Hey, Prez! Pissing on The Magna Carta makes the Baby Jesus cry. (updated, h/t RMcC&DD)
My neices used to call me “The Pharmacist” out of appreciation for my varied knowledge of psychotropics, but even I cannot find in my inventory the pill to cure the cognitive dissonance (pace Sal).that is making my head explode.
Glenn Greenwald’s latest must read, confronts us with the newest version of the face of evil, and (Holy Shit!) it’s Prez!. (supported by the usual supects).
33 Guantanamo detainees fought their way to in front of a Judge; 28 were found to have been held with NO REASONABLE GROUNDS FOR THE DETENTION (It is worth noting that the standard for reasonably detaining is LESS than the familiar “probable cause” which is needed to search a suspect AFTER reasonably detaining him.)
In other words, these men were kidnapped and held incommunicado for year after year for absolutely nothing. And yet we hold some of them still—in obdurate defiance of a judge’s ruling based upon all the “evidence” the administration could adduce, concoct or invent.
And this is the regime that Prez seems willing to perpetuate, export , even to codify with an elaborate Preventive Detention program (Hint: The Detention swallows up the Prevention).
OK, I knew that Prez wasn’t Robin Hood (or Kucinich, or Gravel—they were my guys,..), but I didn’t think he was King John!
Not long ago, I realized: John Yoo is a constitutional lawyer. They don't make 'em like they used to.
September 15, 2009 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
John Yoo
Yet another instance of the evil of banality...I saw one of his C-span broadcasts from the heart of darkest Berkeley (Black Oak Books, for those in the know...) He can make the most outrageous claims on behalf of the security state in the calmest, even benevolent and jovial tone--it's scary as shit...
September 15, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with your criticism of Obama's policies, but the mock soul brother is just racist and irrelevant to your argument.
September 15, 2009 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a play on an article from a while back ... school kids say it to each other and it has become a bit of a meme. There has to be some sort of balance between your "everything is racist" and TS77's "nothing is racist" view points. I sure hope TPM can find it soon, this shit's getting annoying.
September 15, 2009 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right. Dare you to walk at midnight into a downtown bar frequented by blacks and make sassy with the you-look-like "King John with a tan" remarks.
I hope you gain a little more sensitivity as to what does and doesn't constitute a racial slur.
September 15, 2009 10:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
you-look-like
It's not the looking like--it's the acting like; thus the tan cannot redeem the behavior.
I'll give up the "my obama" reference out of caution not to be misconstrued, but,com'on man, with the magna carta and habeas corpus thing, don't take away my Robin Hood and King John....
September 15, 2009 11:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll give you Robin Hood and King John if you leave off the tan part next time.
September 16, 2009 12:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Umm, the idea is, see, that I expect more of the brother on account of, you know, he's a brother; the Robin Hood/King John alone only gets you half way to the irony of Prez supporting a brand of denial of personhood that we have been accustomed to seeing in only the worst authoritarian regimes. He's DISAPPEARING people!
September 16, 2009 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Stated in the context used here, wouldn't hesitate. But, umm, since when is that "mock soul brother"?
And why couldn't it be a suburban bar ... no brothers in the burbs in your mind?
September 15, 2009 11:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Inner-city brothers tend to have keener sensibilities than you do. Please take my dare and learn something.
September 16, 2009 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
You don't know fuck about me or where I came up, or where I've been. Now I'm just going to stop, because I don't have shit to prove to you - and I don't know anything about where you've been either.
I generally appreciate your posts, so I'll leave it with a simple request: why don't you let folks who know something about the topic first-hand police this aspect of TPM? Because neither you nor I fit that bill.
September 16, 2009 2:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough, kgb. Apologies to you and jollyroger for disrupting the thread. We'll agree to disagree, but I actually do agree with the thrust of jollyroger's post here. Unlawful incarceration is wrong no matter who is president.
September 16, 2009 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Rip, take a look at your avatar and chill.
Peace.
September 16, 2009 3:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Elliott Gould? Not making that connection, but I can take the chill pill for sure. Sorry to all, because this racist shit that IS happening out there in the world is just getting to me.
P.S. I'll probably go back to the St. Louis waterfront avatar. More peaceful.
September 16, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The phrase references the aspirational nature of his presidency for all of us, but point taken nonetheless
September 15, 2009 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
And in other news ... President Obama supports extending the "Patriot" Act. Lovely.
September 15, 2009 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kaplooie, splat.....(that was the erstwhile contents of my skull hitting the wall)
September 15, 2009 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
This got into a thread I would not have predicted.
I do not think Jollyroger is a racist.
That said, I can reveal that in a number of different contexts I would have enjoyed seeing some real SYSTEMATIC changes. Detention, war, wall street graft, bail outs, healthcare for certain.
I was going to do a post on this toooo. It is like the only chance you have for real change is when the issue, the nation is on some precipice, teetering and flirting with Armageddon.
But then again, I am not that informed. I am not that smart.
Maybe there has been systematic change that just does not show up on radar (radar being msm and dont fool yourself the Beast, Huffpo, Politico for sure, ...all part of msm)
Now that said, this detention with no probable cause is unforgiveable. We have judges we can trust, and national security matters should be given to them, at least. even if defense counsel cannot see the evidence.
I am going on too long.
However, I feel about this Jolly, I aint usin no tan jokes. It takes me back fifty years....
Sometimes it has to be: I will avoid the appearance.....
September 16, 2009 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
iavoid the appearance....
Well said. And now that I come to think about it, the use of "tan", however innocent in my case, unhappily puts me in uncomfortably close proximity to Silvio Berlusconni...Ripper may not be crazy...
September 16, 2009 1:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
if defense counsel cannot see the evidence.
DD made a funny....what kind of counsel would participate in a charade like that? If I don't misrecollect several JAGs resigned before being players in just such farcical frolics
hahahahahaha
September 16, 2009 2:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is like the only chance you have for real change is when the issue, the nation is on some precipice, teetering and flirting with Armageddon.
Which is also the only time they can push through change we don't need (Islamofascist terrorism, financial crisis, etc.). OT, but today Bernanke was reassuring the public that the recession is over (only it isn't), and happy days are here again.
I was criticized for quoting a Whitney article here before (don't know why, he's always spot on), but here he quickly explains how Bernanke and Paulson created the panic of world economic collapse in order to blackmail congress into passing TARP and giving their friends billions. Obama has continued these programs as he has continued other Bush policies . They threw a TARP over the American economy, threw it into a van and held it for ransom. Despicable.
September 16, 2009 3:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, if there is anything to be offended by it isn't jollyroger's attempt at humor, no matter how good or bad someone thinks it was. It should be Obama being compared to Bush...and in the context of the facts the blog post outlines, sadly, that comparison can be made.
September 16, 2009 1:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seen on a bumper sticker ---
Obama in '08!
Get disappointed by someone new.
September 16, 2009 1:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
They always seem to disappoint Ellen...the only question will be how much.
September 16, 2009 1:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'd say Obama is one of the most disappointing of all time. His betrayal of the voters regarding the mythical "war on terror", his support for illegal and unconstitutional endless detention, for limiting but not eliminating torture, his continuation of the use of expensive mercenaries like Blackwater, aka Xe, his support for domestic spying, his support for protecting war criminals from investigation and prosecution, and his support for escalating the war in Afghanistan are an amazing reversal of what he indicated he would support and implement while running for office. No amount of rationalizing can get around the fact that he simply double crossed his base on all these issues.
September 16, 2009 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think I know what he would say oleeb...he'd say the far left isn't his base. Sure we were the ones that got him started in his campaign but he has always tried to portray himself as a centrist.
Now all that being said he did say he would be doing the business of government much differently from the previous POTUS. I don't see that being fact as of yet. So, yeah, I'm not a happy camper at all at this point. I expected so much more than what we've got so far...and tat is being kind.
September 16, 2009 2:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
double crossed his base
One expects the double cross, but at least hopes that as one bleeds out through the shiv's hole one might understand "cui bono?"
I can't figure out what short or long term interest that even remotely maps with the national interest he thinks he is serving in the double cross...he has picked such a losing hand to play...
September 16, 2009 2:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
oleeb, don't be so hard on Obama. He had good intentions, problem is once elected he met the harsh reality that the presidency is propelled by the machine not visa versa. Any change that will come is only change that is allowed and that’s just enough to keep everyone from looking behind the curtain.
September 16, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
see here
September 16, 2009 2:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
see below
September 16, 2009 1:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
sadly, that comparison can be made.
It's the goddam sad part that has me twisting in the wind, because it seems so out of joint...I can't for the life of me figure out in what universe there is a context within which we can frame what Prrez is doing here as serving any kind of good, greater or lesser, as it were.
I'm baffled by the ostensible meta communication of his acquiesence (please don't let him be walking point on this shit) in state terror.
September 16, 2009 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is nothing there that points to any good actually happening in actually reversing the prior administration's policies on these issues, jollyroger. Is he focusing on health care? I thought he spoke of his ability to multitask? I think he might be listening to the advice of his generals the most on this stuff. That would also explain his equally questionable Afghanistan policies too...
September 16, 2009 1:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
advice of his generals
clearly. But why?? He must know better on his own, so I infer that he feels constrained by the shitstorm of general staff leaks that might be anticipated if he made a head on attack on the imperial stormtroop and its 1000+ bases...So, ok. what would be the slick way to keep from becoming Lyndon Johnson. and yet be re-elected.
Whatever Houdini act he's gonna pull to get out of the military staff strait jacket, he better stgart wriggling soon...
September 16, 2009 2:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have a theory about Presidents who never served in the military relying on/deferring to the generals on security issues to deflect criticisms of being weak on defense. Plus Gen. Jones is a right hand man of the president while in a non-Pentagon post. He has surrounded himself with a good deal of (ex-)military men.
September 16, 2009 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
never served in the military
Grounds, perhaps, for caution before countering strategy or tactics once an overall national interest has been articulated--but you would not necessarily defer to the generals in defining the parameters and the metrics of that geo-political interest.'
On that issue, their opinion is no better or worse than any other amateur statesman.
Look what an ass Wesley Clark turned out to be once he was forced to think a level up from the operational...
September 16, 2009 3:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
There may come the day when Obama will need some soldiers to defend the nation. He needs to know on whom he can rely.
September 16, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
disappointed
This is disappointed.
I'm feeling more like ,this
September 16, 2009 1:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
JR,
As always well said.
September 16, 2009 3:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
thx.
September 16, 2009 3:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's a killer poem! Made my head spin!
September 16, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll pass your encomium along to the king of the visigoths. I know he would want me to express his thanks.
September 16, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep...disappointed. But judging by his FISA vore from last year, when he was still in the Senate, his inaction on these issues shouldn't come as a complete surprise. Plus there is strong bi-partisan opposition to him relocating the detainees to prisons in the US as the cries of NIMBY are shouted. He doesn't have many options right now...BUT...he is the president so any inaction is on his shoulders.
Harry S. Truman - "The buck stops here"
September 16, 2009 2:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
his FISA vore
fair enough--it's not like there were no foreshadowings...but still--to extend and even attempt formally to legitimize preventive detention which *always swallows up due process, is horrific.
*Once you've decided to hold someone to prevent some future harm, there is only career downside for the next guy (or for you yourself) in deciding to let him go... Let alone doing all this on shaky and secret evidence.
THIS IS FUCKING STAR CHAMBER BULLSHIT!!
What kind of due process proceeds based on evidence that the defense counsel can't see???
September 16, 2009 2:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ahhhhh...God bless ya jollyroger. Perfectly accurate in your assessment even down to quoting my typo. :)
He said he was gonna close it...time for him to walk the walk on that promise. It needs to be done for us as a country to undo the damage of the previous administration and not to codify what was done. I am not defending what he is, or isn't doing, just trying to figure out the reasons why.
September 16, 2009 2:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
to codify what was done
Perhaps I simply don't appreciate or properly respect the power pushing him that way, because it is certainly self evident to me that only by a stark repudiation can the repair of the damage even begin--and while necessary, the repudiation alone will not be sufficient without accountability.
But to cavil at repudiation is bizarre!
September 16, 2009 3:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
But in all fairness to Washington speak ... while he promised to close Gitmo, he never did specify what he was going to to do with the prisoners. He didn't actually say he was going to ensure they got received due process - or at least he never defined what due process was in a world where executive lawyers had turned the concept into mush.
Gitmo is just a symbol, really more of a visible tip of an iceberg - and the only piece we couldn't maintain or absorb back into the foreign nation in which the facility exists(ed). It might honestly be better to keep it open until they fix the real problem: cleaning up the aftermath of our brutal detainee policies. I can can see the due process issues disappearing from view if all of a sudden the Gitmo detainees end up in the SuperMax without resolving their actual guilt.
And man! Can't we at least end the brutal force-feeding torture. That's against international laws. I haven't thought about this for a while ... it pisses me off all over again (a good thing I think).
September 16, 2009 4:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Two very quick comments, with maybe a full post if I can find the time.
First. I don't back Obama on this...not even a little bit, not an iota, not an atom.
Second, Magna Carta is a very weak stick to club him with. People ought to read it sometime. Now is as good a time as any. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/magnacarta.html
Read what it says about rights of jews, for example. But most pertinent here, is that we understand very clearly what those Barons meant by "Peers"--Other Barons. This essentially meant they could do what they bloody well wanted to with the peasantry. "Freemen" of which there wer few, were to be tried by their "lords".
Accuse Obama of pissing on the Universal Declaration of Human rights, if you will. Baby Jesus will probably sleep better. Soi will historians. http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/teach-er-vk/documents/udhr.htm
September 16, 2009 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Universal Declaration of Human rights
1. It doesn't scan like Magna Carta..
2. It's the disrespect of the Great Writ that has my knickers particularly in a bunch--hence, Magna Carta
3. We are all Barons now...
September 16, 2009 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Except if one goes by the logic of that age applied to ours, the "barons" are the media conglomerates, big health insurance, Wall Street, possessors of hereditary fortunes, Wal-mart, and the rest of those who treat us like peasants.
Which is why we need a glorious revolution like that of 1688, to establish a true bill of rights and take another stab at ending feudalism under a different name.
September 16, 2009 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
true bill of rights
For the record, I am not confused as to who is the baron (between Rupert and myself...).
That said, the rights granted to the barons have devolved, as it were, along with the definition of "person". down to all of us.
Curiously, anent your reference to 1688, the Brits, unencumbered by a written constitution, have begun themselves to back away from their own bill of rights (which, of course, was "mere legislation"
September 16, 2009 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I always thought it was PRINCE John, and King Richard.
September 16, 2009 9:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
King Richard got himself a bad case of dead and the rest, as they say . . .
September 16, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Princes who are pricks grow up to be bad kings after their big brothers get killed following their ethnic cleansing expeditions..
September 16, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
And just how is John so much worse than his compatriots of royalty in those days (ie prick). He was a man of his time and raised from birth as royalty. He could of have been an egomaniac and took on the barons, but instead was smart enough to get them to sign the Magna Carta, thus avoiding a governance meltdown. And by doing so, unwittingly, moved us toward a day when "we are all equal" is a legitimate political philosophy.
September 16, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
how is John so much worse
You apparently never saw the documentary.
September 16, 2009 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just to throw out there one thing to think about: If Obama and team roll everything back immediately, and something does happen which would happen even without the rollback, all the dark forces in the country will blame the rollback. They will use it (with Cheney leading the way) to impose even worse, more permanent crap than what we have now.
People want Obama to dive into the deep end and he wading from the shallow end to the deep end. What is the right way to get what we all want, a sustainable return to human and civil rights in this country?
Not to mention the fact that had Obama dove into the deep end on this some months ago, there is serious doubt that we would have made it this far on something like HRC because the atmosphere would have been hundred times more toxic.
September 16, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
wading from the shallow end to the deep end.
Certainly what is to be hoped--but meanwhile, there are real people being really disappeared...And the proposed Preventive Detention regime is right out of Minority Report...(disclaimer:Tom Cruise is an asshole, but the movie is a good shorthand for where the prevention concept gets you...)
September 16, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. And I don't necessarily agree with Obama's approach. I just think that there may be more than it just Obama continuing the policies of the Bush administration. He tends to look at where he wants to be in the long run and takes each move in accordance. For instance, just on the national security side, he is trying to keep his Generals inside the fold moving forward. To harsh a break and we'd start getting some serious dissent seeping out. This would undermine his credibility in other matters, as well as media distractions that would cover issues he wanted others to focus on.
We need to keep the heat on these issues, but keep in mind that Obama may want what we want just as much.
September 16, 2009 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
serious dissent seeping out
I share this analysis in my more hopeful moments, and I realize that he can't exactly ride into town like Wyatt Earp...But does he have to enunciate a legal framework purporting to regularize what has always been the province of the rogue agency (for us) or the terror state abroad? (The power to hold indefinitely without charge eats up all other rights...that's why they call Habeas Corpus The Great Writ
September 16, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Concerns me as well. That is why we need to keep the heat on this. I guess the crux is how do we keep the heat on without demonizing Obama as the second coming of W.
September 16, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
the second coming of W.
My hyperbole aside, I am pretty clear that he is not that...And I am willing to impute purer motivations to Prez than his outward conduct might otherwise portend.
I just don't want to be burned again...and I worry that he might sincerely believe that there is some describable person who might justifiably be held for life without charge...
Remember this: He taught here, not here.
September 16, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I find it so odd that so many of us, time and time again, think politics and moral purity can go hand in hand.
Isn't this kind of like believing in Santa Klaus and the Easter Bunny?
September 16, 2009 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or that Klaus Kinski could play the Easter Bunny? That said, I think JR asks a cogent question as to "what universe there is a context within which we can frame what Prez is doing here as serving any kind of good, greater or lesser, as it were".
September 16, 2009 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
kind of like believing
You mean there's no Ea....I gotta lay down till my head stops spinning..
September 16, 2009 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am so hesitant to pipe into this thread. I have been crazy-angry by the President's human rights policies on preventive detention, and Robert Gibbs' dance around subjects like rendition, black sites, etc. Not that the press inquires too often about those issues. But I simply cannot square these behaviors with the essentially good man I believe him to be.
So my mind leads me to wonder if there are any threats, veiled or otherwise, that are limiting his course corrections from Bush's era. Before you double over in laughter, please remember all that came out concerning Hoover's threats to Kennedy, threats from the IRS, god knows what all. Treasury Dept. Secret Service agents have to guard him, take a bullet for him. Who are they, really? I don't know.
And I get it may sound wackadoodle, but...there it is.
A caveat: I would not have expected him to populate his administration with Chicago economists, but...there that is, too.
September 16, 2009 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
veiled or otherwise
I see no reason why Prez should have been immune from the "oversight" of the Cheney Regime...
September 16, 2009 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cheney Regime
Other link dead.
September 16, 2009 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But I simply cannot square these behaviors with the essentially good man I believe him to be"
this is the problem. You have the evidence of what he actually does right in front of your face, yet you cling to this illusion from all the pretty rhetoric from his campaign, books, or what not.
Face it, Obama is not an essentially good man.
You need to update your opinion to draw valid conclusions in the present.
September 16, 2009 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Face it
Who're ya gonna believe?? Me, or your lyin' eyes...
September 16, 2009 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oy, a number one post.
About farking time...
I think Obama is a good man, meself. You can't fool so many. He isn't the problem.
September 16, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Obama is a good man, meself
Captain O nowithstanding, me too...(Taking the bio as a whole, if he's not, we stand zero chance of ever having such a one do the Preznit thing, which (as Michelle presciently remarked) is no real fun...
September 16, 2009 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
A number one post???!!
Fix! Fix!
Alarum! Alarum!
etc. ;-)
September 17, 2009 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
bwak - mibbit pm - and i'll try to to exxplain
September 17, 2009 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink