I remember the discussion in the nineties of what to name the coming decade. In a previous century yrs 1900-09 were aught years, but “the aughts” is an archaic term. Aught means: no thing; not anything: nil, nothing, null, zero, nix, zilch.
In bookkeeping terms, as with data processing, an aught with its diagonal slash helps the accountant differentiate a zero from an O.
I’m amused obviously, that O stands for Obama, optimism and Oprah; and figuratively it represents a zero. With a slash, we can make the distinction, and association, more pointed.
Admittedly, the 00 decade was defined by George W. Bush, and zero fits, doesn’t it, to describe his gas gauge, if not obviously his mileage? In 2008 Barack Obama promised a return from the brink of meaninglessness, this decade, not later, but how far has he got? His followers hold still plenty of hope, things being complicated in Washington and what not, but Obama is looking more like Bush’s fall guy than his arresting officer.
With his legislative majority, George Bush proved you can take a world to war, dismantle regulatory protections, rape the environment, eliminate rights, screw every last living earthly being, and raid the treasury for the bankers, each act performed faster than a Sotomayor confirmation.
With majorities everywhere, even with public opinion on his side, Obama can’t reform health care. And he didn’t have a stolen election behind him.
We’re fast approaching the anniversary of September 11, an impressive benchmark if you will, for George Bush’s first term. I’d be surprised if Obama could put a Cessna into the Hudson by then.
Of course I recognize that Obama is up against more than the Republicans. He faces the powers that be, the corporations, financiers and oligarchs, the “deciders” whose deciding Bush pretended to do by himself. But if the President of the United States is not the Leader of the Free World, is not the most powerful figure on Earth, as his office is held to be, what is he? Are we prepared to accept that our democratic election accounts for naught?
Obama was elected in aught-eight. Judging by the job he’s doing, the superlatives flying from the corporate media about how he’s turned world public opinion, brought change, ended racism, and pretends to be drawing down bad things, Obama will be a shoe-in incumbent. Come next election, we’ll still need someone to offer us hope for mini-versal health care. So from ’08 we have eight years of aught.
President Obama, we hear your sense of urgency to ‘reform’ American Healthcare for American business within weeks, but not any sense that you will pull US troops out of Iraq where you plan to keep them there for another 29 months! Hey! In fact we don’t really believe that you will pull them out even then, now will you? You promised all of this though simply to quiet your supporters within the now dead US ‘Peace Movement’, a large group of Democrats now off into a slumber party.
President Obama is blocking the release of further detainee abuse photos. Would more images of outrages committed against US detainees inflame sentiment against US troops? No doubt. Would more of such photos add nothing to the national dialog? Well… If you consider that the media is still vacillating on the definition of waterboarding, torturers and the lawyers who sanctioned torture are being exempted from prosecution, and war criminals like Dick Cheney are bragging about their participation, maybe there’s room for more dialog.
Yesterday was a rather bad day for the Zionist Republic of Jewish Domination, more commonly known as just the Jewish State of Israel. The United Nations condemned it for its attacks on UN facilities in Gaza where the IDF dumped White Phosphorus down on the civilians hiding below, and then the UN also said that it wanted to investigate the hidden Israeli torture center called ‘1391.’
Borrowing a page from the recent Israeli military slaughter in Gaza, 
‘NETANYAHU’S DEMAND that the Palestinians recognize Israel as “the State of the Jewish People” is ridiculous, even as a tactic for preventing peace. A state recognizes a state, not its ideology or political regime. Nobody recognizes Saudi Arabia, the homeland of the Hajj, as “the State of the Muslim Umma” (the community of believers).’
The Far Right Jewish State Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is on a charm patrol in Europe right now, where his job is to try to convince Europeans that he is not Israel’s equivalent of Dick Cheney. It is doubtful that Avigdor can pull the wool over the eyes of even these enablers though. 
“Socialism will continue. The Ecuadorian people voted for that. We are going to emphasize this fight for social justice, for regional justice. We are going to continue the fight to eliminate all forms of workplace exploitation within our socialist conviction: the supremacy of human work over capital. Nobody is in any doubt that our preferential option is for the poorest people, we are here because of them. Hasta la victoria siempre!”
The Lebanese Right Wing is going into a panic as it is about to lose a major election coming up in that country. Israel is also worried and Barack Obama’s Zionists are getting worried, too. It was time to sex it up in Lebanon and who better than that old American whore, Hillary Clinton, to do the job? Cause Condi went off duty! See 
It’s kind of sad reading the liberal ‘Peace’crat sites as they scream and shout about why the Democratic Party must prosecute The Republicans for the crimes of implementing torture. That can’t happen though, and there is one BIG reason why not? Can you guess why it won’t and can’t be done?
Ciudad Juarez is a city of 1,500,000 plus people directly opposite El Paso, Texas, and Presidente Fecal Calderon and his Gringo manager, US President Barack Obama, have occupied the city with 10,000 Mexican troops. In short, this is where and what the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ has ‘retreated’ to. 
Immediately after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the term “Nine Eleven” was already tripping off the tongues of TV talking heads as if it was more natural than saying “last Monday,” or “last week Monday,” before even we knew the attack was not going to last several days. The day after the election of Barack Obama, a suddenly large proportion of the TV talking heads were black, overnight, like it had become some sort of costume party theme.
Obama meanwhile is the black man we invite to dinner. And these colored teevee folk too. They’re not poor blacks after all. They’re the Thomas Sowells, Uncle Toms, educated reformed black people. Rich black people are the new lawn jockeys.
Lack of money to pay for higher priced cornmeal is what is helping starve millions in Southern Sudan, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Somalia, and elsewhere in Africa. Many are just a few weeks from dying because they can’t buy the cornmeal at current prices.
Hugo Chavez met Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas, and presented this gift to the American president: “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. At the United Nations General Assembly in 2006, Chavez held aloft Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” encouraging everyone to read it. Is there a common theme to the dark-skinned Chavez’s book recommendations? Chavez’ critics from the Venezuelan upper middle class think he’s no brighter than a monkey. His message, educate yourselves.
Eduardo Galeano was interviewed by Amy Goodman on the day Barack Obama learned he had won the election. Galeano had this hope for the first US President of color: that he never forget that the White House, his new home, had been built by black slaves.