If there was any doubt whether the U.S. system of government had become a Military Democracy (as opposed to a representative democracy, constitutional monarchy, corporate theocracy), the president has proposed a freeze on discretionary spending. And guess what is non-discretionary?
Regardless, I think that yesterday’s one year anniversary of President Barack H. Obama in office warrants some reflection, especially considering that I was an outspoken Obama supporter during the election. Now, one year later, I think it is safe to say that I got one thing right and one thing very wrong.
What I got right was that Obama’s victory was going to be a blessing in disguise for the Republicans.
But if I were a Republican, I wouldn’t fret too much (unless I was running for reelection tomorrow [Election Day, November 4, 2008]). Remember 1992? Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. Nevertheless, Bill Clinton was unable to pass any significant legislation. Two years later, the Republican Revolution took control over the Senate and the House for the first time in 40 years, as well as big gains in state legislatures and governorships around the country. That’s right, Americans love divided government. It took a little longer for this to happen to George W. Bush, but the same thing eventually happened to the Republican dominated Congress in the 2006 elections.
What does this mean for Republicans? My guess is that the Democrats will have big congressional victories in state and federal elections tomorrow and if Obama also wins, Americans will once again show their preference for divided government in the 2010 midterm elections. If on the other hand Obama loses, we’ll have divided government with a Republican presidency and Democratic Congress, and no tangible incentive to vote Republicans back into government.
In other words, all Republicans have to do until 2010 is say no to everything coming from the White House, call the president a socialist like its the 1950s, create a legislative stalemate, and voilà, the Republicans will see congressional victories all over the country. But don’t forget that in 1994, President Clinton’s popularity didn’t rise until the Democrats lost their congressional majority and the Republicans thereafter became the fall guys for all of the country’s ills. So in an ironic turn of fait, what is good for Republicans and bad for the Democrats in 2010 – Republicans regaining congressional seats — may be the key to Obama’s reelection in 2012. Americans do love their divided government.
Now to what I got horribly wrong. Back when debating whether Obama’s early choices for cabinet officers would lead to change or was simply recycling the old institutional players, I wishfully argued that unlike Clinton who surrounded himself with his Arkansas boys or Carter who failed as an outsider, Obama was “concentrating not so much on looking like change but on who was most capable of implementing the necessary changes.” Guys like Rahm Emmanuel (who my uncle Charlie had warned me against from day one), Leon Panetta, Geitner, and Summers were supposed to be the insiders who knew how to play ball and get the president’s job done.
But instead of zealously pushing for the president’s mandates, these pro-bowl insiders have done little more than insure the inside status quo. Who would have thought you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks? So instead of real change you can believe in, we have had a full year of more of the same. On almost every initiative and campaign promise of change, President Obama and his team have – quite to the contrary of the Republican cries of socialism – moved far to the right. There has been absolutely nothing progressive or even remotely liberal in any of the Administration’s actions to date. I defy anyone who voted for change — or even those who voted against Obama’s alleged radicalism — to signal a single area where Obama has not caved. Continue reading
This I promise is not a political post. It is about the willingness of the masses to believe whatever the government tells them (with the full support of an abetting media). Ironically, for a nation that innately distrusts the government in all things domestic, it is a blind follower of the government abroad as supreme warrior leader beyond good and evil.
The most recent example is the new story in Harper’s Magazine by Scott Horton about the government’s cover-up of three detainee deaths — most likely from torture and made to look like suicide — at Guantanamo in June 2006. All three of the detainees had previously been cleared for release.
In reference to this article, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic writes,
We have been told for so long that “enhanced interrogation techniques” are just “aggressive questioning”; that the ancient waterboarding technique is not torture; that Guantanamo Bay is a model prison facility where detainees are, if anything, molly-coddled (in fact, Rudy Giuliani recently opined that “Guantanamo is better than half the Federal prisons.”) We are also told routinely on Fox News that the United States has not and never would torture prisoners; we are told by the New York Times and NPR that use of the word “torture” is too biased; we have been told by many that to argue that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals is such an extreme position it disgraces anyone who states it, and marginalizes them to the fever swamps of leftist haters and hysterics.
These are all lies. They are pre-meditated lies. They are attempts to lie about some of the worst crimes committed by a president and vice-president of the United States in history. Anyone with their eyes open and their mind not closed knows this somewhere deep inside. And the only reason we do not know more about this is because of the criminal cover-up under the Bush administration and the enraging refusal of the Obama administration to do the right thing and open all of it to sunlight.
In the past, the Bush-Cheney administration could cover up their total control of the torture program and their direct authorization of the techniques used at Abu Ghraib by several distancing moves: “we are shocked that this happened”; it was the work of a “few bad apples”; the techniques we use are “relatively benign”; waterboarding is only torture if the Communists do it, and so on.
Glenn Greenwald explains the problem as such
The single biggest lie in War on Terror revisionist history is that our torture was confined only to a handful of “high-value” prisoners. New credible reports of torture continuously emerge. That’s because America implemented and maintained a systematic torture regime spread throughout our worldwide, due-process-free detention system. There have been at least 100 deaths of detainees in American custody who died during or as the result of interrogation. Gen. Barry McCaffrey said: “We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.” Gen. Antonio Taguba said after investigating the Abu Ghraib abuses and finding they were part and parcel of official policy sanctioned at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, and not the acts of a few “rogue” agents: “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Despite all of this, our media persists in sustaining the lie that the torture controversy is about three cases of waterboarding and a few “high-value” detainees who were treated a bit harshly. That’s why Horton’s story received so little attention and was almost completely ignored by right-wing commentators: because it shatters the central myth that torture was used only in the most extreme cases — virtual Ticking Time Bomb scenarios — when there was simply no other choice. Leading American media outlets, as a matter of policy, won’t even use the word “torture.” This, despite the fact that the abuse was so brutal and inhumane that it led to the deaths of helpless captives — including run-of-the-mill detainees, almost certainly ones guilty of absolutely nothing — in numerous cases. These three detainee deaths — like so many other similar cases — illustrate how extreme is the myth that has taken root in order to obscure what was really done.
At the end of the day, it becomes hard to believe almost anything we are told about the War on Terror either by our government or the rubberstamping mainstream media.
In professional football (soccer) terms, the 20th Century could be called Real Madrid’s Century. As a matter of fact, FIFA – the world’s football governing body – voted Real Madrid the most successful professional club team of the 20th century.
In 2000, Real Madrid kicked off the new century with a reinforced policy of signing the world’s greatest and most expensive players including Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, and David Beckham. Then in the summer of 2009, Real Madrid again made football history with unheard of spending, including the purchase of Cristiano Ronaldo for the record amount of €96 Million ($135 million), Kaká for €65 Million ($ 95Million and Benzema for €35 Million ($51 Million) (not to mention picking up Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa from Liverpool and Raul Albiol from Valencia).
Nevertheless, in the Copa del Rey against the modest Alcorcón from Second Division B (Group 2) with an annual budget of less than €1 million, Real Madrid with its budget of over €200 Million ($300 Million) on players alone was eliminated after losing 4-0 in Alcorcón and winning by only 1-0 at its home stadium that seats 80 million spectators.
How is it possible that the wealthiest and most expensive professional team in the world cannot defeat a group of part-time amateurs? Should we blame the Real Madrid players? The coaching staff? The club’s governing body? How about the FIFA rules? Or should we demonize Alcorcón?
I will let you make the inferences and draw your own conclusions.
Filed under Essays
Without getting into the merits of the Sahwari people’s claims over the disputed territories in Moroccan controlled Western Sahara, it is hard for me to understand what a group of Spanish actors have to do with any of it.
The story goes something like this. Spain had colonies in Northern Morocco between 1912 and 1956, and in Western Sahara from 1884 all the way until 1975. Throughout most of that time period, Morocco (and Mauritania to a less extent) laid claim to that territory. Right before Franco’s death and after the massive Moroccan public demonstrations against Spanish colonization known as the Green March, Spain finally relinquished its control over the area. The land was then divided between Morocco and Mauritania, but after pressure from the Algerian funded and based Polisario (a pro-Sahrawi rebel group), Mauritania abandoned its portion of the land. In 1991, the U.N. created MINURSO to enable a cease fire between the Polisario and Morocco and to allow for an eventual referendum on the sovereignty over the territory. That referendum has yet to occur, and Western Sahara remains fully under Moroccan control, with a majority of its residents now hailing from the rest of Morocco.
Flash forward to November 2009. The pro-Sahwari human rights activist, Haidar Aminatu, was traveling to the Western Saharan city, Laayoune, and, according to Morocco, refused to enter with her Moroccan passport and insisted that her nationality be listed as Sahwari. As one can imagine, the Moroccan authorities denied her entry. She was then flown to the Canary Islands, sans papers, where she has refused to leave the airport until she is permitted to take another flight to Laayoune and has been on a hunger strike ever since. The Spanish government is now left in the middle of a game of wills between its neighbor and former colony, Morocco, and the human rights activist that the Spanish left is enamored with.
Then today, a group of Spanish actors and labor union politicians – including Pedro Almodóvar, Pilar Bardem, Ruth Gabriel, Juan Diego, Aitana Sánchez Gijón and Juan Diego Botto, – sent an email to Spanish King Juan Carlos requesting his intervention in favor of Haidar Aminatu.
For the most part, the Spanish side against the Moroccan government and in favor of Sahwari independence (whereas the U.S. government sides with Morocco). Not only was Western Sahara Spain’s last colony (Ceuta and Melilla not under discussion here), Spanish colonization of Morocco was also uniquely tied to the Franco regime; Franco had been the Commander of the Army of Africa which played a key role in the Spanish Civil War. On the other hand, for the Moroccans the Green March and the independence of the territory from Spain have become important historic assertions of pride, unity and sovereignty in the Moroccan national psyche.
It is ironic then that a group of pseudo-intellectual Spanish celebrities are so eager to take sides, regardless of all of the historic connotations of their position. What does Western Sahara have to do with them anyways? Other than being a vestige of Spain’s colonial and Franquista past.
Filed under Essays, Living la vida española
Apparently, many Obama supporters are complaining about the strict scrutiny the President is receiving from the progressive wing of his party. To highlight the cynicism of that position, Greenwald writes,
These outbursts include everything other than arguments addressed to the only question that matters: are the criticisms that have been voiced about Obama valid? Has he appointed financial officials who have largely served the agenda of the Wall Street and industry interests that funded his campaign? Has he embraced many of the Bush/Cheney executive power and secrecy abuses which Democrats once railed against — from state secrets to indefinite detention to renditions and military commissions? Has he actively sought to protect from accountability and disclosure a whole slew of Bush crimes? Did he secretly a negotiate a deal with the pharmaceutical industry after promising repeatedly that all negotiations over health care would take place out in the open, even on C-SPAN? Are the criticisms of his escalation of the war in Afghanistan valid, and are his arguments in its favor redolent of the ones George Bush made to “surge” in Iraq or Lyndon Johnson made to escalate in Vietnam? Is Bob Herbert right when he condemned Obama’s detention policies as un-American and tyrannical, and warned: “Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House”?
Who knows? Who cares? According to these defenders, it’s just wrong — morally, ethically and psychologically — to criticize the President. Thus, in lieu of any substantive engagement of these critiques are a slew of moronic Broderian cliches (“If Obama catches heat from the left and right but maintains the middle, he is doing what I hoped he would do (and what he said he would do) when I voted for him”), cringe-inducing proclamations of faith in his greatness (“I am willing to continue to trust his instinct, his grace, his patience and his measured hand”), and emotional contempt for his critics more extreme than one would expect from his own family members. In other words, the Leave-Obama-Alone protestations posted by Sullivan are fairly representative of the genre. How far we’ve fallen from the declaration of Thomas Jefferson: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
aided by the above video that reveals the shockingly scarce criteria behind Palin worship, almost as if to remind us of the inherent perils in the blind no-questions-asked presidential adoration so common during the W. Bush administration.
| Chappelle’s Show | ||||
| Tron Carter’s Law & Order | ||||
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In response to my post on the irrelevance of the Tiger Woods marital crisis story, my brother — a public interest attorney in the Bronx — brings up an excellent point about the disparate treatment of the wealthy and the poor in domestic disputes.
For example, I was recently listening to a Leonard Lopate Show podcast about police informants and the example of Jack Abramoff was given. In exchange for his testimony, Abramoff — probably the most corrupt lobbyist in Washington history — got a lighter sentence than would someone found with less than a teaspoon of crack.
Yet we continue to believe that the poor in America get all of the breaks.
Filed under Essays, Friends / Family
On Thursday night in Vienna, a group of neo-Nazi extremists interrupted the European club match between Austria Vienna and Athletic Bilbao. The match coincided with a pan-European meeting of neo-Nazis from Austria, Bulgaria, Spain, and Italy. This type of incident should be recognized for what it is: terrorism, pure and simple. Yet, it received absolutely no coverage whatsoever in the New York Times, Washington Post, or CNN. Were the neo-Nazis armed, FOX would have called it a Tea Party.
Filed under Essays
A few weeks ago we were blaming Islamic extremism for an All American shooting spree, largely forgetting the other two mass shootings that occurred within a few days of each other. Not this time. This time we have another scapegoat, as Gene Lyons so elegantly writes:
Another week, another grotesque mass shooting: In Washington state this time, leaving four police officers dead, four families destroyed and nine children’s lives shattered. As it’s politically unfashionable to wonder whether Americans shouldn’t do more to keep semi-automatic handguns away from crazy people, attention soon focused on why mass murderer Maurice Clemmons wasn’t locked away, where he belonged.
So many insane people with easy access to guns and so many excuses. And we certainly are not going to blame Governor Huckabee for aiding and abetting terrorism.
Grave Error 