Tag: obama

The Obama administration is considering filing the first criminal charges against radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in case the CIA fails to kill him and he is captured alive in Yemen.

Matt Apuzzo, writing for the Associated Press.
Nothing defines America more than these core Constitution protections: Kill first, then charge. Thank God the Founders had the foresight to put that in writing once and for all; truly a boon for citizens living some 225 years later.
Yet, one would assume, a poll of Tea Partiers and other Strict Constructionists would be broadly supportive of this kind of nonsense and would wonder after the squeamishness of questioning it at all.

Some people have already asked how an American like D’Souza disparages anti-colonialism, but it’s simple really: African self-determination is seen by many in the West, particularly conservatives, as tragic in comparison to the idealized “stability” of white rule. “Kenyan anti-colonialism” manages to say at once that Obama is a black, incompetent despot who is out for revenge against whites and who will destroy the country in the process. This is profoundly racist on its face. Yet it’s the cover story in Forbes magazine.

Adam Serwer, extending these comments for the American Prospect. I know Bob Somerby doesn’t want to hear it, but “the R-word” is the only rational way to describe this sort of thinking.

All of which to say is there’s no need to parse the ethnic origins or political philosophies of Obama’s parents to understand the ideology of Barack Obama. He is a center-left Democrat who supports mainstream Democratic policies. But some conservatives don’t want to talk about policy. They are unable to engage in an argument with liberalism on substantive terms; they know only argument by epithet. They want to talk about the fact that our blackety black president is blackety black.

Adam Serwer Archive | The American Prospect (via Balloon Juice)
Agreed, except this isn’t an “argument with liberalism.” It’s an argument with center-rightism.
Source: prospect.org

Economic Policy Institute gives us a simple chart:

38.7% of all of the income growth accrued to the upper 1% over the 1979-2007 period: a greater share than the 36.3% share received by the entire bottom 90% of the population.

Those in the top 10% of the income scale received 63.7% of all the income growth generated over the 1979-2007 period. In contrast, the bottom 20% of all earners saw such a small share of income growth – just 0.4% – that it barely shows up on the included pie chart.

Let’s repeat: over the last ~30 years, the top 10% got about 60% of all income growth. Everybody else: not so much.
There should be no speech, no appearance, no utterance, no anything involving any Democrat anywhere a camera, microphone, or goodly crowd may gather that does not include this chart. Every time, every day, every hour between now and November.

Don’t hold your breath.

brooklynmutt:

American politics “seem to be getting worse because, sorry to say it, people get stupider and stupider every election cycle.” – Bill Maher

See, I would simply say “This is why we fail.”
Obama should have, at every speech (or, at the very least: every other speech) beaten home the essential failure and utter depravity of the previous administration and its numerous supporters and enablers in the Congress. People shouldn’t be able to hear the word “Boehner” (as just one example) without thinking of failed policy and economic destruction.
Instead, we got “small-ball, make-nice, compromise on everything and the GOP will come on board.” Boy, that worked out well. Boehner can come right out and say he wants to continue (or resume) Bush policies exactly as before without the least fear; quite the contrary: he’s treated as a big thinker. This is why we fail.

So basically, here’s what this election comes down to. [The GOP leadership is] betting that between now and November, you’re going to come down with amnesia. They figure you’re going to forget what their agenda did to this country.

Barack Obama, giving a textbook example of “too little, too late” in his labor day speech.
My friend, if you had hammered this message home in every speech you gave from Inauguration Day forward, you might have had a chance. Instead, you went with “look forward, not back.” Which is great if you live in a fantasyworld in which the GOP is willing to pragmatically play ball with you. They are not and never were. And you and your advisers still haven’t worked that out.
But I’m sure the new GOP majority in the House will also take up a look-forward stance, and bypass all the usual investigations into your Christmas card lists and so forth. They are, after all, serious pragmatists with the best interests of the common man at heart.
Source: whitehouse.gov

The central question raised by this controversy is the same one raised by countless similar controversies throughout American history: whether the irrational fears and prejudices of the majority should be honored and validated or emphatically confronted.

Glenn Greenwald nailing it. Also worth checking out for Dean’s more nuanced explanation of himself.
If only we had a rhetorically skilled President that could go out there and make a powerful case for this. Of course, a growing fraction of Americans think he’s a Muslim. Probably better to wait until September 2012 to start pushing back on that too.

In that spirit, let me end by saying I don’t pretend to have all the answers to the challenges we face, and I look forward to periodic conversations with all of you in the months and years to come. I trust that you will continue to let me and other Democrats know when you believe we are screwing up. And I, in turn, will always try and show you the respect and candor one owes his friends and allies.

Barack Obama sounding oh so 2005 on the Great Orange Devil, and apparently Gibbs would agree: that was all a bunch of meaningless horseshit aimed primarily at the center-right that is so desperately underserved by American “politics.”
Abandon those that put you there and then blame them when you’re not there anymore. That’s change we can believe in, all right.

Nothing that Does Matter

So good:

It does not matter where presidents or their wives go on vacation. IT DOES NOT MATTER. Presidential approval, election outcomes, support in Congress — nothing that does matter depends on where presidents go on vacation. It did not matter when Clinton apparently polled to figure out where he should go. It did not matter when Bush decamped to Crawford. It did not matter when the Obamas went to Martha’s Vineyard. It does not matter now.

Dowd writes:

In politics and pop culture, optics are all.

By that she means, “In politics and pop culture, optics are all that matters to me.”

You could not ask for a better distillation of why so much political commentary is so completely and utterly detached from what actually affects political outcomes. War and peace, economic prosperity and hard times, real scandals — these things pale beside the fact that the Obamas once went to New York City on a date!

Nothing that Does Matter

Obama’s Watergate

This paragraph from Yglesias got me thinking:

This is the oddity of American politics in 2010. To simply appropriate funds to give to poor foreigners (”foreign aid”) is hideously unpopular and politically unthinkable. To appropriate funds to give to state governments to keep the public sector operating is also politically untenable. But to appropriate the funds to build facilities for Americans but located in Afghanistan is easy.

In a nutshell: while we’re turning out the streetlights in Colorado and chopping up paved roads that states can no longer manage to pay up-keep on (and etc…), the Congress can always find plenty of money for our overseas adventures.

So: whoever Obama’s edition of Oliver North is, that person should build up some kind of sufficiently large yet sufficiently innocuous project that just needs doing over to Afghanistan. Money in hand, said North should then redirect that money to secret infrastructure improvements in this country. We can call it the Tuttle Initiative. Tuttlegate inevitably follows.

That this seems not only doable but probably the only way such a project gets done says a lot about our collapsing empire. Tap tap tap.