I was passionate about Obama becoming our 44th president, and while I recognize that in the short term Obama greatly improves the U.S.’s standing abroad, I am starting to wonder whether Obama is actually becoming more dangerous for the world than George W. Bush.
Regardless of what Dick Cheney may think, Obama has fully embraced the Bush vision of an imperial and unchecked executive branch. From the proposed Guantanamo show trials to the notion that the president can order people to be detained indefinitely without trial, conviction, rationale or necesity, Obama has institutionalized, with bipartisan support, the notion that the executive branch is above and beyond the law.
Sure, Obama may be closing Guantanamo, but he is doing so only cosmetically. Obama is maintaining, without any dissent whatsoever, the detention facility at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan, a prison that makes Guantanamo pale in comparison.
Remember all of those Democrats, journalists, and citizens complaining about the Bush Cheney world of secrecy? Remember Bush Cheney refusing to disclose which oil companies met with the White House prior to invading Iraq? Remember Obama’s promise of transparency? Welcome to the Obama state secrets doctrine that not only refuses to disclose evidence of government crimes (because upholding the rule of law may hurt our image abroad), it now also insists on keeping secret the names of the health insurance companies that have met with the president.
Bush Cheney Redux or worse? With the Democrats in power and fully supporting the Obama Administration’s Bush-Cheneyian policies, we now have bipartisan support for the notion that the president is above the law and that the U.S. government is completely immune from any claim of human rights abuses.
Grave Error 
Definitely, he’s worse.
Bush didn’t care about the Constitution, and let everyone run all over it.
Maobama is trying to destroy it, with willful intent.
Village idiot/absentee landlord v. freedom hating/racist socialist …
Eric are you really so dissappointed with Obama or you just want to polemize?
Cuz, I am not quite sure how Obama is a racist — he’s done little more than sustain the status quo — and I don’t think his intention is to destroy the Constitution. I just think that he is too eager to please all sides and therefore is capable of giving in on things that he surely knows are unforgivable. The Bush White House couldn’t give a crap what anyone thought.
Borja,
Both.
Ummmmm …. wtf?
Cugino, “czars” are a violation of the Constitution, period. He doesn’t care.
Allow me to elaborate: any powers not expressly stated as existing for the Federal government, in the Constitution, are thereby expressly forbidden to the Federal government and are expressly the province of the States. Not arguable.
Federal government acquiring controlling portions of private sector businesses; Constitutional violations.
Federal government taking control of, and federalising banks; Constitutional violations.
He has openly stated that he thinks the Constitution is often “deeply flawed” because it reflects the times it was written in; which is a strawman because he doesn’t know, nor does anyone else, exactly what the mindset was of the Framers, because none who live today were present. But, like the classic moron, attempts to circumvent the elegance of the document being written to not be dependent upon any historical period; that’s why it is amendable.
How is he a racist? You haven’t been paying attention to the news? H.L. Gates, hate/racial distinction promoter, a joke of a professor at Harvard, who teaches, **laff** “African American studies” was lawfully arrested for his behavior ~ Maobama has castigated the “offending” officer and his statement was that the officer acted “stupidly”, (don’t even try it, his own words), because “African Americans” are sensitive to police mistreatment and brutality. As well as the fact Maobama proved himself to be an ineffable moron when he admitted he was opining WITHOUT knowing the facts, and proceeded without hesitation to blame law enforcement; with an obvious invective intent.
The Cambridge police department has video and audio of the “professor” following the officer out of the home, hurling obscenities, vitriolic insults and puerile commentary at the officer.
The man was duly arrested and should be charged with both disturbing the peace and menacing of an officer. I have, with my own eyes, on more than a few occasions seen this exact scenario; and every time, the offending individual has been arrested ~ and they were ALL white.
Maobama refuses to admit he was wrong, is a fool, a douchebag and a shiftless, mindless imp and further, still points to the officer engaging in inappropriate behavior ~ based on race, by his own admission.
It’s 2009, I don’t know anyone who ever owned a slave, ever thought owning a slave was a good idea, ever thought that we should promote or allow slavery or segregation, etc, etc, etc … but according to Maobama, we owe them “special treatment” because they are “sensitive”. I don’t owe anyone, ANYONE, outside of my family, anything … except perhaps two to the skull, with malice of forethought, for fogging up my mind with their unending idiocy.
He’s a Chavista socialist, a hater of the Constitution, and an open racist; civil rights rebel without a clue, and an absolute naricissist, perhaps without equal.
I think you are far too forgiving to assume he “means well and is eager to please” … I don’t buy it, not even considered a plausible option of the variable set.
Of course the Bush administration didn’t give a crap; they weren’t cognisant at a level that would allow them to care. Hence, absentee landlord/village idiot.
So who is worse? The mongoloid who can’t control the fact they are unable to be aware enough to perform their tasks; or the shiftless imp with an agenda, whose design is destruction of a standing way of life in the most lurid, pernicious attempt at egalitarianism ever seen?
“I’ll take option B for the win, Alex!!!”
ftw.
On the Constitution, I don’t totally disagree with, yet it would be incorrect to say that these are things peculiar to the Obama presidency. TARP was passed under the Bush Administration, administered by Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman, now one of the great beneficiaries of TARP. When can call it nationalization or the opposite, the transfer of wealth from the taxpayer directly to the private sector.
People focus on TARP, but nobody debates the validity or importance of the FDIC that insures our bank deposits and protects our money when a bank goes under by taking it over. Without the FDIC, I highly doubt anyone would put their money in banks. Sure, this could be managed strictly by a state agency, but no matter how much states cry for more state’s rights, I doubt they’d ever want to finance it.
Still, though, we have an incredibly long history, since the birth of the nation, of the Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution to give Congress great deference under the Commerce Clause to pass just about anything it wants, as long as it can articulate a nexus between the law and interstate commerce.
If you ignore this deference, then of course, everything from federal drug to insider trading laws would be unconstitutional. The Federal Securities Regulations would be unconstitutional, so would the voting, civil rights, Americans with disabilities acts and so on and so on. Not to mention Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” or any national incentive on education or to define marriage.
Most of what the EPA, FDA, OSHA, Department of Energy, and FCC would be illegal. And other than anything that protected consumers, Bush advocated for greater federal control.
So it gets pretty hard to argue that Obama is somehow more inclined than previous administrations against state rights. Furthermore, it most cases — especially in light of most states going bankrupt — how decentralization is beneficial to the U.S. economy, an economy whose great advantage is its volume and regulatory uniformity.
Regarding the Gates/Police incident, I think it is almost impossible to argue that racial profiling is not a serious problem across the country (it is also a problem in Spain, but minorities have almost no political power whatsoever to complain). Almost every statistic imaginable points to the overwhelming disparity between how law enforcement treats whites versus minorities. The is a phenomenon where minorities simply do not trust the police. But, I will leave this for a separate post.
Not going to argue any of those points on Federal departments and lack of Constitutionality … and we absolutely agree on the SCOTUS. Personally, I’d like to see them hung from the neck until dead, for open acts of treason against the country and the Constitution.
I’ll say the rest for your other post.