Obama's first evil act as president

[Col. Quisp]

I guess I should have highilghted that last sentence in green or whatever the color code is here for snark.

[barracuda]

Mo, I voted McKinney, myself. I was agreeing with you.

[timetunneler]

I suppose I'm somewhat dense but what in holy hell does this (among many other similar items)

The Obama-Biden policy platform is clearly committed to democracy promotion. Implicitly linking democracy promotion to counterinsurgency efforts, one platform statement called for the increased integration of "civilian and military capacities to promote global development and democracy." It also calls for the creation of the position of "Deputy National Security Advisor empowered to develop integrated strategies to build capable, democratic states and ensure policy coherence in the application of development and democracy programs as key elements of U.S. power."

Obama also stated he will "significantly increase funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other nongovernmental organizations." In a similar vein, in its "legacy booklet," the outgoing Bush administration has touted its increase of NED funding by 150% since 2001.

Although Obama didn't cast a vote when the Senate passed the ADA in 2007, he likely supported it. According to Palmer, Obama's former advisor, Samantha Power, "wanted Obama to be one of the co-sponsors of the [ADA] and they had agreed basically to co-sponsor it." In the end, Obama did not sponsor it, but Palmer expressed that this didn't have "anything to do with the substance of the Act."

Reached by telephone and citing the close proximity of the inauguration, a spokesperson from President Obama's transition team declined to comment on the likely implications of the ADA and NSPD 58 on his incoming administration. Likewise, key members of Obama's democracy transition team democracy sub-group, Gayle Smith, Michael McFaul, and Jeremy Weinstein, did not respond to interview requests via email.

have to do with this

I'm starting to come around... the Canadian Obama Haters Club was right. We should have elected Cynthia McKinney as president just as like they were nagging us all up through the election. Obama has been president 8 days and accomplished nothing... Shit, McKinney would have turned the USA inside out overnight... all 300 million of us would have loved her.. gotten behind her 100%. She would have gotten so much done. Cleaned out the Pentagaon, NSA and CIA in one fell swoop. Congress and the House would have rubberstamped everything she asked. How goddamn foolish of us dumb Americans to turn our back on our last best hope of getting some shit done in this country. I've seen the light now. Thanks for opening my eyes. Really. I appreciate it. Thank you.

?

Obama criticism = uncritical support for Cynthia McKinney? Supporting Cynthia McKinney = insanity? What?

Did I say anything about criticizing Obama? Did I even use the word insanity in connection with McKinney? No, you're projecting. I have problems with some of what Obama is doing. Like the stimulus. The point I was trying to make was:

[Col. Quisp]

Mo, I voted McKinney, myself. I was agreeing with you.

Oh! I thought you were making fun of me, I couldn't figure out what you meant...I was going to vote for her also but for her being anti-Jewish, from what I've read.

[chiggerbit]

Yeah, this place is getting to be like the Daily Kos -- where no criticism of a Dem is allowed. And it's great that Pan treats this thread as a joke when people like C2W correctly point out Obama's tortuous reading of the Army Field Manual means Americans don't torture anymore.

Oh, for pity's sake, professorpan started this post out with sarcasm, an obvious invitation to snark, so perhaps not the best venue for making serous pronouncements of importance. It's pan's thread. If you don't like the tone, start one of your own. Besides, it helps the search function when people want to find that topic again. Really, who wants to wade through pages of snark to find the serious nugget? Not that the pronouncement isn't on-topic, because it was on-topic. It's just that I don't see that there's room for criticism for the mood of the thread. Do you go to the fair to listen to your priest or preacher or whatever? This looks to me like it was meant to be a free-for-all.

As for no criticism of Dems--are you kidding??? A good 90% of the comments here about various Dems, and Obama in particular, are negative. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of threads started with just that subject. Dems are kind of fun to kick around. I get a kick out of it myself. But I think an outsider might be forgiven for mistaking this discussion board for being a right winger one, not understanding that the criticism comes mostly from disappointment that the Dems aren't left enough, not for being too left.

[chiggerbit]

The line to piss on Cynthia McKinney just got one person longer is all that happened, Colonel.

Right, it's ok to piss all over Obama, for instance, but not drop of piss on McKinney? Sorry, I don't worship at that church. She looks to me like she's prone to dramatic gestures, and I have a personal aversion to dramatic people.

[barracuda]

it's ok to piss all over Obama?

[compared2what?]

Yeah, this place is getting to be like the Daily Kos -- where no criticism of a Dem is allowed. And it's great that Pan treats this thread as a joke when people like C2W correctly point out Obama's tortuous reading of the Army Field Manual means Americans don't torture anymore.

Oh, for pity's sake, professorpan started this post out with sarcasm, an obvious invitation to snark, so perhaps not the best venue for making serous pronouncements of importance. It's pan's thread. If you don't like the tone, start one of your own. Besides, it helps the search function when people want to find that topic again. Really, who wants to wade through pages of snark to find the serious nugget? Not that the pronouncement isn't on-topic, because it was on-topic. It's just that I don't see that there's room for criticism for the mood of the thread. Do you go to the fair to listen to your priest or preacher or whatever? This looks to me like it was meant to be a free-for-all.

As for no criticism of Dems--are you kidding??? A good 90% of the comments here about various Dems, and Obama in particular, are negative. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of threads started with just that subject. Dems are kind of fun to kick around. I get a kick out of it myself. But I think an outsider might be forgiven for mistaking this discussion board for being a right winger one, not understanding that the criticism comes mostly from disappointment that the Dems aren't left enough, not for being too left.

I don't know about that. Because an outsider who mistook this discussion board for a right-winger one would kind of have to overlook the explicitly implacably anti-right-wing tenor of approximately 95 percent of the political posts on it to do so.

Also, sorry for not realizing that this was the dress-casual thread. As I read it, the sarcasm with which professorpan wrote the OP was his way of giving the finger to the several posters with whom he spent the latter part of the campaign engaged in bitter and not-at-all-light-hearted conflict wrt the issue of Obama's bona fides. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se. Everything exists in a context. Also, it's always possible that I may have misunderstood the spirit in which he was posting. And if so, were professorpan to convincingly explain to me how and where I got him wrong in that regard, I would, of course, admit my error and apologize for it. At the moment, though, my honest, best-faith understanding of his tone -- in light of the context of ongoing bitter debate I just mentioned; as well as the manifestly nose-thumbing spirit in which the motif of condescending and self-congratulatory mock-dismay was both introduced and then repeated at every opportunity on the present thread; as well as the repeated insistence (on this and other threads) that dissenters are motivated by their personal need to bash and hate, rather than by the facts -- is still that the sarcasm was less an invitation to snark than it was the seizing of the first possible opportunity to say "I told you so" that presented itself. Not that there's anything wrong with that, either, imo. In any event, I really do stand willing to have the flaws and logical lapses of that reading pointed out to me if it's rife with flaws and lapses in logic.

I frankly don't understand in what way pointing out that one of the key premises of the thread is flat-out wrong amounts to "making serious pronouncements of importance." Personally, if I were celebrating the banning of torture and it hadn't been banned, I'd want to know. It's not like I just spin out little posts on the legality or illegality of torture in order to feel big about myself, or like I only oppose it when the mood is right. It actually is important, and that's actually why -- as I understood it -- the directive Obama signed was being touted by pan, mac, and others as a significant and probative event. I know professorpan to be an opponent of torture. And that's why, in light of the below-quoted invitation to be addressed as an open-minded person, which I took at face-value -- reproduced and bolded for your convenience -- I brought it up. I agree that what I said, as well as its implications for our new President's honesty, definitely do harsh the mellow, for sure.

But it seems to me that to ascribe that to my being a bummer rather than to our being citizens of a country that has an official policy wrt interrogation that includes torture is more than a little short-sighted of you, chig.

Conversely, what would Obama need to do for you to say "That was fucked up; Obama is worse than I'd hoped"?

I'm sure he will do plenty of things that will piss me off. And I will be outspoken when that occurs, just as I've been outspoken about any politician, regardless of party. But unlike the Obama-can-do-no-good RI brigade, I have now seen evidence that he will do some, possibly many, very good things.

He could cure fucking cancer and some of the nitwits here would twist themselves into pretzels trying to come up with why that's actually a bad thing.

It would be amusing if it wasn't so sad.

So there you go. But I certainly won't trouble this thread with any more serious truths now that I know they're inappropriate, and I'm sorry not to have realized sooner that they were. Although not that sorry, to be completely candid.

[OP ED]

(i follow c2w around in hopes that some of that eloquence will eventually rub off)

i do not have anything of value to add to this thread.

[RocketMan]

But I think an outsider might be forgiven for mistaking this discussion board for being a right winger one, not understanding that the criticism comes mostly from disappointment that the Dems aren't left enough, not for being too left.

I well and truly hope that we're not that esoteric... :p And if that's the case, well, it could be argued that it's more of a function of how fucked up the general political discourse is. It's kind of bizarre that Obama is viewed as being "on the left" in the first place.

[professorpan]

Obama is a two-faced liar. Aw-RIGHT!

by Greg Palast

January 29, 2009

Republicans are right. President Barack Obama treated them like dirt, didn't give a damn what they thought about his stimulus package, loaded it with a bunch of programs that will last for years and will never leave the budget, is giving away money disguised as "tax refunds," and is sneaking in huge changes in policy, from schools to health care, using the pretext of an economic emergency.

Way to go, Mr. O! Mr. Down-and-Dirty Chicago pol. Street-fightin' man. Covering over his break-your-face power play with a "we're all post-partisan friends" BS.

And it's about time.

Frankly, I was worried about this guy. Obama's appointing Clinton-droids to the Cabinet, bloated incompetents like Larry Summers as "Economics Czar," made me fear for my country, that we'd gotten another Democrat who wished he were a Republican.

Then came Obama's money bomb. The House bill included $125 billion for schools (TRIPLING federal spending on education), expanding insurance coverage to the unemployed, making the most progressive change in the tax code in four decades by creating a $500 credit against social security payroll deductions, and so on.

It's as if Obama dug up Ronald Reagan's carcass and put a stake through The Gipper's anti-government heart. Aw-RIGHT!

About the only concession Obama threw to the right-wing trogs was to remove the subsidy for condoms, leaving hooker-happy GOP Senators, like David Vitter, to pay for their own protection. S'OK with me.

And here's the proof that Bam is The Man: Not one single Republican congressman voted for the bill. And that means that Obama didn't compromise, the way Clinton and Carter would have, to win the love of these condom-less jerks.

And we didn't need'm. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Now I understand Obama's weird moves: dinner with those creepy conservative columnists, earnest meetings at the White House with the Republican leaders, a dramatic begging foray into Senate offices. Just as the Republicans say, it was all a fraud. Obama was pure Chicago, Boss Daley in a slim skin, putting his arms around his enemies, pretending to listen and care and compromise, then slowly, quietly, slipping in the knife. All while the media praises Obama's "post-partisanship." Heh heh heh.

Love it. Now we know why Obama picked that vindictive little viper Rahm Emanuel as staff chief: everyone visiting the Oval office will be greeted by the Windy City hit man who would hack up your grandma if you mess with the Godfather-in-Chief.

I don't know about you, but THIS is the change I've been waiting for.

Will it last? We'll see if Obama caves in to more tax cuts to investment bankers. We'll see if he stops the sub-prime scum-bags from foreclosing on frightened families. We'll see if he stands up to the whining, gormless generals who don't know how to get our troops out of Iraq. (In SHIPS, you doofusses!)

Look, don't get your hopes up. But it may turn out the new President's ... a Democrat!

******
Greg Palast's investigative reports for BBC and Rolling Stone can be seen at www.GregPalast.com. Palast is the author of New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

[American Dream]

As we turn now to Pakistan where outrage continues to mount over the US military’s first act of war approved by President Obama. Last Friday unmanned US Predator drones fired missiles at houses in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, killing as many as 22 people, including at least 3 children.

The United States has carried out 30 such drone attacks on alleged Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistani territory since last summer, killing some 250 people, according to a tally by Reuters.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told an audience at the World Economic Forum Thursday that US drone attacks were “counterproductive” and ended up uniting local communities with militants.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates indicated Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that such strikes would continue and that Pakistani officials were aware of US policy on this matter...

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/30/obama_continues_bush_policy_of_deadly

[MacCruiskeen]

It actually is important, and that's actually why -- as I understood it -- the directive Obama signed was being touted by pan, mac, and others as a significant and probative event.

c2w, I think you may have misunderstood this sarcastic post of mine from page 2 (my only contribution to this thread so far):

MacCruiskeen Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:39 pm

Barak "Aitch" Obama has just acknowledged the quaintly old-fashioned Geneva Convention AND stated the ballsachingly obvious without making a single grammatical error or even an unwisely unambiguous statement about release-dates. Therefore, like all sane human beings, I want to want to have his baby.

The prospects are golden, for everyone except cynics.

Think of it all in green ink. I was trying to be ironical but I just ended up sounding like an actual groupie.

And thank you for looking closely at what Obama actually did and didn't order.

[chiggerbit]

So there you go. But I certainly won't trouble this thread with any more serious truths now that I know they're inappropriate, and I'm sorry not to have realized sooner that they were.

Your find was the result of excellent detective work, c2w. But to go all caps when you threw your pearls before swine in the pigpen and the pearls got lost in the mud? Hmmmfff. It's a matter of common sense, not appropriateness.

[compared2what?]

Obama is a two-faced liar. Aw-RIGHT!

by Greg Palast

January 29, 2009

Republicans are right. President Barack Obama treated them like dirt, didn't give a damn what they thought about his stimulus package, loaded it with a bunch of programs that will last for years and will never leave the budget, is giving away money disguised as "tax refunds," and is sneaking in huge changes in policy, from schools to health care, using the pretext of an economic emergency.

Way to go, Mr. O! Mr. Down-and-Dirty Chicago pol. Street-fightin' man. Covering over his break-your-face power play with a "we're all post-partisan friends" BS.

And it's about time.

Frankly, I was worried about this guy. Obama's appointing Clinton-droids to the Cabinet, bloated incompetents like Larry Summers as "Economics Czar," made me fear for my country, that we'd gotten another Democrat who wished he were a Republican.

Then came Obama's money bomb. The House bill included $125 billion for schools (TRIPLING federal spending on education), expanding insurance coverage to the unemployed, making the most progressive change in the tax code in four decades by creating a $500 credit against social security payroll deductions, and so on.

It's as if Obama dug up Ronald Reagan's carcass and put a stake through The Gipper's anti-government heart. Aw-RIGHT!

About the only concession Obama threw to the right-wing trogs was to remove the subsidy for condoms, leaving hooker-happy GOP Senators, like David Vitter, to pay for their own protection. S'OK with me.

And here's the proof that Bam is The Man: Not one single Republican congressman voted for the bill. And that means that Obama didn't compromise, the way Clinton and Carter would have, to win the love of these condom-less jerks.

And we didn't need'm. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Now I understand Obama's weird moves: dinner with those creepy conservative columnists, earnest meetings at the White House with the Republican leaders, a dramatic begging foray into Senate offices. Just as the Republicans say, it was all a fraud. Obama was pure Chicago, Boss Daley in a slim skin, putting his arms around his enemies, pretending to listen and care and compromise, then slowly, quietly, slipping in the knife. All while the media praises Obama's "post-partisanship." Heh heh heh.

Love it. Now we know why Obama picked that vindictive little viper Rahm Emanuel as staff chief: everyone visiting the Oval office will be greeted by the Windy City hit man who would hack up your grandma if you mess with the Godfather-in-Chief.

I don't know about you, but THIS is the change I've been waiting for.

Will it last? We'll see if Obama caves in to more tax cuts to investment bankers. We'll see if he stops the sub-prime scum-bags from foreclosing on frightened families. We'll see if he stands up to the whining, gormless generals who don't know how to get our troops out of Iraq. (In SHIPS, you doofusses!)

Look, don't get your hopes up. But it may turn out the new President's ... a Democrat!

******
Greg Palast's investigative reports for BBC and Rolling Stone can be seen at www.GregPalast.com. Palast is the author of New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

I've said very clearly that I too voted for the guy in the reasonable expectation that he will do some good things. And there is still some reason to expect that he'll do some, just as there always was. The stimulus bill to which Palast is referring has some potentially very serious (oops) problems, when viewed as a vehicle to prevent large numbers of people from sliding into mass poverty of a dust-bowl migration type, as it presently stands. But I have hopes that the wrinkles will get ironed out. And I don't begrudge the grave-pissing-upon of those who think of victory in terms of making the minority party its bitch.

But I'm glad to see that when he does something you object to you will speak out, same as you would with any other politician. I'm also glad he won. It was the best realistic outcome possible.

Mac -- my apologies.

Was that too serious a pronouncement on important things? I guess it might have been. Just to be on the safe side, I'll throw in a joke:

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Just one, but the lightbulb has to be willing to change.