for his support of the Graham Lieberman secrecy bill….
Tag: Obama
Jun 02 2009
Things are falling apart
The nauseating sensation of being in a surreal, waking dream is becoming the daily reality of the Obama Administration. Unlike the crude affront to sanity that was the Bush nightmare, the dominant feeling of the Obama era is the insidious feeling that things are not right, but that everyone is pretending that they are.
Consider the GM bankruptcy. This historic event has been ignored by the stock market, which actually staged a rally. The arithmetic of massive auto industry job losses and wiped out government investments is obvious, but nobody wants to run the numbers. Instead, all we hear from the press is numbing, repetitive assurances that everything is going to be fine. Obama sends in a handful of inexperienced functionaries to apply crude measures to hold the remnants of GM together for another year or two, and we are supposed to believe that we are going to get an automotive technology renaissance.
This is government by bull$hit, not a new era of competence. When FDR took things in hand, he gave the people straight talk and new structures staffed by competent people. Obama is blowing smoke and dodging accountability. We have seen this pattern in the financial “rescue,” as Geither and Summers ducked, weaved, and dodged around every issue. Now we are seeing it in industrial policy.
If the Bush administration did not give us an adequate lesson in the pernicious consequences of wishful thinking and ideological fantasies, we will certainly learn this lesson under Obama. Liberal fantasies are no less pernicious than those of conservatives. Reality will not be denied for much longer.
Jun 02 2009
Obama Changed Mind on Photos After Maliki Said Baghdad Will Burn
McClathchy Newspapers is reporting that the real reason that President Obama changed his mind on releasing the torture photos is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki told him that Iraq would erupt in violence and demand the US get out:
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and that Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official have told McClatchy.
Why’d Obama switch on detainee photos? Maliki went ballistic
The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn’t make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011.
Maliki said, “Baghdad will burn” if the photos are released, said a second U.S. military official.
Why’d Obama switch on detainee photos? Maliki went ballistic
More at the link, including a desription of some of the pictures.
So we hide the truth.
In my view, it’s long past time to withdraw from Iraq. In addition, there should be justice for the crimes Americans committed, including justice at the highest levels for ordering torture. To be a nation committed to the rule of law means applying laws against torture to even high officials who break the law. When we fail to apply the law against a high official because of his or her rank, we no longer can say we follow the rule of law.
That means investigate Bush and Cheney for All of their violations of law.
Simulposted on Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
May 29 2009
How long before Obama is on the hook?
Whew. Can't believe I just wrote that headline.
For all this time, we have been told to keep our powder dry. That he's on our side, got our best interests at heart. For all this time, the focus and outrage has been directed to Bush/Cheney. There is plenty of evidence he's doing the bidding of the military industrial complex, and not the bidding of his constituents.
Obama has been in office for just over 4 months. In that time, he has had the time to:
1) Extend warrantless wiretapping, and even extend his claim to that power
2) Defend government secrecy – even exceeding Bush's claims of executive power.
3) Publish evidence of Bush era war crimes
4) Declare theintention not to prosecute said war crimes
5) Close, then not close GTMO
-calling the detainees 'too dangerous to let go'
6) Reinstall military commissions for 'dangerous terrorists we CAn prosecute'
7) Continue unabated the TARP program, while doing little to save people's homes from foreclosure.
8) Bail out giant carmakers without requiring the money be used to support jobs at home.
9) Kept key Bushies like Gates on – keeping the previous military structure in place so propaganda can leak out just like before.
10) Asserted the intent to keep Don Seigelman in jail.
How on earth does this look different, other than the party label, than the last 8 years?
May 26 2009
Obama falls victim to his bogeyman
Like some great inflatable amusement park monster, Obama and his fellow Democratic Party Machiavellians decided to pump up the deflating Al Qaeda bogeyman to prove their “toughness” on national security – and to keep the arms merchants happy. But the problem with reinvigorating bogeymen is that they frighten people.
The campaign promise of closing Guantanamo has now collided with the rediscovered super-evil, world-threatening, cosmically colossal threat of AL QAEDA! This great terrorist organization, which has been incapable of putting so much as one sniper with a rifle and a box of bullets in the United states, is now becoming a self-created political obstacle for the Obama administration.
We are waging two ruinously expensive “wars” against the Al Qaeda bogeyman, and now the main issue Republicans are using to undermine Obama is his “weakness” in dealing with the terrorist threat he has revived. The irony is extraordinary, but the results are very bad for America. We will continue to piss away our dwindling resources chasing the Al Qaeda bogeyman, and Obama has given the Republicans a permanent claim to superior devotion to protecting us.
Al Qaeda is a weak enemy that can easily be contained for a fraction of our “war on terror” expenditures. But Obama can’t tell these simple truths. He is now the victim of his own bogeyman.
May 24 2009
We Got Played
(Crossposted from The Free Speech Zone)
Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner and Managing Attorney for CCR’s Guantanamo project Shayana Kadidal responded with disappointment to President Obama’s speech this morning. CCR represents the detainees at Guantánamo and is part of the key FOIA lawsuit surrounding the torture photo disclosures.
Ratner and Kadidal were disturbed by the direction the Obama administration is taking on questions of human rights, transparency, accountability and the law. CCR’s Executive Director, who met with the president yesterday, briefed his colleagues before boarding a plane this morning.
Said Ratner, “The president wrapped himself in the Constitution and then proceeded to violate it by announcing he would send people before irredeemably flawed military commissions and seek to create a preventive detention scheme that only serves to move Guantanamo to a new location and give it a new name.”
Said Kadidal, “Preventive detention goes against every principle our nation was founded on. We have courts and laws in place that we respect and rely on because we have been a nation of laws for hundreds of years; we should not simply discard them when they are inconvenient. The new president is looking a lot like the old.”
May 23 2009
Unemployed? Get used to it.
Our Kleptocracy: Saving the American economy by looting it
“Economists are already floating the concept that Americans better get used to a lower standard of living. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished forever in industries such as auto manufacturing and financial services. Millions of people who were fired or laid off will find it harder to get hired again and for years may have to accept lower earnings than they enjoyed before the slump.
…
Layoffs now taking place are similar to those in the 1981-1982 recession, when unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent and 2.8 million jobs disappeared, leaving industries such as durable-goods manufacturing permanently smaller. Some 14 percent of durable-goods positions vanished in that slump, and the sector never regained the employment level of June 1981.”
May 22 2009
Two not to be missed videos! And Liz Holtzman speaks out on torture!
Both of these videos speak for themselves without dialogue from me!
David Swanson speaks on Real News: “Policy Differences or Crimes?”
Rachael Maddow, with Vince Warren, Director of Center for Constitutional Rights
Rachel speaks out on Obama’s speech and indefinite detention!
(Note: I tried over and over to embed the video with no success. I don’t get it. Nightprowlkitty did it the other night — she must’ve hit a nerve I haven’t found. Sorry, wish I could’ve done it myself!)
Liz Holtzman next!
May 21 2009
What happened to Obama?
In view of the stunning policy reversals Obama has made in the last few weeks, we must conclude that something significant has happened to change the political positions held by Barak Obama. I believe that there are four possible explanations:
1. Obama has carefully reconsidered his positions and decided to turn away from a lifetime commitment to populist and liberal beliefs to embrace the governing philosophy of the Bush administration.
2. Obama has been persuaded that he must continue Bush administration policies to raise political capital for reforms he wishes to pass in Congress (e.g., national health care).
3. Obama has been coerced by blackmail or some similar mechanism into continuing Bush/Cheney policies.
4. Obama was always a “Manchurian candidate” of the plutocracy, and he deliberately misrepresented his positions during the campaign.
I am leaning toward #4. What do you think?