Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

(by far leftist I assume you mean Ted Kennedy types) xxxp

ah, the deep-in-his-heart argument... could we swear an organ in?

a world where roseanne gets 10-15% support is a world with roseanne still on television

or a world where every state in the country is like MN circa 1998

xp to continue my lil' theory all the stuff about his post-american tranzi charater is bullshit too, if that were true he could have sold afghanistan to india and china and the whole world would be better off, but no, it's "ours" so "we" have to "finish it" or whatever, nobody else can be trusted

this isn't a "deep in his heart" argument! he doesn't trust anyone except himself and like four people from chicago! this is pretty clear!

goole, if you are right on your "Cheney's watching" argument, then why did Obama say in the 2008 campaign that "we're not a country that detains ppl without a trial"? was he that 'naive'?

or was he just lying? (easy answer)

I actually have no trouble believing there's classified information out there that you don't get to see until you are President that could change your mind about the usefulness of indefinite detention.

what's going on w/roseanne??

and that's an unrebuttable argument, so well played! xp

she is seeking the Presidential nomination of the Green Party

she's one of 2 finalists.

btw goole, by your theory, when Cheney said on TV last summer that he was glad O had "seen the light" on terror and detention, Obama turned to Bill Daley and heaved a sigh of relief?

well if DJP's argument is unknowable then neither is yours...

i think he naively underestimated how cheney-fied the CIA and military was and how hard their stance was on forgetting torture ever happened. my reading is that john brennan said, ok you can send people into pakistan or you can have a 'get right with god' moment on the darkside stuff, pick one.

i don't think holder really knew what kind of a shitshow a terror trial in new york would cause either.

I actually have no trouble believing there's classified information out there that you don't get to see until you are President that could change your mind about the usefulness of indefinite detention.

i don't doubt the 'usefulness' of indefinite detention, just its legality and morality.

legality follows usefulness, as it has throughout the history of man

the Geneva Conventions were not created because they were that useful

The writers of the constitution knew some of the language there was not useful, so I don't exactly agree with you DJP

How useful were the guys we let out of Guantanamo after 4-5 years who didn't do anything, and have told their stories in the media?

habeas corpus isn't really that useful to most ppl in authority

FWIW, if anyone cares and in an attempt to not make this a filibuster -- the reasons why i am even willing to consider a third party (i was quite vehemently anti-Nader back in the day, before he went on TV and made his odious racial comments about Obama) are: (1) the solidification of "money=power" and everything that goes with that; (2) the shit economy (usually my #1 concern and very closely tied in with "money=power"); and (3) i have no more faith in Obama, left to his own devices anyway. his administration's appalling record on civil liberties is important, but admittedly secondary for me. (i'm mixed on foreign policy - pre-Bush, i was a bit more hawkish than some liberal/lefties; but i don't agree with the overall continuance of the Bush-Cheney way of thinking).

so there you are.

so am I completely mistaken in my impression that the economy overall has been slowly improving over the past 12 months (at least, in states where they didn't enact laws that caused $11B worth of labor to flee)?

tbh I am not a presidential scholar and I was very young at the time, but given the treatment of history I have a hard time imagining Carter being to the right of Obama

― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Friday, February 3, 2012 2:30 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Carter ran as a centrist, to the right of McGovern. He was anti-abortion, he deregulated the airlines, he stayed within the continuum of our cold-war national defence strategy, our military and CIA were all over South America and the Middle East, he oversaw huge tax cuts to corporations. He lost favor with the unions who felt betrayed, and he was criticized form the left during his presidency, just like Clinton and Obama.

I think maybe he was generally to the left of Obama during his presidency, but I think Obama has effected more liberal gains in policy than Carter did.

I think Carter is an amazing humanitarian, and I don't want to detract form his accomplishments both during and after his presidency, but I think he was much less a liberal president than we remember.

economy's in better shape, I think unemployment's down a little & the GOP has been kicking itself in the balls every day before live news cameras for several months

even haters like me get huge lols from how fucked the GOP is

The economy ios getting better and we are in much better shape then the austerity fetishists on the other side of the pond.

Krugman and others who seem to know more about the economy agree that we have made economic progress, but we could have made more. On the economy as with civil liberties, Obama made promises in 2008 that he has not kept. With a different economic team without Geithner we could have made more progress. Obama has gone after whistleblowers but not Wall Street.

Obama's refusal to release the legal argument for killing Americans abroad, and for putting them on secret lists, may make the CIA and the Pentagon happy but it is not consistent with his 2008 campaign or American ideals. But I'm still a hold your nose and vote for the least objectionable candidate who will win.

carter's term in office offers a useful demonstration of what happens to a president who isn't supported by his party.

and more than just a lack of faith in Obama, i have no more faith in the Democratic Party. i can no longer tolerate the gabbnebized mess that that sorry pack of clowns has become.

and yes, the economy has been slowly improving ... i'll even concede we've gone about it better than the Europeans (b/c at least early on during the crisis we didn't kick Keynesianism to the curb). i am also convinced that until the "money=law" problem that the OWS has been on about these past few months is satisfactorily resolved that we'll be right back in the same jam at some point.

have a grand theory obama's miseries w/r/t war, surveillance and the law are all based on domestic political fears, but i have no real proof, just a feeling. like, cheney pulled all this shit because he was legit interested in eternal global dominance. obama is paranoid about anything going wrong on his watch

Agree 100%, and expressed very similar sentiments on some thread about a year, year-and-a-half ago. Obama is afraid to call attention to himself by majorly reversing course on anything because he's a) a Democrat, b) an egghead, and c) black. The political strategy has been completely wasted in terms of Republicans, who go ahead and obstruct legislation and caricature him as an appeaser and such regardless. It may make a difference in terms of voters in the middle; I think many of them will see the bizarre disconnect between what Republicans say about Obama in terms of foreign policy and what he actually does.

That's all politcal, of course. The morality of what he's been doing is another issue, and I understand the anger.

Also agree with most all of DJP's long post, but simply stopped trying to say any of that stuff in politcal threads because it wasn't worth being ridiculed for.

well if DJP's argument is unknowable then neither is yours...

OK I give up, what's my argument?

I believe Carter was "anti-abortion" in the same way as Mario Cuomo was -- personally thinks it's morally untenable but didn't do anything to restrict it.

Carter jacked up military spending after Ford lowered it, and his UN ambassador Andrew Young didn't even vote for tough sanctions against South Africa. "Human rights" my ass.

srsly I'm not sure what "unknowable" thing yer talkin' about in my argument

Your argument is that Obama always intended to keep up with indefinite detention and that he lied about it so he could lefties to vote for him, which is a conclusion based on these facts:

- Obama said he was against indefinite detention on the campaign trail
- after getting into office his position changed

You can definitively say "Obama went back on his word." You can definitively say "Obama did not follow through on his campaign promise." You cannot say "Obama lied to us" because that is assigning intent to the facts.

(Just as goole is assigning intent to the facts re: his conspiracy, only goole acknowledged that he was assigning intent.)

there's no point in speculating about any politician's private motives. i would guess that obama probably feels a little more guilty about doing it than bush did, but it doesn't change the fact that both of them carried out essentially the same policy.

Obama's SEC as discussed in today's NY Times:

Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/business/sec-is-avoiding-tough-sanctions-for-large-banks.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

i would guess that obama probably feels a little more guilty about doing it than bush did

heh see i wouldn't even go this far in the speculation!

for all his blindness the story that has emerged (i mean, who knows anything ultimately) was that bush was personally quite shocked, if only by the surprise, by stuff like abu ghraib. obama has some kind of sense of himself as making tough lincolnoid decisions that will appear judicious to history.

that's the kind of times-speak that pays for yves smith's traffic...

I don't care a fig why Obama decided to be Bush Plus on detention OR what his motives are. (When a modern US president does something morally right, it's always pure coincidence.)

yeah, thinking we know much at all about these cats from reading about em is wishful, at least til the postmortems come out. (Or tapes. Hours and hours of tapes.)

thanks for the link, curmudgeon -- i mean, really, i don't even see how investigating (let alone prosecuting) wrongdoing such as that surrounding the financial crisis is even an ideological question. i suspect the reasons are twofold: (a) Obama and the Democrats don't want to cut down the Wall Street money tree; and (b) ambitious SEC personnel who don't want to rock the boat b/c of consideration (a) and b/c they have plans to work for Wall Street (or the BigLaw firms that defend them).

Federal judges in New York and Wisconsin recently criticized the S.E.C. for its habit of settling cases by allowing companies to promise not to violate the law in the future.

This shit is some bad bad shit. It's time to clean house at the SEC.

regulatory capture :(

follow the money = the only effort i expend in trying to suss out politicians' motives. all the rest is pointless mental wank.

also, regulatory capture points to institutional rot much deeper than a single election can cure.

mic check

taking a personal day on May 1 for sure

you think there would be, if not money, serious political capital in being an anti-finance elliot ness figure. elizabeth warren's donation bucket says as much.

she seems unlikely to be interested in whores also.

there's never going to be enough money in being anti-finance as there will be in being pro-finance alas.

When Obama wanted to do that "Grand bargain" (cutting entitlements and such in exchange for some token tax increases) the argument was that he wanted to look like the "reasonable adult". Too often on many items it seems he believes that a centrist approach is the only "reasonable adult" option. Ok SEC we will just settle with these firms...

the SEC and other regulatory agencies pay a decent salary and have good benefits (well, until the GOP starts screaming about overpaid federal bureaucrats and Obama dutifully signs onto the cause the way he did with "entitlement reform"). but no, not as much as a hedge fund or a white-shoe law firm will -- nor should they (the taxpayers won't stand for it).

(When a modern US president does something morally right, it's always pure coincidence.)

Really? This is where your position starts to look less and less principled than lazy. What did Bush get for expanding AIDS treatment in Africa?

continued fealty from the religious right, for starters.

kinda wish we had message boards in 1937...

I think any president elected in the wake of the 2nd biggest economic meltdown in US history (and one with international ramifications every bit as large as the GD) is going to put the economy first, quite naturally. That Obama has done this is not suprising but that he's done it and passed healthcare reform is quite ambitious.

The real institutional capture is that nobody wants to mess w/finance when everybody's doing well and no-one dares mess w/them when times aren't doing so well. I just don't see OWS having the same intensity and breadth if unemployment were under 6%.

there's never going to be enough money in being anti-finance as there will be in being pro-finance alas.

The Rudy Guiliani Story!

What did Bush get for expanding AIDS treatment in Africa?

good press, future markets.