Obama national security speech: The American people are not absolutist

Today Obama and Cheney have dueling speeches on national security (I’ll examine Cheney’s in a post later today). (Some of the pictures of Obama in this post are actually of the wax figure of Obama which arrived at the Wax Museum in San Francisco today. See if you can spot which ones.)

Obama repeatedly stressed the need to stick with our fundamental values*

*unless it is absolutely convenient not to. So there was a lot of stirring rhetoric interspersed with less stirring caveats.

He said that the Bush admin (which he never named) made after 9/11 “a series of hasty decisions” and “all too often... made decisions based on fear rather than foresight.” Oh, I’m pretty sure those are the same decisions they’d have made with the benefit of more time and less soiled underpants.


“Now, I know some have argued that brutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. ... That’s why we must leave these methods where they belong, in the past.” Er, they didn’t really belong there either. It’s not like waterboarding was ever a good idea.

“Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo, likely, created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.” So it’s like a Ponzi scheme....?


He said some prisoners will be tried by US courts for violating US laws, some will be tried by military tribunals for violating the laws of war, some will be released per previous court rulings, some transferred to other countries and... “Now, finally, there remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.” Oh good, the legal category, so well known to the Constitution, of people who “cannot be tried and cannot be released.” “Examples of that threat include people who’ve received extensive explosives training at Al Qaida training camps or commanded Taliban troops in battle or expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans.”

“Expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.”


He explained that he released the Bush Justice Dept memos because “the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known. The Bush administration had acknowledged its existence. And I had already banned those methods.” Anyone else have the distinct impression that he would have covered them up if “the existence of that approach to interrogation” had not been “already widely known”?

“There was and is no debate as to what is reflected in those photos is wrong.” Obama doesn’t watch a lot of Fox News.

“I ran for president promising transparency. And I meant what I said. And that’s why, whenever possible, my administration will make all information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable.” You know, whenever possible. Of course it’s always possible; he means whenever it’s not inconvenient. When it is inconvenient, he’ll let the American people make uninformed judgments and hold the government unaccountable. Like his retention of the power to detain people indefinitely, this comes down to the same “trust us, we’re the good guys” approach as the Cheneyites.

Speaking of Cheney, he gave a little shout-out to his rebuttal speaker: “Some Americans are angry. Others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, in some cases, debates that they have lost.”

He opposes a truth commission. “I have opposed the creation of such a commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability.” Of course, the purpose of the truth commission would be to investigate things that our existing democratic institutions failed to prevent happening, so, you know, good luck with that.


“Already, we’ve seen how that kind of effort only leads those in Washington to different sides to laying blame.” Er, so?

IN OLDEN DAYS A GLIMPSE OF STOCKING: “on the one side of the spectrum, there those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism and would almost never put national security over transparency. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words -- anything goes.”

“Now, both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right. The American people are not absolutist. They don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems.” You know what the Constitution and Bill of Rights – which you’re literally standing right in front of – are, Barack? A rigid ideology.

An opportunity to have a colonoscopy

Sen. Inhofe on how great it is to be a prisoner in Guantanamo: “anyone, any detainee over 55 has an opportunity to have a colonoscopy.” Whether he wants it or not. Clearly, the Dems voted to keep Gitmo open as a sneaky move to bring in socialized medicine.

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The ad which asks the burning question, If my dad married a man, who would be my mom?



Think of the children.

Oh, half a woman in thong, we hardly knew ye

In Britain, the scandal over MPs’ expenses is taking scalps. Speaker Michael Martin, who I always thought rather bad at presiding over Parliament, is out, as is Douglas Hogg (Indy headline: “Hogg Stands Down to Spend More Time Cleaning His Moat”). Many more MPs will stand down at the next election or be de-selected by their local parties.

Chinese authorities have stopped some... entrepreneur’s plans to open a sex theme park called Love Land, and sent in workers to tear it down. CAPTION CONTEST:

Heh, he said bottom

Budget Director Peter Orszag says the economy has “bottomed out.” Or does he mean the economy is a “bottom”?

Obama and Netanyahu: unfortunately, Bibi seems to have misplaced his address book

Today, Obama met with Binyamin Netanyahu, and then had a press conference. Obama said Bibi “has both youth and wisdom,” which in terms of misperception is right up there with Bush looking into Putin’s soul.


While they may have disagreed about a two-state solution, there was no disagreement about Israel’s proper identity as an ethno-sectarian state. Obama: “It is in U.S. national security interests to assure that Israel’s security as an independent Jewish state is maintained.” Netanyahu: “I think that the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state”. For what other state does the US recognize a principle of racial/ethnic/religious dominance as legitimate?


Bibi said “we don’t want to govern the Palestinians.” Not that he wants anybody else to do it either; anarchic chaos is just fine with him. “We want them to govern themselves, absent a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel.” You know, just a handful of powers.

Obama gently twitted Netanyahu on settlements (the Bib-stir authorized a new West Bank settlement just before leaving for Washington, an entirely new one as opposed to “expansion” of an existing settlement), saying that settlements are “a difficult issue. I recognize that, but it’s an important one and it has to be addressed.” Which, as Eli points out, is not a demand that settlement-building stop immediately. What else needs to be “addressed”? “I think the humanitarian situation in Gaza has to be addressed.” I believe the linguists call that the future nebulous tense.

What is it with New York Times columnists?

I mean, Paul Krugman has been stealing all his best ideas from me for years.

But he had a banana

Eyewitness Statement of the Day: “If he had had a gun he would’ve shot me. But he had a banana.”

Nice little social safety net you got here, it’d be a shame if something was to happen to it

Schwarzenegger, trying to influence next Tuesday’s vote, suggests the budget cuts that will ensue if when his initiatives are voted down. For example, do we really need the third and seventh grades?

So Nancy Pelosi said that the CIA failed to tell her about waterboarding in secret briefings, the CIA says it did. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the secret briefings are for: so that both sides can claim whatever it’s convenient to claim about what took place in them. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Pretty clear

Nancy Pelosi says the CIA lied to her, explicitly denying that there had been any waterboarding. John Boehner thinks he can prove that she is lying by this simple but deadly logic: “When you look at the number of briefings that the Speaker was in and other Democrat members of the House and Senate, it’s pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were.” When you have eliminated the impossible – the CIA failing to tell the truth at multiple briefings – whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” is now Kindliscious

Do you own a Kindle? Me neither. But if you do, you can now pay $0.99 a month to subscribe to this free blog on Kindle. You’re welcome.

Not particularly sensational

So let me get this straight. Obama has decided to fight the court-ordered release of torture pictures which, he claims, are “not particularly sensational” and “would not add any additional benefit to our understanding,” but would, if published, “further inflame anti-American opinion and... put our troops in greater danger.” So the pictures are unsensational but inflammatory. Or maybe he means unsensational to jaded Americans but inflammatory for excitable foreigners.

I’d guess that the real reason here, besides a lot of whining from the military, is that some of the pictures are of abuse that occurred in Obama’s favorite war, Afghanistan, where information about detainee abuse at Bagram – indeed, any information about detainees in Bagram – has been kept relatively quiet – no Lynddie Englands with digital cameras.

He focused on the fact that these abuses of prisoners – which at one point in his statement today he referred to as “alleged abuse” – occurred in the past. But not everyone shares his belief that the United States was born anew on January 20th. He inherited this country’s past along with its government, and while he attempts to sound like an objective outsider making judgments about what is or is not sensational, what will or will not aid the public understanding, he fails to realize that what he sounds like, because it’s what he is, is the head of a government covering up for employees of the government. He is not a disinterested bystander. Bush and Rumsfeld’s cover-up is now Obama’s cover-up.

What, according to Obama, are the dangers of releasing the photos? “I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.” I puzzled over that for a while with no success, but I think Digby has successfully decoded it: “Apparently, the logic is that the military will refuse to investigate criminal behavior if there is any chance that pictures of such criminal behavior could be made public. So we simply won’t make pictures of it public anymore.” To put it another way, the military has other goals that it values more than stopping the abuse of detainees, and Obama is validating those priorities.

In the end, it’s all about protecting our troops: “I am concerned about how the release of these photos would be -- would impact on the safety of our troops.” So if you oppose this cover-up, you hate our troops.

Seems to me I’ve heard all this before.

Name that party!

So the RNC intends to rename the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party.” Ha ha, the Democrat Socialist Party. It’s funny because it’s true.

Clearly the GOP needs a new name too. Any suggestions?

No role in his life and in his personality

Name of the Day (although that day may be sometime in the nineteenth century): the commander of Walter Reed, Col. Coots. Col. Norvell V. Coots, in fact. The V. stands for Vandervall, but then it would, wouldn’t it?

Donald Trump has decided that Carrie Prejean may retain her Miss California title, noting that her views on same-sex marriage are the same as Barack Obama’s. To be fair, I wouldn’t really want him to be Miss California either.

The pope’s spokesmodel, Rev. Federico Lombardi (director of the Vatican Press Office), after first denying that Ratzi had been in the Hitler Youth – “never, never, never” – had to admit that well yes he had but “This fact of the Hitler Youth had no role in his life and in his personality.” The reverend is in the good-and-evil biz, so you’d think he wouldn’t be suggesting that Benny was completely unaffected by the Hitler Youth as if this should be considered a good thing rather than a sign of deep moral obtuseness.

Pope Benny failed to mention his youthful Hitlerian experiences while visiting Israel and giving a speech at the Holocaust Memorial, and he spoke about the Holocaust (he used the approved, Jews-only term Shoah) in the passive voice, that is, without mentioning that Germans had anything to do with it. So perhaps he didn’t learn anything in the Hitler Youth after all.

Cheney is outraged

Icky Quote of the Day, from Randall Terry about Obama’s visit to Notre Dame: “Our mission is to tar him with the blood of the babies so he can never shake it between now and 2012.”

Yesterday on Fox Business News, Neil Cavuto interviewed a man whose mouth always waters when he hears the phrase “blood of the babies,” Dick Cheney.

He accused the Obama admin of missing the big torture picture: “They did it in a way that sort of blocked so far any real discussion of the results of the program, and instead focused upon the techniques themselves.”

Because when you focus on techniques such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, “walling” and the like, you miss the real outrage: “And they really began the debate then with the suggestions that perhaps people should be prosecuted for having participated in the program or the lawyers who gave us these opinions should be disbarred. I think it’s an outrage.” See, and you thought there was nothing so awful that could outrage Cheney.

A ROLLING CHENEY GATHERS NO MOSS: “I don’t think we should just roll over when the new administration says -- accuses of us committing torture, which we did not, or somehow violating the law, which we did not. I think you need to stand up and respond to that, and that’s what I’ve done.”

EXISTENTIALISM: Asked about the possibility of Israel bombing Iranian centrifuges: “I would find it that it would be a reflection of the fact that the Israelis believe this is an existential threat to the state of Israel. ... So, I would expect them to try to do something about it.”

Cavuto asked if Guantanamo prisoners should be released into the US and go on welfare. Cheney said no.

On Guantanamo, “I think if you didn’t have it, you’d have to invent it.”

He referred to the Uighur prisoners as “Chinese terrorists.”

He said Obama is using the economic situation as an “excuse... to significantly broaden the power and authority of the government over the private sector.” He has another solution, which is... wait for it... wait for it... tax cuts.

ON THE NEED FOR A FRESH NEW FACE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: “I like Jeb. I think he’s a good man. ... I’d probably support him for president.” He didn’t say who Jeb should choose as running mate...

Thought of the Day

Maybe we waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times because there were 83 ticking time-bombs.

How many Tories does it take to change a light bulb?

I’ve been enjoying the British scandal (by which I mean a lot of faux moral outrage about something fairly insignificant in the broader scheme of things) over MPs’ taxpayer-reimbursed expenses, which started with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith having to apologize for her husband’s porn pay-per-view habit, continued with David “Two Brains” Willetts (the Tory shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills) hiring an electrician to change some light bulbs, and today reached Douglas Hogg, who was John Major’s agriculture minister, putting in claims for a mole man at his mansion (sadly, that’s a man who exterminates moles, not an actual mole-man) and of course for clearing the moat. Cleaning the moat. How many American politicians even own a moat?

Speaker of the House Michael Martin is outraged... that someone leaked the expense reports to the press. Says Times parliamentary sketchwriter Ann Treneman, “His attire didn’t help: at times, as the buffoon black robe ballooned away, he resembled an enraged parachute.”

Stand-up Obama

Obama, at the NerdProm: “In the next hundred days, our bipartisan outreach will be so successful that even John Boehner will consider becoming a Democrat. After all, we have a lot in common. He is a person of color. Although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

Read his entire gig here.

Or watch it. Part I



Part II

If we had been about torture, we wouldn’t have wasted our time going to the Justice Department

Dick Cheney went on Face the Nation this morning, because nothing says Happy Mother’s Day like Dick Cheney defending torture.

He was just happy to be there: “It’s nice to know that you’re still loved and are invited out in public sometimes.”

He accused the Obama admin of selective release of documents, and if there’s one thing Dick Cheney hates, it’s the selective release of documents: “They don’t have any qualms at all about putting things out that can be used to be critical of the Bush administration policies. But when you’ve got memos out there that show precisely how much was achieved and how lives were saved as a result of these policies, they won’t release those.”

AN INTELLIGENT INTERROGATION PROGRAM: On shutting down torture, which he says saved “thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives”: “Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America.”

OH, IT’S NEVER A WASTE OF TIME GOING TO THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “If we had been about torture, we wouldn’t have wasted our time going to the Justice Department.” The logic is inescapable.


I’M NOT TAKING THE RAP FOR THIS ALONE: Asked if Bush knew about the torture: “I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.” He “basically” authorized it”?

Why Guantanamo is still needed: “The group that’s left, the 245 or so, these are the worst of the worst. This is the hard core. You’d have a recidivism rate out of this group of maybe 50 or 60 percent. ... I don’t know a single congressional district in this country that is going to say, gee, great, they’re sending us 20 Al Qaida terrorists.”

EVIDENTLY HE STILL HAS THAT MAN-SIZED SAFE: “I think there is room for moderates in the Republican Party.”

Rush and Colin Powell have been trying to expel each other from the Republican party. Where, oh where, does the Dickster stand?: “Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh, I think. I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”

A bridge over the valley of the Pennsylvania electorate

Follow-up: Arlen Specter’s fake cancer cure website, which I mentioned here yesterday, has now been altered, making it clear that funds raised will go to the Specter campaign and not cancer, unless of course you consider Arlen Specter to be a cancer on the body politic.

Chores

A survey (in Britain) has determined that cleaning the oven is the most disliked household chore.

Wait... you’re supposed to clean the oven?

There are people who want to create panic in the country and destroy it

Obama admin people are referring to prisoners “we cannot release and cannot try” as if that’s an actual legal category.

The Pakistani military is finally responding to American demands that they start killing Pakistanis (or, as the army spokesmodel called them, “miscreants”), using air strikes and mortars (what else you gonna do with miscreants?) and calling for residents of the Swat valley to flee so they can turn it into a free-fire zone. The army is air-dropping leaflets saying, “There are people who want to create panic in the country and destroy it. Do you want that?” That’s a trick question, right?

(Update: and the NYT quotes another government pamphlet which associates the Taliban with the worst miscreants of all: “They are the same as Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.”)

A bridge over the valley of death

Arlen Specter has launched “Specter for the Cure,” which he calls “a bold new initiative to reform our government’s medical research efforts, cut red tape and unstrangle the hope for accelerated cures.” His website proclaims, “Senator Arlen Specter intends to build a bridge over the valley of death.”

Or, to put it another way, Specter for the Cure is nothing more than a website at which you can donate money they want you to think is going to find a cure for cancer, but which actually goes to Specter’s re-election campaign.

Prick.

(Update: in case Specter is shamed into taking this down, I’ve taken the liberty of taking a screen capture.)

Of learning goals, savage-ry, and the dreaded Tennis Balls of Doom

Bumper sticker seen yesterday: “I achieved my learning goals at Salvador Elementary.”

Thanks a lot, Britain, for making me have to side with Michael Savage in the interests of civil liberties. By the way, it may not have been clear in the news reports that when Britain released the list of people it was banning from entering the country because their opinions are too unpleasant for Brits to cope with, those people hadn’t actually applied to enter Britain. Indeed, some of them are Russian skin heads currently serving long prison terms. So it was just sort of a random list of People We Don’t Like. Of course the real point of the exercise is that Britain’s policy of excluding “radical imams” was beginning to look anti-Muslim, so, like Bush tacking non-Muslim North Korea onto his “axis of evil,” they decided to include Savage and the skinheads. But they couldn’t say that that was the reason they were releasing the list to the press, so it was presented as “naming and shaming” hate-mongers.

Important follow-up: the cat is still not warming to the tennis balls.


Where can I get me one of those hats?

Dude, you just blew my mind

More profundity from the maverick:

A bridge too far

Things Sen. John Thune said about his opposition to a gay person being appointed to the Supreme Court that sound pretty darn homoerotic themselves:

“I know the administration is being pushed”

“but I think it would be a bridge too far right now”

“my hope is that he’ll play it a little more down the middle”

Of moving on from debates about the past and killer tennis balls from hell

John McCain and his aged catamite Lindsey Graham have an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, mostly about how “preventive detention” of enemy combatants should go on for as long as The War Against Terror (TWAT) continues (i.e., forever) and how America’s silly criminal courts aren’t up to the task of dealing with such prisoners. They also reiterate McCain’s position on the legal memos that it is time to “move on from debates about the past,” i.e., torture, which is interesting from John “I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live” McCain.

I was in a dollar store today. The cat is currently staring dubiously at the tennis ball I bought her. It’s just sitting there, but she’s seen it roll, and that’s pretty suspicious in her book. Wait till she finds out there are two more tennis balls.

But the real question of the day is, who would buy a home pregnancy test at a dollar store?

Besides a member of the Palin family, I mean.

Obama’s personal connection to the Zionist idea

Joe (“I would not, could not, on a plane, I would not, could not, on a train”) Biden gave a speech at the AIPAC conference today. He has been widely reported as having been tough on Israel, in that he said there needs to a two-state solution and that Israel should stop with the settlements already (new ones, anyway). Of course most of the actual speech was a big wet kiss.

SHARED VALUES: “The bond between Israel and the United States was forged by a shared interest in peace and security; by shared values and to respect all faiths and for all faiths and for all people; by deep ties evidenced here today among our citizens, both Christian and Jew”. Muslims, not so much.

AS THEY SAY IN THE SENATE: “I want to congratulate my friend, Prime Minister Netanyahu -- and as they say in the Senate, he is my friend -- for his victory.”

FUNNY, HE DOESN’T LOOK...: “[Obama’s] support is rooted in his personal connection to the Zionist idea”.

AND IF I LIFT MY FOOT, YOU CAN SEE THAT RIGHTFUL PLACE: “We want Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations, politically and economically.”

He seemed to accept the current Likud claim that without outside agitators (i.e., Iran), there would be no problems in the Middle East: “Iran also has played a dangerous role in the region supporting terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and undermining many of our friends and those who claim to be our friends. Indeed, these proxies are the tools in my view, our view, that Iran uses to exploit conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- use it to their advantage.”

However, he didn’t entirely buy into the corollary of that theory, that Iran will have to be crushed before Israel even attempts any dialogue with the Palestinians. “In this way the continuation of Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab -- Arab-Israeli conflicts, strengthen Iran’s strategic position.”

GREEN LIGHT: “We will continue to defend Israel’s right to defend itself and make its own judgments about what it needs to do to defend itself.”

“This administration sees and seeks a future of lasting peace and security in which Israeli children can leave behind the tyranny of rockets and terror; when Israeli mothers, as they send their children off to school, do not have to worry about whether or not they will come home; or Palestinian children have full opportunities to live out their dreams, and the entire Middle East does not have to live under the dread of a nuclear cloud.” You’ll notice that only Israeli children are the ones at risk of death from rockets and terror, while Palestinian children only seem to face socio-economic problems, not getting full opportunities to live out their dreams.

Speaking of living out their dreams, afterwards Biden and Obama went out for a burger at Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington. They went dutch. Obama looks like he’s never seen a hamburger before.

Of discernment, moldy Christian leaders of tomorrow, and lighting up crosses rather than blunts

A history teacher in Mission Viejo has been found guilty by a US District Court judge of violating the First Amendment by saying that Creationism is “religious, superstitious nonsense.” The judge wrote, “The court cannot discern a legitimate secular purpose in this statement”.

The California state Supreme Court let stand a ruling that California Lutheran High School (motto: “Molding the Christian Leaders of Tomorrow”) is not subject to civil rights law and was perfectly within its rights to expel two (supposedly) lesbian girls.

Billmon notes and/or links to some of the dickishness of Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, now top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, but leaves out one of the quotes that helped torpedo Sessions’s nomination by Reagan to district court, that he “used to think the Klan was all right until I learned they smoked marijuana.”

(Update: a WaPo article on Sessions mentions the comment, but for some reason only as “remarks Sessions made about the Ku Klux Klan.”)

Epitaph

I didn’t have anything nice to say about Arlen Specter just because he left the Republican Party, and I have nothing nice to say about Jack Kemp just because he’s dead. That is all.

Supreme

What I want as a replacement for David Souter: an actual, for God’s sake, criminal trial attorney. Someone who’s seen the inside of a court. Would be the first since Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991.

Air Force Take Two

After Air Force One’s buzzing of NYC, which many people noted could have achieved the required “cool picture” for less money and fewer 9/11 flashbacks through the use of PhotoShop, the NY Daily News decided to hold a photoshop contest. Here are some of the entries.


Duck!


Plane-et Of The Apes


Campaign Photo-Op


Where No President Has Gone...


Last Flight Out


New York by North by Northwest


wood


Take a look!


Sound of Music


Scream


Times Square


Kong Force One

What’s good for the People’s General Motors Collective...

Obama press conference: humbled, surprised, enchanted, and troubled

Silvio Berlusconi’s wife has been emailing news organizations complaining about his attempt to fill the European Parliament with hot young women, which she calls “entertainment for the emperor.” Silvio responded that she was being manipulated by left-wing media and said that the hot chicks will be a nice contrast to the “evil-smelling, badly-dressed people who represent certain parties in Parliament.” However, he seems to have dropped several of the showgirl candidates from the official candidate list, retaining only Barbara Matera.

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Speaking of entertainment for the emperor, Obama held a prime time press conference to mark his 100th day in office.

He gave some advice to the American people: “So wash your hands when you shake hands. Cover your mouth when you cough.” He’s still trying to wash the Arlen Specter off his hands.


Asked whether waterboarding is torture and whether the Bush administration had sanctioned torture, he answered the first part in the affirmative and wiggled out of answering the second, going only so far as to call waterboarding a “mistake.” He said that “waterboarding violates our ideals and our values,” but evidently letting the people responsible for waterboarding get off scot-free does not violate our ideals and our values.

He said, “we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.” Tickling. Merciless, relentless tickling.

Also, remember to always wash your hands after torturing.

That sort of pragmatic talk about what should be a moral issue always makes me nervous, since he didn’t exactly rule out using torture in circumstances in which information can’t be gotten in other ways.


He applied that pragmatism as well to a question about abortion. He said that the Freedom of Choice Act “is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on.” In other words, the real problem, as far as Obama is concerned, is not maintaining women’s ability to exercise their rights but tamping down anger.

He added, “I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they -- if they suggest -- and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations.” There may be other considerations, but women’s freedom, i.e. their constitutional right to abortion, trumps them.

Also, remember to always wash your hands after an abortion.


NYT reporter Jeff Zeleny asked what most surprised, enchanted, humbled and troubled Obama in his first hundred days. He was surprised by the shitstorm that fell on him, enchanted by the military, troubled by how slowly Washington moves, and humbled by not having the god-like powers he expected. “And so I can’t just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want”. He should definitely work on that, cuz that would be cool.

Also humbling: “I don’t know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid.” Yes, Obama has really been a great disappointment.


Also humbling, or possibly enchanting: somehow everyone who becomes president, even a black guy from Chicago, winds up saying “doggone it”: “But I know that, if the Japanese can design an affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same.”

As long as they remember to wash their hands afterwards.

We’ve ridden that train together again and again

Arlen Specter appeared this morning alongside Obama and Biden.

Specter, perhaps forgetting that people who vote in Republican primaries sometimes show up for general elections as well, said, “I was unwilling to subject my 29-year record in the United States Senate to the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate”. You know, I can’t say I have much respect for Republicans either, but it’s unseemly for an elected official in a democracy to speak quite so disdainfully about “subjecting” himself to voters. Insulting the party leaders is one thing, dismissing the 3,169,194 registered Republicans is something else.

Anyways, the following homoerotic-sounding things were said during the photo op:

Biden: “We’ve ridden the train for so many years... it’s just a delight to have no separation.”

Specter: “We’ve ridden that train together again and again, and we’ve supported that train.”


Specter: “And I appreciate what you have in the stimulus package, Mr. President.”

Specter: “When I talked to the president yesterday, I said, I haven’t seen you in the elevator lately.”

Obama: “I don’t expect Arlen to be a rubber stamp.”

Obama: “And I’m also grateful that Joe Biden paid him a little attention on the train.”

First blows

Scalia, in the 5-4 decision that the FCC was not being arbitrary in fining tv stations for fleeting profanity (a lower court detected arbitrariness because the FCC had changed its policy without warning, subjecting broadcasters to fines for shit they’d gotten away with in the past): “There are some propositions for which scant empirical evidence can be marshaled, and the harmful effect of broadcast profanity on children is one of them.” He then went on about the difficulty of performing this experiment on children, exposing some to a non-stop diet of profanity, but only from tv, to determine its effects. Yes, that would be difficult, although it might explain how Glenn Beck came to be Glenn Beck. Scalia continued, “The FCC did not need empirical evidence proving that fleeting expletives constitute harmful ‘first blows’ to children; it suffices to know that children mimic behavior they observe.” The first blows are always the best, aren’t they?

Mitch McConnell, pathetically explaining the insignificance of Arlen Specter’s switch in party affiliation: “This is not a national story. This is a Pennsylvania story.” Katharine Hepburn was especially good in that one.

Fun fact about The Philadelphia Story: screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart, who won an Academy Award for the movie, was later blacklisted.

Waterlogging

Andy Zaltzman of The Bugle on the logic of waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times: “if the fear of drowning didn’t crack him – and it clearly didn’t – the sight of his fingers going all wrinkly would have been just too much to bear.”

Remembrance

Obama issues a statement for Armenian Remembrance Day. He says, “My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.” However, throughout his statement he fails, as he did in Turkey, to use the word genocide. In fact, the event is actually called Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, not Armenian Remembrance Day. And while he says that Armenians were “massacred” in “one of the great atrocities of the 20th century,” he uses the passive voice a lot, failing to mention who might have been doing the massacring (much like Bush’s Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day statements). Oh well, we know he’s all about the looking forward.

I want new, young faces

As has been noted here before, Silvio Berlusconi tends to promote women into politics for reasons other than competence and experience. Among his picks to liven up the next elections for the European Parliament are Angela Sozio, best known from Big Brother (Grande Fratello),


Eleonora Gaggioli, a tv actress,


Camilla Ferranti, star of soap opera and nudie calendar alike,


and Barbara Matera, a former Miss Italy contestant and tv announcer.


As with his Minister of for Equal Opportunities, you can find topless pictures of some of these women online (hell, it was hard to find a picture of Angela Sozio where she wasn’t topless, but this is a family blog). Sez Silvio, “I want new, young faces.” That was my excuse for this post. But then, I’m running a blog, not a country.

The master of consistency strikes again

I believe him

Israeli Foreign Minister Unholy Avigdor Lieberman says that the US will only work for Middle East peace if Israel tells it to. “Believe me, America accepts all our decisions.”

Super cows and sergeants who love too much

Headline of the Day: “Nazi-Bred Super Cows Roam Farm in Devon.” Heck cattle, they’re called.

The lawyer for Master Sgt. John Hatley, convicted last week of killing four bound and gagged Iraqi prisoners, says: “He loved his soldiers too much, that was his crime.”

Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes

Today Obama visited the CIA. He gave a little talk, standing in front of the wall commemorating the spooks who died in our many, many secret wars.


WELL, IT’S BETTER THAN EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION: “Well, thank you for the extraordinary welcome.”

And why not an extraordinary welcome? He gave them nothing but praise. They’re doing God’s work, they’re “fundamental to America’s national security,” they’re “the tip of the spear,” but not in a gay way. Basically he went to reassure them that just because he released those memos about their having tortured people doesn’t mean he doesn’t love and appreciate them.

WHICH IS TOO BAD, BECAUSE THAT’S KIND OF WHO YOU HAVE TO PROTECT AGAINST: “I understand that it’s hard when you are asked to protect the American people against people who have no scruples and would willingly and gladly kill innocents.”

UNLIKE THE CIA??? “Al Qaeda is not constrained by a constitution.”

WELL ISN’T THAT SPECIAL? “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy; even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it’s expedient to do so.” This as he reassures torturers etc etc.


POTENTIALLY: “So don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks. Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes.” Mistakes? Or, rather, some potential mistakes? Okay, I could see how you could accidentally waterboard somebody thirty or forty times, but I’m pretty sure if you do it 183 times, you’re doing it on purpose.

He continued, “That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States, and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the CIA.” So he’s proud because we’re willing to acknowledge torturing people, so long as there are no consequences for the torturers, and then we “move forward.” That’s how we learn.

The United States obviously has a history in this region that’s not always appreciated from the perspective of some

Barack Obama held a press conference at the end of the Summit of the Americas.

SO THEY SHOULD DENY DIGNITY AND OPPORTUNITY AND A CHANCE TO LIVE OUT THEIR DRIVES TO JUST THE RIGHT NUMBER OF CITIZENS: “And too many citizens are being denied dignity and opportunity and a chance to live out their dreams in Cuba and all across the hemisphere.”


Bolivian President Evo Morales demanded that Obama explicitly oppose assassination attempts and coups (he evidently privately accused Obama, to his face, of being involved in one such attempt). Surprisingly, Obama decided not to take umbrage and just do so: “Now, specifically on the Bolivia issue, I just want to make absolutely clear that I am absolutely opposed and condemn any efforts at violent overthrows of democratically elected governments, wherever it happens in the hemisphere. That is not the policy of our government. That is not how the American people expect their government to conduct themselves.” Well, the American people who have no idea whatsoever of our history... oh, right.


SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST SO UNAPPRECIATIVE: “But one of the things that I mentioned in both public remarks as well as private remarks is that the United States obviously has a history in this region that’s not always appreciated from the perspective of some”.

SOMETHING BUSH WOULD NEVER HAVE SAID: “but we recognize that other countries have good ideas, too, and we want to hear them.” Although later he said the US is boycotting the UN racism conference because there are some ideas we don’t want to hear.

WHAT IT’S IMPORTANT FOR US NOT TO THINK: “it’s important for us not to think that completely ignoring Cuba is somehow going to change policy”.

That said, because Obama made some rather minimal changes in the US’s Cuban policy, the ball is evidently in Cuba’s court now.

SOMETHING ELSE BUSH WOULD NEVER HAVE SAID: On Chavez’s gift of a book about the effects of imperialism in Latin America: “it was a nice gesture to give me a book; I’m a reader.”

Everyone’s a critic

Hugo Chavez gave Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.” John McCain, just to be a dick, twitters this helpful book review: “Chavez’s book - best cure for insomnia!!”

Might want to check the forecast before going outside

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair describes the torture memos as basically historical documents which must be understood in the context of the benighted era of the early 21st century: “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing.” He added, because it would clearly be an act of ethnocentrism to judge the people of that by-gone age by our own values, “we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

So what Blair is saying is that human rights apply only on sunny, safe days. On those rainy, unsafe days when the government might actually want to torture you, those are the days you don’t have the right not to be tortured. On a sunny, safe day when the government doesn’t want to torture you, you have a right not to be tortured. Enjoy it in good health.

In his telling use of the word “graphic,” Blair harkens back to Bush and Rumsfeld’s reactions to the Abu Ghraib pictures, when they were always clearly so much more concerned by the leak of images of torture than they were with the torture itself.

A fleeting moment

Sarah Palin revealed at an anti-abortion event that when she learned that her fetus had Down syndrome, she thought about having an abortion “for a fleeting moment”.

I’m not surprised.

She’s never had a thought that lasted longer than a fleeting moment.

Obama meets Chavez

At the Summit of the Americas. CAPTION CONTEST!

Wherein your humble blogger unleashes some more faux outrage

Karzai explains how that pesky marital rape provision got into the Shia family law he signed: he didn’t notice it was in there because the bill “has so many articles.” So that’s okay, then.

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Obama, in a press conference with Mexican President Calderón: “the relationship between Mexico and the United States cannot just be defined by drugs.”

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Bush’s CIA director Michael Hayden and his last attorney general Michael Mukasey have an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal condemning the release of the torture memos.

For a start, it gives future detainees advance warning of what they will experience: “There would be little point in the president authorizing measures whose nature and precise limits have already been disclosed in detail to those whose resolve we hope to overcome.” Little point, because Al Qaida would just give its members anti-waterboarding vaccines.

“Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption.” Evidently they can’t conceive of the possibility that people might oppose torture for reasons other than political gain. They’ve heard of people having moral principles, they just don’t believe they really exist.

They warn that in future CIA officers will be unwilling to torture: “Even with a seemingly binding opinion in hand, which future CIA operations personnel would take the risk? There would be no wink, no nod, no handshake that would convince them that legal guidance is durable. Any president who wants to apply such techniques without such a binding and durable legal opinion had better be prepared to apply them himself.” I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing in law as a “binding opinion,” even from the Justice Department. Kind of a contradiction in terms, really. Although if legal precedent is what they want, a few trials of CIA torturers and their superiors might establish just that, no winks, nods, or handshakes required.-

Reflection, not retribution

Obama on his position of impunity for torturers: “This is a time for reflection, not retribution”; “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” Because the torturers tortured in, you know, good faith. Good-faith torturing. So that’s okay, then.

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Well-paid, adult men in our government spent their days sending memos back and forth to each other about whether and how to exploit a prisoner’s fear of insects.

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And making up new words for their acts of violence against prisoners: Walling: to slam a detainee into a wall. “A detainee may be walled one time (one impact with the wall) to make a point, or twenty to thirty times consecutively when the interrogator requires a more significant response to a question.” To make a point! More significant response!

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NYT: “Mr. Ahmadinejad warned Wednesday that Washington should adopt a respectful tone toward Iran. ‘The Iranian nation might forget the past and start a new era,’ he said, in a reference to Iran’s accusations that the United States has meddled in its affairs in the past.”

Accusations? Is there some question about CIA involvement in the 1953 coup against Iran’s democratic government? It’s not exactly a he said, she said, is it now?

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Middle East envoy George Mitchell, in Jerusalem today, said that the US goal is “a two-state solution which will have a Palestinian state living in peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel.” What exactly is the American definition of a “Jewish state”? Will Palestinians be allowed to live in it without converting? Will non-Jews have any rights?

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Sigh. Now Clement Freud has died.

Here’s a 6-minute audio clip from a 2006 episode of Just a Minute, on which he performed for more than 40 years, with Freud, Tim Rice, Stephen Fry, and Paul Merton speaking on “How to be irresistible to women”:



Sadly, I was unable to find any of his famous 1960s dog food commercials (with a basset he curiously resembled) on YouTube. The Times quotes some of his columns for the paper. (Update): Like me, the Guardian has been trawling YouTube for his appearances on Just a Minute and elsewhere, and put up a dozen or so here.