Obama and Palestine: We're easily satisfied

It seems less often than more when published political analysis reflects reality. But I was rewarded for my patience in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books (July 15, 2010) when I  read the following in David Shulman’s article on “Eyeless in Gaza.”

Maintaining the occupation is, of course, incompatible with making peace, and indeed it should be clear by now to all that the present Israeli leadership has no interest in resolving the conflict. Quite the contrary: the ongoing proximity talks with the Palestinian Authority are no more than a diversion. I know of no one in Israel who takes them seriously, least of all the Netanyahu government. Gaza itself provides another helpful distraction. The very idea of peace based on mutuality, compromise, and at least minimal respect for the dignity of the other side is anathema to the men and women in the Cabinet who are making the decisions. [dated June 16, 2010; Shulman is identified as a Professor of Humanities Studies at the Hebrew University]

Perhaps I liked Prof Shulman’s clarity because it was not inconsistent with my own suggestion that Obama's Middle East policy is really Rahm Emanuel's Middle East policy, which has opportunistically stood on the shoulders of the previous Bush-Cheney-Eliot Abrams Middle East "policy."

Bush administration policy was to give free rein to the most right wing elements in their administration to do their worst to the Palestinians. Accordingly they (very cleverly we must admit) engineered the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006. They insisted on going through with the election because they knew Hamas would win. And they also engineered the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007.

[See The Gaza Bombshell Vanity Fair 2008

According to Dahlan, it was Bush who had pushed legislative elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, despite warnings that Fatah was not ready.]

Thus Washington and Tel Aviv  had a perfect pretext to starve Gaza –NOT into submission -–submission to what? – -- but to starve them in preparation for the next step: expulsion and mass murder whenever  the political situation should be deemed appropriate. The Israelis are in no rush. They know time is on their side. (And their timetable has been speeded up by a decade or more by Bush and now Obama.)

Thus the purpose of Operation Cast Lead of December January 2008-2009 -- which Obama could have stopped. Destroy as much of Gaza’s infrastructure as possible. So the Israeli blockade against building materials going to Gaza makes sense since the Israelis have no intention of allowing what they destroyed to be rebuilt. It’s a plan that couldn’t be implemented without the approval of the Obama administration.

Here as in almost every other critical area, Obama makes a mockery of his theme of change, as by this time, 18 months into his term of office,  he stands exposed as having no independent policy or plan other than to allow and assist Israel to do its worst. Just like Bush-Cheney.

Many are familiar with the Hebrew song, Dayenu, which is traditionally sung on Passover: Dayenu means: it is sufficient for us; we are satisfied: or in the case below:  we would be satisfied.

With a slight twist to the lyrics we might sing to Obama: Dayenu: We understand that you have no intention of lifting the blockade of Gaza. That’s ok. But perhaps you can do something to repair Gaza’s sewage system destroyed in Cast Lead so that the many tons of raw sewage that flow daily into the Mediterranean can instead be treated and the Palestinians and their guests can once again enjoy their beaches. Dayenu.

Obama’s Plan A was to bark loudly about an end to settlement activity, a plan that was intended to fail. So little thought was given to the plan that the U.S. was caught by surprise when the Abbas “Authority” cleverly decided to take it seriously and refused to negotiate with the Israelis until it was implemented.

But it doesn’t matter. The Palestinians can refuse all they want. The surprise is that the White House doesn’t seem to have a face saving Plan B other than to show the white flag of surrender.

Here’s a nice symptom  of the surrender flag from Mondowiess’s invaluable site.

by Adam Horowitz on July 7, 2010

http://mondoweiss.net/

Robert Dreyfuss reports:

Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu set up another illegal Jewish settlement, this time on the White House lawn. And, it appears, President Obama has agreed to serve as its armed guard.

So complete was Obama’s identification with Israel yesterday that he actually referred to Israel as “us” before correcting himself:

“We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it’s in, and the threats that are leveled against us – against it, that Israel has unique security requirements.”

One often hears things like: Hamas isn't hurt by the blockade since they get plenty of revenue from their taxes on what comes through the tunnels on the Egyptian border. It's the ordinary people of Gaza who are hurt. This of course is true, but surely the U.S. and Israel are aware of what’s going on.

Which goes to show that the blockade isn't intended against Hamas. Like Arafat, Hamas is Israel's friend, giving the government all the pretext they need to impose as much hardship and cruelty and oppression on the Palestinians as they can devise each month.

Yes, the blockade is intended to immiserate the Gazans and the larger Palestinians community. It’s a signal that the Israelis have the power to tell them they don't belong in land which Israel covets and to prepare themselves for  the day when they are to be shown the door.

Ah, if only Hamas would agree to give up Gilad Shalit. Unconditionally. That would show the Israelis that the Palestinians want peace. I actually heard this from a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist on NPR, on a liberal talk show.

The last thing the Israeli government wants is the return of Gilad Shalit –which if they really wanted him back, it could be done in 48 hours. Like Arafat and Hamas, Shalit is a poster boy for Palestinian intransigence. If Shalit were returned, he'd only have to be replaced --probably at the cost of 15 or 20 or 1,000 or more Palestinian lives. 

Letters to Editors re Gaza Flotilla

The New York Daily News

June 8, 2010

 

To the Editor:

Thanks for your editorial, "The nature of the beasts," regarding the Gaza flotilla.

I'm wondering if you will print a correction  since Israel has effectively admitted that the "Shut up and go back to Auschwitz," statement was created in an Israeli government laboratory where it doctored the tape [see the testimony below]  in an attempt to discredit those who were protesting the Gaza blockade. Israel is evidently shameless -- and much worse. I trust there is more integrity in the offices of one of NYC's great newspapers.

Sincerely,

Ronald Bleier

 

 

From Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, 6.7.2010

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/7/israel_rejects_call_for_international_probe

AMY GOODMAN: You reported on this as soon as the IDF released its doctored audio. This is the initial clip the IDF released last week.

 

ISRAELI SHIP: [inaudible] This is the Israeli navy. You are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade.

 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Shut up. Go back to Auschwitz.

 

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter.

 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We’re helping Arabs going against the US. Don’t forget 9/11, guys.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal, can you explain what you found fishy about this clip? Also, the IDF’s retraction and your thoughts on that? Also, you managed to get an earlier apology from the IDF last week regarding a press release they sent out two days after the assault claiming that approximately forty flotilla passengers, quote, "are mercenaries belonging to the Al Qaeda terror organization." When you questioned the Israeli military press office, you didn’t get the evidence you asked for, but press release was modified. The original headline was changed from "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found to be Al Qaeda Mercenaries" to read, quote, "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers." Explain what’s happened in these cases, the doctored audio and the press release.

 

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, as soon as I arrived here in Israel, it became pretty clear to me that the IDF’s press operation was being run by someone with the journalistic integrity of James O’Keefe. First I found this press release where the IDF claimed that forty people onboard the Mavi Marmara were al-Qaeda mercenaries, and their evidence was that they had night-vision goggles and possibly gas masks, which clearly proves they’re linked to bin Laden. So I called the IDF along with my journalistic colleague Lia Tarachansky, who called them in Hebrew. I called them in English. We both got the same response: there is no evidence. This claim came from Netanyahu’s inner circle. And they immediately changed the press release to say forty passengers "found without identification" onboard the Mavi Marmara, basically retracting the al-Qaeda claim.

 

The second lie we were able to basically prove was that the IDF had doctored the footage you played, which sounds sort of like a prank call by a mentally deficient pre-adolescent. And clearly what the IDF and what the Israeli government is trying to do is present the confrontation with the flotilla in the context of the Holocaust to further incite nationalistic sentiment among the Israeli public. And it succeeded. But they have admitted that they doctored the footage and have now released, after releasing a previous audio clip, which showed—which presented entirely different audio from the same exchange, a new audio clip presenting different audio, which they claim is the full exchange. But now they’ve claimed that a lot of this audio did not come from the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship. So their story isn’t holding up.

 

And what this demonstrates is that nothing that the IDF says can be trusted, not one single word.

***

Susan L. Rosenbluth

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

The Jewish Voice and Opinion

Englewood, NJ 07631

 

June 18, 2010

Dear Susan L. Rosenbluth:

Thank you for your article “The ‘Armada of Hate’ Had Only One Goal: Force Israel to End Its Legal Blockade So Gaza Can Get Weapons,” June 2010, Vol 23 No 8. 

I found your article confusing because you seem to indicate that it’s appropriate for Israel to impose a blockade on Gaza because the territory is controlled by Hamas. But at the same time you cite statistics to seem to indicate that there is no humanitarian crisis raised by the blockade because a sufficient amount of trucks with supplies arrive in Gaza each day. 

However, according to Oxfam, the number of trucks of relief items allowed in to Gaza was just 22 percent of what it was before the blockade was tightened in 2007. 

According to a recent report of the Gisha organization for freedom, Israel today [before Israel’s 6.18.10 announcement] allows 97 items to be brought into Gaza, compared to 4,000 before the siege. The same report noted that a large Israeli supermarket holds 10,000-15,000 items. 

In addition, the Red Cross said more than 100 essential medicines and many basic medical supplies are no longer available in Gaza due to the blockade. A new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says the blockade has led to economic collapse in Gaza: 95 percent of Gaza’s factories have closed, 98 percent of residents suffer from blackouts, and 93 percent of Gaza’s water is polluted. 

Also, I understand that there is extensive damage to Gaza’s sewage system. According to Oxfam, damage to the sewage system results in 28 Olympic swimming pools of raw sewage pumped into the sea of Gaza every day, leading to what experts fear is blanket nitrate poisoning of the population. 

It’s difficult to understand how the justice of Israeli control over Gaza is reflected in such conditions. 

As far as whether the blockade is legal according to international law, the International Committee of the Red Cross declared, "The whole of Gaza’s civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law."

Sincerely,

Ronald Bleier

 

Prison Planet: IDF SHOT SLEEPING PEOPLE ON THE AID FLOTILLA!

 Here's the first part of the Prison Planet report. Democracy Now also quoted eyewitnesses who said the IDF came in shooting.

Notice how effective are the Israelis even in the face of the clearest brutality and viciousness  in getting their spin across.

One of the still  mysterious points. The report below suggests that about 20 people, not 9,  were killed. And I think it was a BBC report (on NYC public radio, 6.3.10) which quoted Turkish sources as saying that not all the people on the Mavi Marmara are accounted for.

***

 

IDF SHOT SLEEPING PEOPLE ON THE AID FLOTILLA!

 

http://www.doomdaily.com/2010/israel-forces-fired-on-sleeping-civillians-under-cover-of-darkness/

 

Israel Forces Fired On Sleeping Civillians Under Cover Of Darkness

 

Heavily armed soldiers "began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck"
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
May 31st, 2010

 

While the Israeli government is praising it's soldiers as heroes and saying they were acting in self defence by firing on unarmed civilians flying a white flag in international waters, one group involved with the Freedom Flotilla has a quite different story.
A spokeswoman for Israel Defence Forces (IDF), Avital Leibovich, claims that Israeli officers gave several warnings before boarding the the Turkish boat, the Mavi Marmara.
Somehow, according to Leibovich, when the soldiers did board the boat, they were then attacked by unarmed activists and relieved of their guns – a claim that is not backed up by video footage of the ambush.
Leibovich told reporters "We found ourselves in the middle of a lynching,"
"We didn't look for confrontation but it was a massive attack," she said. "What happened was a last resort."
This story is on its face ridiculous.
The following press release came from Freegaza.com , one of the aid groups involved in the flotilla, in the wake of the attack:
Under darkness of night, Israeli commandoes dropped from a helicopter onto the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck.
They fired directly into the crowd of civilians asleep. According to the live video from the ship, two have been killed, and 31 injured. Al Jazeera has just confirmed the numbers.
Streaming video shows the Israeli soldiers shooting at civilians, and our last SPOT beacon said, "HELP, we are being contacted by the Israelis."
As things currently stand 20 people are thought to have been killed in the attack.
While the IDF and the Israeli government claim that their soldiers were attacked by violent political agitators wielding knives, several videos of those on board the boats and scenes from their voyage reveal that they are peaceful civilians that could not possibly constitute any threat to one of the most powerful armies on the planet.
In the following clip American born pro-Palestinian activist Huwaida Arraf, the Free Gaza Movement chairperson and delegation co-coordinator for the flotilla, explains the mission of the flotilla noting that "Israel is threatening to attack us, to use force if necessary when it is obvious that we are average civilians, we don't constitute any threat except for the fact that we want to stand up for the right of the Palestinian people to lead a life with dignity."

 

Read more:

http://www.doomdaily.com/2010/israel-forces-fired-on-sleeping-civillians-under-cover-of-darkness/

 

Gilad Atzmon: Israeli Butchery at Sea

There's going to be a lot about this. Here's an early account from an Israeli activist Gilad Atzmon  (h/t Israel Shamir) who predicted a bloody outcome simply from the Israeli government's spin days and hours earlier that the victims were terrorists and carried weapons. Also interesting is that Atzmon tried to warn the activists, some of whom, he points out,  would be older people, that there would be violence. As Atzmon writes, the Israeli Cabinet, the military elites (and no doubt Netanyahu himself, not to mention Barak) planned the attack in advance.

In a Monday morning BBC report/interview carried on NY public radio, the BBC reporter couldn't understand why these Free Gaza ships carrying cement and supplies would continue.

If I had to guess, this story will last only two or three days. It would be nice to think that the victims will not have died in vain.

***

 

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/israeli-butchery-at-sea-by-gilad-atzmon.html

 

Israeli Butchery at Sea

by Gilad Atzmon  
Monday, May 31, 2010 

 

As I write this piece the scale of the Israeli lethal slaughter at sea is yet to be clear. However we already know that at around 4am Gaza time, hundreds of IDF commandos stormed the Free Gaza international humanitarian fleet. We learn from the Arab press that at least 16 peace activists have been murdered and more than 50 were injured.  Once again it is devastatingly obvious that Israel is not trying to hide its true nature: an inhuman murderous collective  fuelled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia.

 

For days the Israeli government  prepared the Israeli society for the massacre at sea. It said that the Flotilla carried weapons, it had ‘terrorists’ on board. Only yesterday evening it occurred to me that this Israeli malicious media spin was there to prepare the Israeli public for a full scale Israeli deadly military operation in international waters.  Make no mistake. If I knew exactly where Israel was heading and the possible

 

consequences, the Israeli cabinet and military elite were fully aware of it all the way along.  What happened yesterday wasn’t just a pirate terrorist  attack. It was actually murder in broad day light even though it happened in the dark. 

 

Yesterday at 10 pm I contacted Free Gaza and shared with them everything I knew. I obviously grasped that hundreds of peace activists most of them elders, had very little chance against the Israeli killing machine. I was praying all night for our brothers and sisters.  At 5am GMT the news broke to the world. In international waters Israel raided an innocent international convoy of boats carrying cement, paper and medical aid to the besieged Gazans. The Israelis were using live ammunition murdering and injuring everything around them.

 

Today we will see demonstrations around the world, we will see many events mourning our dead.  We may even see some of Israel’s friends ‘posturing’ against the slaughter. Clearly this is not enough.

 

The massacre that took place yesterday was a premeditated Israeli operation. Israel wanted blood because it believes that its ‘power of deterrence’  expands with the more dead it leaves behind. The Israeli decision to use hundreds of commando soldiers against civilians was taken by the Israeli cabinet together with the Israeli top military commanders. What we saw yesterday wasn’t just a failure on the ground. It was actually an institutional failure of a morbid society that a long time ago lost touch with humanity. 

 

It is no secret that Palestinians are living in a siege for years. But it is now down to the nations to move on and mount the ultimate pressure on Israel and its citizens. Since the massacre yesterday was committed by a popular army that followed instructions given by a ‘democratically elected' government, from now on, every Israeli  should be considered as a  suspicious war criminal unless proved different.

 

Considering the fact that Israel stormed naval vessels sailing under Irish, Turkish and Greek flags. Both NATO  members and EU countries must immediately cease their  relationships with  Israel  and close their airspace to Israeli airplanes.   

 

Considering yesterday’s news about Israeli nuclear submarines being stationed in the Gulf, the world must react quickly and severely.  Israel is now officially mad and deadly. The Jewish State is not just careless about human life,  as we have been following  the Israeli press campaign leading to the slaughter,  Israel actually  seeks pleasure in inflicting pain and devastation on others.

Glenn Greenwald on Obama's next Supreme Court pick

Friends:

Remember how it was in the bad old days of Bush-Cheney?  They would pile one horror on top of another to the point where when the next one came down, our reaction became: So what's new?

At least in those days we could look forward 2,4, 6, 8 years and comfort ourselves with the thought that at least then we'll have the opportunity to change the direction of our govt.

 

Are we at a similar point now?  We read about Obama's not unlikely next pick for the Supreme Court to replace one of its aging liberal members and we say: So what's new? We're getting inured  to Obama's atrocities just as in the bad old days. But what relief can we look forward to in the next 2,4, 6, 8 years?

***

Glenn Greenwald

 Mar 26, 2010

The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein

Glenn Greenwald writes:

The N.Y. Times bizarrely claims that choosing this long-time defender of Bush radicalism would "excite the left"....
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/26/court

 

The New York Times' Peter Baker has an article today on Obama's leading candidates to replace Stevens, in which one finds this strange passage:

The president’s base hopes he will name a full-throated champion to counter Justice Antonin Scalia, the most forceful conservative on the bench. . . . The candidates who would most excite the left include the constitutional scholars Harold Hongju Koh, Cass R. Sunstein and Pamela S. Karlan.

While that's probably true of Koh and Karlan, it's absolutely false with regard to Sunstein, who is currently Obama's Chief of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  From the beginning of the War on Terror, Cass Sunstein turned himself into one of the most reliable Democratic cheerleaders for Bush/Cheney radicalism and their assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. 

 

Here are some of the lowlights of Sunstein's record abstracted from Greenwald's article.

He:

* Defended Bush's military commissions and wrongly predicted that the courts would uphold these commissions [Does this put Sunstein in Clarence Thomas territory?]

*Defended Bush's warrantless wiretapping

*According to the Washington Post,

Sunstein argues that Bush's decision to conduct surveillance of Americans without court approval flowed from Congress's vote to allow an armed struggle against al-Qaeda. "If you can kill them, why can't you spy on them?" Sunstein said, adding that this is a minority view.

 

Read Greenwald's blog

The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/26/court

 

In January 2010, two months before the Supreme Court opening became a news item, Greenwald warned his readers of:

Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal
Cass Sunstein wants the government to "cognitively infiltrate" anti-government groups
Cass Sunstein wants the government to ... Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, ...
By Glenn Greenwald
Friday, January 15, 2010

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein

 

 

 

Unmasking Obama’s Middle East policy

What's going on in Israel U.S. relations? Since Israel’s recent slap in the face of their greatest protector and supporter during VP Biden’s visit, there’s been a lot of noise in the media about the incident's effect on U.S. Israeli relations. But since there’s no visible policy change either in Tel Aviv or in Washington, we can surmise that the brouhaha is simply a distraction from the Obama administration's deeply hostile intentions towards the Palestinians in their struggle for justice and for their human and national rights.

Many Obama supporters had hoped that with the departure of the Bush-Cheney regime there would be some respite from their open malevolence and vicious hostility to the whole Arab and Muslim world. We didn’t expect real justice for the Palestinians, we weren't hoping for miracles. We understood the fealty that that the power of the Zionist lobby imposes on Congress and the White House and that the cause of one person, one vote, a country for all its citizens was not going to be on the agenda.

Nevertheless we had hopes that at the very least, the worst of the previous administration's animus towards all things Palestinian was behind us. But as we approach the first days of spring 2010, we find that behind the latest public drama between the two countries, we are facing the depressing and brutal truth that the Obama administration, with its agenda seemingly set by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a committed Zionist, has the same ruthless intentions towards the Palestinians as had the previous U.S. regime.

What's the evidence? In a word: concrete, as in: By their actions ye shall know them. Israel's bloody Operation Cast Lead in December-January 2009-2010 (an operation that could have been headed off or curtailed by President-elect Obama, a point we didn't realize until a year later) was intended and was successful in destroying the best part of Gaza's remaining infrastructure, its schools, hospitals, government buildings, farms, factories, hothouses, much of its housing and on and on. ** It was a brutal, pitiless, more than twenty-day operation against an absolutely helpless and trapped population, which if it happened to Jews, would have been termed the greatest pogrom against them in more than 50 years. But since Jews conducted this attack, it has been accepted as a legitimate defensive action in much of the Western world.

Bad enough, but what about the aftermath? The Gaza community wasn’t asking for much under the circumstances. At the very least they might have expected that the Obama administration do what was necessary to allow them to import concrete and building materials so that they could begin putting something of their lives back together. One can imagine some of the behind- the-scenes pleading by Palestinian representatives and their supporters to the Obama administration: Can’t you at least allow us to rebuild some of the damage?

No, answers back the U.S. We can't. We won't. The U.S. doesn't say that outright, or at least I haven’t heard such a thing. In fact I haven't heard one statement made by a high or not so high U.S. official on the subject, although I'm sure there's a State Department document somewhere to the effect that Israel has every right to defend itself in the ways it sees fit.

No, the only people I've heard on the subject are Israeli spokespeople who most often are unembarrassed to intone: Sorry, we'd love to let you have as much concrete as you want except that we're scared that if you do so, well, who knows what you might do with it? You might use it to cast stones at us if and when we are required to cross the border again with our infantry and our tanks and F-15s.

The effect of U.S./Israeli policy is to ensure that the damage done to the infrastructure of Gaza, which was the apparent point of the Cast Lead operation, is never repaired so as to make it as difficult as possible for the Palestinians to live in their land and to struggle for their rights.

It’s called creeping transfer, creeping expulsion and Obama, led by Rahm Emanuel, has chosen to cast his lot with those who support Israeli policy.
***

**Wikipedia’s entry on the subject documents much of the damage caused by the Cast Lead operation. [Numbers in brackets refer to the footnotes they cite.]

On 27 December Israel began a wave of airstrikes [26] on the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of stopping the rocket attacks from and arms smuggling into the territory,[27][28] damaging or destroying tens of thousands of homes,[29] 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary health care facilities,[30] 800 water wells,[31] 186 greenhouses,[32] and nearly all of its 10,000 family farms[33]; leaving 50,000 homeless,[34] 400,000-500,000 without running water,[34][35] one million without electricity,[35], and resulting in acute food shortages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War

***

Note:
Just as I was finishing my latest bout of editing this blog entry, I noticed that Alex Cockburn and my mentor, colleague and friend, Jeffrey Blankfort, had recently weighed in on the same subject. I decided not to read their articles before I posted mine, partly because I was afraid that I’d want to modify my own too long delayed post. --RB

See Alexander Cockburn, March 19 - 21, 2010
"My Fellow Americans, Tonight I'm Going to Talk Frankly About a Pesky Little Nation Called Israel ... " http://counterpunch.org

Jeffrey Blankfort, “A Crisis in U.S. / Israeli Relations? Sure. But ...
Why Israel Always Prevails,” March 19 - 21, 2010
http://counterpunch.org/blankfort03192010.html


Special mention also of recent posts by Dr. Stephen Sniegoski, author of The Transparent Cabal, an important study of neocon influence in promoting the Iraq War, who has been following these issues and shedding much light.

Counterpunch: Top Ten Reasons to Kill the Senate Health Care Bill:Obama and Rahm Cheer Republican Victory in Mass: An End to Reform

Thanks to Alex Cockburn for highlighting the poison below about the Senate Health Care Bill.  As of this writing, how many if any of the insults below will pass in some kind of health care "reform."  But if all of the execrable provisions or some of them pass, wouldn't it be interesting that when the Dems had 60 votes they needed all 60 so that the worst elements could be forced through by a single Senator -- like Lieberman. Now that they don't have 60, will it take only 51 to pass some of the outrages below, and pay off Big Pharma and Big Insurance (redundant), BHO's major contributors?

 

In his lead article for the same issue of CP, "2010: Is The Future Behind Us?" Alex Cockburn refers more than once to the power of Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel in shaping and forcing through the legislation he prefers: anti-abortion for one; and by implication, blocking legislation he opposes. I wonder if people -- besides Marcy Wheeler and Jane Hamsher of firedoglake and emptywheel -- are starting to wake up to who is really the president and who is the empty suit whose words get emptier every week.

 

It's a nice question how upset Rahm and Obama really are by the Massachusetts loss since their goal seems to be to lose the Democratic majority -- perhaps in both Houses, just like Clinton -- so that the pressure --pressure? what pressure? -- for reform will fade into a memory from last year. Their only embarrassment is the public relations blow and this simply gives a chance for Obama  --again and again-- to sound like he's the populist while he plays  the delaying game. Their plan which has worked for them like a charm, seems to be to create the vacuum that will open the door to the lobbyists and the Tea Baggers whose job it is to make plenty of noise -- the less reality-related the better. Their cacophony gives cover to Rahm, as he dispatches marching orders to Reid and Pelosi, ensuring that only his right wing agenda gets through.

***

 

Top Ten Reasons to Kill the Senate Health Care Bill

 

from CounterPunch (hard copy edition) vol. 16, No. 22, Dec. 16-31, 2009

January 4, 2010

CounterPuncher Chuck Spinney sends us this note:

 

I got this from a friend who works on budget issues in Congress. If true, this list would explain why Insurance stock just rose to all time highs.

 

• Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations – whether you want to or not.

 

• If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.

 

• Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums.

 

• Massive restriction on a wo-man’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.

 

• Paid for by taxes on the middle-class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase copays.

 

• Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits – like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions – until 2014, when the program begins.

 

• Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.

 

• Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.

 

• No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years.

 

• The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year – meaning, in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

Diebold and Health Care: Bradblog on Election for Kennedy Seat

Who should we root for in the Tuesday special election for senator in Massachusetts: the Republican or the Democrat?  Do we want to stop the  terrible health care reform bill or do we want a Democrat Senator in Kennedy's old seat? I say we take the Republican for 6 years: a good trade off.

 

Some of the implications of the Bradblog item below.

 

How long now has it been since we've given up hoping that an incoming Obama administration would help do something regarding the computer voting machine fraud (see below)  and move to establish fair elections in this country?  Has it been 6 months already that we've given up hoping for reform from the Emanuel administration.

On that score, it's a testament to Rahm Emanuel effectiveness that we can't get ONE Democrat to vote against the health care monstrosity. He's as powerful as Cheney was apparently when it comes to ensuring that only the legislation he wants, gets passed. That includes further restrictions on abortion, a huge windfall for the insurance industry and big pharma. We can't even roll back the Bush monstrosities on the costs of medications; nor will we have the Canada option we used to have.

 

Interesting or ironic that Emanuel/Obama really don't want a Democratic controlled Congress, certainly not a 60 vote majority in the Senate. On the other hand, they want this health care giveaway bill. Tough call.

Where's Walter Karp when we need him?  He's the one who explained that when Democrats win the White House and/or Congress their big challenge is how to dampen hopes for reform. In Indispensable Enemies (1993) he shows that the last thing the Party wants is an activist base pushing and shoving with reform proposals and competing for power. Republicans have an easier time since their platform is anti-Reform.

But this is Emanuel's time so it looks like one way or another the health care disaster will somehow pass.

***

 

 

Easily Hacked Diebold Machines to Determine Winner of 'Toss-Up' Special Election for U.S. Senate in MA
Written by Nathan Barker and Brad Friedman

 

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7650

 

Since writing today's piece for Upstate New York's right-leaning Gouverneur Times, a new poll has come out this morning showing the Republican Scott Brown now leading the Democrat Martha Coakley by 4 points in
the race for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by a Democrat named Kennedy for nearly 60 years.
As of last night, when I filed the story with them, the latest survey from a Democratic-leaning pollster showed Coakley up by 8, though a day or two earlier, Republican Rasmussen had Brown down only by 2 points.
Suffice to say it's now officially "a toss-up", at least according to the Rothenberg Political Report, and to all
the Dems and Reps now sweating out what was previously thought to have been an easy Democratic win.
With the 60th "filibuster-proof" Senate seat now hanging precariously in the balance, I'm sure you'll be delighted to hear that the winner will now be whoever Diebold declares it to be. The near-entirety of the
state will vote next Tuesday on paper ballots to be counted by Diebold op-scan systems. The same ones used dubiously in the New Hampshire Primary in 2008, and the same ones notoriously hacked --- resulting in a flipped mock election --- in HBO's Emmy-nominated Hacking Democracy.
And to make matters even worse, the notorious LHS Associates --- the private company with the criminal background, who has admitted to illegally tampering with memory cards during elections, and who has a Director of Sales and Marketing who embarrassed himself with obscene comments here at The BRAD BLOG some years ago, resulting in his being barred from CT by their Sec. of State --- sells and services almost all
of MA's voting machines along with those in the rest of New England.
Read my detailed coverage of the entire sad affair over at Gouverneur Times today. And yes, here we go again...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7650

Obama's Lies…Lead to Cheney in Iowa?

One Middle East analyst interviewed in connection with Obama's Nobel Prize award ceremony this month said that despite his good intentions, Obama hasn't accomplished much as far as resolving crises, especially on the Israeli Palestinian issue.

Good intentions? I suspect that we're beginning to see that not only are the outcomes on so many crucial issues the opposite of what we would wish, but we're beginning (we latecomers) to be forced to conclude that the intentions were not what we imagined.

Which brings us to the question of presidential lying.

All presidents lie, it comes with the territory.

Yet we wonder if  BHO’s lying is perhaps among the worst in post war history, up there with LBJ, Nixon, Reagan and Bush-Cheney?

At least with Bush Jr there was something good-natured with his lies in the sense that his pronouncements weren't intended to be taken seriously – except as media fodder. He and Cheney couldn't care less that their political opponents knew they were lying. What was important to them was their power to pursue their agenda. And as for their supporters, the regime's real agenda was always clear and the lies were viewed simply as the necessary cover story. 

The difference with Obama is that he's lying to his base, intending to fool us -- perhaps less and less successfully after about a year -- into thinking that he’s on our side. 

It would seem that the difference between Obama's rhetoric and the agenda he's pursuing, -- replicating and consolidating the worst policies inherited from the most criminal regime in U.S. history -- contributes to his falling popularity and makes him a potentially weak candidate in 2012. Perhaps that is why Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake (Iowa) Times is predicting that “Cheney Will Visit Iowa.” According to Cullen:

       Cheney thinks Obama is a pipsqueak and that he can beat him. Most important, Cheney believes in his bad ideas and is perfectly willing to run on them.         http://www.populist.com/09.22.artcullen.html

 We're fortunate to live in an age that has produced the first Black president, and a smart, eloquent one at that. But it appears that we're just as unlucky that our first minority president has turned out to be some combination of too young and inexperienced and too feckless to rise to the challenge of providing us with the leadership so desperately needed. 

Obama's Surge Consolidates the Bush-Cheney Legacy

Obama's Surge Consolidates the Bush-Cheney legacy

 

What could be worse than a continuation of the Bush-Cheney administration?

What could be worse in an Obama administration than the consolidation of the worst of the Bush-Cheney  policies starting with their permanent war agenda?

Why has Obama embraced permanent war, a policy that he, as well as anyone else knows, is unsustainable, if not suicidal?

Some, if not many, agree that the twin pillars that underpin the status quo are the military industrial complex and the Zionist lobby, for which constant war is always the desideratum.

Perhaps fewer will agree that the chief way, in a post cold war age that permanent war is maintained is by funding, arming and directing the enemy.

Where and how, one might ask, do the Taliban get their weapons and wherewithal?

The enemy is the U.S. in a literal way that we have not previously imagined.

Now that Obama has moved to the consolidation of permanent war, HE is the enemy.

The first step is to know thy enemy.

***

 

("Bush &) Obama's Trillion Dollar Bailouts -- Questions that won't die

Trillion $ Bailouts  – Questions that won’t die

by Ronald Bleier

11.6.09

 

A major political question that doesn’t want to die is whether the billion and trillion dollar Wall Street bailouts that Washington handed out were necessary to keep the economy from disintegrating.  Despite the persistence of the question, the only answer seemingly allowed in the mainstream is the monotonously uniform: Without the bailouts we’d be using beads for currency -- a line I heard on TV this week. 

 

Yet there is another, rather different answer available. The alternative response is that not only were the bailouts unnecessary to save the economy, but they represent perhaps the biggest single criminal theft and transfer of wealth to the wealthy from the rest of us.

 

Some of the evidence for such an unorthodox view was presented back in September by Mike Whitney, a regular contributor to the indispensable Counterpunch.org website.

 

Whitney took the trouble to read some of the findings of independent economist, Dean Baker, who took the trouble to look at some of the relevant data.

 

According to Mike Whitney

 

Lehman Bros. didn't die of natural causes; it was drawn-and-quartered by high-ranking officials at the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Most of the rubbish presently appearing in the media, ignores this glaring fact. Lehman was a planned demolition (most likely) concocted by ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, who wanted to create a financial 9-11 to scare Congress into complying with his demands for $700 billion in emergency funding (TARP) for underwater US banking behemoths.  The whole incident reeks of conflict of interest, corruption, and blackmail.

 

(9.15.09)“Lehman Died So TARP and AIG Might Live”) http://Counterpunch.org/whitney09152009.html)

 

Whitney explains that Lehman brothers could have been saved relatively easily if “Bernanke and Paulson had merely provided guarantees for some of their trading positions.” According to Whitney, their claim that they didn’t have the legal authority for such guarantees was “a lie.”

 

Whitney continues by quoting economist Dean Baker who explains that the $700 billion TARP authority wasn’t necessary to rescue the commercial paper market - –the market that most major companies rely on to meet their payrolls and pay other routine bills.  Dean explains that Bernanke “forgot to tell Congress…that the Fed has the authority to directly buy commercial paper from financial and non-financial companies [and thus] the power to prevent the sort of economic collapse that Bernanke warned would happen if Congress did not quickly approve the TARP.” Indeed, Dean continues, the weekend after TARP was approved the plan for the Fed to buy this commercial paper was put in motion. (emphasis mine)

 

For more on the case for criminal indictments of Messrs Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, et. al., read the work of the brilliant Matt Taibi in recent articles in Rolling Stone --  if you can deal with his liberal use of obscenities which he childishly thinks somehow improves his prose -- who has done the legwork and taken the trouble to understand and to pass along the nature of some of the frauds that have been managed – and are doubtless continuing.  

Wall Street's Naked Swindle  by Matt Taibbi -- October 2009

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle/print

A scheme to sell fake stocks helped kill Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers — exposing the counterfeit nature of our entire economy.  

The Great American Bubble Machine  by Matt Taibbi  -- July 2009

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine/print

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again.

***

Letter to the New York Times --Obama and the Lack of Accountability

Another in the long list of my letters that the NYTimes has ignored. --RB

Letters

The New York Times

August 28, 2009

To the Editor

Re: "Abuse Issue Puts The Justice Dept And CIA At Odds", Front Page, 8.28.09

The latest developments in connection with US employment of torture on the pretext of fighting the "global war on terror," suggest that President Obama's dictum that we look forward not backward will be in the news for as long as he maintains such a misleading and dangerous political posture.

On the issue of accountability, we might like to recall Winston Churchill who effectively reminds us what's at stake. .

“The use of recriminating about the past is to enforce effective action at the present.” --Winston Churchill, 1936.

Sincerely,

Ronald Bleier

Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer: The Health Care Debate --The Enemy Within

One of the most astute observers of the health care reform debate must be Doug Henwood, author, journalist and radio producer.

On his July 16, 2009 program radio program for WBAI-FM, New York, his guest, Len Rodberg of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), outlined the problems with current versions of ObamaCare. And Henwood followed up with a précis of the situation in his invaluable Left Business Observer (LBO) #120, August 2009.

It seems that the White House has effectively given up on an effective public option that would compete with private insurers. Instead we have an agreement between Obama and the insurance industry whereby they make certain changes to their restrictive practices in return for which they get to collect the premiums of dozens of millions of U.S. citizens and residents not currently insured. One can only guess at the rate at which the insurance companies will benefit over and above their current profits. For every dollar that they will expend under the new guidelines, can we not expect that they’ll take in an extra $10? $100? $1,000? or more? Thus we won't be surprised to find that the salaries of top executives of the ever more consolidated private insurance industry will be enlarged over and above their current payoffs –- in some cases $10 or $20 or $30 million or more annually-- into really healthy amounts.

There’s more. For example, current proposals are that the U.S. will subsidize some portion of the premiums under the mandatory rules that everyone must carry insurance. Who’s going to pay these billions? We’ve just answered the question. The U.S. taxpayer. But in order to squeeze the billions this will cost into an acceptable package for Congress, current proposals are that huge amounts will be – is “stolen” too harsh a word?-- from Medicare (and Medicaid?) disbursements. One number I’ve seen is half a trillion ($), so that seniors are correct to be scared –really scared --that their services will be reduced if not crippled.

In addition, according to Dr. Jerry Avorn of the Harvard Medical School (Author, "Powerful Medicines"), as reported on NPR’s All Things Considered (July 23, 2009; “Drug Firms Pour $40 million into Health Care Debate” http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=106899074

government negotiated drug prices is already off the table. While this immense concession has apparently not yet publicly been set in stone, such a consideration is not inconsistent with the way the Rahm Emanuel-Obama administration has tilted toward the previous administration’s policies on so many foreign and domestic issues.

One of the reasons I was so opposed to Hillary Clinton and supported Obama was because I was convinced that she and her husband intended to sabotage health care reform from the inception of their presidency in 1992. I suspected that they were opposed to reform because of some combination of their right wing ideology (the undeserving poor are truly undeserving) and their loyalty to some of their biggest financial supporters.

In 2008 I figured that our only hope for change was an Obama presidency. But the bad news is that for his own complex of reasons – perhaps slightly different from the Clintons but surely overlapping when it comes to seeking the favor of the movers and shakers -– we are faced with the prospect of legislation just as bad or worse than the Clintons managed to devise.

Ironically, I’m now wondering whether a 2009 Hillary Clinton victory might have produced a bill with elements of real reform simply because her former opposition (disguised as mistakes) was well known and for credibility’s sake she would have been forced into effective change. But such speculation runs into the reality of Hillary Clinton as a lightening rod and a divider.

***

Health Care and Consumer Spending

LBO # 120 follows up with a brilliant analysis of the astonishing degree to which consumer spending has been bolstered by health care costs. It turns out that consumer non- health spending has remained pretty steady over the years including the last two decades while close to 80% of the increase (is this possible?) has been due to health care spending. In other words, U.S. citizens (and residents) weren’t by and large on a buying binge: we were going into debt to pay for health care.

This turns out to be such a new finding that Henwood actually apologizes for not understanding this trend earlier.

***

FDR vs. BHO

Speaking of the LBO, Henwood’s #119 (July 2009) is worth the price for his insightful contrast between FDR and BHO. Henwood notes that Obama’s not the man to make a speech anything like FDR’s October 1936 announcement of a second New Deal. Henwood cites FDR’s famous lines:

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

And Henwood’s analysis continues with the suggestion that the difference between the two men is that FDR was a product of the aristocracy with all the self confidence of someone from that class, while Obama’s emergence from the meritocracy leaves him with little but admiration for the “establishment that groomed him.”

***

Go to http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/LBO_subinfo.html for information regarding subscriptions to LBO (the print edition is $22; digital $20)

***

Ronald

Greg Eow: I used to be a fan of Bernard Lewis and the Neocons

H/T to FJ by way of Mondoweiss 8.13.09 for this wonderful email showing that, with some effort, time and money --and, btw, an open mind -- people's views of the Israeli-Palestinian issue can change to better reflect reality. Come to think of it, it happened to me despite my years of yeshiva indoctrination and it didn't cost all that much, and I didn't even have to read 20 books on the subject.

One can get cheered up after reading an example of such change, but all too soon one is brought back to reality to realize that the siege of Gaza and the starvation of the Gazans is ongoing. The slow genocide and the removal of the Palestinians from their land is occurring with the full knowledge of Sec Clinton and President Obama who either don't care or prefer not to risk political capital trying unsuccessfully to "interfere" with Israeli policy.
***

___________________________________________
I was with the neocons– (Then I went to the Middle East)
by Greg Eow
August 13, 2009

Mondoweiss wrote:

In April, Greg Eow wrote a letter to a professor he had met in graduate school at Rice University, Ussama Makdisi, describing his political transformation. Eow. . . shares it with us.

Dear Professor Makdisi,

I don’t know if you rem ember me, but I finished my PhD in the Rice history department in 2007. I was one of Thomas Haskell’s students. We ran into each other a handful of times, including once when I helped you with some of the microfilm machines in Fondren Library. Anyway, this is a strange e-mail, both to write and most likely to receive. But I wanted to tell you about some recent experiences which have profoundly changed my view of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. You have demonstrated an interest in changing how people think about the issue, and so I thought you might be interested in what for me has turned out to be a transformative event.

First of all, a quick word about presuppositions. I confess that I previously never paid a great deal of attention to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Insofar as I did follow the issue, my sympathies were with neoconservatives. Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis were my guides. They were realists, I would tell myself, whereas those who quarreled with them, for instance colleagues at Rice who were more interested in postcolonial studies than I, had political axes to grind. Not for me the romance of resistance. I was a good skeptic, an empiricist; and if there was a problem in Israel it was clear to me it had to do wi th Muslim fundamentalism, terrorism, and the clash between Enlightenment values and democracy on the one hand and premodern tribalism and totalitarianism on the other.

Flash forward a couple of years.
I’m through with grad school, I finally have some time and money, and I embark on a self-directed course of study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have my feelings, sure, but I realize that I don’t know a whole lot, that a lot of smart people disagree with me, and now I want to make a good faith effort to learn about the issue and test my prejudices against the scholarship in the field. I read Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, Benny Morris, Patrick Seale, David Fromkin, Juan Cole, Efraim Karsh, Tom Segev, William Cleveland, Bernard Rougier, Albert Hourani. I read your book and article on anti-Americanism. And I spend two weeks traveling through Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem and the West Bank. In sum, I read about forty books from a number of different standpoints and travel through the region to see what is going on with my own eyes.

The result? Well, the whole experience essentially knocked me on my butt. I was wrong about a great many things. And not just wrong but deeply wrong. Wrong to a degree that to realize it has left me shaken, wondering how exactly I got to be so intellectually, and in this case morally, obtuse. Just a taste of the data that undid my worldview:

1) The Arab people I met in Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank (and Jerusalem), the vast majority of them Muslims, were almost uniformly lovely, warm, and welcoming. I wasn’t expecting20passersby in the street in all of these places to invite me into their homes for tea to discuss how much they "hate George Bush, but like Americans." (This happened too often to count.) Pretty much everyone thought U.S. policy was a disaster. But they were angry about policy and lovely to me in ways that make the "they hate us for our freedom" line not only inaccurate but criminal. Among the people I met: a 20 year old Shiite Muslim named Mohammed whom I met in the Bequaa Valley. Mohammed supports Hezbollah because of their 1) resistance to Israeli incursions into Lebanon (he didn’t say anything about Hezbollah provocations), 2) their welfare programs, and 3) their support of the20Palestinian cause (all his words). He’s been to Mosque no more than twice in his life, eats pork, and likes nothing more than going dancing in Beirut. That is to say, he is entirely secular. With Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington as my guides, I have no way to make sense of such an encounter.

2) Driving through the West Bank at night allows one to see the proliferation of illegal Israeli settlements with immediate and striking force. They are everywhere, some small, some huge, in the high ground lit up like prisons. I thought the reason why the two-state solution had failed was Palestinian intransigence. A look at the settlements – even a quick look – demolishes such a simple explanation. Traveling through the West Bank at=2 0night, and later visiting and talking with people in Ramallah, reinforced an essential point: Israel, at least powerful forces within Israel, is actively pursuing policies to colonize and annex the West Bank while simultaneously making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will pick up and leave. The evidence was there for anyone with eyes to see, irrefutable and horrible in its obviousness. How I got duped by the "Israel wants peace behind the 1 967 borders but extremists deny it to them" line is a question I will be asking myself again and again with embarrassment and not a little shame.

I could go on, but this (unsolicited) e-mail has gone on long enough and you get the point. What I’m saying is this: keep writing, keep telling U.S. citizens to better inform themselves about what is going on in their name and with their tax dollars. If they’re honest, and they go see for themselves what’s going on, I can guarantee that the reasonableness of what you and others have written on the matter will soon become apparent.

Emptywheel/bmaz: Washington Post features John Yoo -- Let's trash the Constitution

Here's bmaz from the more and more indispensable Emptywheel site from the very special Marcy Wheeler. One characteristic of her site is that it often gets thoughtful comments. I append one of the superb responses.
Ronald
***

The Yoo Tumor
By: bmaz Sunday July 26, 2009
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/07/26/the-yoo-tumor/#more-4563

John Yoo is a cancer on the Constitutional body politic of the United States, and he won't go away. For some inexplicable reason, Carrie Johnson, and her editors at the Washington Post, have decided to fluff the one man self rationalization and obfuscation tour Yoo has been on as of late:

Some public figures, if their judgment and ethics come under fire, retreat into solitude. Then there is John C. Yoo.

The former Justice Department official, whose memos blessed the waterboarding of terrorism suspects and wiretapping of American citizens, has come out fighting, even as negative assessments of his government service pile up.

Last month, a federal judge in California refused to dismiss a lawsuit that accuses Yoo of violating a detainee's constitutional rights. This month, the Justice Department's inspector general described Yoo's legal analysis of the Bush surveillance program as "insufficient" and sometimes inaccurate. Also expected in coming weeks is a department ethics report that sources have said could renounce Yoo's approval of harsh CIA interrogation practices and recommend that he and Jay S. Bybee, a former colleague, be referred to their state bar associations for discipline.

While former colleagues have avoided attention in the face of such scrutiny, Yoo has been traveling across the country to give speeches and counter critics who dispute his bold view of the president's authority. Now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, he engages in polite but firm exchanges with legal scholars over conclusions in their academic work. This month, he wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal defending his actions and labeling critics' arguments as "absurd" and "foolhardy" responses to "the media-stoked politics of recrimination."

There is nothing whatsoever new in the story, save perhaps for the information that even if the long delayed OPR Report recommends bar discipline against Yoo, he is unlikely to suffer any consequences because the only state he is licensed in, Pennsylvania, has a five year statute of limitations on ethics infractions. Johnson and the Post, of course, do not discuss whether the Pennsylvania statute may have been tolled because the information was not publicly available for a good deal of the time.

The Post article is beyond disingenuous with the way it blithely equates the pros and cons of Yoo and his work. It even points out the recent decision in Federal court in NDCA by Judge Jeffrey White without noting in any detail that White carved Yoo's work up like a Butterball turkey.

John Yoo arguably has done as much, if not more, harm to the Constitution than any government lawyer in history. Yoo authored legal reliance opinions eviscerating the Fourth Amendment and authorizing the implementation of a state sponsored torture regime. If the Washington Post is going to fluff Yoo, they ought to at least be intellectually honest enough to give some credible billing to the moral and legal hell he hath wrought. Apparently, it is asking too much.

***

Bob in HI responded:

The trouble is that major news organizations no longer know what “fair and balanced” means. Part of what this indicates is that there is no longer any public consensus on what is “right” and “wrong.” I’m not referring to some cosmic yardstick here. I’m referring to a cultural consensus.

But what is truly alarming, to me, about this shattering of the cultural consensus is that the Constitution of the United States has lost its primary place. The culture now apparently views it, like George Bush, as “just a piece of paper.” Defending the Constitution is no longer a big priority to our Congresspersons, even though they take an oath of office to do so.

Instead, “Public Safety” has now been elevated to a priority equal to, or exceeding, that of the Constitution. The public consensus is shifting, and not for the better.

The MSM [Major Media?] are no longer defending the Constitution because it is no longer seen as a fundamental priority, on which all other priorities are based. And the MSM don’t defend the Constitution because the Presidency has not done so, for about 8 years. And neither has Congress. Only the Courts still seem to act as though defending the Constitution is Job #1.

Yoo is a symptom of a deep cultural malaise.

Bob in HI

Obama abandoning public health care option?

Obama Abandoning Public Health Care Option?

Democracy Now's headlines for 7.7.09 and 7.8. (see below) included items on the Obama administration’s signals that it’s ready to abandon or perhaps has already effectively abandoned the public health plan option. (see below)

In that case, we can guess that Obama has bowed to the Republican wall of opposition and to the opposition of some of his wealthy corporate campaign contributors. No other U.S. president has so clearly enunciated the need for such a government run health care option so there is no question that he well understands the stakes involved.

The only questions are for the future. Will there be a health care reform bill signed by President Obama and if so will it be any real improvement over the current intolerable situation? And what will be the political ramifications for Obama and for the Democrats?

The sad or tragic thing about this episode – taken together with Obama’s serial betrayals on fixing the financial meltdown, civil liberties, Af-Pak, Iraq, Palestine, mountaintop removal, Don Siegelman – what else? – is what it shows about the character of our 44th president. We have just passed through (and we lucky ones have barely survived) the tough minded, focused, powerful presidency of Bush-Cheney and we could have wished for similar toughness in reversing their horrors.

Instead it seems that we’re saddled with another weak-willed, feckless and directionless Democrat leader. Followers of Walter Karp (Indispensable Enemies, and Liberty Under Siege) are seeing signs that Obama is following in the tradition of virtually all the Democratic presidential contenders after LBJ -- either they didn’t want the job or they only took it on condition that they wouldn’t have to lead from the Left. (Interesting that only Jimmy Carter is a partial exception to this phenomenon.)

So if Obama follows Bill Clinton’s trajectory, his healthy congressional margins will melt away starting in 2012 to the point where, like his predecessor, he can be our savior simply by playing defense against the Republicans.
Ronald


Emmanuel: Obama Open to Dropping Public Health Plan

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/7/headlines
7.7.09
The Obama administration continues to downplay its stated commitment to a government-run public health insurance program. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said he thinks it’s more important to inject competition between insurance plans than it is to create a plan run by the government. Private insurers have opposed the public plan because they feel its cheaper costs would provide too much competition and potentially put them out of business. Emanuel’s comments echo recent statements from President Obama. At a White House news conference last month, Obama refused to call the public health proposal non-negotiable and said he hasn’t “drawn lines in the sand.”

President Obama, speaking June 23rd: “We are still early in this process. So, you know, we have not drawn lines in the sand, other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don’t have health insurance or are underinsured. You know, those are the broad parameters that we’ve discussed.”

See also:
Obama Defends Commitment to Public Health Option
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/8/headlines#10
7.8.09
President Obama has issued a vague response to criticism his administration is backing away from its advocacy of a government-run public health insurance program. On Tuesday, Obama released a statement saying: “I] still believe… that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest. I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals.” The statement came hours after White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal he think it’s more important to inject competition between insurance plans than it is to create a plan run by the government. Emmanuel instead said the White House could back a plan that would “trigger” a public option only if private insurers failed to provide suitable care.