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

god only knows what a 'liberaltarian' is

the hypocrisy on this point is pretty blatant Matt, I don't get what "realities" are being elided here

or is it just that you don't think he should be shocked

nobody's a hypocrite cause nobody's a liberal

GG really thinks that there were a ton of "progressives" who thought Gitmo, civil liberties etc. were a big deal and voted for Obama in large part because of it.

1. the number of these people is small, too small to be judged from these polls

2. if we could do a poll of these people, most of them would be disappointed with Obama, and very few would now suddenly support civil liberties violations.

But GG probably chats with 2 or 3 of these people online so he's really pissed.

yes sadly i think GG overestimates how much the civil liberties grodiness was animating liberals in 2006 or 08

i think he is right about various kinds of media basically ignoring this issue now that a liberal is president however

the number of people saying they support guantanamo's operation is legit surprising

I'm reasonably certain there's poll data showing a shift among liberals both pre- and post-Obama election

the % of people who could actually tell you what guantanamo is, why it exists, how it operates is probably pretty low

like I wouldn't be surprised if < 50% would know what country it's in

GG really thinks that there were a ton of "progressives" who thought Gitmo, civil liberties etc. were a big deal

He explicitly says these ppl were posturing/pretending to care about these matters when BushCheney were in charge.

Turns out all they really do care about is gay pride proclamations, abortion/contraception, and the prez being "cool."

the fact that they're idiots doesn't make them not hypocrites though

xp

otherwise i pretty much agree

He explicitly says these ppl were posturing/pretending to care about these matters when BushCheney were in charge.

Turns out all they really do care about is gay pride proclamations, abortion/contraception, and the prez being "cool."

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 8:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even in this construct, those people aren't suddenly OK with Gitmo, they're just supporting Obama anyway. These polls don't reflect Gitmo hypocrites.

GG really thinks that there were a ton of "progressives" who thought Gitmo, civil liberties etc. were a big deal and voted for Obama in large part because of it.

1. the number of these people is small, too small to be judged from these polls

no idea where you're getting your info from but i've never met a single self-defined progressive OR liberal who wasn't at least kind of bothered by the bush admin's policies on civil liberties, espec. gitmo.

seriously cannot remember encountering a single 'liberal' person, outside of maybe a fuckin' joe klein article or something, that insisted that bush was doing a stellar job on the civil liberties front.

'I don't know anyone who voted for nixon' etc.

Matt also did not hear the applause in every Bam '08 "I will close Guantanamo" speech

Matt, you're being real disingenuous. Every liberal friend in '05 specifically mentioned Bush's civil liberties violations (and Iraq) as his most egregious cins.

xpost that applause was just a tiny portion of the audience clapping really loudly

also they were shouting boo-urns

Maybe Matt can visit the OWS thread and enlighten them on their complete disconnect from the American political system.

Matt, you're being real disingenuous. Every liberal friend in '05 specifically mentioned Bush's civil liberties violations (and Iraq) as his most egregious cins.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 9:38 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Iraq>>>>>civil liberties violations

your liberal friends are a scintilla in a poll of "Democrats." and I presume hardly any of them are now ok with Gitmo remaining open.

your liberal friends are a scintilla in a poll of "Democrats." and I presume hardly any of them are now ok with Gitmo remaining open.

You can't untangle the war in Iraq and the diminishing of civil liberties in a national security state primed for war. That's like bemoaning MLK for "abandoning" civil rights to concentrate on the Vietnam War -- they were both connected!

remember Alec Baldwin's line from The Departed? "PATRIOT ACT!!!"

GG really thinks that there were a ton of "progressives" who thought Gitmo, civil liberties etc. were a big deal and voted for Obama in large part because of it.
1. the number of these people is small, too small to be judged from these polls

no idea where you're getting your info from but i've never met a single self-defined progressive OR liberal who wasn't at least kind of bothered by the bush admin's policies on civil liberties, espec. gitmo.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 9:30 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"kind of bothered"

GG is arguing against a phantom progressive who pretended to be upset by Gitmo but is now supporting it. Where are these people? This poll doesn't show them, it shows a much broader portrait of Democrats and the public at large. Passionate Liberaltarians are a small part of that larger whole, and hardly any of them were frontin' on Gitmo.

uh have you read his links, dude?

and he's been writing about the silence of liberals who weren't so quiet when Bush was in the Oval Office for three years now. There's a search engine.

yeah, um read the poll a little more closely dude

xp

DUDE

Does GG really think people now "support" Gitmo and think it's hunky dory when they used to "pretend" it was awful? It's more complicated than that and a broad poll of the Democratic electorate does not show this kind of rampant hypocrisy. People are ok with Obama not closing it because they realized how complicated closing it would be, because they weren't that passionate about it in the first place etc.

Does anyone know someone who actually was pretending to be upset about Gitmo but now thinks it's ok? It's an absurd straw man.

he has a better case on drone strikes, but that's a hypothetical.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postabcpoll_020412.html

This is the breakdown of the poll data as linked by Greenwald. As far as I can tell, the relevant data is here:

13. Changing topics, thinking about the following decisions of the Obama administration, please tell me whether you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove.
2/4/12 - Summary Table
                                           --- Approve ----   -- Disapprove --   No
                                           NET  Str.  Smwt.   NET  Smwt.  Str.   op.
a. Keeping open the prison at Guantanamo                             
   Bay for terrorist suspects              70    42    28     24    12     13     5
b. The drawdown of U.S. troops from                      
   Afghanistan                             78    56    23     19    10      9     2
c. The use of unmanned, “drone” aircraft               
   against terrorist suspects overseas     83    59    23     11     7      4     6

42% of all respondents strongly approve and 28% somewhat approve. I don't see any demographic breakdown in the data about left/Democratic voters anywhere; Greenwald seems to be taking the quoted excerpt of the article on faith without any link to corroborating evidence. (I have no reason to doubt those figures but I'm not going to base a screed on a quote with no numbers behind it.)

What I do take away from the data presented is that of these three positions, people disapprove of Guantanamo the most but not at levels that would cost Obama the election, which strikes me as accurate.

I am not happy about Gitmo but I have a certain understanding that a POTUS cannot just ride roughshod over the 'establishment' w/o losing a lot of political capital, esp a Democrat in a period of paranoid hysteria. I would have preferred a more agressive look-in on Wall Street practices, too, but again, not easy when you have the second largest financial slowdown in US history and ppl are clamoring to get the economy restarted a lot more loudly than they are for justice. Call me jaded, if you wish, but a lot of this hard stuff will be easier during a second term. I'd prefer he be bold about ditching Afghanistan, frankly, so we can quit the 'war on terror' and return to treating terrorists as psychotic murderers subject to our justice system instead of boosting them into an army or whatever the fcuk Cheney decided they were.

a lot of this hard stuff will be easier during a second term.

this is the opposite of jaded imho

I'd prefer he be bold about ditching Afghanistan, frankly, so we can quit the 'war on terror' and return to treating terrorists as psychotic murderers subject to our justice system instead of boosting them into an army or whatever the fcuk Cheney decided they were.

but... current Obama policy is to treat them as psychotic murderers completely outside ANY justice system!

Most second terms are a wash though. There is little reason to hope any president will Do The Hard Stuff then.

i can't think of any president who pursued more progressive policies in his second term than his first -- most of FDR's second term was spent dealing with fallout from the court-packing fiasco.

Most second terms are a wash though.

Despite Issa's best efforts, I've yet to see the kind of corruption that usually messes w/a second term. It might be there and it might distract him, but at least he'd be somewhat freer to talk about these subjects publicly.

yeah it never happens. most you can hope for is some foreign policy successes. anything requiring congressional cooperation basically won't happen.

He can discuss them but he's a lame duck and the Congress knows it.

and Gitmo isn't getting closed without congress's help - they're the ones who fucked up all previous efforts to close it in the first place

xp

big fan of the filing of reproductive rights alongside other airhead fauxgressive concerns like HRC parties and obama al green youtubes. truly artisanal work.

let's not discuss the Human Rights Campaign on this thread -- I might get poisonous.

Maybe Matt can visit the OWS thread and enlighten them on their complete disconnect from the American political system.

as somebody who spent plenty of time at zuccotti park, my biggest thought always was 'there aren't too many people here, all things considered'

i'm not holding my breath waiting for a "better and more progressive!!" Obama his second term, either. we'll be lucky to get Clinton's second term (minus Monicagate).

just wanted to pipe in to say that i think glenn greenwald is up there with my least favorite human beings in the world but he's probably right about obama supporters changing their mind about gitmo before + after election. i think it's sad, but telling about the American (and maybe World) public. that said, his broader implicit point (i assume from numerous other articles i've read by him, i haven't read this particular one) that this makes liberals just like conservatives is incorrect. there is still a much larger critical-of-Obama left than there was a critical-of-Bush right, including mr greenwald himself. the problem is that he enjoys pretending like he's one voice shouting into the darkness when actually there's a bunch of ppl who agree with him, who write similar things (i'm sure if he wasn't on vacation, sullivan would be quoting this article approvingly). it's nowhere near the majority of the democratic party, but it's growing.

there is still a much larger critical-of-Obama left than there was a critical-of-Bush right, including mr greenwald himself.

Agreed, and the White House knows it or knew it (e.g. Rahm Emmanuel shaking fingers at "fucking retarded" liberals). Unimaginable when Bush and Ronnie stuck their fingers in the press' asshole.