Effective but not effusive?

In his first year, President Obama has done almost more damage to Al Qaeda in his first year than President Bush did in his entire term. Yet, as many speeches as the President has given on numerous issues like the economy and healthcare, he is reluctant to claim credit for keeping our country safe, because the anti-war lobby mistook his opposition to the invasion of Iraq for his opposition to war, and they’re now “disillusioned” that he’s acting as Commander in Chief.

Meanwhile, those people whose careers depend on portraying Democrats as weak on defense can’t bray as loudly because the facts don’t support their assertions. Even Vice-President Cheney has acknowledged (under his breath, of course) that President Obama has been effective.

He needs to be, either in a Saturday you tube video, a prime time interview or speech, or via Robert Gibbs, more effusive about the elimination and capture of Al Qaeda leaders, more vocal about the concrete actions he’s taken and successes he’s had in keeping the country safe.
He’s effective. Now he needs to be effusive.

Author’s note: In researching the background for this post, it appears that the President did indeed make this claim in December, 2009, and Vice-President Biden followed up on Meet the Press in January, 2010.  It seems, though, that neither of these statements has cut through the noise of the continued claims that he’s not keeping us safe.  What to do?

Hitting the Reset Button

My children like to play Parking Lot. It’s a great game, both as a board game and as an app for my iPhone. For those who don’t know, it’s a puzzle game where you move cars, trucks and buses out of the way to get your car out of the parking lot. It’s a problem solving exercise that strengthens the brain while it entertains. When you get stuck, though, it can be frustrating to the point of nail-biting, cursing whoever invented the automobile, or flipping the bird at inanimate objects. For the cool, calm and collected, it comes with a reset button which allows you to put everything back in place and start again having learned from your mistakes and miscues to approach the same problem.

Many of us, in the United States and around the world, are operating as if life has a reset button, too. I know personally that the President’s forceful passivity on the torture situation is causing me to raise my voice, both here and in person. The tea baggers don’t like President Obama, don’t like paying less taxes, don’t like bailing out corporations, don’t like socialism, don’t like “big government”, and I would venture to say, don’t like much of anything right now.

But President Obama appears to be working without a reset button, looking at the cars on the board (or the crises he has inherited), and making the best moves available to him. On some fronts, he is moving the cars back to where they were before President Bush came into office – rescinding torture as an American tool of interrogation; drawing down our military involvement in Iraq; allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire; repealing the ban on adult stem cell research, etc.

In other cases, he is moving the cars from the position they’re in to what he deems more beneficial positions for the future – more troops and attention paid to Afghanistan and Al Qaeda; actual diplomacy with Iran; repealing the ridiculously stringent relationship between the United States and Cuba; understanding that our economic turbulence requires both indirect (tax cuts for many Americans) and direct (bailouts of restructured companies) government interventions which are politically unpopular, etc.

In both cases, millions of us are screaming, saying, writing, blogging, thinking, critiquing, criticizing, and encouraging his moves. For the ninety days that he’s been moving the pieces, he’s made a lot of progress toward actually getting our yellow car out of its parking space, and moving it forward toward its goal. There are still obstacles in our way – nuclear North Korea; staggering unemployment; Republicants; budget deficits; over-extended military personnel and their families; corporate and other pirates; escaped war criminals, etc. But unlike those of us screaming from the sidelines, President Obama is making the moves to get us out of the lot.

And he’s doing it without the reset button.

Opposition Grows to Obama’s Decision Not To Prosecute CIA Agents

Obama ‘gravely concerned’ about U.S. journalist in Iranian prison

We can move U.S.-Cuban relations in a new direction

Bailout overseer draws fire from right

Picking Letters, 10 a Day, That Reach Obama

Obama defends greeting Hugo Chavez

Senator says Obama’s appearance with Chavez ‘irresponsible’

Summit of the Americas ‘productive’

A World of Trouble For Obama

Two al Qaeda leaders waterboarded 266 times

No, Mr. President. I Won’t Look The Other Way

“In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”

-President Barack Obama, April 16, 2009

I concur with President Obama most of the time.  But he’s wrong today, and he’s messing it up for everyone.  The memorandum from President Bush’s administration that he released today outline torture: the decision to authorize, the proscriptions and applications, the “limitations” and durations of.  To quote Howard Feinman, they are “a window into a heart of darkness.”

Part of my support for him until this time was the necessity for rectification, for redirection, for a return to the ideals that fundamentally support the United States of America.  And my support of him was based on the deeply held belief that CHANGE meant holding people responsible for the decisions they chose to make, the actions they chose to take, and the values that those actions expressed.

Releasing the memos with the right hand, and exonerating the torturers with the left hand while claiming that he is “looking forward not looking back” is an offense against those ideals which he has espoused almost as great as the former president claiming divine authority to invade Iraq.

No, Mr. President.  I won’t look the other way.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed that you are.  There are prosecutors in Spain who understand that the treatment of people in United States’ custody under the Bush Administration, under the purview of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales and John Yi and George W. Bush, was torture and constituted criminal activity, if not crimes against humanity.

Forgive the profanity . . . it is the result of believing that truth, justice, honor, integrity and equality are not simply cool logos on t-shirts, but the reason that my ancestors fought, bled and died on these and other shores.  And those ideals were shat upon by the elected leader of this nation and his coterie for eight years.

I supported you, Mr. President, because I believed that you were intent upon restoring if not those perfected ideals, at least domestic and international responsibility to pursue those ideals.  Today’s duel decisions call into question that intent.  Not because it is simply a decision you’ve made that I disagree with.  I don’t believe that any president would make decisions I agree with 100% of the time unless I were elected to that office myself, which is obviously not the case.

Today’s decisions literally give cover to the prison guards, literally allow the torturers to continue on the payroll that I fund, and leave the ideals for which I struggle and teach each day laying on the floor of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay with their heads bashed in, and leave me gasping for air wondering how to teach my children about justice, about morality, about right and wrong when one of the primary examples I use each day cowers behind rhetoric of progress while allowing regress to fester with impunity.

Loving my country and being a patriot means speaking truth to power, and yours is as has often been said, the most powerful office in the world.  We as a people cannot afford to simply look forward.  That is the ridiculous attitude that lets idiots claim racism no longer exists because you were elected.  Releasing the document which catalogues torture without holding the torturers accountable is moral cowardice, which means that they did the right thing if only because they got away with it.  You have become accomplice after the fact by your failure to hold them accountable.

It is important that we move forward, that we look to the future and the reconstruction of our nation.  But it is equally as important that those responsible for the current state of the union face the consequences of their actions.

No, Mr. President.  I won’t look the other way.

And neither should you.

Bush-era interrogation memo: No torture without ‘severe pain’ intent

Rights groups criticize CIA immunity on interrogations

Future of the U.S. depends on torture accountability

Memos reveal harsh CIA interrogation methods

President Obama’s Statement on the Memos

Teabags, Taxes and the “new” Republican Right

“Watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of vultures, vultures everywhere. Everywhere.” – Casablanca

There is a “movement” of idiots afoot protesting President George Bush’s tax structure, though they claim they’re against President Obama’s bailouts (like TARP, which started under . . . President Bush). They’ve mistaken the stimulus package passed by President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress for something that affects them as they file their taxes for 2008. What’s more, Faux News is promoting this farce and trying to make it sound like a news story instead of a (permanent opposition to a Democratic president) publicity stunt. Fashioned after the famed Boston Tea Party, where American colonists disguised themselves as Native Americans and destroyed private property in protest of taxation without representation, today’s ‘tea baggers’ are protesting against the wrong people for the wrong reasons. However, they haven’t realized that much like the Virginia Republican Party, which was displaying softcore lesbian pornography on its website a few days ago “by mistake”, that their preferred method of protest, teabagging, is a rather vulgar masculine display of power and authority it modern parlance.

This confusion about what is good for the United States, and what is Right in the United States, and what is simply peeing into the wind is exemplified by the people who speak for the Republican Party in public. Take House Minority Whip Cantor’s comments about tax increases today.

“At a time when American families and small businesses are facing difficult challenges and financial uncertainty, Washington must not make their situations worse by imposing the largest tax increase in American history.”

His comments have absolutely nothing to do with the taxes we’re filing. He (and the teabaggers . . . giggle) are trying to link together President Obama, the economic crisis, and the fact that our government must have taxes as revenue in order to function. How did he vote on Congressional salary increases? How do the teabaggers expect that the services they depend on like police departments, fire departments and public schools to name a few, are to be paid for?

The tax structure today is lower than it was under that paragon of conservative economic virtue, President Reagan. President Obama’s tax cut for the majority of American families (including those who run small businesses) took effect in March of 2009 – which means that they affect next year’s tax returns, not today. The New Right is so wrapped up in fighting President Obama (even though they lost the election, remember) that they can’t see straight.

I’ve grown tired of the whining, the preening, the Rushing. Protest is the right of every citizen of the United States, and really the world. But you should know what you’re protesting for (or against) before you open your mouth, paint a sign, or threaten to tea bag someone.

Anti-Tax ‘Tea Party’ Protests Expected Across U.S.

The Fine Art of Teabagging

April 15th is Patriots Day

Right-wing extremism may be on rise, report says

Nationwide ‘tea party’ protests blast bailout

Republicans and Republicants

“There will always be ignorant, dangerous people who twist the truth for their own ends.  No amount of arguing will change their minds because their argument isn’t based on facts, it’s based on their own petty point of view.”

- Gail Z. Martin, Dark Haven

My wife told me, after listening to my last post, that I was sounding a bit angrier than usual.  My on-and-off political foil, Wow, said in response to the same, “What’s with lowering yourself to a pointless, name-calling rant?”  And my response is, I’m tired of Republicants.

The elected (and acknowledged) leaders of the Gallant Old Party are bereft of actual ideas.  Listening to Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Michelle Bachmann, Tucker Carlson, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Judd Gregg, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and all of the elected Republicants who claim to speak for conservative Americans when their personal lives and political actions don’t reflect that supposed conservatism is annoying in the utmost.  They don’t seem to grasp the fact that the playbook they’ve been using got tossed with the old coach who got fired in November, and he’d stopped using it years before.They are, as my pleasure reading stated, using arguments which aren’t “based on facts, [but] based on their own petty point of view.”

I get called a liberal a lot, and I recently self-identified as such for the gallop pollster who called my house.  But I’m not certain what that label means.  Just as I’m not certain what the Republican label means.  What I am certain of, though, is that the leadership of the Republican Party doesn’t know who or what it is.  For the last twenty-five years, the GOP has followed Reagan’s “the government is the problem” philosophy to unadulterated ends, and that has proven to be disastrous for our country.

I would like to hear what exactly “conservatism” and conservative values are . . . not from “the right-wing, nut-job extremists” that Stephanie Miller and company spend so many hours satirizing every morning, but from individuals who consider themselves to be conservatives, either fiscal or social.  I feel like I tend to be socially liberal, based on the teachings of the Catholic Church in which I grew up and my study and understanding of the founding principles of the United States.  And I am more and more fiscally conservative, wanting to know why the government is still wasting money like Speaker Pelosi’s recent trip to Italy or the Democratic and Republican earmarks in the recent $410 billion omnibus bill that Congress is working on right now.  But I am cognizant of the fact that it’s difficult to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you don’t have boots, and part of the government’s responsibility to is to “promote the general welfare,” i.e. make sure Americans have boots.

To answer the question about my recent rants, ravings and anger, all I can say is that I’ve got no problem with Republicans.

It’s the Republicants I can’t stand.

He Knew the Job Was Dangerous When He Took It

“This wasn’t a Republican invasion of Iraq, this was an American invasion”

-Richard Wolfe, Newsweek

" . . . and I broke the lamp in the Oval Office, too."

The splitting headache of being president of the United States is that you inherit with no ambiguity the failures of your predecessor.  With President Obama, the failures of his predecessor are numerous and obvious.  None, however, weighs more heavily on the conscience of the nation than the destruction of a (dangerous) sovereign nation.  In March of 2003, President Bush ordered the United States Army to lead a coalition of world forces to topple the government of Saddam Hussein, ostensibly to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like those who destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, New York on September 11, 2001.

Candidate Obama on the campaign trail pledged to remove the United States from Iraq in sixteen months, if he were to be elected President.  He argued before the invasion (in 2002) that it was a needless waste of American lives and resources, that it removed the focus from retaliation and revenge on al Qaeda (who perpetrated the attacks), and that it was a “dumb war.”  Unfortunately for him, the realities of our involvement are mounting against the audacity of his original stance, and the tempered pledge of his latter.

He has now announced that the US is leaving Iraq . . . sort of.  In nineteen months, in August of 2010, all combat troops will be removed from Iraq.  Mind you, two combat brigades renamed advisors (I saw a bumper sticker that read, “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam”) and up to 50,000 troops will remain.  This sounds eerily similar to Candidate McCain’s claim that the United States might remain in Iraq, “up to 100 years.”  Speaking of Senator McCain, he is now supporting the President’s plan to withdraw and redirect combat troops, while the President’s own party is attacking his withdrawal because he’s leaving troops there.  While I’m for holding the executive branch accountable and checking its power, the Dems are beginning to feed on themselves again.

Neither of the extremes on Iraq, 1) we were wrong to go in, so lets get out now, nor 2) we liberated Iraq, and it is a “good war” are correct.  What is true is that we are in a hell of a mess, and the blathering response is not helpful to the President, engaging for the troops, or emblematic of the moral and intellectual leadership that we as a nation have enjoyed in the past.

We have a moral obligation to LEAVE IRAQ in a way that leaves A FUNCTIONING IRAQI GOVERNMENT.  And the “you didn’t do what you said you would” finger in the face whining that both parties are doing is singularly ridiculous in the face of the coffins we’re now allowed to see, the sacrifice our soldiers have been ordered to make, and the gaping holes in our national character we must begin to mend.

The President is doing a very good job cleaning up the messes he inherited.  It’s simply going to take some time.

Today, I can announce that our review is complete, and that the United States will pursue a new strategy to end the war in Iraq through a transition to full Iraqi responsibility.

Remarks of President Barack Obama – Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq

Repudiating Bush

Obama sets firm date to end Iraq war he inherited

On the right track, finally, in Iraq

Obama says most troops will leave Iraq by 2010

Obama’s Iraq Speech Receives Mixed Reviews on Capitol Hill

Democrats voice concerns on Obama’s Iraq drawdown plan

Most support plan to bolster U.S. troops in Afghanistan

Happy Presidents’ Day

President Obama appears to have picked the best mentor possible when he chose the lawyer from Springfield.  Abraham Lincoln ranked number one today, among presidents of the United States whose term has ended.  President Obama, then, hasn’t been ranked yet.  His immediate predecessor, though, didn’t do so well.  Ranked in the seventeenth percentile, little george came in thirty-sixth out of forty-fourth.  His dad beat him (no surprise), as did Bill Clinton (twenty-fifth) and Ronald Reagan (tenth).

President Lincoln came in just ahead of President Washington (second) and President Franklin D. Roosevelt (third) another favorite of Forty-Four.

I love a good competition.  If only it wasn’t our future at stake.  Here’s wishing President Obama good luck when they take this survey again in 2017.

Happy Presidents’ Day!

C-SPAN’s 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey

Honest Abe tops Presidential Survey

But the check cleared!

Among the other legacies left by the Bush Administration, unfinished infrastructure projects round out the list.  But these are not in the United States, mind you.  These are subcontract jobs in Iraq, which the government used to transfer public monies to private hands.

We’re in the midst of a financial turmoil of historic proportions, with elephants trying to stampede and impede the President’s stimulus project, and there are buildings standing unfinished in a country we invaded without cause as monuments to arrogance, greed and failure.

And while the brick and the buildings are still standing there, the government funds, the TAXPAYER contributions, have filled the coffers of those contractors and subcontractors like Cheney’s Haliburton and Blackwater.

The work is left undone, but you can be sure the check cleared.

Thanks again, President Bush.

bushlit rolls downhill

The bushlit continues.  Despite being subpoenaed to testify before Congress, Karl Rove is still missing in action.  Just as the ex-president and vice-president asserted executive privilege, which for them is tantamount to the Fifth Amendment’s safeguard against self-incrimination, so to is this mastermind of maliciousness attempting to continue subverting the Constitution of the United States and dismissing a full branch of the government.

Representative John Conyers is doing the heavy lifting here, where President Obama should be, by pushing for an accounting of the nefarious acts of the bush administration.  He has introduced HR.104, which seeks to establish a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties “to investigate issues ranging from detainee treatment to waterboarding to extraordinary rendition.”

what . . . me worry?

Now, while the ex-president might be able to assert in perpetuity that he doesn’t have to testify, his minions don’t have that luxury.  And while Rove is being summoned this time to testify merely about the improper firing of federal employees for political reasons, don’t be surprised when he gets Lee Harvey Oswalded by one of the administrations hacks because he knows too much.  Or do you think they trust him like Reagan trusted North?

The trail of bodies left by this administration is long, much as the holes they’ve left in the national character are deep.  I agree that we need to move forward, but we can’t know where we’re going until we know where we come from and where we’ve been.  Stay tuned.

Bush lawyer directs Rove not to talk to Congress

Sleeper Bill of the Month: Our Own Truth and Reconciliation

Senate bracing for ‘hard slog’ on stimulus bill

Learning the lessons of Augusto Pinochet

The New Business of Politics

President Obama’s Inaugural Address codified his desire to set the tone in and for the United States of respect, discussion and action.  Both domestically and internationally, his actions have followed his words to the letter.  Despite the continued recalcitrance of individuals like John Boehner and Hamid Karazi who actually have some participatory relevance, and Rush Limbaugh who doesn’t, President Obama has reached not only across the aisle to listen to and engage Republicans with different ideas about how to stimulate the economy, but he’s gone all the way across the street.

It’s sad and funny at the same time, watching the GOP “leaders” deal with this new way of doing business.  I’m sure that across the nation and across the globe, part of the HOPE that was held tight like baited breath was that CHANGE would actually come to the White House.  It has.

Whether beginning his administration by ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay, the forbiddance of torture, calling bumbling CEOs to account, stimulating the economy despite Republican obstacles, going to listen to the Republican obstacles, speaking for the American people directly to the Muslim and Arab and Middle Eastern populations around the world, speaking to the American people about our national attitudes toward Muslims and others around the world, President Obama is proving that he can do what Senator McCain couldn’t – walk and chew gum concurrently, I mean, do more than one thing at the same time.

And while I am loathe to frame President Obama with negatives, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that he is not what President Bush was: arrogant, ignorant, insulated, perjorative, aggressive or engaging in perfidy.

“There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name is Barack Obama.”

Obama: ‘We don’t have a moment to spare’

How Al-Arabiya got the Obama interview

Obama envoy arrives for talks with Israelis

The GOP grapples with Obama’s charm offensive

Obama tells GOP no compromise on tax rebates