Matt Taibbi: Obama's Big Sellout

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we've been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Whatever the president's real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial "reforms" that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street's political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer's role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama's top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals.

How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and almost nobody noticed.

'Just look at the timeline of the Citigroup deal," says one leading Democratic consultant. "Just look at it. It's fucking amazing. Amazing! And nobody said a thing about it."

Barack Obama was still just the president-elect when it happened, but the revolting and inexcusable $306 billion bailout that Citigroup received was the first major act of his presidency. In order to grasp the full horror of what took place, however, one needs to go back a few weeks before the actual bailout — to November 5th, 2008, the day after Obama's election.

That was the day the jubilant Obama campaign announced its transition team. Though many of the names were familiar — former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, long-time Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett — the list was most notable for who was not on it, especially on the economic side. Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who had served as one of Obama's chief advisers during the campaign, didn't make the cut. Neither did Karen Kornbluh, who had served as Obama's policy director and was instrumental in crafting the Democratic Party's platform. Both had emphasized populist themes during the campaign: Kornbluh was known for pushing Democrats to focus on the plight of the poor and middle class, while Goolsbee was an aggressive critic of Wall Street, declaring that AIG executives should receive "a Nobel Prize — for evil."

But come November 5th, both were banished from Obama's inner circle — and replaced with a group of Wall Street bankers. Leading the search for the president's new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama's biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters — chief among them his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup (a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself).

Incredibly, Froman did not resign from the bank when he went to work for Obama: He remained in the employ of Citigroup for two more months, even as he helped appoint the very people who would shape the future of his own firm. And to help him pick Obama's economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, a former Clinton diplomat who happens to be Bob Rubin's son. At the time, Jamie's dad was still earning roughly $15 million a year working for Citigroup, which was in the midst of a collapse brought on in part because Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments...
(snip)

"The investment community feels very put-upon," Fass explained. "They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown."

Which makes sense. Shit, who could blame the investment community for the meltdown? What kind of assholes are we to put any of this on them?

This is the kind of person who is working for the Obama administration, which makes it unsurprising that we're getting no real reform of the finance industry. There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.

"The obvious danger is that with the passage of time, risk-taking will be encouraged and efforts at prudential restraint will be resisted," Volcker told Congress in September, expressing concerns about all the regulatory loopholes in Frank's bill. "Ultimately, the possibility of further crises — even greater crises — will increase."

What's most troubling is that we don't know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.

Bush's Third Term? You're Living It

By David Swanson

September 02, 2009 "TomDispatch" --- It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can't you just picture it?

There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.

I picture this demonic president still swearing he doesn't torture, still insisting that he wants to close Guantanamo, but assuring his subordinates that the commander-in-chief has the power to torture "if needed," and maintaining a prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan that makes Guantanamo look like summer camp. I can imagine him continuing to keep secret his warrantless spying programs while protecting the corporations and government officials involved.

If Bush were in his third term, we would already have seen him propose, yet again, the largest military budget in the history of the world. We might well have seen him pretend he was including war funding in the standard budget, and then claim that one final supplemental war budget was still needed, immediately after which he would surely announce that yet another war supplemental bill would be needed down the road. And of course, he would have held onto his Secretary of Defense from his second term, Robert Gates, to run the Pentagon, keep our ongoing wars rolling along, and oversee the better part of our public budget.

Bush would undoubtedly be following through on the agreement he signed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 (except where he chose not to follow through). His generals would, in the meantime, be leaking word that the United States never intended to actually leave. He'd surely be maintaining current levels of troops in Iraq, while sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan and talking about a new "surge" there. He'd probably also be escalating the campaign he launched late in his second term to use drone aircraft to illegally and repeatedly strike into Pakistan's tribal borderlands with Afghanistan.

Etc.

"The Curious Case of the Establishment Liberal: Condemning Torture, Condoning Mass Murder"

A peculiar notion has arisen of late, maintaining that things like torture, domestic spying and illegal wars are all attributable to the Right -- namely, the administration of President George W. Bush -- and are in fact historical anomalies, not at all in keeping with the traditions of these great United States. The idea that war crimes and civil liberties violations are strictly conservative affairs is particularly comforting to wide-eyed Democrats in awe of America’s First Black President ™, and it affords the heirs to the same liberal establishment which brought us Vietnam and Hiroshima another opportunity to grandstand about their commitment to human rights even as the noble humanitarian Barack Obama continues to extra-judicially murder foreigners with unmanned drones. Unfortunately for partisan Democrats – and even more so the victims of U.S. exceptionalism – American imperialism and its associated evils have long enjoyed bipartisan backing, though liberals tend to be somewhat more sheepish about their support for killing, torturing and maiming poor people overseas.

The torture debate has provided the liberals of the establishment punditocracy but the latest opportunity to claim human rights violations are an aberration -- a regrettable “mistake” in the words of Obama -- the use of which was relegated to an eight year span wherein ignoble right-wingers broke with past tradition and authorized a whole host of evils that would make their predecessors in power turn in their graves. Though abhorrent, the message is that these crimes are a departure from the past, when prisoners of war and others in the U.S. government's possession were presumably set up at the Four Seasons and given a lollipop and a court-appointed attorney.

While that take on history is at odds with reality – the U.S. government's torture school for Latin American human rights abusers in training, the School of the Americas, for instance, was started under the watch of liberal icon Harry Truman – it serves a useful purpose in allowing establishment liberals the opportunity to decry the crimes of their right-wing foes with a forceful moral indignation that would appear ridiculous if they acknowledged the long-running, bipartisan nature of the U.S. empire's many transgressions.

"[R]emember that a liberal's only passion is not to do good but to look good” writes Princeton University mathematics professor Bernard Chazelle. In a post at the blog A Tiny Revolution, Chazelle helpfully reminds liberals that the use of torture did not begin with George W. Bush's disastrous presidency and did not end with Barack Obama's glorious ascension to the White House, contrary to popular lore. Rather, Chazelle notes, committed humanitarians from LBJ to Ronald Reagan repeatedly sanctioned its use in places from Vietnam to El Salvador, though past sainted leaders at least had the courtesy to "always [make] sure we could blame a nonwhite guy with a funny accent," thus helping maintain the fictional-if-widespread belief that the American state really is a force for good in the world and at home, and not actually an imperial, cancerous impediment to progress.

Yet even after their best attempts to pretend crimes committed by self-styled progressive Democrats are excusable or never even happened, liberal denunciations of torture appear none the more credible in light of their general acceptance for other war crimes, such as the aforementioned Truman's brave decision to incinerate hundreds of thousands of Japanese men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – a decision, it should repeatedly be noted, that was opposed by Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, casting doubt on the oft-debunked claims it was necessary to stave off the deaths of even more American soldiers (as if that would justify the deliberate and repeated killing of civilians).

The PTB and their Op-Plans: Bush Op-Plan vs. Obama Op-Plan -- and The Future

By The Anonymous Physicist

Bush is a Republican. Obama is a Democrat.

Bush is a moron, Obama is very intelligent.

Bush was a conservative, Obama is a liberal.

Bush only cared about the wealthy and elite. Obama cares about everyone.

Bush didn’t know/comprehend/care about the law. Obama is a Consitutional scholar—surely he will govern in a Constitutional manner.

Bush, and lackeys, OKed waterboarding, rape, sodomy. Obama says waterboarding is torture and he is banning it. (Note that I think it is possible that ALL the monstrosities perpetrated on e.g., Abu Ghraib prisoners, were OKed by the highest authorities in the Bush Administration, because of the following logic. In any jail, instances of such barbaric acts may occur, but how many times have you heard that the perpetrators felt safe enough to take pictures, and even post some of them on the internet? IMO, they were initially told that whatever foul acts they carried out were sanctioned by the highest American authorities.)

Bush and his lackeys, like Condoleeza Rice, claim if the President ordered a technique to be used, then it is legal, and not torture. Obama is now asking Congress to create a “legal regime” for the things he wishes to set in place things that are in fact unconstitutional. In other words--

Bush’s Op-Plan was that the “President’s ordering something, ipso facto makes it legal.”

The Obama Op-Plan now is to claim that if Congress-- or "if Congress PLUS the President-- orders something, that ipso facto makes it legal", regardless of what the Constitution says.

Obama wouldn’t have publicly cited this new Op-Plan if he didn’t have the Democrats/Traitors in Congress lined up to go along! Bush failed to obtain indefinite detention. Now BECAUSE OF THE ABOVE clever, SEQUENTIAL Double Op-Plan (a variation of good cop, bad cop), Obama seems to have Congress with him on this! Thus we are in the midst of a blatant, final, total destruction of the Constitution. Note— unlike many— I hold that the Constitution was always trampled upon in the USA, by the elite/PTB. This is demonstrated by the many acts of Presidential assassinations, poisoning of citizens, treatment of minorities, waging undeclared, unconstitutional wars, and interference in foreign countries-- and how the elite/PTB always got away with these murderous, unconstitutional acts. The difference between these last nine years-- with BOTH the Bush and Obama Op-Plans-- and the earlier history of this nation, is that the total destruction of Constitutonal rights and freedoms is now OPENLY proclaimed with the usual ruse of being done to “counter terrorism” and “safeguard the nation.”

Alas, the framers of the Constitution likely— being Freemasons etc.— put (at least) one fatal flaw in to the Constitution. They allowed Article I, Section 9, which states that “the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Now “public safety” has morphed into “National Security.” And national security has become the excuse for not only terminating Habeas Corpus, but for shredding the entire Constitution. Again, behind the scenes-- in case they would be charged with treason-- I believe those who committed such acts as illegal wars and assassinations of Presidents, have always proclaimed that their acts were done in the interest of “national security” or “public safety.”

This article details a related and remarkable case in the federal courts right now. Here the Obama Justice Dept. is continuing an unconstitutional and anti-Constitutional claim against an Islamic group that was wiretapped illegally. First the history of this matter. After the Church Senate Committee, in the early 1970’s, uncovered massive, illegal spying on Americans by the CIA and other federal agencies, the Carter Administration saw the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. The Feds must apply to this Court for prior approval to wiretap any Americans it wants to. The Court is itself virtually totally corrupt in that its members have approved every single request that was sent to it. With the exception of but one judge who resigned from it, its members are all likely intel agents or assets themselves. The case before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco, involves the revelation that the Bush Administration spied on the Islamic Group without applying to the FISA Court-- which is a serious violation of federal law. I assert this is commonplace! From my own experience, after I once spoke publicly showing how President Kennedy’s Secret Service driver, William Greer blew Kennedy’s brains out after he first accidentally shot Connally (all of which can be seen and heard on audio-added Zapruder film), I was heavily wiretapped and then assaulted, and my home broken into and a mercury compound placed all over it. I seriously doubt that the federal Gestapo agencies involved whether CIA, FBI, NSA, Secret Service, other, or all of the above, went through the FISA Court to ask to wiretap me, before they did, and are. The USA is a totally lawless land, and perhaps always has been. But the remarkable thing in the case before Judge Walker now is that the Obama Regime is actually claiming that since the wiretapping of the Islamic Group was found out accidentally, and since the Bush Regime did not officially admit to it, and did not apply through official channels (the FISA Court), the Justice System cannot adjudicate the matter! They are attempting to render impotent, or non-existent, the entire third branch of the Federal Gov’t-- which has always acted as an interpreter and counter to any attempted power grab by the other two branches of the Federal Govt. So the Obama Op in this matter is continuing the Bush Op of claiming a supreme executive branch with no oversight from the Judiciary-- when it cries “national security.” Here they are OPENLY claiming what I have asserted assassins and traitors, in control of the American federal regime, have always claimed. When they (illegally) kill a President or (illegally) wiretap, poison or kill a citizen, and then merely yell “national security,” they want not to be charged, tried, or judged for their crimes. And they want NOW TO MAKE THIS OPENLY “LEGAL” and NOT SUBJECT TO OVERSIGHT OR CRIMINAL CHARGES. In other words, the Bush-Obama Op is to have an openly, and admittedly, total Supreme Gestapo Regime.

Ultimately, as many have realized, we have had the same overall Op-Plan as Nazi Germany did. The Nazi Regime itself burned down their Reichstag [government] building as a ruse for “needing” to eradicate their constitution and “more effectively counter terrorism”; and officially blamed a patsy. In the USA, the Regime nuked the World Trade Center, had a China Syndrome Aftermath there for six months— until the radioactive fragments were carted away— and blamed members of an ethnic group and a world-wide religion, so as to have PERENNIAL war, and the destruction of constitutional rights and freedoms. There are several differences between the U.S. and German Nazi devolutions into mass torture, global war and loss of rights and freedoms for their citizenries. The American people have had the benefit of previously observing this, as recent German history. And the Nazi Regime only partook in these acts AFTER publicly creating mass concentration camps, and taking away the guns of the citizenry.

So in the U.S., despite having the benefit or observing the same Op-Plan just a few decades earlier in Germany, and despite still having the tools to effect change as the founders crucially created the second Amendment for the people to fight encroaching tyranny, the American people-- as nearly all Germans did-- do not act, they just wait and hope…

The Bush-Obama controllers-- and yes, I ask that we henceforth put these two Administrations together as one-- apparently still fear to try to get the 100 million legal guns, owned by the citizens, removed from them. This indicates they fear they might lose in a blatant confrontation this way. Ultimately it may come down to a mass uprising of the armed citizenry, and/or the people in the military/intel agencies acquiring some guts (perhaps for the first time), and acting on their oaths to defend the Constitution against all enemies-- especially the domestic terrorists, in seeming total control since their traitorous acts on November 22, 1963. All arbitrary laws recently enacted against terrorists could be employed against the Bush-Obama Cabal, and also against those in the Congress and Supreme Court who also are part of the treason against the American people and the Constitution. Citizens of other countries must try to get their own gov’ts to charge the Bush-Obama Cabal with: crimes against humanity, torture, waging aggressive war, genocide, and other crimes.

If the people of the USA ever wake up and act-- before it is too late-- and fight back and win, a new Constitution would need to be created that would not have any “exception clause” allowing for the negation of the rest of the Constitution for reasons of “public safety” or “national security.” INSTEAD, it would contain clauses that ENFORCED the AUTOMATIC examination, detention and trial-- for such acts as assassinations or “suicides” of high govt officials, seeming terrorist acts against the citizenry, even attacks from other nations (note the Pearl Harbor set-up)-- of the highest benefiting government officials themselves. Historically, false-flag Ops have virtually always been perpetrated by such regimes as the U.S., the U.K, and Nazi Germany. These regimes carried out terrorist acts themselves; and blamed innocent patsies to facilitate waging war on other innocents; and created a terror regime in their own land. Clauses and methods, to counter this common blueprint of the PTB, need to be incorporated into a new Constitution.

Doing nothing only emboldens our terrorist-rulers more, as the recent Obama plan to install a new “legal regime” to allow permanent detention proves. Note the clever paradox: the use of the word “regime,” and not e.g. “administration,” is flaunting the illegality of it; yet it is coupled with the word “legal”. Perhaps we all need to follow the example of Michael Collins of Ireland. Against all odds, he used great cunning and daring to devise methods to defeat the British terrorist regime who occupied his land, and mass-exterminated his people, for nearly 1000 years. I urge everyone to read up on him, see the movie, and do as he did-- ACT.

And, as he did, try to get people in the military and/or intel agencies to join you. Try to get these people to obey their oath and remove the present, terrorist regime that has assassinated our rightful Presidents, mass murdered our fellow citizens in false-flag operations, and who are now blatently removing the last vestiges of our innate rights and freedoms. The sequential Bush-Obama Op-Plan was likely thought up a long time ago. As I indicated recently, the likely, threatened shoot-down of Obama aboard Air Force One on April 27, signaled his total acquiescence, and the likelihood of him going all out to please his masters from now on. So, in a sense, this obscene, blatant, new tactic of trying to create a “legal regime,” in cahoots with the Congress, for indefinite detention of human beings— who may well be innocent patsies who could prove that Al-Qaeda is Al-CIA-duh— was predicted.

President Obama-- if he ever did-- will not likely ever publicly utter another word of truth. National leaders all over the world are not allowed to utter a public word of truth. BTW, if you haven’t seen it before, here is video proof of the alteration, by the BBC (MI5) of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto saying Omar Sheikh (likely Pakistani Intel asset— which means run by MI6) had killed Osama Bin Laden. This was two months before Bhutto herself was assassinated. And it appears that Bhutto was forced to retract this in her last two months; but perhaps the PTB saw that they could never trust her again not to speak some occasional truth.

Whether Dick Cheney ordered the Bhutto hit-- as some claimed Seymour Hersh said and then retracted-- or more likely the hit was ordered by London, is not the point here. Her stating that the alleged leader of the (fictional) terror group Al-Qaeda [Al-CIA-duh] had been dead for some time, likely got her killed by British (or American) controlled assets in place. America’s, and Britain’s, bogus, perennial wars on terror would be untenable if the alleged leader of the alleged main terrorist group is acknowledged to be dead. And if the entire, alleged, foreign, bogeyman group is acknowledged to be fictional, or COMPOSED ENTIRELY OF DEAD PEOPLE, the “terrorist” acts committed on American or British soil would be realized, by their citizenries, to have been committed by their own regimes.

Obama’s “second chance” of not getting shot out of the air, and subsequent total cave-in is similar to Reagan’s acquiescence to GHW Bush’s controlling the Presidency, after Reagan was allowed to survive his attempted assassination. President Kennedy, on the other hand, did not cave in after the Bay of Pigs set-up, and paid the ultimate price. We are seeing Obama’s true colors, and the puppet strings behind them. Things may be far worse now, because-- we have had a bunch of mostly traitorous, fellow Democrats take over the Congress, who will now try to give Obama, and his masters, this new coveted “legal regime.” Unless the people, or the state gov’ts, or the military, step up and refuse to go along, and instead fight back.

Life won’t be worth living in this coming total Gestapo-land. Neither can an honest or moral person allow his/her “Govt” to continue to mass murder his/her fellow citizens in more false-flag operations, or to wantonly rape, plunder and mass murder around the world in his/her name. The German Nazi Regime was terminated by the British-American Regime-- that actually created, and emplaced it. Terminating the terrorist British-American regime itself can only come from within.

(Originally posted here)

Democrats Offer Weak Support to Dawn Johnsen, Stronger Support to Grotesque Men Like Spector, Hayden, Mukasey and Gonzales

Greenwald again:

One of the best things Barack Obama has done since being elected President was selecting Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel -- the office of Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Stephen Bradbury, torture memos, and theories of presidential omnipotence. Johnsen expressed outrage over the extremism and lawlessness of the Bush administration not (like most political and media elites) in the last few weeks when doing so was easy and irrelevant, but did so loudly and continuously while those crimes were actually taking place. Her arguments were grounded in one simple belief: that the duty of the OLC is to tell the President when his desired policies are unconstitutional or otherwise illegal. But as a vivid reflection of how perverse Washington culture is, those attributes -- outrage over high-level government extremism and criminality, and a belief in the rule of law -- are apparently disqualifying....

It's unclear what the White House or the Democratic leadership have done, if anything, to support Johnsen's nomination (Christy Hardin Smith suggests that the answer is "nothing"), but what's not unclear is that they have lent their absolute, unconditional support for Arlen Specter's re-election in a blue-state Senate seat that could easily be filled by someone infinitely better than Specter. It's rather irrational to repeatedly complain about one's inability to "get 60 votes" when one simultaneously does everything possible to ensure the continuous re-election of the alleged obstructionists. It's almost enough to make one believe that the inability to "get 60 votes" to support their claimed agenda is a desired, rather than lamentable, state of affairs.

The Senate that is refusing to confirm Dawn Johnsen is the same Senate that confirmed Gen. Michael Hayden as CIA Director -- with overwhelming Democratic support -- even after it was revealed that he oversaw Bush's illegal NSA spying program. It's the same Senate that confirmed Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General -- with substantial Democratic support -- even once everyone knew that he had played a key role in Bush's torture program. It's the same Senate that -- thanks to Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer -- confirmed Michael Mukasey as Attorney General even after he refused to say whether waterboarding was torture and endorsed some of the most extremist presidential powers ever asserted in the U.S.

Obama Continues Bush Policies on Terrorism

Greenwald:

In his New Republic article today, Goldsmith reviews what he calls the "eleven essential elements" of "the Bush approach to counterterrorism policy" and documents how -- with only a couple of minor exceptions -- Obama has embraced all of them. In those cases where Obama has purported to "change" these elements, those changes are almost all symbolic and ceremonial, and the few changes that have any substance to them (banning the already-empty CIA black sites and prohibiting no-longer-authorized torture techniques) are far less substantial than Obama officials purport. None of Goldsmith's analysis is grounded in the proposition that Obama hasn't yet acted to change Bush policies, thus rendering a nonsequitur the response that "Obama needs more time; it's only been 4 months." Goldsmith is describing affirmative steps Obama has already announced to adopt the core Bush "terrorism" policies.

The Arlen Spector Switch

Greenwald:

(2) Democrats will understandably celebrate today’s announcement, but beyond the questions of raw political power, it is mystifying why they would want to build their majority by embracing politicians who reject most of their ostensible views.

Reports today suggest that Democratic officials promised Specter that the party establishment would support him, rather than a real Democrat, in a primary. If true, few events more vividly illustrate the complete lack of core beliefs of Democratic leaders, as well as the rapidly diminishing differences between the parties. Why would Democrats want a full-blooded Republican representing them in the blue state of Pennsylvania? Specter is highly likely to reprise the Joe Lieberman role for Democrats: a “Democrat” who leads the way in criticizing and blocking Democratic initiatives, forcing the party still further towards Republican policies.

(3) Arlen Specter is one of the worst, most soul-less, most belief-free individuals in politics. The moment most vividly illustrating what Specter is: prior to the vote on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, he went to the floor of the Senate and said what the bill "seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years" and is "patently unconstitutional on its face." He then proceeded to vote YES on the bill's passage.

(4) Today is the best day to watch Fox News since the election -- mass grieving flavored by impotent bitterness.

Stonewalling Torture Investigation

April 24, 2009
Obama Resisting Push for Interrogation Panel
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — The White House and the Democratic leadership in the Senate signaled on Thursday that they would block for now any effort to establish an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration’s approval of harsh interrogation techniques.

In doing so, they sought to reduce pressure for a full inquiry — from, among others, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi — that has grown more intense since President Obama suggested on Tuesday that he would be open to such an investigation. While the White House has contended that Mr. Obama never actively supported an inquiry, his firmer opposition to the possibility, communicated to Congressional leaders in meetings on Wednesday night and Thursday, represented a shift in emphasis.

Meeting with the Democratic leadership on Wednesday night, Mr. Obama said a special inquiry would steal time and energy from his policy agenda, and could mushroom into a wider distraction looking back at the Bush years, people briefed on the discussion said. Mr. Obama, they said, repeated much the same message on Thursday at a bipartisan meeting with Congressional leaders.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other top Senate Democrats endorsed Mr. Obama’s view on Thursday, telling reporters at a news conference at the Capitol that they preferred to wait for the results of an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee expected late this year

“I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are,” Mr. Reid said. “And I don’t know a better way of getting the facts than through the Intelligence Committee. I think that’s a pretty good way to do it.”

At the White House, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said that it was “not a time for retribution” and that “we’re all best suited looking forward.”

Glenn Greenwald has the definitive rundown on this.