I think that this captures the dynamic perfectly.
Category: Barack Obama
Obama’s Speech
Oddly flat for him.
Part of that may be the substance, where I think that he is simply wrong.
I think that this is all about trying to split the difference where one side is wrong, the hawks are wrong, as they almost always are.
We’re Still Torturing at Black Prisons
So much for change we can believe in.
The CIA is still maintaining gulags where prisoners are tortured:
An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates, sometimes for weeks at a time, without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.
The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.”
The jail’s operation highlights a tension between President Obama’s goal to improve detention conditions that had drawn condemnation under the Bush administration and his stated desire to give military commanders leeway to operate. While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency in January, it did not also close this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces.
The problem here is that he wants to split a difference, because he is too eager to please people, and there is no difference to split: You either torture, or you don’t. You either allow the ICRC to review conditions at POW camps, or you don’t, you either try terrorists in real courts, or you don’t.
What’s more, this is well corroborated:
Although his and other detainees’ accounts could not be independently corroborated, each was interviewed separately and described similar conditions. Their descriptions also matched those obtained by two human rights workers who had interviewed other former detainees at the site.
(emphasis mine)
What Barack Obama (and Eric Holder, and much of the rest of Obama’s security/intelligence appointees) has done is to spiff up the image of the torture, but it is still going on.
There is a point where a line gets crossed, and it won’t be just covering up for Bush and His Evil Minions™, and maybe shading a few lines on due process.
After a few more months of this, Barack Obama becomes a war criminal too.
More on the Exit of Greg Graig, White House Counsel
Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf of Time magazine have the full rundown, but the basic thesis is that Dick Cheney started saying bad things about Barack Obama when it started to become obvious that Cheney might be in legal jeopardy if Obama did not go all out to stop all investigations and public disclosures on law breaking by Bush and His Evil Minions™.
At Firedog Lake, Marcy Wheeler hits the nail on the head when she says, “I guess Dick Cheney is right–Obama can’t stand up to terrorists. Terrorists like Dick Cheney.”
(emphasis mine)
Deep Thought
H/t Ted Rall.
My Congratulations to Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader McConnell, and President Palin
You know, we all thought that we elected FDR or JFK in 2008, but it appears that we elected Herbert Hoover instead:
This recession has taught us that we can’t return to a situation where America’s economic growth is fueled by consumers who take on more and more debt. In order to keep growing, we need to spend less, save more, and get our federal deficit under control. We also need to place a greater emphasis on exports that we can build, produce, and sell to other nations – exports that can help create new jobs at home and raise living standards throughout the world.
(emphasis mine)
Unemployment is, 10.2%, 17½% if you use U6, which the metric that most closely matches the numbers used to arrive at the 24.9% level during the Great Depression, and he thinks that it’s time to cut the deficit.
It’s the wrong prescription, and notwithstanding polls, people don’t vote on the deficit, they vote on the economy, and except for little Timmy Geithner’s friends in wall street, the economy has consistently gotten worse, and it will continue to get worse as Obama plays to Wall street, and not Main Street.
The Crazy Will Not End
A 52% Of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the election for Barack Obama in 2008.
This is not going to end well. These people are even stronger than the folks who claimed that Ross Perot stole the election for Clinton in 1992.
One needs to understand the difference between the opposition and the enemy, and understand that you cannot negotiate with the former.
Unfortunately, you can count the former in without running out of fingers.
Paul Krugman Has a Very Good Point
He usually does, but in this case, his point is good even by his standards.
Specifically, he says that the bank bailout that Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner and His Evil Minions™ was so badly executed, and so without consequences to the people who made this mess, that it has completely soured the public on any further attempt by the government to fix the problem:
…..
So could the feds have negotiated a haircut? Yes. It might not have been that much money, but it would have had a lot of symbolic importance. And that matters.
Brad DeLong says that the loss of public trust due to the kid-gloves treatment of bankers has raised the probability of another Great Depression, because the public won’t support another round of bailouts even if it becomes desperately necessary. I agree — but I think the bigger cost is that we’ve greatly increased the chance of a Japanese-style lost decade, with I would now give roughly even odds of happening. Why? Because bank-friendly policies have squandered public trust in all government action: try talking to the general public about stimulus, and it’s all confounded in their minds with the deeply unpopular bailouts.
(emphasis original)
Krugman is talking about Geithner’s decision to pay off AIG’s swaps to the counter parties, like that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* Goldman Sachs at 100¢ on the dollar, which was both stupid and highly unusual:
But Wall Street doesn’t work like that, and never has.
Big financial institutions are a small club, with a shared interest in sustaining the system. Ever since the days of JP Morgan it has been standard practice, in times of crisis, to get major players together in a room and get them to forgo short-term profit maximization on behalf of the industry interests. It happened in the Panic of 1907; it happened in the Latin American debt crisis of the 80s; it happened in the LTCM bailout, which was financed by private firms, not the feds.
I fear that these actions, amongst others, have completely soured the American public on the idea of any government bailout.
To quote a subordinate, who was speaking to Captain Tupolev as they were about to be sunk by their own torpedo, “You arrogant ass. You’ve killed us!”
Let me make this clear: This sad state of affairs is not Geithner’s fault. It would be absurd, and stupid to say, “If only the Czar knew.” This is going on, and continues to go on, because this is what Barack Obama wants.
He has people around him, like Paul Volker, who have been giving him contrary advice, and he chooses not to listen to them.
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
Breaking: Greg Craig Out as White House Counsel
This was the point man on closing down the gulag at Guantanamo, drafting the memo that called for closing it within a year, as well as the point man on releasing the Bush White House torture memos, and now he’s been fired (resigned) in a classic Friday afternoon bury the news tactic.
My guess is that this means that Barack Obama intends to “embrace and extend”, indefinite detention, probably at Bagram rather than Gitmo, show trials called military commissions, and torture, but YMMV.
In any case, replacing him will be Robert Bauer, who was Barack Obama’s personal attorney from 2005 onwards, as well as the general council for both the DNC and OFA, so I think that what we are getting here is someone who will be a providing justifications for actions, as opposed to reviewing them for legality.
Think Alberto “Abu” Gonzales writ small.
The Boycott is Getting Results
Following repeated actions by Barack Obama and his administration to do absolutely nothing about gay rights, including a particularly illuminating exchange between DNC Treasurer and Andrew Tobias, which I noted here.
Well, it appears that some people concluded that enough was enough, and John Aravosis launched a donor boycott of the DNC. (There is a particularly damning list of the bill of particulars at the link)
So, after months of everyone, including Barney Frank, saying that nothing could be done right now about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), because the plate was too full, we now treated to the spectacle of that same Barney Frank saying that DADT will be repealed in next year’s defense authorization bill. (see also here)
Amazing that.
I think that if people are interested in gay civil rights, it needs to be understood that while Barack Obama and his administration may not be homophobic, they are hostile to the expenditure of any political capital on this matter.
Simply put, while they may not hate gays, they find the LGBT community inconvenient.
This means that the only way that anything is going to get done is if the LGBT community makes doing nothing even more inconvenient.
Damn, He Can Give a Speech
Obama at Ft. Hood.
What Krugman Said
I’ll just quote his last ‘graph:
If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.
Actually, I am not entirely sure that this is true. There is a pat of me that believes that Obama’s agenda has always been very minimalist.
Just read the whole thing.
Obama Knifes Gays Again
Not surprising, when he replaced the Gay friendly DNC chair (Howard Dean ) with yet another bible thumper (Tim Kaine)bible.
As I have said before, Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ are desperately afraid of offending homophobic bigots.
Well, the DNC was claiming that they sent those emails to folks in Maine, asking for support for Corzine in NJ, without any mention of the Hate Referendum in Maine by accident, but John Aravosis got a copy of an email sent to donors which proves that to be a lie.
Ironically enough, the email was from Andrew Tobias, who is the author of The Best Little Boy in the World, who later got involved in the comments section of the above thread, and blamed John for, “turning people against support of the Democrats,” ignoring Obama’s record on such things.
I think that it is absolutely clear now, between Donnie McClurkin, his reversals on DADT, inviting homophobes to offer prayers at the inauguration, and, of course, the disgraceful DOMA briefs that Barack Obama will do whatever is possible to avoid basic civil rights for gays.
I don’t know if it’s because he wants everyone to like him, and so does not want to offend anti-gay bigots (homophobia-phobia), or if he is homophobic himself.
It does not matter. There is a pattern here, and it’s not going to change.
Excerpt of email after the fold.
Email to donors:
1. An email went out asking activists to make calls to New Jersey. It was insensitive not to omit Mainers from that email. I apologize that no one thought to do that. I can’t imagine it could have cost No On One even a dozen votes, but I still wish someone would have thought of this in time to catch it. Mistake noted.
2. A different email went out to Mainers urging them to vote. As the only thing of substance anyone was voting on in Maine was Question One, and as Democratic activists vote our way, this was a small but positive effort to be helpful.
I would have liked to see that email discuss No One One directly, in case there may have been an email-enabled Organizing for America activist someplace in Maine who did NOT know where Maine Democrats stood on this issue. (Out of the country without Internet access until the night before the election?) But I’m told there was concern that advocating specifically for a ballot initiative, whether LGBT or otherwise, would set a precedent for every other ballot initiative. Bureaucracies are nervous about setting precedents.
So We Have a Bunch of Homophobe-Phobic Idiots in the White House
Barack Obama’s former campaign organization, Organizing for America, just sent out mass emails to Maine voters in preparation for the elections.
Well, with the best chance yet to defeat an anti-gay marriage plebiscite, in years, what to they have to say about the Maine’s hate amendment?
Why, nothing, of course.
Just go out and vote, because Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ all cut their political teeth on the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” fiasco in the early 1990s, and so they live in fear of bigots.
The degree to which the Obama administration has internalized the idea that civil rights for gays are simply a captive special interest group who can be thrown under the bus is appalling.
From: “Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com” info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: From: “Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com” info@barackobama.com
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:10:17 -0500
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Get out the vote in MaineMitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America
Subject: Get out the vote in MaineXXXX —
One year ago, we made phone calls, went door to door, and proudly cast our ballots to elect Barack Obama and bring real change to this country.
Tomorrow is Election Day once again in Maine. It’s as important as ever for you to get out to vote. And just like you did last year, bring friends, family, and co-workers with you when you go to the polls.
(Click here to find your polling location. http://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1033d/507aca42/d7167d3d/118862ba/2515913445/VEsH/ )
http://my.barackobama.com/page/m/55c1033d/507aca42/d7167d3d/118862ba/2515913445/VEsE/
On Election Day last year, we knew that victory was just the beginning — that the hardest work was still ahead of us. We didn’t build this movement for a single election or issue.
And we know — now more than ever — that our voices and votes are critical to continuing this movement for change and in shaping the outcome of the issues that are most important to us like health insurance reform and creating jobs to turn around the economy.
So please remind friends and family to go vote and bring them with you to your polling location tomorrow.
Thanks,
Mitch
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for AmericaPaid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
Elections Make a Difference: Labor Regulations
It appears that people who want to treat their employees like so much excrement are distressed that Barack Obama is not vociferously anti union, and that under his watch union leaders have access to, and information from, the White House, and that sensible rules have been established:
Delta Air Lines, the world’s largest carrier, would be more likely to lose union elections sought by flight attendants and machinists if a proposal by the AFL-CIO is approved.
The workers asked the National Mediation Board in July and August to clear the way for an election. Last month, the AFL-CIO petitioned the board to revise procedures and allow a union if most of those voting approve, instead of a majority of all workers in the class.
The board plans to announce a proposal in coming days to advance the union request on voting rules, people familiar with the matter said. Seven Republican senators said in a Sept. 30 letter that the board was delaying a decision on the union election while it considers the new vote-counting method.
Yes, under the old system, a non-vote was counted as a no vote, so you could lose because someone got the sniffles, or just didn’t want to be bothered to vote.
What’s more, they are appointing people who are not management toadies to boards. In the case of the National mediation board, you have a former flight attendent union official replacing a former lobbyist for Northwest (now a part of Delta), and the President of Delta Airlines is pissed about it:
“You have two former heads of AFL-CIO unions at the NMB and they really are politicizing the process,” Delta CEO Richard Anderson said on a conference call with investors last week.
My heart bleeds borscht for you sadistic equestrian necrophiliac…But that’s beating a dead horse.
Even more shocking, the head of OSHA decided to, “replace pictures of OSHA managers displayed in a conference room with photos of workers who had been killed on the job.”
It gives one the vapors.
I’m not sure how deep the support for labor is in the Obama White House, but what is going is a welcome change form the vociferous hostility exhibited by Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
New York Times Calls Out Obama on Torture
Their editorial board just called out Obama as Bush II on torture and secrecy.
OP/EDs generally don’t mean much, but I think that the Times, at least in its unsigned editorials, is a barometer of a certain segment of the population, or at least that segment that doesn’t live inside the DC Beltway, and as such, this could mean a trend.
I’d give it about 5 to 1 against it being a trend, but a week ago, I would have said 20 to 1.
No Balls
The word is that the Senate version of the healthcare reform bill will have the public option, but only if Barack Obama actually asks for it:
There is a growing sense on Capitol Hill that the White House’s refusal to weigh in more forcefully in the health care debate could come at the cost of a public option for insurance coverage.
Democratic aides said that a “handful” of senators who are skeptical of a public plan likely could be persuaded if not to support it then at least to oppose a Republican filibuster, if the administration were to apply a bit more pressure — or even guidance.
(emphasis mine)
Barack Obama has two problems here:
- He is desperate to sign something, anything, as in keep him away from toilet paper, into law that he can call “healthcare reform”.
- He still wants everyone, including the Republicans, to like him.
So he is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because he does not have the guts to even try to win, even though it appears that Harry Reid is pretty much begging him for some backup on the public option.
I know that it is only 9 months into his term, but it’s already screaming “1 term wonder” in my ear.
There is a Message to this Madness
OK, so we have some anonymous adviser to Barack Obama saying that people who want more substantive action on LGBT rights are a pajama clad left wing fringe:
For a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed, and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.
There are a lot of people out there who are claiming that this is not official White House policy, and it’s an anonymous source, and maybe John Harwood is flat out lying.
It’s clear from the discussions that Harwood is a turd: The idea that moving in a direction that a majority of the country supports is dangerous, and that Obama has to fear Letterman, Leno, and O’Brien is ludicrous. (see video)
That being said, he did not just make this up from thin air while on the air. Harwood is standing by his statement, but does now offer that perhaps it was more about the people who want us out of Afghanistan.
Barack Obama and his people have done a very good job at keeping some groups on the reservation, to the degree that Andrew Sullivan describes the Human Rights Campaign as having “Battered Wife Syndrome”, and Glenn Greenwald correctly describes the administrations dealings with liberal organizations, particularly in the case or Rahm Emanuel, as being liberal veal pen.
So, the question here is what is going on, and I think that Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog nails it: this is a deliberate attempt to send out contradictory messages:
The deliberate muddying of the message was the message.
That’s what’s going on now. Obama reached out to the gay community — and yet he wants to be seen as not being tight with gays or the angrier lefties. So a friendly journalist leaked this remark — this deniable remark — which has since been, um, denied. And now the message is muddied. The mixed signals are meant, I think, to confuse supporters of gay rights and wavering but potentially Democratic-voting non-liberal voters (including non-white social conservatives) in, oh, say, New Jersey and Virginia.
What is going on here is that Obama’s staff is populated by old Clintonistas, and if there was a defining characteristic of the Clinton Administration, it can be summed up in three words, Sister Souljah Moment.
You see Republicans prove how macho they are they attack their opponents, but Democrats, particularly those who came to politics under Bill Clinton, prove how macho they are by attacking their allies. They make a fetish of it.
There are people in the Obama White House who are terrified at what might happen if people started to think that the administration supported civil rights, because that would likely mean that they would lose the white male vote in the south….Never mind, already lost…Lose the white evangelical vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the white evangelical vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the foaming at the mouth bigot vote….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…Lose the voters who want to criminalize abortion….Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down…
Gee, I’m beginning to sense a pattern, and I think that it means that there some really stupid folks playing politics in Obama’s white house.
Now I Get the Nobel Prize
It was for the “Beer Summit“:
OSLO (The Borowitz Report) – As the world responded with a mixture of surprise and amazement to the announcement of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel insiders revealed that the President’s “beer summit” at the White House put him over the top.
“The committee was definitely split down the middle right up until the end,” said Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician and member of the five-person Nobel committee. “Some of them were still quite upset about that nasty business with the Somali pirates.”
As Dotcommie at the Stellar Parthenon BBS noted:
Getting the Israelis and the Egyptians to talk was WAY easier than a Boston Cop and a Black Man.
Troof.
I Guess That it’s Now the “Not George W. Bush” Prize, not the Nobel
I’m not saying that Barack Obama won’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize some day, but he certainly does not deserve his award of the prize today.
I dunno, maybe people like Morgan Tsvangirai, who accomplished something like reforms in Zimbabwe at significant personal risk and cost, were just busy flying that day, like Gary Kildall was with IBM.
BTW, I think that there should be a “Not George W. Bush” prize, and there is a better than even chance that Barack Obama deserves this, excluding the who Habeas, prosecuting torture, too big to fail stuff.
You know, this does remind me a lot of Ronald Reagan, in a good way, in that it appears that Obama could fall into a cesspool, and come out smelling like a lilac.
The only thing that I can figure is that the Nobel committee decided that this would be the best way for them to pressure Obama to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.