Aladdin Sane

Charlatan, this is a fair question. The topic is "Bush got a third term." I am not being critical of President Obama in these matters. I am only pointing to the Bush policies that the current president has embraced.

I support President Obama's wise decision to adopt the "fascist" policies of the Bush Administration. These policies will not result in me calling President Obama a "war criminal." I will not call for him to be disemboweled or even "impeached." President Obama's brilliance is actually underlined by his decision to continue many security policies developed by President Bush.

__________________
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

roachboy

how quaint---so you not only claim vindication from obama's continuation of some bush policies, but also try for some imaginary moral superiority because you imagine yourself to make these claims with a greater degree of decorum than your imaginary political adversaries.

to fill you in on a couple things: typically, i was pretty careful about the way in which i used the term fascism---more often fascism-lite---with relation to the bush administration. to have understood the points of contact you'd have to know something about how fascism worked ideologically (the unified nation fulfilling its world-historical destiny--which is a militarized destiny---through War with an Enemy that is everywhere and nowhere blah blah blah) and legally (the legal arguments that the bush people were so fond of repeated the fascist critique of democracy in the name of dictatorship---the Leader was a Decider; a state of emergency required Decisions; democracy is too slow, too abstract; so states of emergency (national security) can become the Justification for an evacuation of democratic process--this *was* the bush administration's legal philosophy in a nutshell. it's the case whether you like it or not).

now obama may be continuing some of the "national security" theater put into place by the bush people but it's also the case that the ideological frame within which we are operating in no way resembles that of the bush period, and the legal philosophy being advanced by the obama administration bears no resemblance to that of the bush period---so if there's no linking of obama to a fascism-lite, it's not because conservatives have some Higher Decorum---it's because the empirical co-ordinates aren't present.

what the right is also trying to do here is empty meanings from the associations of fascism-lite and the bush administration.

i think paul krugman is right in his editorial this morning about the cali-crisis: the limbaugh republicans have gone insane from lack of power, from the situation they created for themselves...they've alienated moderates, lost them in great number and have scuttled to the extreme right. from there, unable to separate accelerating the sinking of their ship from stabilizing it, they dream the world is other than it is.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ratbastid

Aladdin Sane

Yikes! President Obama sells ambassadorships, like other presidents, or Another example of Hopeandchange:

Obama Offers Prime Posts to Top Campaign Contributors (Update1)

By Jonathan D. Salant and Julianna Goldman

May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Louis Susman has one thing in common with many of his predecessors nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom: money.

Susman, 71, a retired Citigroup Inc. senior investment banker, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and another $300,000 for his inauguration. On Wednesday, Obama nominated Susman to the post formally known as the Court of St. James.

Like Andrew Mellon, Joseph Kennedy and Walter Annenberg before him, Susman’s credentials stem more from involvement in financing party politics than foreign policy experience.

Even with his pledges to change government, Obama is following the tradition of his predecessors by offering some ambassadorships to top campaign backers, including four of the 12 nominations this week. The president acknowledged in a news conference in January that donors might get plum postings.

“The practice of rewarding donors is a remnant of the spoils system that we abolished in the civil service,” said career diplomat Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former ambassador to Afghanistan. “It is a dismal testimony to the importance of money in our electoral system.”

“That said, the republic will survive the president selling a few embassies.”

Reagan Appointment

Susman is a former vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup. He was finance chairman for John Kerry’s 2004 Democratic presidential campaign and raised money for the presidential runs of Senators Edward Kennedy and Bill Bradley.

Besides Susman, those nominated on May 27 include:

-- John Roos, chief executive officer of the Palo Alto, California-based law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, to Japan. He raised more than $500,000 for Obama.

-- Charles Rivkin, chief executive officer of Wildbrain Inc., to France. Rivkin collected more than $500,000 for Obama’s campaign and $300,000 for his inauguration.

-- Laurie Fulton, a partner with Williams & Connolly LLP, to Denmark. Fulton, 59, raised $100,000 to $200,000.

Susman said he was “excited by the opportunity to serve our country.” A call to Fulton was referred to the White House. Roos, 54, and Rivkin, 47, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Rewarding Rooney

Two other nominees -- Vilma Martinez, 65, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in California, to Argentina, and Miguel Diaz, 46, a theology professor at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, to the Vatican -- gave to Obama.

Diaz, who earned his doctorate in theology from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, contributed $1,000 to Obama’s campaign last year. Fluent in Spanish and Italian, he was also a member of the Obama campaign’s Catholic advisory board.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Obama named Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, as ambassador to Ireland. Rooney, 76, a Republican, endorsed Obama last year.

“The system, despite any desires, is not basically going to change in this administration or any other,” said former ambassador Mort Abramowitz, who spent more than 30 years in the State Department.

On Jan. 9, when Obama conceded he wouldn’t abandon the practice, he said, “It would be disingenuous for me to suggest that there are not going to be some excellent public servants but who haven’t come through the ranks of the civil service.”

‘Committed Individuals’

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, called the nominees “a group of committed individuals and proven professionals that are eager to serve their country.”

Since John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, about one- third of ambassadorships have gone to campaign donors or other politically connected individuals, according to the American Academy of Diplomacy.

“It’s very prestigious being the ambassador and living in a large residence,” said John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association.

Wealthy ambassadors have paid to help refurbish their residences abroad or to throw parties. Annenberg, U.S. ambassador under President Richard Nixon, spent almost $1 million renovating his quarters, according to the New York Times.

Between January 2001 and January 2007, President George W. Bush named 124 people to foreign posts. Fifty-three had raised at least $100,000 for his presidential campaigns, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based watchdog group.

Ameriquest

One was Roland Arnall, the founder of Ameriquest Mortgage Co., a subprime lender, who served as ambassador to the Netherlands. Ameriquest and its subsidiaries gave $1 million to Bush’s 2005 inaugural committee.

Former President Bill Clinton named M. Larry Lawrence, owner of the landmark Hotel del Coronado near San Diego and a campaign donor, as ambassador to Switzerland. Lawrence’s body was later exhumed from Arlington National Cemetery amid allegations that his claims of Merchant Marine service were fraudulent.

Some career diplomats are trying to change the practice. Neumann and Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador, wrote letters to both major presidential nominees last year asking them to limit political appointees to 10 percent of ambassadorships.

“Too often ambassadorships have served as political rewards for unqualified candidates,” they wrote.

Some Obama appointments have drawn praise. Abramowitz cited former U.S. Representative Tim Roemer of Indiana as ambassador to India and Jon Huntsman, the Republican governor of Utah, as ambassador to China. “It’s largely better than previous administrations,” he said.

Abramowitz said there will always be appointments that are naturally suited toward non-career officials.

“People aren’t going to worry about who goes to Trinidad and Tobago,” he said.

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

aceventura3

No sour grapes, I just call them like I see them. Obama has no conviction. I think that is the worst possible trait one can have has a leader. I disagree with Hilery Clinton on most major issues, but I respect her for saying what she believes and being consistent with that. And as I have stated previously I would have voter for her before voting for McCain, because I see McCain as a person who lacks conviction as well.


Ever notice when Obama speaks he alsway takes both sides of an issue and that he creates straw man arguments that he easily defeats. For example - he is for holding teachers accountable and against doing anything to make teachers accountable, and he is against the false argument that you can improve the schools by firing good teachers.

I often get a headache trying to figure out his actual position on important issues. For example what is his position on gays in the military? Do you know? Can you explain it?

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

i thought that maybe the conservatives whose restatements of the self-evident come packaged with images of various modes of Flaying the Strawman might enjoy reading the same kind of arguments from the opposite political position:

Z Magazine - Obama's Violin

the difference of course is that the conservative arguments really have no point to them, beyond being something to put into the Flaying the Strawman packaging.

enjoy.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ratbastid

Ah! Conviction! The sort that W displayed, I guess?

One man's conviction is another man's near-religious blindness to alternatives, others' opinions, and those con-sarned facts. Conviction is what leads to waterboarding people in a quest to fabricate evidence tying Iraq to Al Qaida. I could do with a LOT less of that sort of "conviction".

Also: really? Gays in the military? I'd honestly be surprised if Obama had said anything about the "issue" at all. It's not 1992 anymore, chief. Obama's opinion on the proper springiness of buggy whips might be hard to track down too.

aceventura3

One difference is when I, a conservative but not representative of all conservatives, makes a pointless argument, I will admit it. When I am playing political games, I will admit it. When I make a straw man argument to try to make the opposition look silly, I will acknowledge it if called on it. Obama and his kind do not. Obama and his kind are against "the blame game politics of the past" but he clearly lets us know that he inherited the worst economy in the history of man kind, two wars, potential extinction of polar bears due to global warming, the US not respected by any country in the known universe, and a Republican Party that is simply saying no everytime he wants to spend a trillion or so out of the petty cash fund. Oh, and they said some not so nice things about his SCOTUS nominee.


P.S. - the thing about polar bears, I just made that on up. I have not heard Obama say polar bears are going extinct as an inherited problem

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

you might read the article, ace, rather than simply bite what's around it. you might even find it interesting.

there are reasons beyond brand triage to be critical of aspects of what obama's been doing.

if you want to look at other things, necessary and potentially good ones, you might consider the indications that the bush non-policy toward israel is out the window.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

I loved his clarity.

I still find it laughable that liberals did not know Bush was going to invade Iraq when he said he wanted the authority to do so and said Saddam was a threat. And then when he ran on "stay the course" they were surprised that he stayed the course. Or, when he said he would do "everything" in his power to prevent another attack on our shores - but the liberals, especially those in Congress with the responsibility to keep the executive branch in check, were suprised by wire taps, interrogations, Gitmo, etc.

Don't you think he should? Wasn't that an important issue regarding our ability to retain some highly qualified people in the military while Bush was in office. Wasn't military preparedness, our military being over extended, recruitment a major issue during the campaign, and you say Obama has not said anything on the subject. Great leadership, right?

---------- Post added at 09:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:10 PM ----------

Here is a quote from the article you cited:

The suggestion that some on the left actual get the fact that Obama is political is fair, but some were saying that from the time he ran for the Senate in Illinois. I guess I am not impressed by old news.

Also, the above is a sad commentary on those who believe that comment above. I do not. I think one should be true to their convictions, which has been my point about the problem I have with Obama since I have been commenting on him.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Aladdin Sane

Any speech in which President Obama announces a change in policy follows the same basic format of denouncing Bush’s policy, taking long thoughtful pauses, then adopting Bush’s policy.

Well known conservative Rachel Maddow said Mr. Obama claimed even more dictatorial power for himself than did President Bush, or any president in history for that matter.

Meanwhile, Published today, elsewhere:

For the last eight years, a sort of parlor game has been played listing the various ways the Bush anti-terror policies supposedly destroyed the Constitution. Liberal opponents — prominent among them Sen. Barack Obama — railed against elements of the Patriot Act, military tribunals, rendition, wiretaps, email intercepts, and Predator drone attacks. These supposedly unnecessary measures, plus Bush’s policies in postwar Iraq, were said to be proof, on Bush’s part, of either paranoia or blatantly partisan efforts to scare us into supporting his unconstitutional agenda.

Now, thanks to President Obama, the verdict is in: All of the Bush protocols turned out to reflect a bipartisan national consensus that has kept us safe from another 9/11-style attack.
How do we know that? Because President Obama — despite earlier opposition and current name changes and nuancing — has kept intact the entire Bush anti-terrorism program.

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Aladdin Sane

Barack Obama has decided to fight the release of the 17 Chinese Uighers at Guantanamo Bay into the US, Jake Tapper reports — and he’s choosing an interesting argument to use. While Obama has wasted no opportunity to paint Gitmo as a stain on the nation’s reputation and all but the gulag Dick Durbin called it a few years ago, the administration paints quite a different picture of it in court:

The Obama administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court Friday to reject a request for a hearing from 17 Chinese Muslims currently being held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, arguing they have no right to come to America despite a district judge’s orders last Fall that they immediately be brought to the U.S. and released.

“Petitioners are free to return to their home country, but they understandably do not wish to do so, because they fear inhumane treatment there,” reads the filing, signed by US Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, and other Justice Department officials. “Petitioners are also free to go to any other country that is willing to accept them.”

Many European countries are waiting for the US to accept the Uighurs before they agree to accept any more detainees from Guantanamo, but there is strong resistance from Congress, which recently voted to keep any detainees out of the US — even out of US prisons.

But not to worry — the Obama administration says the Uighurs’ detention isn’t so bad, considering.

“In contrast to individuals currently detained as enemies under the laws of war, petitioners are being housed under relatively unrestrictive conditions, given the status of Guantanamo Bay as a United States military base,” Kagan writes, saying they are “in special communal housing with access to all areas of their camp, including an outdoor recreation space and picnic area.” They “sleep in an air-conditioned bunk house and have the use of an activity room equipped with various recreational items, including a television with VCR and DVD players, a stereo system, and sports equipment.”

In fact, the conditions at the rest of the facility also are pretty decent, compared to conditions in max-security prisons elsewhere in the US. The military runs a tight ship at Gitmo, but the prisoners have a standard of living that — apart from their detention — exceeds anything available to them in their home countries, free or not. They certainly don’t want to be there any more than the Uighers, but as the administration admits in this filing, they’re being detained under the “laws of war.”

Presumably, they would have to be detained under the “laws of war” regardless of where we house them. So why close Gitmo at all?

Also, Obama’s new friends in Europe have to be a little nonplussed at this filing. He just got done twisting arms on his first trip to the EU to get our allies to take some of the Gitmo detainees. Supposedly, the Uighers are the best of the lot, with no particular animus towards anyone but China, at least according to the administration. If so, why did Obama go to court to block them from entering the US? Europeans may not have been so charmed by Obama as to miss that glaring hypocrisy.

It seems that the more Obama looks at Gitmo and the military tribunal system, the better he likes both. Maybe by this summer, Obama will finally admit out loud that George W. Bush had it right all along.

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Aladdin Sane

The Obama administration continues to defy the judge in the lawsuit over warrantless electronic surveillance in the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation case, refusing this weekend to release a top-secret document and continuing a Bush administration claim of “state secrets” in the case. The judge has ordered the lawyers to court to explain why he shouldn’t just issue a summary judgment on behalf of the plaintiffs, which the Department of Justice opposes:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration insists it has no obligation to provide access to a top secret document in a wiretapping case, setting up a showdown next week with the judge who ordered it released.

Justice Department lawyers, in a response Friday with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, also argued that Judge Vaughn Walker had no cause to penalize the government over its refusal to turn over the document.

Walker on May 22 threatened to punish the administration for withholding the document, which he ordered given to lawyers suing the government over its warrantless wiretapping program.

The judge has ordered department lawyers to appear before his court Wednesday to make the case why he should not award damages to the now-defunct Oregon chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. That group is challenging the wiretapping program.

In its response, the department said that in this case "disclosure of classified information—even under protective order—would create intolerable risks to national security."

The filing said President Barack Obama has authorized access to classified information on a "need-to-know" basis and argued that the government "cannot be sanctioned for its determination that plaintiffs do not have a need to know classified information."

The Al-Haramain case has been a focal point for civil liberties groups questioning the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program, and has become one of several instances where the current administration has taken its cue from the Bush administration in citing national security as justification for keeping secrets.

Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a review of all state secrets used by the Bush administration to protect anti-terrorism programs from lawsuits. But the Obama administration is also fighting the court-ordered release of prisoner-abuse photos and is reviving, in a revised form, military tribunals where suspected terrorists have limited access to information.

The Bush administration inadvertently turned over the top secret document to Al-Haramain lawyers, who claimed it proved illegal wiretapping by the National Security Agency.

The document was returned to the government, and the lawyers have argued they need the document back to prove their case.

The Treasury Department in 2004 designated the charity as an organization that supports terrorism.

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

filtherton

Not that I agree with Obama's policies RE: Gitmo, et al, but I would hope that the above posts get the same derisive responses that were normally reserved for Host.

wing870

Just more smoke and mirrors.

roachboy

of course you don't agree with the assessment in the article i posted, ace. to agree with it would be to position obama as what he always really was: a centrist. conservative mythology requires that he be some Radical--it doesn't matter that the idea is patently absurd--if he wasn't framed as some Radical than this, even more ridiculous line of conservative argument wouldn't have been able to get started.

but this is no longer a debate thread: it's a conservative circle-jerk. there are many many many more interesting things in the world than the right's sad attempts to salvage itself, and the silly arguments that it throws around in a desperate attempt to locate Traction.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

powerclown

Nobody can say they didn't see it coming -- or they didn't have the imagination to see it coming. Apart from being a politician, Barama-san was an unknown quantity from Day One. Oh, we knew he was smart and cunning, but apart from that, nobody knew squat. Nobody knew squat because there was nothing to know; the man never ran anything. People were howling in the streets not to put an inexperienced senator with zero governing experience in the White House in charge of America at such a sensitive time. Barama had 2 things going for him that proved irresistible to the faithful: George W. Bush and Charisma. It's been scientifically proven that babies are more attracted to so-called "beautiful" faces (beauty, which in this case also scientifically explained by such characteristics as bone structure, symmetry, facial expression), and such was the spellbinding powers El Barama commandeered.

I never had a problem with the Patriot Act, wiretapping, the privilege of state secrets, the revival of the Bush Administration Military Commission, enhanced interrogation so it makes no difference to me. I think Barama is doing the right things to maintain the security of the country, and I especially like that its an articulate, intellectual liberal doing it this time around. Because if an articulate intellectual liberal says these things must be upheld, then its somehow more legit.

aceventura3

My first reaction to the above was that, Obama is not a centrist. I believed Obama is one of the most left leaning politicians in Washington. However, upon reflection I thought he is left but that his quest for power trumps his being a "leftist" and that his quest for power has made him a "centrist", suggesting that I actually agree with the article. So, I think my real problem is that with Obama what we are dealing with is a person with a hidden agenda combined with the intellect and patience to carry out his agenda. And at the end of the day, just like many "revolutionary" leaders of third world countries we are probably dealing with an individual who is really only interested in power and is using the "left" agenda when needed, a "centrist" agenda when needed and a "right" agenda when needed. Perhaps I was wrong when I said he has no conviction, perhaps is only quest is a quest for power.

Your article actually had an impact.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Baraka_Guru

From a Canadian perspective, it seems to me that Obama has a hell of a lot more leaning to do before he moves beyond centrist.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Aladdin Sane

Yesterday the Obama administration won a stay from the judge who ordered the Department of Justice to grant habeas corpus to suspected terrorists held at Bagram in Afghanistan:

To the chagrin of many on the left, Obama had essentially adopted the Bush administration’s position that prisoners at Bagram could not bring challenges in U.S. courts. On April 2, Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, rejected the Bush-Obama stance, ruling that three prisoners flown into Bagram from other countries could pursue so-called habeas corpus cases seeking release.
However, Bates agreed Monday to allow the government to appeal his ruling immediately and to put the original ruling on hold while the appeal proceeds.
“These cases present extraordinary circumstances,” Bates wrote. “Although this Court believes that its conclusions are correct, given the novelty of the issues courts could reasonably differ.”

(W.H. gets breathing room on detainees - Josh Gerstein - POLITICO.com)

Kudos to the Obama administration for sticking to the George Bush ("war criminal") position on this issue. Realize, of course, that President Obama does it with thoughtfulness and finesse.

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

roachboy

gee, i would have expected some decontextualized and abused version of obama's speech this morning in cairo to follow on the series of nonsensical posts that have clogged up this thread of late full of specious "evidence" that somehow the bushworld hysteria and policies it leaned on are legitimated by obama's choices. but maybe this speech is such an obvious and wholesale break with the "logic" of bushworld that not even the right media apparatus can chew it finely enough to turn it upside down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/wo...ef=global-home

have a look.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ring

The Guardian had a link to the entire speech earlier today,
but now they don't seem to.
I found it here.

Barack Obama speech: the full transcript - Telegraph


oh..and is it okay for me to say ditto, to the post above?

timalkin

..

__________________
Trinity: "What do you need?"

Neo: "Guns. Lots of guns."

-The Matrix

ratbastid

I'm not at all surprised that this thread shut right down in the last couple days. Hard to talk crap about "more of the same" when all the cable news stations are parading your country's 180, even those who are arguing we shouldn't be doing that.

mixedmedia

I see far more pussy being wantonly exposed by American conservatives in the last six weeks than I can ever recall in my lifetime. It has reached truly pornographic proportions.

Only idiots equate hubris with strength.

Obama's speech was eloquent and generous and I loved it. But I have been moved by his speeches before. My eye is still on his actions. I want to know what he is going to do about our conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Charlatan

Yes, because more of the same and stayin' the course has worked so well.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Baraka_Guru

My god. What, was he suppose to go over there and start another war?

Maybe he should have alienated the Muslim world even more. Because, you know, any one of them could be a terrorist.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

ratbastid

If you want to note the tectonic shift in foreign policy here, just go to the full text of the speech and search for the string "terror". You won't find it.

filtherton

Never mind.

Aladdin Sane

Following the practice of The Dumbest Evil Genius in the History of Fascism, The Most Transparent Administration Evah (Hopenchange) won't release WH visitor log:

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.
Obama blocks access to White House visitor list - White House- msnbc.com

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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Ambiguity

I can't read through this whole thread, it would take hours, but I have read a page or two, and I guess my 2 cents about the original question/comment is this:

1- Yes, Obama probibly walked into the White House thinking, based on a pre-presidential, non-POTUS security clearance essentially that limited what he knew about the true nature of the situation in Gitmo, the brutal TRUTH that if we walked away from Iraq right now, in 6 months to a year the country would be the epicenter of a kind of rogue nation that would make North Korea look like a Sunday school-girl. The ember of hatred has been stoked in extremists of our way of life, (in their reality an unholy, god-less bunch of heathens are we, an opinion stoked by their belief in a twisted, ugly version (in OUR eyes anyway)of a otherwise legitimate world religion . (not to start a religious debate, please, lol.) I think the conservatives jump way too quickly and way too loudly shouting a chant that the country has grown tired of, distrust, suspicion, condemnation. Their chosen view of the collective reality is legitimate in their eyes to just the same extent as liberals shout their chants of whatever it is their chanting that week, the political flavor of the month so to speak. I think personally, that I believe that Obama is at least as smart as me. Maybe smarter. And therefore, I also believe that he can take stock of the reality of the political promises that were the ONLY WAY HE WOULD EVER GET ELECTED (by running exactly as he did and everything that entailed, the good/bad/ugly). Otherwise it would be McCain and Palin, which, I mean... COME ON. Palin is a joke, and anyone who could take her seriously, who believe she would be a good choice to help run the country, is... well... dumber than her. Obama can ride the wave he's on, he has the Political capital so to speak, so yeah he's got it to spend on the realities of the world that those who voted for him might not believe in. And I trust him to be smart enough, to be a stable enough human being that looking at all the challenges facing this country and the world, he'll do what he thinks is right. Not that he'll do exactly what I think he should do. Because I don't know what he knows, no one does, and all the FOX/CNN etc etc etc media watchers who think the media has the whole story about, well, ANYTHING besides Lindey Lohan's relationships, or Britney Spears meltdown is just blissfully ignorant. Media=Entertainment, based loosely on real life. To allow the world to be reduced to what you can read on Page 1-10 of the newspaper is living in a minuaturized version of the world. Why do you think no one cares about the war anymore? No coverage. Old news. So the media for the most part, moves on. Because they have to. Because the world is bigger, and offers more than they could ever use, and also they need the money to operate, to compete for viewer, to be ENTERTAINING- from advertisers. It's delivery is almost a collectively driven entertainment on demand, lazily playing over the world with a narrow-minded, keyhole, snapshot, simplistic microscope like a slow motion snowboarder doing S-curves down a huge mountainside.

I digress.

2- Give it some time. I agree with a much earlier post saying it will be 2012 before things will start to truly bear fruit. Give it some time. Can't change the world overnight, and I think he realizes the reality of that fact now more than ever, not less.

Aladdin Sane

Sorry, Kids, but The One has endorsed yet another Bush ("Fascist") policy.

More Hopenchange from Newsweek:

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

Obama: Not Keeping Promise of Transparency | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com

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Derwood

disappointing for sure

Aladdin Sane

Even NYT starting to point out Obama’s shameless broken campaign promises:

June 22, 2009

“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent and accountable…

Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two…

“There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless,” said Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to making government more transparent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/us.../22pledge.html

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dksuddeth

that sounds suspiciously like Clintons '5 year plan'.

__________________
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Aladdin Sane

Obama has essentially endorsed the detention policies of George Bush without the courtesy of apologizing for slandering him over the last two and a half years. Obama and his allies screeched endlessly about indefinite detentions, and not just in Gitmo, either. They specifically railed against the holding of terrorists without access to civil courts in military detention facilities around the world, specifically Bagram, but in general as well. Not even six months into his term of office, Obama realized that Bush had it right all along.

Did he even have the grace to admit that? No. Instead, the White House took the cowardly method of a late-Friday leak to let people know that Obama had adopted the Bush policy all over again.

I guess Obama has finally conceded to Dick Cheney on national security.

Washington Post
White House Weighs Order on Detention
Officials: Move Would Reassert Power To Hold Terror Suspects Indefinitely

By Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn
ProPublica and Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 27, 2009

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.
. . . . .

White House Considers Executive Order on Indefinite Detention of Terror Suspects

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roachboy

i don't think anything about obama's actions on detainees can be twisted into an endorsement of cowboy george's actions.
but what you are showing is that adequately truncated infotainment can be made to appear to lead almost anywhere, say almost anything.
which i would have thought self-evident.
like demonstrating that this is a sentence. you know, in that kinda way.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dc_dux

When one is confronted with a legacy of dozens of detainees who cannot be tried because of the illegal manner in which "evidence" was obtained....one is left with few options.

The Bush policy of torture ("enhanced interrogation")? A blight that has been eliminated...as have the policies of CIA black prisons and extraordinary rendition to nations that torture their own citizens.

In a perfect world, IMO, the separation between Bush and Obama policies would be even greater...but you play the cards you're dealt.

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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Marvelous Marv

I wish I had a nickel for every time a liberal has shrieked "You shut up!" when his position was contradicted by facts. I could retire the $12 trillion Obama has loaned, borrowed, spent, or pledged to Hamas.

God, I've missed the clean debate of TFP, unsullied by personal attacks.

The more facts Aladdin Sane posts, the easier it is to hear crickets chirping over the dead silence where responses would be, if they were possible.

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FoolThemAll

No, Derwood's right*. The joke's old and no one believes that.

*- this post never happened.

The moderators are really committed to keeping the forums polite these days. It says so in that bulletin message.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.