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Tag Archives: Barack Obama

The Information War

The time has long since passed when governments can commit crimes in the dark, run secret wars, and have their passive and narcotized citizens go along with it, fund it, and salute when they’re told. The advance of technology has challenged the State’s information monopoly, and broken the power of the gatekeepers in the “mainstream” media: [...]

Counterinsurgency Down for the Count in Afghanistan… But the War Machine Grinds On and On and On

President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy isn’t working.  So said a parade of Afghanistan watchers during the flap over war commander General Stanley McChrystal’s firing.  But what does that phrase, so often in the media these days, really mean?  And if the strategy really isn’t working, just how can you tell? The answers to these questions raise even [...]

Statusquobama

Statusquobama | The Range: The Tucson Weeklys Old Pueblog | Tucson Weekly.

Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press

In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press. Mr. Drake was charged in April; in May, an F.B.I. translator [...]

Death Without Due Process

Today, the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing called “The Rise Of The Drones II: Examining The Legality Of Unmanned Targeting.”* The hearing addressed the legality of the use of unmanned systems (i.e. drones) in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Pakistani border regions, and elsewhere. The [...]

Fixing Detroit: A Laboratory for Saving America’s Cities?

One evening last month, the mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, took to the podium at a downtown theater. The occasion was the state of the city address, and despite the mayor’s best effort to project optimism, the truths facing America’s 11th largest city are grim. The budget deficit is at least $85 million. The police [...]

Obama administration ‘looks backwards’ to punish heroes

In a society that adheres to the rule of law, killing innocent civilians is still considered a war crime. Of course, this isn’t the era of accountability. This is the era of Obama, and the era of Obama is about “looking forward, not backwards.” We don’t look backwards if the former vice-president admits to a war crime [...]

Obama orders hospital visitation rights for gays, lesbians

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama has told the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a rule that would not allow hospitals to deny visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners. The president’s memo Thursday notes that “There are few moments in our lives that call for great compassion and companionship that when [...]

What happened to “look forward, not backward”?

Let’s spend just a moment thinking about what this means.  We’ve known since December, 2005, that Bush officials, including at the NSA, committed felonies by eavesdropping on Americans without the warrants required by law — crimes punishable by a five-year prison term and$10,000 fine for each offense.  All three federal judges to rule on the question have found those [...]

No One Should Be Above The Law

In 1776, our founding fathers made a bold pronouncement: that all men are created equal, that we were endowed with inalienable rights, and, among these were Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Enshrined in our Constitution were more bold pronouncements: that no man could be deprived of his rights, that no man [is] above the [...]

Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama ‘dumped him for dinner’

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday [...]

No You Can’t (Featuring John Boehner)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOUctySD68[/youtube]

Patrick Kennedy leaves note for Ted on gravesite: “Dad, the unfinished business is done.”

The political odyssey of health care reform in many ways is the story of Ted Kennedy, and as President Obama signed the historic bill into law Tuesday, Kennedy’s gravesite was a place of quiet celebration and poignant reflection. The late senator’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, spent hours Sunday at the simple white cross at Arlington [...]

Obama, Clinton fundraiser admits $292 million fraud

Hassan Nemazee, 60, who once ran a private equity firm, admitted in Manhattan federal court to defrauding Bank of America Corp of more than $142 million, Citigroup Inc of $74.9 million and HSBC Holdings Plc of $74.9 million to pay his debt to Citigroup. [...] Nemazee was listed as one of the top “bundlers” of [...]

The Limits of Rahmism

One day, Obama is saying he will sign no health care bill without a government-run “public option”; the next, he all but drops it. One day, he is bashing the “shameful” bonuses for “fat-cat bankers” at bailed-out firms, the next he is serving dinner to corporate titans at the White House and saying he does [...]

Obama and the State of Democrats

Options for Obama abound: Mixing jobs, populism and American nationalism, for example, creates a perfect political trifecta for the Democrats. One of the State of the Union dial focus groups indicated that the strongest pro-Obama response occurred when the President suggested ending tax breaks for corporations that outsource American jobs. Up to now, Obama has [...]

Israel and America: Foolish tricks

By its continued settlement expansion, Israel makes the two-state solution ever harder to realise… Politics is ultimately about interests. Morals and highfalutin principles have their place, but a more reliable truth is that governments and countries usually act in their own self-interest. Usually. The way Israel greeted the visiting US vice-president, Joe Biden, this week offers an [...]

Obama To Republicans: ‘You Had Ten Years’ To Focus On Costs

Health Care in America: Barack Obama Pwns -(X)- March 08, 2010 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igiHKB_5ERU[/youtube]

What Good It Does: On the Obama – Dalai Lama Meeting

What good does a meeting with the Dalai Lama do? What good it does is simple — it sends a clear message to Beijing that they are not the only ones who set the agenda on the Tibet. It sends a clear message that there are limits to their sphere of influence outside their borders. [...]

When Democrats take power, paranoia blooms

Last week, CNN released a poll showing that 86 percent of Americans believe the U.S. government is “broken.” I admit my first reaction was to wonder subversively, “How would they know?” A contemporaneous Pew survey of the public’s “political news IQ” showed that on one of the most heavily reported issues of 2009-10, only 32 [...]

Seven Paragraphs

There are times when governments fight to keep documents secret to protect sensitive intelligence or other vital national security interests. And there are times when they are just trying to cover up incompetence, misbehavior or lawbreaking. Last week, when a British court released secret intelligence material relating to the torture allegations of a former Guantánamo [...]

Bush, Cheney and the Great Escape

Is there any hope at all that the larger players in the Bush-era criminal activities – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz most prominently – will be brought to justice when those two lesser lights (Yoo and Bybee) are allowed to return to a law school classroom and a seat on the federal [...]

Behind the Lack of Medical Marijuana Research: Feds Disallowing Initiatives

It’s the “catch-22″ that has plagued medical marijuana advocates and patients for decades. Lawmakers and health regulators demand clinical studies on the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis, but the federal agency in charge of such research bars these investigations from ever taking place. But it took until now for the federal government to finally [...]

The Great Recession’s Job Losses

From the BLS: The unemployment rate fell from 10.0 to 9.7 percent in January, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-20,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction and in transportation and warehousing, while temporary help services and retail trade added jobs. Image via Calculated Risk This graph shows [...]

On the claimed “war exception” to the Constitution

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZz7mwvmm7A[/youtube] But even if you’re someone who does want the President to have the power to order American citizens killed without a trial by decreeing that they are Terrorists (and it’s worth remembering that if you advocate that power, it’s going to be vested in all Presidents, not just the ones who are as Nice, Good, Kind-Hearted [...]