Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

[Ben]

Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

By Conor Friedersdorf

Nov 22 2011.... Jonathan Chait is the latest to write about the president as if his civil liberties abuses and executive power excesses never happened

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/politics/obama%20fullness%20plane.jpg

When I pleaded with liberals (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/a-plea-to-liberals-stop-marginalizing-peace-and-civil-liberties/247890/) to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. Now it has. In New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay (http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/) purporting to defend the president's first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected too much.

Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush Administration's excesses in the War on Terrorism, he neither desires nor feels compelled to grapple with President Obama's approach to foreign policy, national security, or homeland security. The closest he comes in a piece overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy and political maneuvering is the breezy assertion that Obama "has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes -- expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime."

Isn't that something?

Apparently it isn't even worthy of mention that Obama's actions in Libya violated the War Powers Resolution, the president's own professed standards for what he can do without Congressional permission, and the legal advice provided to him by the Office of Legal Counsel.

In Chait's telling, expanded drone strikes in Pakistan are a clear success. Why even grapple with Jane Mayer's meticulously researched article (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer) on the risks of an drone war run by the CIA, Glenn Greenwald's polemics (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/02/the_human_toll_of_the_u_s_drone_campaign/) on the innocent civilians being killed, or Jeff Goldberg and Marc Ambinder's reporting (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally-from-hell/8730/) on the Pakistani generals who are moving lightly guarded nuclear weapons around the country in civilian trucks as a direct consequence of the cathartic bin Laden raid.

Chait mentions the Iraq withdrawal, but doesn't point out that Obama sought to violate his campaign promise, and would've kept American troops in the country beyond 2011 had the Iraqis allowed it; that as it is, he'll leave behind a huge State Department presence with a private security army; and that he's expanding America's presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf to make up for the troops no longer in Iraq. Is any of that possibly relevant to a liberal's assessment?

Perhaps most egregiously, Chait doesn't even allude to Obama's practice of putting American citizens on a secret kill list without any due process, or even consistent, transparent standards.

Nor does he grapple with warrantless spying on American citizens, Obama's escalation of the war on whistleblowers (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all), his serial invocation of the state secrets privilege (http://www.thenation.com/article/155080/obamas-use-state-secrets-privilege-new-normal), the Orwellian turn airport security has taken, the record-breaking number of deportations over which Obama presided, or his broken promise to lay off medical marijuana in states where dispensing it is legal.

Why is all this ignored?

Telling the story of Obama's first term without including any of it is a shocking failure of liberalism. It's akin to conservatism's unforgivable myopia and apologia during the Bush Administration. Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he is signing? Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often didn't even know the names (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904577013982672973836.html) of the people it was killing?

These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism.

Chait's essay suggests an ideological movement that finds the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights indispensable, but only when a Republican is in the White House. One that objects to radically expanded executive power, except when the president seems progressive.

I want to be reassured that liberalism is better than that.

When I last wrote on this subject, I criticized David Remnick for what he left out of a short piece on Obama and the War in Libya; I ought to have added that during his tenure as editor of The New Yorker, and thanks in large part to his priorities, the magazine has paid and published Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, David Grann, and other indispensable authors whose work on civil liberties is vital. The same can be said for the editors at The New York Times, who support work like that done by Charlie Savage (http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/s/charlie_savage/index.html). Outside of Reason and the Cato Institute, it's almost all left-leaning outlets that have stood up for civil liberties during the War on Terrorism.

I'd like to give Chait his due in the same piece where I skewer his latest. I've long appreciated his talent and intellectual honesty. And I'm sure he both appreciates the work of the writers I've praised and has smart things to say about many if not all of the subjects he ignored in his piece.

But it won't do for smart writers and prestigious publications to keep writing big think pieces about Obama's tenure that read as if some of its most significant, uncomfortable moments never happened; as if it's reasonable for an informed liberal to vote for him in Election 2012 as happily as in 2008. Civil liberties and executive power and war-making aren't fringe concerns, or peripheral disappointments to lament in the course of leaving them to Charlie Savage and Jane Mayer.

They're central to the Obama narrative, and the American narrative, as the president himself would've affirmed back when he was articulating lofty standards that he has repeatedly failed to meet.

As have we all.

[Ben]

Torture’s Future

By ERIC LEWIS (http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/author/eric-lewis/)

As a candidate in 2008, President Obama stated categorically, “We’ll reject torture — without exception or equivocation.” (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/14/956370/-Heres-how-Obama-wins-back-young-voters) During his first month in office, he made good on his pledge, signing an executive order prohibiting torture or inhumane treatment. There is no reason to doubt that the order has been followed (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/175/end-the-use-of-torture/). This was a huge step forward for the United States.
But if he loses the presidency next year, Obama’s failure to deal with the legacy of torture that he inherited may turn out to be a huge problem. He has left the door open for state-sanctioned torture to be part of the next administration’s tool kit for dealing with the “global war on terror.” The leading Republican candidates understand that in many circles advocating torture is good politics. In their debates and in their foreign policy pronouncements, they are effectively capitalizing on a series of decisions that the Obama administration made as it failed to enshrine its own ban on torture as an absolute legal norm. Torture remains on the table as a future policy choice.
So what happened? The president has rejected three clear opportunities to erect a high legal wall against the return of torture: he has made it clear that criminal prosecutions for torture will not go forward; he has opposed the creation of a truth commission to examine events comprehensively; and he has affirmatively intervened to stop civil litigation by detainees against their torturers.
When President Obama took office, I was in the midst of litigating a civil case against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the military chain of command for torture. A panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had found that as “aliens without presence or property in the United States,” Guantánamo detainees had no right not to be tortured under the Constitution (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-dc-circuit/1078633.html) and, in any event, even if there were such rights, there was no reason that Rumsfeld and other military leaders should have been aware that the right to be free from torture was “clearly established.” Accordingly they were immune from suit. In 2009, the Supreme Court directed that the Court of Appeals reconsider its decision in light of its recent finding in Boumediene v. Bush of a constitutional right to habeas corpus for detainees at Guantánamo. 

Torture remains on the table as a future policy choice.Surely, I thought, the new administration would weigh in and support the argument that there was an inarguable and fundamental right not to be tortured by the government of the United States. What’s more, supporting civil actions for damages would have allowed the facts of torture to emerge through judicial proceedings, avoiding the political conflict of direct executive involvement.
Instead, the Obama administration slammed the door on constitutional challenges to torture. It reiterated the Bush administration’s position, arguing that “aliens held at Guantánamo do not have due process rights,” limiting the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene to habeas corpus only. In other words, it was the position of the Obama administration that even though the Supreme Court had found a constitutional right for detainees to challenge their confinement, detainees had no constitutional right not to be tortured while in confinement. The Obama administration also insisted that it was not sufficiently clear that the Constitution prohibited torture of aliens, and so “a reasonable officer would not have concluded that plaintiffs here possessed Fifth and Eighth Amendment rights while they were detained at Guantánamo.” (http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_Justice_Dep._defends_Rumsfeld_in_0313.html)
Yet reasonable officers have known since the founding of the republic that military law prohibits torturing prisoners and, since the 1930s, that it was cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of due process to torture prisoners in the custody of the United States (http://supreme.justia.com/us/297/278/case.html). What these officers apparently could not have been expected to figure out was whether by bringing prisoners to Guantánamo, they could evade the Constitutional ban on torture or prisoners. Finally, the Obama administration warned that civil remedies for torture would “enmesh the courts in military, national security, and foreign affairs matters that are the exclusive province of the political branches.” In plain English, it is up to us — the executive — and not you — the courts — to decide whether detainees can be tortured or not.
While the norm against torture could have been enforced through criminal prosecution, even in the absence of the remedy of civil damages, the Obama administration then eliminated the option of prosecution. As a candidate, Obama called for a “thorough investigation” (http://www.salon.com/2008/11/13/torture_commission/) of detainee mistreatment; President-elect Obama, however, declared his “belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html?pagewanted=all) No prosecutions have been brought and it is overwhelmingly likely that there will be none, despite the Convention Against Torture (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm), to which the United States is a signatory, requiring criminal investigation (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-robert-byrd/our-obligation-to-investi_b_193593.html) where there are credible allegations of torture.
A South-African style truth commission, which would have had the virtue of getting all the facts out into the open and at least creating a record that would have precluded future officials from claiming that there was ambiguity or uncertainty about whether they had the power to torture under the Constitution, didn’t happen either (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/21/obama-still-opposes-truth_n_206317.html), despite earlier indications of support. Harboring a vain hope for what has turned out to be imaginary reconciliation, the Obama administration has failed in its legal and moral obligation to create an effective and durable bar to torture.
Had President Obama shown the courage of candidate Obama, he would have strongly supported civil litigation under the Constitution against officials who authorized torture. The argument that it involves the courts in foreign policy or causes officials to be wary in their actions is nonsense. The ban on torture should be absolute; it is not a foreign policy or defense issue and it is salutary for officials to know that they will be held accountable for torture. President Obama should also have ordered candidate Obama’s “thorough investigation” to go forward, ideally through the criminal process. Perhaps the specter of potential indictments of senior officials made a president who wanted to be perceived as post-partisan queasy, but he should be made more queasy by a former president claiming it was “damn right” to order waterboarding (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E5DC1039F930A35752C1A9669D8B 63&&scp=1&sq=%2522damn%20right%2522%20bush%20waterboarding&st=cse).
When torture becomes another political choice, the debate becomes an empirical one about whether it works. Putting aside the moral issue, this becomes the ultimate bureaucratic game, where former Vice President Dick Cheney can claim he is “convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives.” (http://www.news.com.au/world/torture-tactics-saved-lives-cheney/story-e6frfkyi-1225710806517) Cheney knows enough to be just as convinced that the data will never emerge to prove him right or wrong. Virtually all the empirical evidence shows that torture is usually ineffective, almost invariably less effective than other methods of interrogation (http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=31844), and frequently generates massive amounts of false leads, leading to further wasteful cycles of interrogation.
What the Bush administration experience showed was not that torture never works, but that the impulse to torture is ever present. Torture is always seen as a sad necessity, imposed with increasing frequency and brutality as panic and frustration increase. The would-be torturer invokes the scenario of the ticking time bomb, but given the power to torture, officials begin to see ticking time bombs everywhere, perhaps especially if they believe they have been right once before. Virtually all of the 800 detainees who went through Guantánamo were subject to sleep deprivation, extremes of hot and cold, stress positions and unmuzzled dogs (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/07/12/getting-away-torture). Could the Bush administration have believed that all of those detainees, the vast majority of whom were released without charge, knew about September 11th? Certain suspects were waterboarded more than 100 times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/world/21detain.html?fta=y). Could the administration really have thought that on the 50th or 100th or 150th episode of waterboarding the real information would come out?
President Obama’s public commitment to ending torture is laudable and important. It is ludicrous to contend, as some do, that his administration is no different from that of his predecessor. But the problem as we look toward the 2012 election is that there is still no “clearly established legal right” for detainees not to be tortured. So when a new administration comes into office, whether that’s in 2013 or 2017, and finds itself in a panic after the next underwear or shoe bomber, it will still be able to find some eager apparatchik to write a memo that allows torture and promises immunity.
The Republican candidates, by and large, have made themselves clear: they will not be inhibited in ordering torture (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/the-torture-candidates.html?_r=3&ref=presidentialdebates). Rick Perry, for example, declared that techniques that might “save young lives” would be approved by a Perry White House. “This is war.” Perry said. “That’s what happens in war.” (http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2011/11/14/obama-waterboarding-torture.html) Mitt Romney, eager to burnish his tough guy credentials, offered a characteristic semantic dodge (http://2012.republican-candidates.org/Romney/Guantanamo.php): “Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used. Not torture, but enhanced interrogation techniques. Yes.”
The Obama administration can’t just say, “Trust us.” Its challenge was not only to stop the American government from torturing detainees, but to institutionalize the legal infrastructure that would prevent the resumption of torture. President Obama had the opportunity to leave an unambiguous legal legacy that prohibited torture and inhibited the torturers of tomorrow from finding legal cover. Instead, we may reap the whirlwind of his timidity, and soon.


Eric Lewis is a partner at Lewis Baach PLLC in Washington.

[tsadriana]

Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

By Conor Friedersdorf

Nov 22 2011.... Jonathan Chait is the latest to write about the president as if his civil liberties abuses and executive power excesses never happened

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/politics/obama%20fullness%20plane.jpg

When I pleaded with liberals (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/a-plea-to-liberals-stop-marginalizing-peace-and-civil-liberties/247890/) to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. Now it has. In New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay (http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/) purporting to defend the president's first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected too much.

Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush Administration's excesses in the War on Terrorism, he neither desires nor feels compelled to grapple with President Obama's approach to foreign policy, national security, or homeland security. The closest he comes in a piece overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy and political maneuvering is the breezy assertion that Obama "has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes -- expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime."

Isn't that something?

Apparently it isn't even worthy of mention that Obama's actions in Libya violated the War Powers Resolution, the president's own professed standards for what he can do without Congressional permission, and the legal advice provided to him by the Office of Legal Counsel.

In Chait's telling, expanded drone strikes in Pakistan are a clear success. Why even grapple with Jane Mayer's meticulously researched article (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer) on the risks of an drone war run by the CIA, Glenn Greenwald's polemics (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/02/the_human_toll_of_the_u_s_drone_campaign/) on the innocent civilians being killed, or Jeff Goldberg and Marc Ambinder's reporting (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally-from-hell/8730/) on the Pakistani generals who are moving lightly guarded nuclear weapons around the country in civilian trucks as a direct consequence of the cathartic bin Laden raid.

Chait mentions the Iraq withdrawal, but doesn't point out that Obama sought to violate his campaign promise, and would've kept American troops in the country beyond 2011 had the Iraqis allowed it; that as it is, he'll leave behind a huge State Department presence with a private security army; and that he's expanding America's presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf to make up for the troops no longer in Iraq. Is any of that possibly relevant to a liberal's assessment?

Perhaps most egregiously, Chait doesn't even allude to Obama's practice of putting American citizens on a secret kill list without any due process, or even consistent, transparent standards.

Nor does he grapple with warrantless spying on American citizens, Obama's escalation of the war on whistleblowers (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all), his serial invocation of the state secrets privilege (http://www.thenation.com/article/155080/obamas-use-state-secrets-privilege-new-normal), the Orwellian turn airport security has taken, the record-breaking number of deportations over which Obama presided, or his broken promise to lay off medical marijuana in states where dispensing it is legal.

Why is all this ignored?

Telling the story of Obama's first term without including any of it is a shocking failure of liberalism. It's akin to conservatism's unforgivable myopia and apologia during the Bush Administration. Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he is signing? Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often didn't even know the names (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904577013982672973836.html) of the people it was killing?

These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism.

Chait's essay suggests an ideological movement that finds the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights indispensable, but only when a Republican is in the White House. One that objects to radically expanded executive power, except when the president seems progressive.

I want to be reassured that liberalism is better than that.

When I last wrote on this subject, I criticized David Remnick for what he left out of a short piece on Obama and the War in Libya; I ought to have added that during his tenure as editor of The New Yorker, and thanks in large part to his priorities, the magazine has paid and published Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, David Grann, and other indispensable authors whose work on civil liberties is vital. The same can be said for the editors at The New York Times, who support work like that done by Charlie Savage (http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/s/charlie_savage/index.html). Outside of Reason and the Cato Institute, it's almost all left-leaning outlets that have stood up for civil liberties during the War on Terrorism.

I'd like to give Chait his due in the same piece where I skewer his latest. I've long appreciated his talent and intellectual honesty. And I'm sure he both appreciates the work of the writers I've praised and has smart things to say about many if not all of the subjects he ignored in his piece.

But it won't do for smart writers and prestigious publications to keep writing big think pieces about Obama's tenure that read as if some of its most significant, uncomfortable moments never happened; as if it's reasonable for an informed liberal to vote for him in Election 2012 as happily as in 2008. Civil liberties and executive power and war-making aren't fringe concerns, or peripheral disappointments to lament in the course of leaving them to Charlie Savage and Jane Mayer.

They're central to the Obama narrative, and the American narrative, as the president himself would've affirmed back when he was articulating lofty standards that he has repeatedly failed to meet.

As have we all.
Because they are big TWATS,thats why.:dancing:

[hippifried]

Well that was a waste of time. Whiners are just so unimpressive.

[Stavros]

The same wave of hope that swept Obama into power was evident in 1997 when Labour destroyed the Conservatives -but any hope that this would mean major changes was not borne out by the facts -without sounding too pompous I knew enough about Blair, Brown and Mandelson to know it would end badly anyway. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary and someone who distinguished himself in opposition with sharp, incisive criticism of the Conservatives, declared that Labour's foreign policy would henceforth have an ethical dimension....human rights at the core; democracy promoted just as we have it here in the UK...three months or so later the British government sold Hawk Jets to Indonesia, then it intervened in Kosovo..etc.

There will of course be a balance sheet in the forthcoming campaign, so I guess you can choose your sweets and your lemons; the record never is as good as the rhetoric, that's politics. And usually, it can take up to 10 years or more for a proper assessment of a Presidency to make sense.

[arnie666]

The one lefty I know in the UK HATES Obama,he was taken in by all the hope and change bollocks and the media as well as Obamas efforts to make him into the messiah. And he now thinks Obama is a corporate monkey (in a non racist way of course) ,and he doesn't he know all about the dodgy dealings between Obama,general electric and the network MSLSD (MSCBC). That network effectively is Obamas propoganda service ,this is why the lunatic Olbermann as fired and cenk from the Young turks was booted out because they were too critical.

I mean how can they go nuts over Bush putting people in Gitmo and chucking water on them, but on the other hand try and excuse Obama killing terrorists who happen to be US citizens without trial? Apparently waterboarding is bad but assassinating is fine? Or how about Obama setting fire to the middle east, and his support for the arab spring has radicalised the middle east even more, to the extent the next adminstration democrat or republican will have to attempt to limit the damage and get labled warmongers. Bush lied to congress, Obama just ignores it,and does what he wants. Unemployment is through the roof,and Obama is frightened to do UK style austerity measures because he knows he is worried about relection.

Iam not surprised all the soap dodgers and hippies are mad, and are protesting,they are just in the wrong places,they should be stood outside the whitehouse general electric and MSLSD. Because they were scammed. The Brits on the forum probably remember Bliar in 1997,and the intelligent among us at the time Obama came on the scene knew he was Bliar with a skin tan,who was a bit more hip and jive. The left and even the centre in the UK were taken in though,I cannot understand how thick they were.

Blaming the last adminstration only goes so far, I mean if you want to go down that route you could say the seeds for both the international problems and americas economic woes were sown in the Clinton admin.Clinton,a man I much admire, is perhaps the best political mind in years,he papered over the cracks,his mistakes very well,clinton made decisions that left him popular but many were the wrong ones. ,leaving Bush to deal with it,which he did badly,and then Obama took over and made it worse. End of the day Obama is president,the buck stops with him,and he has no leadership skills at all,and he constantly fucks up.

I think the standard of politicians has gone down the toilet in both the US and UK personally, America needs a decent president, but apart from save newt gringrich who while he might be a nasty individual and is corrupt as they come, is far more competent than anyone else on the republican side now.The rest are jokes. Gingrich I know has a book of dirty tricks and would sell his own mother,that is kind of man you need to get bills through a hostile legislature,he is also tough and has a political mind. That is the kind of guy you need to clean up the mess in the middle east.

[Mike11]

Does it really matter who the president is in the US? Do they have any real power?

At least Obama seemed to have resisted the congress more than some other previous presidents, as ineffective as it may have been.

The US seems to be run like a business and I am afraid that approach is becoming well rooted in the UK too evidenced by the fact that political parties are becoming irrelevant and campaigning is what matters.

What is the meaning of Democracy? Does it really exist anywhere or is it just a man made illusion to mobilise the masses, a bit like religion.

[Stavros]

Or how about Obama setting fire to the middle east, and his support for the arab spring has radicalised the middle east even more, to the extent the next adminstration democrat or republican will have to attempt to limit the damage and get labled warmongers. Bush lied to congress

Arnie, one of the striking aspects of the Arab Spring has been the absence of the USA -someone called it 'leading from behind'. The USA over many decades has been terrified of change in the Middle East -I don't recall any US President making public speeches that called for an end to autocracy in Saudi Arabia in the same way that speeches were made against the abuse of human rights and the absence of democracy in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and said it quite clearly: Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall! No US President has gone to the West Bank and said 'Mr Sharon, tear down this wall!' (or Netanyahu, choose your Israeli). The US knows that the Arab state has failed, and also knows that transformation will be bloody, chaotic, unpredictable -but cannot control it, and I don't think Obama had any role in it. For once, the Middle East is beyond American influence, Netanyahu's contempt for the elected President of the USA is an additional factor in the strategies of tension over Iran that sound ominous to me. Difficult times, but on this one, the USA is out of the loop, and a bystander.

[hippifried]

Oh gee... The Brits are all disappointed because their expectations weren't met.

Well, I guess y'all can join up with the "professional left" & the continuously whining Republicans who created all these expectations, based on who knows what, & never bothered to listen to a single thing that was actually said by President Obama during his campaign.

Just out of curiosity: Does anybody really believe that candidate Barack Obama got elected Ptesident of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world, by a landslide vote that included the lion's share of the political center & independents, by claiming to be a wild eyed leftie & promising to turn America into a socialist paradise?

I'm the old hippy. Isn't it supposed to be me who can't remember what happened more than 5 minutes ago, instead of you whelps? Both of these articles are hyperbolic bullshit. All punditry is lies.

[onmyknees]

Well that was a waste of time. Whiners are just so unimpressive.


Perfectly said by Hippie in a moment of rare relevance and sobriety. Whiners are unimpressive, including the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave who's when he's not pandering, is whining about someone else "driving the car into the ditch"....or whining about Congress.

The irony that liberals are now faced with is that Obama is the exact opposite of what they expected....a killing and interventionist machine overseas, and a man who's actually done well continuing Bush's policies.....and weak, ineffectual leader on the domestic front who's hands are deeper in Wall Street's pockets than any of them care to admit. I'd say that puts libs in a quandary, but hopefully Ben's search for accountability by liberals is not something he's counting on.....they carried his water to the last elestion, and they'll do it again. As writer Victor Davis Hansen put it ( much better than I.........)


The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.
Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.

In the imaginarium, all sorts of demons and devils can unite to derail the brilliance of Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. ATMs have for the first time after 2009 begun to eliminate jobs. But then so did the Japanese tsunami and the EU meltdown. The DC earthquake did its part, but then so did climbing oil prices and the Arab Spring. Of course, the ghost of George Bush floats over all the present mess. Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.

[Stavros]

I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's.

You could have been honest and admitted that if people brought before the courts of America are presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty, 'Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo' IS very bad, because the majority of Guantanamo's prisoners were not terrorists, were not convicted of any crimes of any description, but were in Cuba because someone in Afghanistan or Pakistan shopped someone to the US they didn't like having been told the Americans would pay them for that information! There were children in Guantanamo, and yes, there were people there who could not offer a sensible explanation as to how they got from somewhere in England to Afghanistan -but the precise point made -not just by liberals- is that unless you have proof that the prisoners have broken the law, why are they there? It was a round-up, pure and simple, and neither Bush nor Cheney cared one way or the other if they were guilty. Along with extraordinary rendition and torture, it was as shameful to the USA as it was to the UK, and part of the discourse of resentment that propelled Obama into the White House. If he made a mistake, it was in not rounding up the prisoners, deciding which ones had a case to answer (about six I think the figure is), and sending them to The Hague, or a regular (not military) court somewhere in the USA. And releasing the rest.

I agree that Obama's record is a disappointment, I never expected much anyway. I don't think the next 4 years will see an improvement either, whoever gets elected next year. The problems go much deeper, which is why I sometimes find your attacks on Obama superficial, if politically motivated for obvious reasons. We are about to slide backwards in the UK where at least the USA has recorded economic growth of some kind, and even with this stasis we are better off than the Greeks or the Spaniards.

[Ben]

HRW: Obama broke law not prosecuting Bush & Cheney - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBzZfKMBoPI&feature=relmfu)

[onmyknees]

I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's.

You could have been honest and admitted that if people brought before the courts of America are presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty, 'Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo' IS very bad, because the majority of Guantanamo's prisoners were not terrorists, were not convicted of any crimes of any description, but were in Cuba because someone in Afghanistan or Pakistan shopped someone to the US they didn't like having been told the Americans would pay them for that information! There were children in Guantanamo, and yes, there were people there who could not offer a sensible explanation as to how they got from somewhere in England to Afghanistan -but the precise point made -not just by liberals- is that unless you have proof that the prisoners have broken the law, why are they there? It was a round-up, pure and simple, and neither Bush nor Cheney cared one way or the other if they were guilty. Along with extraordinary rendition and torture, it was as shameful to the USA as it was to the UK, and part of the discourse of resentment that propelled Obama into the White House. If he made a mistake, it was in not rounding up the prisoners, deciding which ones had a case to answer (about six I think the figure is), and sending them to The Hague, or a regular (not military) court somewhere in the USA. And releasing the rest.

I agree that Obama's record is a disappointment, I never expected much anyway. I don't think the next 4 years will see an improvement either, whoever gets elected next year. The problems go much deeper, which is why I sometimes find your attacks on Obama superficial, if politically motivated for obvious reasons. We are about to slide backwards in the UK where at least the USA has recorded economic growth of some kind, and even with this stasis we are better off than the Greeks or the Spaniards.


"I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's. "

Stavros....with all due respect, that's as ignortant a statement as I've ever read. Profoundly ignorant in fact. Your reading of things on this side of the pond are lacking...to say the least.
Barrack Obama was the second coming for liberals....make no mistake about it, and don't attempt to lower expectations now that the jury is in. James Carville pronounced 40 years of liberal domination after the election. Take 30 minutes and go back and google some of what the left wing intellengencia was saying and writing about him in 2008. This guy had sky high expectations. If they could have molded a savior out of clay, it would have looked and sounded like Obama. To suggest otherwise is revisionist history. He was the right color, had the right left wing radical resume, the right education at the nations most liberal institutions, and the right oratory, and cut his political teeth community organizing and pandering to public employee unions. To a left winger, that's like being a carpenters son from Nazareth.

The second asinine statement concerns Reagan. I'm beginning to think you're spending all your waking moments when not on HA, reading those UK tabloids. Gallup and CNN ( neither particularly sympathetic to conservatives) poll for the most influential and popular presidents every year. Reagan came in first this year followed by Lincoln and Clinton, so I'm not sure where you're developing your information, but your bias is becoming a disqualifying factor from me taking you serous as an observer of the US political scene. It's fair to say you disagree with Reagan's conservatism, but to call his 8 years disastrous may be the dumbest thing you've said recently....and that's saying something. The miles of mouners lining the streets and highways to pay respects as his casket came home to California was an astounding sight, but appearently you missed all that while reading The Guardian editorials.

[hippifried]

Sorry, but all these "expectations" I keep hearing about didn't come from anywhere other than the lunatic fringe & the Republican opposition. They didn't come from anybody who was actually paying attention to the campaign & the candidate instead of the pundits. Yeah pundits. You know, those empty talking heads who tell you "Fprget what you just heard. Let me tell you what he really meant.". Do y'all really believe that the voters who elected the President by a landslide really expected a pacifist? An isolationist? A vindictive jerk who would prosecute his predecessor? (As far as I know, the only ones actually pushing that nonsense were Jonathan Turley & Noam Chomsky.) So what's left on the international front? Oh yeah, horrible stuff. BinLaden's dead. Who's sniveling about this? It couldn't possibly be the same whiners who bawled that Clinton didn't give the green light to have him killed back in the '90s, could it? AlQaeda dude in Yemen? Oh waaaa, he's dead too. Those poor Somali Pirates. Boo hoo hoo...

Domestically: Wasn't he supposed to close down Wall Street & turn the US into a socialist paradise? Cuban style healthcare? Total redistribution of fthe wealth? All those jobs streaming back from China? We're not all hooked up to the fuel free energy grid Yet? What's he waiting for? Waaaaaaa!!!

Who's expectations? My bad, I guess. I wasn't paying enough attention to the empty lips all over the electronic media telling me what I was supposed to be thinking. Oops! My mistake. That shouldn't be past tense. I still don't give a shit about any of that silliness. I am disappointed in the Congress. I didn't expect the "blue dogs" to turn on him as viciously as they did. I'm still dsappointed that the Republicans turned out to be such cowards that they're afraid to even question the nutbar teabaggers. We shall see what happens next year.

[Stavros]

"I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's. "

Stavros....with all due respect, that's as ignortant a statement as I've ever read. Profoundly ignorant in fact. Your reading of things on this side of the pond are lacking...to say the least.
Barrack Obama was the second coming for liberals....make no mistake about it, and don't attempt to lower expectations now that the jury is in. James Carville pronounced 40 years of liberal domination after the election. Take 30 minutes and go back and google some of what the left wing intellengencia was saying and writing about him in 2008. This guy had sky high expectations. If they could have molded a savior out of clay, it would have looked and sounded like Obama. To suggest otherwise is revisionist history. He was the right color, had the right left wing radical resume, the right education at the nations most liberal institutions, and the right oratory, and cut his political teeth community organizing and pandering to public employee unions. To a left winger, that's like being a carpenters son from Nazareth.

The second asinine statement concerns Reagan. I'm beginning to think you're spending all your waking moments when not on HA, reading those UK tabloids. Gallup and CNN ( neither particularly sympathetic to conservatives) poll for the most influential and popular presidents every year. Reagan came in first this year followed by Lincoln and Clinton, so I'm not sure where you're developing your information, but your bias is becoming a disqualifying factor from me taking you serous as an observer of the US political scene. It's fair to say you disagree with Reagan's conservatism, but to call his 8 years disastrous may be the dumbest thing you've said recently....and that's saying something. The miles of mouners lining the streets and highways to pay respects as his casket came home to California was an astounding sight, but appearently you missed all that while reading The Guardian editorials.

Re Obama: I was not following all of the day to day comments on the election that are natural sources of information to you, so much of the surrounding rhetoric on Obama escaped me -perhaps also, I am too cynical about politicians declaring the imminence of change -to some extent there is always something that changes, but major structural changes are rare, even from this distance I thought a lot of the rhetoric on Obama was overblown, but it would not have the same impact on me here as it has done on you there. I concede the point to you, given my limited access to all of the debate at the time.

In my lifetime, only three political leaders have delivered real, structural change -Clement Atllee and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, and Ronald Reagan in the USA. Attlee for me is the finest politician Britain has ever produced, I wont go into it because its not relevant, but his record as an MP, as a member of the wartime coalition in the 1940s and then Prime Minister is exemplary.

Reagan, from this side of the pond -as well as the political divide- looks quite different from the matinee idol you refer to.

1) It was during the Reagan presidency that the USA began to de-industrialise. I don't know how much of the outsourcing of production could have been stopped or delayed in an age when 'free markets' and the growth of industrial capacity in south-east Asia made American labour uncompetitive with its counterparts in South Korea, for example, where most of the Gulf of Mexico's offshore oil rigs are now made. The point is that this structural shift took place on Reagan's watch and is wholly in tune with the ideological belief that -as Maggie said- You can't buck the market. The USA is paying the price for that shift today, in terms of lost jobs and lost tax revenues.

2) Reagan's foreign policy with one exception, was a disgrace to the democratic heritage of the American Revolution.

Following the revolution against autocracy in Nicaragua in 1979, a transitional government was established which contained all shades of opinion, including conservatives, and they were the people who drafted the new constitution. The Reagan presidency recruited terrrorists and crooks to undermine this transition in Nicaragua, and was found guilty of numeorus violations of international law. The constant sabotage of the Nicaraguan economy was one element in the painful experience that country endured, for no reason other than that Reagan and his advisers didn't like it -that Nicaragua was creating a democratic state following a revolution, just as it did in the USA, meant nothing to Washington. That the Sandinistas lost power in subsequent elections and handed over power to a new government demonstrated their commitment to democracy, in spite of the attempts of the USA to destroy it. Ronald Reagan was the enemy of democracy and human rights in Central America.

The USA was an assiduous backer of Joseph Desire Mobutu in Zaire, a man so openly venal he once advised his own citizens that if they were going to steal, they shouldn't steal so much, just enough to get by. The USA sponsored this anti-democratic, mass-murdering lunatic because it saw the southern cone of Africa as part of the 'new' Cold War. Stinger missiles were sent to Zaire for use in the civil war in Angola -the USA and Mobutu supported another mass-murdering lunatic called Jonas Savimbi, a man whose troops committed atrocity after atrocity in an attempt to sabotage stability in the country; yet Savimbi had absolutely no hope of ever leading Angola. All this was done to spite the USSR, but at the same time the USA was buying oil from the allegedly 'Marxist' MPLA government! The consequence of this mis-guided and, given the indifference the USSR showed to Africa anyway, politically sterile game, was that the USA today continues to buy oil from 'Marxist' Angola (the MPLA are still in power), and Exxon and the rest are busy offshore giving god knows how many millions of $$$ in 'signature contracts' to the MPLA, money that is then salted away in the Caribbean banks where the little people can't see it. You backed the wrong horse, but pay for it now anyway -and Angola? Is it a beacon of democracy in Africa?

In the whole eight years of his Presidency, Ronald Reagan failed to bring either side of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into dialogue -Jimmy Carter negotiated a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, Bill Clinton sponsored the treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, Reagan did nothing -zilch, nada. But he did send hundreds of US marines to their deaths in Lebanon on a mission that was designed to fail before they even got there. The Reagan presidency was indifferent to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and looked the other way when its Israeli allies cleared the way for the Falangists (the military group modelled on Franco's Fascist army) to enter the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps and slaughter the people living there. This was a crime for which Ariel Sharon was sacked as defence minister by his own government.

Because the Reagan Presidency viewed Islamic Iran as the greatest threat to stability in the Middle East, it chose to ignore Saddam Hussein's record as President of Iraq, and was a major contributor to a war that ended a million lives and bankrupted both states -one consequence of which was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

In the same decade the Reagan Presidency joined with Saudi Arabia in the financing and military support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in its war against the USSR; one consequence of which was the birth of the Taliban, their eventual takeover of power, and the licence that was given to al-Qaeda. The line from Reagan to Bin Laden -call it Route 66, or Route 666: its there, Reagan paved the way to 9/11.

Throughout this period, Reagan was baying for democracy in Eastern Europe -Let Poland be Poland; Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall! At no point in the same period did Reagan call for a democratic transition in Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain or Iraq.

If there was one exception, it was the gradual realisation that Gorbachev was for real, that he marked a radical moment in the history of the USSR. But Reagan's decision in his second term to open serious negotiations on nuclear weapons capability and deployment was opposed by his own advisers, notably Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, indeed, to them, Reagan had betrayed them and their activist agenda.

Reagan's legacy is with us today -the ruins of hope in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where over the next two weeks another filthy crook will seek election, as thousands of women are raped on a daily basis. Reagan's indifference to settlement activity on the West Bank and his failure to deal with the underlying roots of that conflict have resulted in the growth of an Israel which has ceased to be a democracy, and is being transformed into a fascist state as settlers from the West Bank move into pre-1967 Israel and use political muscle and new laws to deny Arabs their democratic rights to education and housing.

A long winded way of demonstrating the damage that Reagan did all over the world, and why his repudiation of the values of the founding fathers (and mothers) of the American Revolution denies him the right to be considered a great American, and why his record as President is so poor.

[Ben]

Glenn Greenwald on Two-Tiered US Justice System, Obama's Assassination Program, Arab Spring - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTaPV0p0Ykg)

[Ben]

Who Are We?

By BOB HERBERT (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/bobherbert/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: June 22, 2009

Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the early months of the Obama administration has been its unwillingness to end many of the mind-numbing abuses linked to the so-called war on terror and to establish a legal and moral framework designed to prevent those abuses from ever occurring again.
The president deserves credit for unequivocally banning torture and some of the other brutal interrogation techniques that spread like a plague in the Bush administration’s lawless response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But other policies that offend the conscience continue.
Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention, imprisoning people indefinitely, for years and perhaps for life, without charge and without giving them an opportunity to demonstrate their innocence.
And yet we’ve embraced it, asserting that there are people who are far too dangerous to even think about releasing but who cannot be put on trial because we have no real evidence that they have committed any crime, or because we’ve tortured them and therefore the evidence would not be admissible, or whatever. President Obama is O.K. with this (he calls it “prolonged detention”), but he wants to make sure it is carried out — here comes the oxymoron — fairly and nonabusively.
Proof of guilt? In 21st-century America, there is no longer any need for such annoyances.
Human rights? Ha-ha. That’s a good one.
Also distressing is the curtain of secrecy the Obama administration has kept drawn over shameful abuses that should be brought into the light of day. Back in April, the administration rightly released the “torture memos” detailing the gruesome interrogation techniques unleashed by the Bush crowd. But last month, Mr. Obama apparently tripped over his own instincts and reversed his initial decision to release photos of American soldiers engaged in the brutal abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We saw the profound effect of the disclosure of the photos from Abu Ghraib in 2004. Imagine if they had never been released. Now, in an affront to a society that is supposed to be intelligent and free, the Obama administration is trying to sit on photos that are just as important for Americans to see. The president’s argument for trying to block the court-ordered release of the photos is a demoralizing echo of the embarrassingly empty rhetoric of the Bush years:
“The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.”
The Obama administration is also continuing the Bush administration’s abuse of the state-secrets privilege. Lawyers from the Obama Justice Department have argued, as did lawyers from the Bush administration before them, that a lawsuit involving extraordinary rendition and allegations of extreme torture should be dismissed outright because discussions of such matters in court would harm national security.
In other words, the victims, no matter how strong their case might be, no matter how badly they might have been abused, could never have their day in court. Jane Mayer, writing in the June 22 New Yorker, said of the rendition program, in which suspects were swept up by Americans and spirited off to foreign countries for imprisonment and interrogation: “As many as seven detainees were misidentified and abducted by mistake.”
The Bush and Obama view of the state-secrets privilege effectively bars any real examination of such egregious mistakes.
It was thought by many that a President Obama would put a stop to the madness, put an end to the Bush administration’s nightmarish approach to national security. But Mr. Obama has shown no inclination to bring even the worst offenders of the Bush years to account, and seems perfectly willing to move ahead in lockstep with the excessive secrecy and some of the most egregious activities of the Bush era.
The new president’s excessively cautious approach to the national security and civil liberties outrages of the Bush administration are unacceptable, and the organizations and individuals committed to fairness, justice and the rule of law — the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many others — should intensify their efforts to get the new administration to do the right thing.
More than 500 of the detainees incarcerated at one time or another at Guantánamo Bay have been released, and, except for a handful, no charges were filed against them. The idea that everyone held at Guantánamo was a terrorist — the worst of the worst — was always absurd.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that Mr. Obama had promised to bring both transparency and accountability to matters of national security. It’s the only way to get our moral compass back.

[onmyknees]

Sorry, but all these "expectations" I keep hearing about didn't come from anywhere other than the lunatic fringe & the Republican opposition. They didn't come from anybody who was actually paying attention to the campaign & the candidate instead of the pundits. Yeah pundits. You know, those empty talking heads who tell you "Fprget what you just heard. Let me tell you what he really meant.". Do y'all really believe that the voters who elected the President by a landslide really expected a pacifist? An isolationist? A vindictive jerk who would prosecute his predecessor? (As far as I know, the only ones actually pushing that nonsense were Jonathan Turley & Noam Chomsky.) So what's left on the international front? Oh yeah, horrible stuff. BinLaden's dead. Who's sniveling about this? It couldn't possibly be the same whiners who bawled that Clinton didn't give the green light to have him killed back in the '90s, could it? AlQaeda dude in Yemen? Oh waaaa, he's dead too. Those poor Somali Pirates. Boo hoo hoo...

Domestically: Wasn't he supposed to close down Wall Street & turn the US into a socialist paradise? Cuban style healthcare? Total redistribution of fthe wealth? All those jobs streaming back from China? We're not all hooked up to the fuel free energy grid Yet? What's he waiting for? Waaaaaaa!!!

Who's expectations? My bad, I guess. I wasn't paying enough attention to the empty lips all over the electronic media telling me what I was supposed to be thinking. Oops! My mistake. That shouldn't be past tense. I still don't give a shit about any of that silliness. I am disappointed in the Congress. I didn't expect the "blue dogs" to turn on him as viciously as they did. I'm still dsappointed that the Republicans turned out to be such cowards that they're afraid to even question the nutbar teabaggers. We shall see what happens next year.

LMFAO....what a fucking revisionist. You don't have the luxury of playing that game old man. Maybe Obama didn't come gift wrapped with your expectations, but who are you? There's too much of a voluminous historical record to beat you about the face and head with . Maybe the smartest thing you've said on these boards was ."Maybe I wasn't paying attention"...You should have stopped there. What makes a person like you say obviously erroneous things? Partisanship ? Denial? Drugs? Only now 3 years into the failure do I hear hand wringing about too high of expectations. Maybe you forgot the extravagant Greek like inauguration ceremony or the countless magazine covers comparing him to FDR and Lincoln. Yes...some of the punditry drove the expectations, but the Obama team spoon fed the public all it wanted about hope and change and they came back for more. Your post wrings hallow, false and bitter. I give you 3 samples of thousands that popped up on a simple search. You're right...you weren't paying attention...hardly new for you.


James Zogby (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby), 11.19.2011
President, Arab American Institute; author, 'Arab Voices'
As I have listened to the increasingly harsh political rhetoric coming from Republicans, I have thought back to a special night in early 2009 and the spirit of cooperation ushered in by our newly elected president, and wondered where it all went.

MTV News....


The historic nature of Barrack Obama's presidency (http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1598607/its-history-barack-obama-wins-2008-presidential-election.jhtml) — not to mention his oratorical abilities — guarantees that his inauguration on January 20, 2009, will be one for the ages.



CNN....

Poll finds great expectations for Obama


BARACK OBAMA (http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/barack-obama)


http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/img/3.0/1px.gif (http://javascript<b></b>:cnnShowOverlay('cnnShareThisStory123');)



November 13, 2008|From Paul Steinhauser CNN Deputy Political Director
http://articles.cnn.com/images/pixel.gif Most people believe President-elect Barack Obama will change America when he takes over from his predecessor.


Call it a case of great expectations.
A new national poll suggests that most Americans think Barack Obama will make major accomplishments as president of the United States.
Nearly two-thirds of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday say President-elect Barack Obama will change the country for the better, with 25 percent saying Obama won't change the country and 9 percent indicating that he will change the country for the worse.
"He's inspired me and this entire nation with his fondness for change," said iReporter Brian Langkan of Elgin, Illinois. "I just hope that the bureaucracy and the typical procedures of Washington don't weigh him down or hold him back or lead him in a new direction."

[trish]

Actually it's the republican party that didn't live up to my expectations. I didn't vote for Hillary in the primary because she was obviously to polarizing. The GOP and friends were attacking her viciously before she even became first lady. I forgot that since Gingrich's time, the GOP strategy is to sabotage all democratic administrations from day one even it is means wrecking the Constitution and the economy. They're willing to do anything from shutting down the government to refusing to raise pay our debts. Boehner refuses to let anything come to a vote, even if he's for it, if he can't pass it without democratic support. Obama's been for approx. three years and has yet to have a majority of his appointments approved.

I take full blame for having such unreasonable expectations of the GOP. I should've known better.

[fred41]

Actually Hillary was pretty vicious herself during her primary against President Obama...not to mention the fabrications trying to shed herself in a more positive light.
The Clinton Political machine is famous for it's brutality...(the whole "birther" issue was rumored to have started with her campaign)..

[hippifried]

One poll during the transition, & shortly after the economic collapse, showing that people expected things to get better. Hmmm... & this is the basis of the claim that folks were expecting the second coming? Who you tryin' to fool, other than yourself? All I'm seeing is a bunch of whining & hype from the fringes. So what? That's an every day of every year constant.

I'll bet that if anybody was ambitious enough to look, you'd find those same poll results after the first election of any President.

[BluegrassCat]

Only now 3 years into the failure do I hear hand wringing about too high of expectations.

Think about that for a second. How else would you know if your expectations were too high unless you waited to find out? Hmm?

And you've inadvertently pointed out how the liberal community is fairly reality based. They (myself included) had very high expectations about a strong liberal president who would be a fierce advocate for progressive values. Instead we got a moderate pragmatist who fetishized bipartisanship. To be fair to Obama, a lot of those expectations were hopeful projections onto a candidate who had already shown his moderate stripes. The Left saw Obama's correct position against the Iraq War as a signal that he would show the same progressive courage on all other issues (his race probably didn't hurt either). Now that he's continued the anti-American and immoral (Yes I think American and moral can be synonymous) Bush policies many on the Left have realized their mistake. They have changed their mind in light of new evidence, part of the definition of rationality.

The same cannot be said for the Right. Conservatives also projected their own version of Barack Hussein Obama onto the new president: a Kenyan Muslim Socialist who planned death panels for grandmothers. And while Obama was busy cutting taxes, this fantasy fringe congealed around the Tea Party moniker. 3 years later, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Tea Party persists in its lunacy, thanks to a right-wing echo chamber that not only keeps out facts but constructs falsehoods to smear the president. As the David Frum article made clear, there are legitimate grounds on which to criticize Obama but the conservative base cannot tear itself away from its self-imposed delusions to engage in reality-based arguments.

[hippifried]

They (myself included) had very high expectations about a strong liberal president who would be a fierce advocate for progressive values. Instead we got a moderate pragmatist who fetishized bipartisanship.

Really? What were you watching? Every speech, from the initial announcement of intent to run through the innaugeration, put bipartisanship at the top of his priority list. Think back & punch your memory button. When did you ever hear anything else from him? The problem is that nobody saw the teabaggers coming. Reason went right out the window with that shit, but that was 2 years later when they actually got elected.

I'm liberal, going back to my teen years in the '60s, & I have no clue what the hell you're talking about with "progressive values". You mean like starting up a national healthcare system after 100 of trying? Granted it could have been a lot better, but look what Medicare was in the '60s or Social Security in the '30s. The Republicans were just intransigent. That's expected to a degree. They didn't have to do anything else because the "blue dog" Democrats screwed up the Recovery Act, health care, & Dodd Frank for them. Aren't they just about all gone now? There's 1 or 2 left in the House, & the ones who didn't have to run for reelection in the Senate? Biggest single group that got beat in 2010. The only way to get rid of an incumbent asshole is to vote for the opponant. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I think the 2010 election has been misread.

[BluegrassCat]

Really? What were you watching? Every speech, from the initial announcement of intent to run through the innaugeration, put bipartisanship at the top of his priority list. Think back & punch your memory button. When did you ever hear anything else from him? The problem is that nobody saw the teabaggers coming. Reason went right out the window with that shit, but that was 2 years later when they actually got elected.

I'm liberal, going back to my teen years in the '60s, & I have no clue what the hell you're talking about with "progressive values". You mean like starting up a national healthcare system after 100 of trying? Granted it could have been a lot better, but look what Medicare was in the '60s or Social Security in the '30s. The Republicans were just intransigent. That's expected to a degree. They didn't have to do anything else because the "blue dog" Democrats screwed up the Recovery Act, health care, & Dodd Frank for them. Aren't they just about all gone now? There's 1 or 2 left in the House, & the ones who didn't have to run for reelection in the Senate? Biggest single group that got beat in 2010. The only way to get rid of an incumbent asshole is to vote for the opponant. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I think the 2010 election has been misread.

Why chop off my next sentence that directly addresses your point?


To be fair to Obama, a lot of those expectations were hopeful projections onto a candidate who had already shown his moderate stripes.

But if you remember the focus on Iraq and the war on terror before the economy imploded, Obama's positions on Iraq, torture and Guantanamo were exactly what progressives and civil libertarians had been waiting for. The problem was we extrapolated from these positions his stance on other issues. Another problem is he didn't even stick to some of his explicit positions.

[hippifried]

I chopped off the sentence so it wouldn't interfere with my rant.

I remember the foreign policy discussion of the campaign & the tie-in to the general mindset that the President was trying to convey. It took a little longer than planned, but we're getting out of Iraq as an occupation force. We're not in the torture business anymore. The Guantanamo prison is still there because everybody balked at trying any of them in the civilian courts within their States & cities. New York especially took the professional sniveling coward stance. Oops, couldn't fulfill that promise. But it isn't like no effort was made. & you expected... What? Proseution of high government officials? Withdrawl from central Asia? A trial for binLaden or that asshole in Yemen who's name nobody remembers already? An end to the use of drones? I certainly hope you're not going to join the Republicans in whining about the Libyan "intervention". What's the "progressive" disappointment? What positions have changed? Please be specific.

Oh & by the way: When did "progressive" & liberal become interchangable terms? I can't remember that ever being the case more than 5 maybe 6 years ago. I find it irritating as well as dishonest. I'm liberal. I still don't know what the hell "a progressive" is, other than an adjective trying to be a noun. From every explanation I've come across so far, progressive has nothing to do with liberal at all, & doesn't require the liberal attitude. I've seen as much intolerance from those who claim the label of progressive as the teabaggers. Just sayin'.

[BluegrassCat]

I chopped off the sentence so it wouldn't interfere with my rant.

I remember the foreign policy discussion of the campaign & the tie-in to the general mindset that the President was trying to convey. It took a little longer than planned, but we're getting out of Iraq as an occupation force. We're not in the torture business anymore. The Guantanamo prison is still there because everybody balked at trying any of them in the civilian courts within their States & cities. New York especially took the professional sniveling coward stance. Oops, couldn't fulfill that promise. But it isn't like no effort was made. & you expected... What? Proseution of high government officials? Withdrawl from central Asia? A trial for binLaden or that asshole in Yemen who's name nobody remembers already? An end to the use of drones? I certainly hope you're not going to join the Republicans in whining about the Libyan "intervention". What's the "progressive" disappointment? What positions have changed? Please be specific.

Oh & by the way: When did "progressive" & liberal become interchangable terms? I can't remember that ever being the case more than 5 maybe 6 years ago. I find it irritating as well as dishonest. I'm liberal. I still don't know what the hell "a progressive" is, other than an adjective trying to be a noun. From every explanation I've come across so far, progressive has nothing to do with liberal at all, & doesn't require the liberal attitude. I've seen as much intolerance from those who claim the label of progressive as the teabaggers. Just sayin'.

For me progressive is just a rebranding of liberal and means the same thing: valuing social justice and social welfare. It's a response to the Con's successful demonization of the word liberal; even though a majority of Americans remain functionally liberal, they reject the label.

So we still engage in extraordinary rendition and send prisoners to countries where we know they will be tortured. Our treatment of Bradley Manning was grossly unconstitutional and bordered on torture. Obama promised to end military commissions, but when faced with political pressure, he backed down and continued the practice. None of this is to deny the limits of the presidency or the importance of Congressional intransigence but the Obama administration has fallen short of its rhetoric when it comes to civil liberties and the limits of executive power.

[hippifried]

For me progressive is just a rebranding of liberal and means the same thing: valuing social justice and social welfare. It's a response to the Con's successful demonization of the word liberal; even though a majority of Americans remain functionally liberal, they reject the label.
Yeah, well I refuse to surrender who I am to a lie by anybody from anywhere in the political sphere, just because the fringers are all pussified & scared of each other. It's not rebranding. It's revisionism, & it's the same lie regardless of who's doing it or why. If you're going to support or even just go along with the LImbaugh definition of liberal, you might as well go ahead & call yourself a dittohead.

Being liberal is an attitude, not a political position. The same goes for being conservative. The big lie is that a position on any given issue should or can be predictable by the attitude. A lie is a lie. All this revisionist bullshit is just fodder for more animosity & rancor. Bearing false witness is a violation of the moral code, & rude.


So we still engage in extraordinary rendition and send prisoners to countries where we know they will be tortured
How sure are you of this? I know it happened because there were documented cases. I haven't seen any kind of details on this blanket accusation that keeps getting repeated that it's still happening. I'm not much into doing a lot of research, so if you have something, link me up.

Our treatment of Bradley Manning was grossly unconstitutional and bordered on torture. Obama promised to end military commissions, but when faced with political pressure, he backed down and continued the practice. None of this is to deny the limits of the presidency or the importance of Congressional intransigence but the Obama administration has fallen short of its rhetoric when it comes to civil liberties and the limits of executive power.
All out of sympathy for Manning. He was a member of the all volunteer US military, working in a sensative position, who handed classified material over to a foreign national. That's espionage, regardless of the who or why. He knew that. Now he has to deal with the consequences. Maybe he can get his hero's ticker tape parade in Leavenworth after the court martial.

How many new tribunals have been started at Guantanamo in the last 3 years?

Lack of success is not the same as lack of effort.

[BluegrassCat]

Yeah, well I refuse to surrender who I am to a lie by anybody from anywhere in the political sphere, just because the fringers are all pussified & scared of each other. It's not rebranding. It's revisionism, & it's the same lie regardless of who's doing it or why. If you're going to support or even just go along with the LImbaugh definition of liberal, you might as well go ahead & call yourself a dittohead.

Being liberal is an attitude, not a political position. The same goes for being conservative. The big lie is that a position on any given issue should or can be predictable by the attitude. A lie is a lie. All this revisionist bullshit is just fodder for more animosity & rancor. Bearing false witness is a violation of the moral code, & rude.

It most definitely is not revisionism. What is being revised? Not what it means to be a liberal, it's merely using a different label with no change in meaning. Who cares about labels?



All out of sympathy for Manning. He was a member of the all volunteer US military, working in a sensative position, who handed classified material over to a foreign national. That's espionage, regardless of the who or why. He knew that. Now he has to deal with the consequences. Maybe he can get his hero's ticker tape parade in Leavenworth after the court martial.


This is not about sympathy for someone accused (not convicted) of a crime, it's about whether we are a nation of laws or not. And by the way, it's the people for whom we lack sympathy that the bill of rights is most important. For the same reason that popular speech doesn't need to be protected.

On the continued use of rendition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25rendition.html

[sharave2]

Its all irrelevant. None of those GOP clowns are going to beat the president in 2012. We would be so much worse off if that happened (which it won't). Hopefully he can get enough democrats elected with him in congress to actually get something done. We need them to get something constructive done and get this country back on its feet. We need to get rid of the "say no to everything republicans".

[hippifried]

It most definitely is not revisionism. What is being revised? Not what it means to be a liberal, it's merely using a different label with no change in meaning. Who cares about labels?
I do, & I take offence. I'm not alone. You self-proclaimed "progressives" are pissing off the liberal base by making the exact same claims about us as the batshits on AM Clearchannel. I keep coming across more & more "progressives" who are every bit as intolerant as the reactionary teabaggers, just pointing in the other direction. There's nothing liberal about it. I was going to give the teabaggers props for being honest, but there's just as many conservative folks who are every bit as pissed off at being lumped in with the "I'm ignorant & proud of it" crowd. Labels are the biggest problem in politics, because they attempt to pigeonhole everybody into one extreme or the other along the lame linear descriptive, that really doesn't describe anything but extremes. Most people aren't fanatics. I find the label insulting. You don't speak for me, & neither do those whom you follow. It's not about policy or expectations. It's not about any particular philosophy. It's an attitude. An approach to the thought process.


This is not about sympathy for someone accused (not convicted) of a crime, it's about whether we are a nation of laws or not. And by the way, it's the people for whom we lack sympathy that the bill of rights is most important. For the same reason that popular speech doesn't need to be protected.
The Manning case isn't about free speech in any way shape or form. He's a member of the military (by choice), in military custody, awaiting court martial under the UCMJ, for the crime of espionage. His rights aren't being violated as far as anything I've heard. He knew the consequences of his actions & took them anyway. If you want to admire him, fine, but that won't be an excuse for keeping him out of prison. Don't get your expectations up.


On the continued use of rendition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25rendition.html
These are recommendations by the DOJ's Special Task Force on Interrogations & Transfer Policies. Are there any details to back the claim that the US is actually still practicing "extrordinary rendition"?

[Stavros]

One of the ironies of history is that the two most common uses of the word Progressive have been in the politics of the USA, and Communism. In the USA you had a Progressive Era in which high level and rather good environmental policies were passed at the same time as the constitutional amendment banning booze, and America became a more aggressive imperial power than it had been before -Theodore Roosevelt may have been a Progressive, but his administration referred to Asians as Pacific Negroes, on the basis that if there was a Manifest Destiny in the USA, it was White and Aryan (see the Bradley link below).
By contrast we used to laugh at the language used in some of the literature coming out of the USSR which referred to the Progressive and Freedom Loving Peoples of the USSR, or the Progressive and Freedom Loving Workers and Toilers who have chosen the Communist Party to guide them, etc etc. The word Progressive was also part of Fascist discourse in Europe, particularly in Italy where in its first phase Fascism was associated with modernity and contrasted with both communism, and the conservative stasis of the first Republic.

In politics, the word is pretty much discredited in Europe.

James Bradley - The Imperial Cruise - Part 1 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUvUPzmr5V0&feature=related)

[BluegrassCat]

I do, & I take offence. I'm not alone. You self-proclaimed "progressives" are pissing off the liberal base by making the exact same claims about us as the batshits on AM Clearchannel. I keep coming across more & more "progressives" who are every bit as intolerant as the reactionary teabaggers, just pointing in the other direction. There's nothing liberal about it. I was going to give the teabaggers props for being honest, but there's just as many conservative folks who are every bit as pissed off at being lumped in with the "I'm ignorant & proud of it" crowd. Labels are the biggest problem in politics, because they attempt to pigeonhole everybody into one extreme or the other along the lame linear descriptive, that really doesn't describe anything but extremes. Most people aren't fanatics. I find the label insulting. You don't speak for me, & neither do those whom you follow. It's not about policy or expectations. It's not about any particular philosophy. It's an attitude. An approach to the thought process.

"I" am certainly not pissing off the liberal base, and I'm definitely not making the same claims about the liberal and conservative base. I don't know where you get that.
You keep saying that labels are bullshit, and when I say labels don't matter you object, it seems like they do matter quite a lot to you. And you seem to be arguing that labels are in fact much more fundamental than most people: you say liberal and conservative are basic approaches to thinking, which implies quite significant differences, more than just a preference for the appropriate role of government. I'm not disagreeing with that assessment but it does imply quite a meaningful gulf between liberals and conservatives.



The Manning case isn't about free speech in any way shape or form. He's a member of the military (by choice), in military custody, awaiting court martial under the UCMJ, for the crime of espionage. His rights aren't being violated as far as anything I've heard. He knew the consequences of his actions & took them anyway. If you want to admire him, fine, but that won't be an excuse for keeping him out of prison. Don't get your expectations up.


I never said the Manning case was a free speech issue. I said it was a civil liberties issue, specifically, a 5th amendment issue. I used free speech as an analogy to point out it's for people whom we dislike that following the law is the most important, because that's when it's difficult to do so, that's what makes them rights and not just preferences. It's easy to tolerate popular speech. Worrying about our personal feelings toward Manning is the same as the right-wing personally attacking the OWS protestors instead of engaging on the substance of their cause. It's a distraction from the real issue.


More evidence of rendition, although the first article was explicit the administration continues to do it.
http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia

[hippifried]

In politics, the word is pretty much discredited in Europe.


It actually works as a political descriptive for policies & even specific ideals, as long as it's used as an adjective. When you try to make it into a noun, both the term & its user lose credence. It creates a pigeonhole. A noun is a thing, & therefore can't be some other thing. The term might work to describe an aspect of someone's professed thoughts &/or positions. But there might be many more aspects within that same person for which that particular descriptive doesn't work at all. That would make the label a lie, & the person who used the label a liar. But it's not a label at all as an adjective. It becomes a label, & therefore a lie, when you stick an article in front of it & use it as a noun. Then it just becomes an attack point, regardless of whether you're on offense or defense. The use of labels on people is deliberate rancor that detracts from the dialog & doesn't allow for the freeflow of ideas.

[Odelay]

This is a bullshit thread title, and a bullshit meme being pushed by Friedersdorf and Chait. "Liberals" are called out as if all liberals are letting Obama off the hook here. Couldn't be farther from the truth. The Left has always been good at criticizing their own, and there are lots of liberals that have been very vocal about the worst parts of the Obama administration, especially the civil rights stuff. Friedersdorf from the Center-Right and Chait from the Center-Left are just concern trolling here. I seem to remember OMK criticizing the big long piece cited by Ben and written by David Frum about the GOP. I actually agreed with OMK's sentiment that Frum doesn't speak for conservatives. This piece is the same thing, in reverse. Liberals don't really need to pay attention to what these two guys say. It's meaningless.

[Ben]

This is a bullshit thread title, and a bullshit meme being pushed by Friedersdorf and Chait. "Liberals" are called out as if all liberals are letting Obama off the hook here. Couldn't be farther from the truth. The Left has always been good at criticizing their own, and there are lots of liberals that have been very vocal about the worst parts of the Obama administration, especially the civil rights stuff. Friedersdorf from the Center-Right and Chait from the Center-Left are just concern trolling here. I seem to remember OMK criticizing the big long piece cited by Ben and written by David Frum about the GOP. I actually agreed with OMK's sentiment that Frum doesn't speak for conservatives. This piece is the same thing, in reverse. Liberals don't really need to pay attention to what these two guys say. It's meaningless.

The so-called Left should criticize the Left when they disagree or find fault with them. As should the so-called Right.
I mean, the "right" claims to be concerned with reducing spending. But I don't think the Republican brass, as it were, even cares about deficits or excessive spending. Ron Paul is the exception.... He's principled about this. And is called Dr. No. Because he'll never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the constitution. That's why he remains steadfastly against the income tax etc., etc.
America is a heavily polled country. Because the business community wants to know what Americans are thinking.
And if you look at the polls, well, the majority of Americans are social democrats. So, the profound problem and the utter assault on democracy is that both parties are far to the right of the majority of Americans.
Will this democratic deficit ever be fixed??? Well, for starters, you'd need a president that's far to the left of Obama and Clinton and has a great deal of empathy for working people.
Problem with Obama: he's way to the right of the majority of Americans.
I mean, look at the opinion polls. Most Americans want to control their own labor. Most Americans want to be in a union. (But ya can't call it that because the term has been demonized. You simply say: Do you want to participate, as it were -- :)) Most Americans want higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Most Americans want universal health care. Then we'd start to see what DEMOCRACY is all about if these policies were implemented. But they're considered politically impossible.... Meaning: the business community doesn't want them. For obvious reasons. It doesn't suit their interests.