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“You never explain why they want to do us harm”

By timmukyPosted on Posted in obama, politics, terrorism, warTagged , , , , No Comments on “You never explain why they want to do us harm”

Glenn Greenwald rightly thinks this exchange reduces the brokenness of our system to its essence. It shows Helen Thomas repeatedly asking a very simple question, and the various ways White House terror expert John Brennan refuses to address  it.

(I especially love the journalist seated to her left. His supercilious stare over her shoulder, his fidgeting, his frowns. Finally, he just cuts her off and starts talking over her.)

Poor Helen. She looks like an exhausted wraith. I don’t imagine there was ever a time when White House press secretaries actually answered questions, but the mendacity took a turn for the worse not long after the dawn of the 21st century. I can only imagine this deranged, stylized theater of many words and no substance must be something saddening to her.

So back to the question of why. Writes Greenwald:

The evidence of what motivates Terrorism when directed at the U.S. is so overwhelming and undeniable that it takes an extreme propagandist to pretend it doesn’t exist.  What is Brennan so afraid of?  It’s true that religious fanaticism is a part of their collective motivation, but why can’t he just say what’s so obviously true:  “they claim that the U.S. is interfering in, occupying and bringing violence to their part of the world, they cite things like civilian deaths and our support for Israel and Guantanamo and torture, and claim that their terrorism is in retaliation”?

Can you spot the difference between Brennan’s attitude and the previous administration’s contention that “they hate us for our freedoms”? I can’t either.

Quite simply, don’t count on anyone with any clout in the national power structure ever addressing this question. As long as there is an insatiable, irrational, and evil entity out there, the military can’t be mobilized enough. The defense budget can’t be high enough. There is no battleground too distant. If this enemy had real grievances and demands, then maybe we could do something to improve the situation. Like pull our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and stop our murderous Predator attacks in Pakistan, Somalia, and now Yemen. Might even save us a little money. A trillion here, a trillion there. Pretty soon, you’re talking real money.

But that ain’t gonna happen. They’re Islamist crazies who will stop at nothing short of world domination.  And the bombs must keep dropping, the supplemental budgets must be rammed through, the money, in short, must keep flowing.

More on Jane, Grover and Rahm

By timmukyPosted on Posted in bailout, corporatism, corruption, obama, politics, populismTagged , , , , , , , , No Comments on More on Jane, Grover and Rahm

All I know is the Hamsher/Norquist joint venture caused many Obama loyalists to pee their pants, and got a lot of positive comments on Jane’s own site. Not exactly surprising.

Someone asked about it on the President’s plane and was met with a predictably smug reply, that the Chief of Staff’s job was “very safe”.

And also: over the Christmas weekend the White House announced that the caps on Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac losses would be lifted. There was talk that they would be raised from $400 billion to $800 billion, but no. They have been raised, to, uh, infinity.

Did Jane Hamsher really whack Rahm Emanuel upside the head, as Cenk Uygur claims? If so, was it with a Nerf bat, or a 2 by 4 with a nail sticking out of it? Is he PISSED? Just mildly annoyed? More important, Will this be enough to shame the White House into taking any real judicial/investigative action with regard to Freddie Mac, like letting Inspector General Ed Kelley get back on the job? You know, 6 trillion dollars is a lot of money.

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“Future prospective torturers can now draw comfort from this decision”

By timmukyPosted on Posted in civil liberties, obama, politicsTagged , , , , , , No Comments on “Future prospective torturers can now draw comfort from this decision”
We suspect he's an Enemy Combatant, so this is OK!

News earlier this week, from the Center for Constitutional Justice

Today, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse at Guantánamo. The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to the U.K. in 2004.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By refusing to hear the case, the Court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all “persons” did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law. The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.”  Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.

Eric Lewis, a partner in Washington, D.C.’s Baach Robinson & Lewis, lead attorney for the detainees, said, “It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision. The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not.  Future prospective torturers can now draw comfort from this decision. The lower court found that torture is all in a days’ work for the Secretary of Defense and senior generals. That violates the President’s stated policy, our treaty obligations and universal legal norms. Yet the Obama administration, in its rush to protect executive power, lost its moral compass and persuaded the Supreme Court to avoid a central moral challenge.  Today our standing in the world has suffered a further great loss.”

No shortage of outraged commentary on this howling catastrophe, but I thought Digby put it pretty well:

So torture is a for[e]seeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants. I guess it’s official.

Everyone in the world should be advised that if they don’t want to be tortured, they shouldn’t let themselves be suspected of being an enemy combatant. And if they foolishly allow themselves to be suspected enemy combatants, they should realize, regardless of any laws or treaties to the contrary, that they’ll be tortured. After all, nobody can be expected to know ahead of time which people are legally “persons” or which prisoners are allowed constitutional rights. It’s up to innocent people not to allow themselves to be caught in this Catch 22 in the first place. Good to know.

Any guesses who said this way back in January?

I was clear throughout this campaign and was clear throughout this transition that under my administration the United States does not torture.We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. We will uphold our highest ideals.

Blame everyone but the big guy

By timmukyPosted on Posted in obama, politicsTagged , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment on Blame everyone but the big guy

Updated below.

And again.

I am not going to defend Rahm Emanuel. He’s never been more than a corrupt, self-interested, low-life would-be hard guy who’s not even really that hard. His role model, that pudgy lump o’ Rove, is the real deal, a completely psychotic fire-breather who would do anything for his party. Rahm has convinced many that he puts the party’s fortunes above everything. Leaving aside the larger question of whether that’s a good thing, lately even those who think he’s a necessary evil have had to reappraise a. his commitment to his party, and/or b. his competence.

Firedoglake blogger TBogg:

So all I really wanted for Christmas was a Karl Rove of our own who would make all of our Obama wishes come true, even if he had to kick Evan Bayh’s mushy skull in to accomplish them. Someone who, I had hoped, would make Joe Lieberman’s life something akin to a hemorrhoidectomy gone horribly terribly wrong.

Such is not the case:

The White House wants Reid to hand Joe Lieberman the farm.

An aide briefed on discussions with the White House says that there would be no story if Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel hadn’t interceded. The aide confirmed an account, reported by Huffington Post, that Emanuel visited Reid personally, telling him to cut a deal with Lieberman.

Then the aide provided more detail.

Emanuel didn’t just leave it to Reid to find a solution. Emanuel specifically suggested Reid give Lieberman the concessions he seeks on issues like the Medicare buy-in and triggers.

“It was all about ‘do what you’ve got to do to get it done. Drop whatever you’ve got to drop to get it done,” the aide said. All of Emanuel’s prescriptions, the source said, were aimed at appeasing Lieberman–not twisting his arm.

If Rahm Emmanuel is all he was supposed to be, we can safely assume that the Obama White House either never gave a shit about health care reform, or they managed health care reform so horrifically and incompetently that they are now willing to settle for a “win”, no matter how meager.

For more of the same, see “Rahm’s making the White House look terrible,” especially the impassioned comments section. So many former true believers think this is the last straw, but so many are still acting like Rahm’s a maverick operative acting against the wishes of his benign boss, who really does have the best interests of the country at heart.

I don’t know what it will take to convince the Obamamaniacs.

Update.  Well, as Jane Hamsher points out, at least Russ Feingold isn’t afraid to finger the Prez:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.

“This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth,” said Feingold.

Update 2 Glenn Greenwald says everything I’ve just said, and says it better.

In essence, this reinforces all of the worst dynamics of Washington. The insurance industry gets the biggest bonanza imaginable in the form of tens of millions of coerced new customers without any competition or other price controls. Progressive opinion-makers, as always, signaled that they can and should be ignored …. Most of this was negotiated and effectuated in complete secrecy, in the sleazy sewers populated by lobbyists, industry insiders, and their wholly-owned pawns in the Congress. And highly unpopular, industry-serving legislation is passed off as “centrist,” the noblest Beltway value.

And, in an update, he comes up with this classic dissection of Obama/Emanuel excuse-making:

It’s also worth noting how completely antithetical claims are advanced to defend and excuse Obama. We’ve long heard — from the most blindly loyal cheerleaders and from Emanuel himself — that progressives should place their trust in the Obama White House to get this done the right way, that he’s playing 11-dimensional chess when everyone else is playing checkers, that Obama is the Long Game Master who will always win. Then, when a bad bill is produced, the exact opposite claim is hauled out: it’s not his fault because he’s totally powerless, has nothing to do with this, and couldn’t possibly have altered the outcome. From his defenders, he’s instantaneously transformed from 11-dimensional chess Master to impotent, victimized bystander.

President Rorschach

By timmukyPosted on Posted in obama, politicsTagged , , , , , 1 Comment on President Rorschach
A Good Man or a "Muslim President?"

Glenn Greenwald muses on the fervor of personal feeling that is behind so many opinions — pro and con — about the current president. Yes, there are kooks who venerate Sarah[!] for no good reason. But what about… um, you know, the president?

This week Andrew Sullivan has highlighted numerous rants from Obama loyalists who are disappointed, nay, disgusted that people “on the left” are daring to criticize their president. As Greenwald asks, should we just ignore all of this:

[A]re the criticisms that have been voiced about Obama valid?  Has he appointed financial officials who have largely served the agenda of the Wall Street and industry interests that funded his campaign?  Has he embraced many of the Bush/Cheney executive power and secrecy abuses which Democrats once railed against — from state secrets to indefinite detention to renditions and military commissions?  Has he actively sought to protect from accountability and disclosure a whole slew of Bush crimes?  Did he secretly a negotiate a deal with the pharmaceutical industry after promising repeatedly that all negotiations over health care would take place out in the open, even on C-SPAN?  Are the criticisms of his escalation of the war in Afghanistan valid, and are his arguments in its favor redolent of the ones George Bush made to “surge” in Iraq or Lyndon Johnson made to escalate in Vietnam?   Is Bob Herbert right when he condemned Obama’s detention policies as un-American and tyrannical, and warned:  “Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House”?

Greenwald asserts that these reactions are “grounded almost exclusively in (a) a deep-seated conviction that President Obama is a good and just man who means well; (b) their own rather intense upset at seeing him criticized; and (c) a spitting ad hominem fury of the type long directed by Bush followers at any critics of their leader, and generally typical of authoritarian attacks on out-groups critics.” So, the big question this raises: WTF is up with America and politics??? Is it all about an innate national inclination to favor judging the person over scrutinizing policy? I guess. Along with a massive media industry that works exactly along the lines of some arcane symbolism, judging the president’s body language, his failure to wear a flag pin, his pre-empting the Charlie Brown Christmas!

Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom are similar in kind to those whose reaction to Obama is dominated by their view of him as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual.  These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies.  But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important.  They’re also far more potent.  Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one’s life who — like a loved one or close friend or religious leader — must be protected and defended at all costs.

You know, this doesn’t really bode well for democracy. And somehow, I don’t see us pulling out of this personality-driven shite anytime soon.

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