Obama over McCain not Bush, of course.
But the whole thing has depressed me too much to think seriously about. Let's do evil things that don't work.
Or, as someone on the Quiggin tread hinted, there is option 4: Obama lost the last elections and he is -whilst certainly imperfect - neither evil in person nor hostage to anything else but to the majority.
And of course in 1 I am using "work" in the boring sense of "help achieve the nominal goals of the various activities" rather than those relating to electoral politics etc. (I think there is a grain of truth in all three hypotheses, but none stand alone.)
A second hypothesis, which seems more plausible, is that Americans generally support these measures, and that Obama either shares their views or is acting out of political expediency. There's plenty of opinion poll evidence to support this hypothesis.
I do wonder about the path dependency of people's attitudes on this (the monstrous lurks within us all). The acts of 9/11 (and don't forget the anthrax!) were a huge factor but I think the subsequent response of political leadership is what really sealed the deal. I distinctly remember seeing a CNN poll early on that had Americans pretty handily rejecting torture/"harsh techniques". I was shocked that they were even asking, and recall mentioning to a co-worker that at least the results showed people were rejecting it.
Obama lost the last elections and he is -whilst certainly imperfect - neither evil in person nor hostage to anything else but to the majority
I don't think this holds up when you look at the case of Bradley Manning. Its not Republicans in the House of Representatives keeping him locked naked and standing in a small, dark room for hours and hours on end in an attempt to elicit a confession that will implicate others. Its Obama's Executive Branch doing that.
... Moreover, you could probably get similar opinion poll responses in other countries, but restrictions on civil liberties have faced far more resistance nearly everywhere outside the US, even in countries that have historically been less interested in individual rights than the US.
I have my doubts about this statement. For example free speech rights remain much stronger in the US than most other places. And a stronger response to 911 in the US is natural considering it was the US that was attacked.
I'm on record since 2007 as never having succumbed to Obama mania, and I always supposed that the best realistic outcome was to be dissapointed by someone different.
So, the guy gets a bum rap.
i. He inherited a far worse situation than FDR; at least Roosevelt wasn't confronted by two unwinnable wars as well as the Great Depression. Arguably he inherited the worst situation since Lincoln. Anybody who ever expected Obama to be either Roosevelt or Lincoln isn't worth arguing with.
ii. in 2008, Obama was a very inexperience politician at national level. The upside of that might have been that he was open to influences outside the charmed circle, but the window of opportunity to extert such influence was necessarily short (see i. above), and there was nobody yelling, "Hey, Mr President Senator, over here!" (let's be clear about when that window was open.) Everybody voted and went home; nobody made a serious effort to 'make him do it'.
iii. Somebody at Pandagon this morning quoted Reagan: "A guy who agrees with you 80% of the time is an ally, not 20% of a traitor." Obama never agreed 80% with the liberal base, maybe not 50%, but he was the best there was. And the netroots expelled him like an insufficiently self critical Maoist at the first sign of disillusion. Of course he's in bed with the military industrial complex, because everybody else threw him out. The President of the United States can't work in a vacuum, nor can 'men make their own history under conditions of their own choosing.'
Obama is gone now, for sure. But why would he stay at a party that didn't want him? gnothe seauton.
"nobody made a serious effort to 'make him do it'." is in tension somewhat with "Of course he's in bed with the military industrial complex, because everybody else threw him out".
For example free speech rights remain much stronger in the US than most other places.
This is true. Remember last decade when the Bush administration was setting up dedicated Free Speech Zones? It was awesome... you could go to a Free Speech Zone and say anything you wanted.
Try doing that in France.
or is acting out of political expediency.
I think the American public by and large doesn't care. Keeping the Republicans happy is the easiest way to keep the issue out of the news, and keep it from being a Fox talking point. And Obama believes he only stands to lose if it becomes a Republican talking point.
I think this logic is idiotic, for the record. But I think that's the logic that Obama is using.
I think Obama just doesn't want to fight about any of this, because he doesn't want to fight for anything that isn't to the benefit of the ruling class. Gitmo remains open, but social security gets cut.
I love these small-d democrats who blame the people for the crimes of kings.
7. Wha? Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Obama in 2010 was not Obama in 2008 or in 2006.
@4: I really don't know. I guess the treatment isn't a matter of personal intervention by Obama or any of his appointed team but rather the result of some stupid application of some stupid protocol. I would imagine that nobody in the Executive Branch has a direct say in how anybody is treated. Maybe I'm as so many times wrong, but I would be surprised if it were so simple as Obama or al. to have the direct influence.
That being said (but again I don't know the details), it would obviously be better if the administration is pointing out who and what led to such an abject treatment.
I tend to be sympathetic to the kinds of arguments in 6, but the specific facts brought up in 4, extinguish any such feelings.
11. And you can fuck off. I blame self appointed vanguards who don't understand that their responsibility is ongoing. The people were led out into the desert by the political minority, and left there (h/t Arthur Hugh Clough) without a thought for the consequenses. Of course I blame Obama; I also blame the people who signed up for his campaign and then demobilised themselves as soon as the results were in. The people, as usual, got the shitty end of the stick.
15 is a good point, however.
he doesn't want to fight for anything that isn't to the benefit of the ruling class
This. So far, pretty much the only things Obama has gone to the mat for are the deal he cut with PhRMA and the bank bailout.
I dont think there is anything that needs a special explanation. There's a centrist consensus that we need indefinite detention, and so Obama goes along.
Oh, and making sure nobody from the previous administration could ever be prosecuted for anything.
6: I don't think this works. I supported Obama in the primaries, after Edwards dropped out, precisely because I thought he was better than Clinton on the human/civil rights issues we're talking about (still, he's probably no worse than she would have been), and I think that was a common position -- that was why he won among leftier voters. And I gave him a good year of slack on this stuff, before I became convinced that he wasn't trying to fix it.
Voters were conveying their wishes on these issues, and support on these issues helped get him elected, and didn't dissolve instantly.
the bank bailout
When people say this, do they mean something beyond TARP, which was signed into law by Bush-43? Or maybe you just mean the implementation of TARP, much of took place under the Obama administration? Honest question, because I hear "bank bailout" leveled as a criticism, and I think it's meant to serve as a catch-all for several things. But I come up with TARP off the top of my head and that's it.
I guess the treatment isn't a matter of personal intervention by Obama or any of his appointed team but rather the result of some stupid application of some stupid protocol.
I'm sure it is. However, it makes me wonder how many other such stupid protocols are still around from the Bush administration, and why the Obama administration has failed to roll them back.
Certainly the administration could make an intervention in this case, but for whatever reason they have chosen not to. That makes me wonder how much control the civilian administration really has over the military.
22: I think the problem is that people a) confuse the bank bailout with the stimulus programme and b) don't really understand what the bank bailout did. b) is true in the UK as well as in the US.
I think the American public by and large doesn't care.
Except for the howling wingers who go into frothing fits when any move towards, say, civilian trials for detainees is bruited. Those of us who voted for Obama because we hoped he'd be good on this stuff have nowhere else to go--and he knows it.
I do think the idea of capture by military-industrial complex is a real possibility.
Those of us who voted for Obama because we hoped he'd be good on this stuff have nowhere else to go
There was the option of going into frothing fits...
Somehow, our frothing fits are never taken as seriously as those of the right-wing.
But I come up with TARP off the top of my head and that's it.
Bailing out AIG wasn't under TARP, but was essentially a big fat check written to Goldman Sacks.
Also, the complete an utter failure that was HAMP, or really, the failure any means to help homeowners directly.
Also, various efforts by the Federal Reserve, although thats more on Bernake than Obama.
24: I think in Obama's case this "confusion" has been exacerbated by who he has chosen to listen to, and put into positions of influence and power. So I think it is shorthand for a general Administration stance and things like not supporting cramdown etc. as much as for the specific bailout (and also although McCain's petulant little suspend the campaign/"I won't debate" drama* had zero or negative electoral impact it resulted in an increased association of the bailout with Obama).
*And there's the literal nut of the electoral issue.
If I wanted to be incredibly charitable, I would point out that Obama knows that if he tries to change these policies he will be greeted by a wave of military commanders, Republicans, and conservative Democrats on every news show. He thinks, and he's probably right, that he will lose that fight, and with it the supposed Clinton legacy of Democratic national security credibility. And he's probably right. His solution is then to surrender this issue in the hopes of building domestic policy accomplishments.
Yes, "bank bailout" was bad wording. The implementation of the program should have included a bunch of people being prosecuted for fraud and forcing banks to write down bad mortgage debt, rather than trying to artificially boost housing prices. Instead we got a big kabuki of "I'm all that's standing between you and the pitchforks." You run the DoJ and the SEC. You should be organizing the Pitchfork Brigade.
capture by military-industrial complex is a real possibility
Like every president in our lifetime.
28: Oh, right. Thanks. I forgot about HAMP. I'm disappointed every time I'm reminded about how terribly that's gone.
There was the option of going into frothing fits...
One sort of has to go into a frothing fit in front of a TV camera, right? None of those ever happen to be pointed at me.
Like every president in our lifetime.
I've often wondered whether the military guys have a super-effective powerpoint presentation that they show everyone right after inauguration, or whether it's a cumulative effect of athletic twenty year-olds standing around promising to catch bullets for you.
Bailing out AIG wasn't under TARP, but was essentially a big fat check written to Goldman Sacks
And it happened in September 2008, ie not under Obama. And the Treasury now expects to break even on it.
26: A couple of things here. First, in 6 I thought the problem was that the left 'expelled' Obama. I'm sure there's a way to make this consistent, but it sounds as if you're saying that we were too hard on him and too easy on him.
Second, I lean toward the 'more frothing fits, we've been too easy on him' side. But I also feel as if we were fairly effectively suckered away from throwing fits. In his first year, he was saying enough respectable sounding stuff on these issues that I could believe that he was just moving slow in fixing problems he'd been left. The realization that it had been too long for that to make sense has been gradual, and it's hard to pick a moment to throw a fit.
I've often wondered whether the military guys have a super-effective powerpoint presentation that they show everyone right after inauguration
No, it's a film clip.
I have this feeling man, 'cause you know, it's just a handful of people who run everything, you know ... that's true, it's provable. It's not ... I'm not a fucking conspiracy nut, it's provable. A handful, a very small elite, run and own these corporations, which include the mainstream media. I have this feeling that whoever is elected president, like Clinton was, no matter what you promise on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoke-filled room with the twelve industrialist capitalist scum-fucks who got you in there. And you're in this smoky room, and this little film screen comes down ... and a big guy with a cigar goes, "Roll the film." And it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before ... that looks suspiciously like it's from the grassy knoll. And then the screen goes up and the lights come up, and they go to the new president, "Any questions?"
"Er, just what my agenda is."
"First we bomb Baghdad."
"You got it..."
When people say this, do they mean something beyond TARP
Also, various efforts by the Federal Reserve, although thats more on Bernake than Obama.
Oh, there were/are a ton of actions, and the Fed and Treasury (& Freddie/Fannie) were/are all working in concert to move toxic waste off the banks' books at fantasy values. You can also count the low rates and QEs and help for Euro banks. Complicated and opaque as expected.
Here's a post from This morning that I picked up with a quick visit to Thoma's. Econbrowser
"The selling bank surrendered T-bonds which the Fed now owns, and has command of new reserve deposits, with which it can do anything it likes. For example, the bank could use the funds to buy some other asset, by instructing the Fed to transfer its balance to those of the bank from which it wants to buy the asset. Alternatively, the bank could use the reserve deposits to make a loan, pay another bank for funds owed, withdraw them by asking for cash from the Fed, or simply hold on to the reserve deposits."So, in theory, the banks could have used the reserves they got in QE1 ($1.7 trillion) to purchase UST's which they traded back to the Fed in QE2---creating a circular trade?
No, I don't understand it. We're not supposed to
Can someone link to a good summary or précis of the Guantanamo issue? I find that my outrage level to knowledge ratio on these things is out of whack and it's hard to remember exactly what's going on. Isn't the current situation something like:
1) Obama tried to close Gitmo as a detention site, but failed, and there are now people there who can neither be tried in the US in civilian courts (in part because of past torture by the Bush Administration) or let go (b/c we've already let go most of the obviously benign folks) or moved out oF Gitmo (b/c of Congress), so they're going ahead with military trials.
2) Bagram air base remains open and has a bunch of people being indefinitely detained on terrorism grounds, who may not ever see the inside of even a military courtroom.
3) The various Bush administration sophistic justifications for torture have been more or less renounced.
4). Eric Holder wants to try terrorist suspects largely in civilian courts but wants an exemption to the Miranda rules for interrogations.
5) The wikileaks leaker is being detained in conditions that are clearly massively punitive.
What did I get wrong/ am missing?
And the Treasury now expects to break even on it.
For some definition of "break even", I'm sure. But the massive opportunity cost of all the money plowed into TARP and AIG was that it set the table, politically, for the stimulus to be far smaller than it should have been. And the cost of that was anemic economic growth, and the cost of that is tax revenues that never happened.
We may end up "breaking even" from TARP/AIG but if we had instead invested that money in, say, fixing infrastructure, supporting homeowners, education, or propping up state budgets, we could have come out a lot farther ahead than we have so far.
I'm not arguing that bailing out the financial industry was the wrong thing to do, but I do think that "breaking even" is really a bad way to look at it.
I've often wondered whether the military guys have a super-effective powerpoint presentation that they show everyone right after inauguration, or whether it's a cumulative effect of athletic twenty year-olds standing around promising to catch bullets for you.
I like to think they get the guys from Apple to do it. Or Cirque du Soleil. Smoke machines!
Wrt Obama's being the oligarch's man in Washington -- in order to not become completely depressed, I occasionally allow myself to hope that he has run some numbers, somewhere, and realizes that he cannot win that fight prior to 2012, but that early in his second term it will become open season on fat, rich, antidemocratic fucks. And also in this fantasy they all develop gout.
(b/c we've already let go most of the obviously benign folks)
I think this is wrong, although I suppose it depends on your definition of obviously benign.
Somehow, our frothing fits are never taken as seriously as those of the right-wing.
Partly establishment bias, but partly the unfortunate fact that in the US there's a lot less of 'us' than of 'them'. We can point to opinion polls on specific issue questions to argue that the conservative vs. liberals numbers are misleading, but whenever one of those policies becomes a top political issue, all those dissenting conservatives fall in line behind the Republicans. Having an ideologically charged partisan base with almost double the share of the electorate makes politics much easier for the right than the left.
On the OP: just depressing. I expected that Obama wouldn't go as far as I wanted on these issues, but I never thought he'd be anywhere near this bad. Easily my biggest disappointment regarding this presidency.
Although 1 is generally right -- if the military trials were to be conducted with a respectable level of due process (which they won't be, but if), I wouldn't actually be horrified about using military trials to clear out Gitmo. But they're still explicitly retaining the right to detain indefinitely without trial for some prisoners, and that's intolerable.
41.2: I don't think we'd have made much progress if almost the entire banking system had collapsed, which is what would have happened if the TARP funds had been used for stimulus spending instead. And would infrastructure spending really have paid for itself in greater tax revenues in just two and a half years?
I don't think the governments really had much choice re: a lot of the banking bailouts, tbh. But it'd be nice if we'd then seen wholesale reform to regulation, a load of fuckers in jail, and tax rises on higher income earners.
41. I think there are other points to add to your list:
There are countries where some of the detainees come from, whose governments don't want them back.
There are detainees who are more frightened of going home than staying in Gitmo (I think these people are a subset of those LB is talking about in 43).
You could close Guantanamo in a heartbeat by putting the remaining detainees in two or three elderly 747s, flying them to Riyadh or Kabul and disabling them (the planes) at the end of a runway. But it wouldn't be a good thing to do.
But the massive opportunity cost of all the money plowed into TARP and AIG was that it set the table, politically, for the stimulus to be far smaller than it should have been.
I don't think this is true. The stimulus package should have been bigger, but it hadn't virtually nothing to do with TARP and bank bailouts. I couldn't even give you the relative numerical sizes of such things, and I was basically paying attention.
Partly establishment bias, but partly the unfortunate fact that in the US there's a lot less of 'us' than of 'them'.
It has been a long time since I read What's The Matter With Kansas, and I won't pretend I delved further into the issue than that, but I do vaguely remember some 20th c. American history, and we used to have quite a few more of the crazies on our side.
This is another overly simplistic point, but who gives a shit, this a blog comment, not a dissertation: I am obviously (per above) sympathetic to the idea that there's a consistent minority of absolute fucking crazy in this country. For whatever reason, I'm past caring why. But they are crazy. And they are effective, because they are so crazy. I see no reason why the left can't pander to them as effectively as the right has. They're paranoid and inhabit a place of fear and anger; they'll be paranoid and inhabiting that place no matter what they happen to be scared by or angry about. I'm saying: perhaps we should look at this as a national resource. It's clearly motivating.
/End dangerous cynicism
...wouldn't actually be horrified about using military trials to clear out Gitmo.
"Clear out Gitmo?"
Do you think many of those remaining are going to be found innocent?
I am only mildly opposed to the death penalty, but am very opposed to executions at Gitmo. I don't trust their evidence (obtained thru torture and coerced confessions), I don't trust the trials, I think the methods and war crimes should demand some kind of relief (or whatever)
Secret trials and executions at Gitmo would be...I guess we have already jumped the cliff.
46 I'm with max my gut feeling is that it would of been best to let the system collapse and then rebuild rather than what we did. The crisis was over two years ago and we still havnt recovered
I wonder if charleycarp is reading? As he'd probably know a lot more about the state of play vis a vis the points in 48.
The crisis was over two years ago and we still havnt recovered
Except corporate profits are at record highs.
By which I mean, unemployment hasn't recovered because no one is making political decisions that would help unemployment. Corporate profits are doing splendidly for the opposite reason.
52: The experience of the Great Depression suggests otherwise.
46:We have a good precedent in FDR's 1st term. He shut down 1/3 of the banks. He taxed everybody bigtime, and gained revenue by ending prohibition.
This is only to say that radically different steps were economically plausible, if not politically possible or in Obama's nature or agenda.
There are countries where some of the detainees come from, whose governments don't want them back.
I cannot believe in this as a real problem that justifies keeping people confined. Find another country that will take them, bribe another country to take them if necessary, or give them residency here. The third would be politically difficult, obviously, but there's nothing implausible about the first two.
47 I don't think the governments really had much choice re: a lot of the banking bailouts, tbh. But it'd be nice if we'd then seen wholesale reform to regulation, a load of fuckers in jail, and tax rises on higher income earners.
Even without that, couldn't they have made a deal that in the end extracted a lot of money for taxpayers? I don't really know much of anything about banking or finance, but my impression is that we basically made a huge low-interest loan that enabled them to quickly get back to making a huge profit, and that they paid back most of the money pretty quickly. Is that right? Couldn't we have asked for a lot more in return?
57 I think that there were different ways to learn the lesson of the great depression, and maybe protect the wealth of the top 1% at all costs wasn't the one we should of went with.
Also, in light of the treatment of Bradley Manning (and given that he's such a high profile prisoner, I have a seriously hard time believing that the White House isn't directly involved), I don't really understand any discussion about the practicality of closing Gitmo. Obama's clearly made some moral choices wrt the treatment of prisoners and basic rights of man. I don't care if he's come out and said it, or even acknowledged it to himself; actions speak louder than words. He didn't inherit Manning. And I understand that the Manning situation is not quite the same, but I think there's a fairly short, direct moral line to be drawn from Manning to Gitmo.
And I don't think this is naive. Choices about action and morality are only really defining when they're difficult, and there's not obviously practical way to make the right one. Going with what's easier is a choice, too.
He's choosing to do this to Manning. Given that, I find it hard to believe that the moral and philosophical arguments about Gitmo hold a lot of weight with this Administration.
it would of been best to let the system collapse and then rebuild rather than what we did. The crisis was over two years ago and we still havnt recovered
Whereas we'd have recovered from a complete collapse of the world financial system in, what, two weeks? Three, tops?
I'm not sure I 100% agree with your economics there, Norm.
I see no reason why the left can't pander to them as effectively as the right has.
The left -- the fickle, reasonably broad range that encompasses people who voted for Obama because they liked him, because they disliked the Dubster and/or John McCain and/or Sarah Palin, because in 2008 the status quo seemed pretty crappy and turning over the keys was an available option, because they belong to the remnant of union politics -- is divided against itself many times over. Pandering-to-expand takes a back seat to coalition-stitching, most of the time.
The right has a consistent (and, perhaps more importantly, consistently presented), durable, if predictable, set of resentment options: minorities, foreigners, those snooty people with passports and library cards, slutty teenagers.
I don't think we'd have made much progress if almost the entire banking system had collapsed, which is what would have happened if the TARP funds had been used for stimulus spending instead.
And I don't disagree with this at all. What I disagree with is that TARP was "break even", when, in fact, it was a huge cost that represented a great burden for the country at a difficult time.
We may have been paid back, but we didn't break even.
The last bit of 62 sounds harsh, but reading it over, I still think it's correct. I can't reconcile Obama caring about these things with the treatment of Manning.
3) The various Bush administration sophistic justifications for torture have been more or less renounced.
5) The wikileaks leaker is being detained in conditions that are clearly massively punitive.
Doesn't 5 seriously undercut 3? I mean, who cares about the sophistic justifications, really, if the practices are unchanged? (And your "punitive" in 5 is too weak.)
The right has a consistent (and, perhaps more importantly, consistently presented), durable, if predictable, set of resentment options: minorities, foreigners, those snooty people with passports and library cards, slutty teenagers.
"The rich" ain't so bad as a resentment option.
56 I don't disagree with you, but I think in a enviorment where the wealthy felt the effects of the collapse there would of been more pressure overall for stronger political action. By insulating them through the bailouts we lost a large resivor of support for major policy changes.
"The rich" ain't so bad as a resentment option.
Except then its difficult to get funding for your resentment generation machine.
62 certainly informs my thinking. We're publicly torturing a citizen who hasn't been convicted of anything for committing a political crime (and the upper levels of the administration could certainly enforce civilized treatment of Manning, whether or not they've specifically ordered the treatment he's getting). If we're doing that, then the arguments about how other activities that look bad may only be compelled by circumstance don't carry a lot of weight with me unless they're very detailed and convincing.
63 well how long till we recover from this, as far as I can tell it's 9% unemployment forever.
The establishment Democrats were pretty shocked and angered by Cablegate. It's entirely possible they discovered the appeal of harsh treatment (borderline harsh, in their thinking) afterwards.
And for the record Obama himself shut down the grass roots in after the elections a) closing down Dean's 50-state organization, b) closing down his own grass roots org, c) demanding independent orgs like Move-On to refrain from activity and issue advocacy, except as directed (veal-pen).
This, as much as the FISA vote and the cabinet hires, is what alerted the leftwing of the Party to his oligarchic strategies. Bowers and Stoller fought for a year, but eventually gave up. There are some specific aspects to Obama that make an internal populist revolt against extremely difficult, in addition to the horror of his "Republican enemies."
What I disagree with is that TARP was "break even", when, in fact, it was a huge cost that represented a great burden for the country at a difficult time.
This isn't really the case. TARP wasn't funded by an increase in taxes - that would have been a huge burden - it was funded by issuing additional government debt. So it ran up the national debt, but this wasn't actually a serious problem because the cost of funds for the US government at the time (and indeed now) was very, very low - T-bill yields were tiny because everyone wanted to buy them. Putting TARP into action didn't require massive cuts in all other government spending.
"The rich" ain't so bad as a resentment option.
Has "eat the rich" won a large-scale election in an American context since, say, 1918?
77: FDR?
Since then, I don't think it's been tried.
Putting TARP into action didn't require massive cuts in all other government spending.
No, but it did cost massive political capital, which could have been deployed in much better ways. My specific hypothesis is that the stimulus package would have been a lot bigger if it had not come after TARP.
78:FDR in 32 ran a wink-wink "eat-the-rich" campaign. No one was that surprised in 1933 (even earlier, after it looked clinched and he started building his cabinet), but it wasn't how he campaigned.
He was clearer about it in 1936
77: Maybe 1945 would have been a better date to ask about, but for a supposed traitor to his class, FDR doesn't seem the the leveller that, say, post-WWII fatigue was in the UK. He did, after all, still wear his cape and use his cigarette holder.
78 is kind of my point. We've been doing it wrong.
I am kind of looking forward to 2012, because excuses kind of end after that. I'm also kind of dreading it, for the same reason.
Somewhat related: I was initially all excited for the Republican primary season, and anticipated making a lot of popcorn. But now they seem to be getting the crazy largely under control. This worries me. I am worried. Pawlenty vs. Mittens worries me.
79: Again, TARP was a Bush policy, not an Obama policy. It was signed into law in October 2008.
Your hypothesis needs backing, I think.
79: It wouldn't have required as much political capital had it put the financial leadership in bamboo stocks and emptied their pockets. Hell, it might have been popular and branded the Republicans as pro-bankster for a generation. Instead, Obama chose to concentrate on HCR.
Where's the evidence that the bank bailouts required _any_ political capital? Because the tea bagger claimed to be angry about them? You don't need to use political capital to give into the demands of the oligarchy.
And I'm really not sure what "political capital" actually means in this context. Obama didn't have to call in favours with members of the House to implement TARP - it had already passed Congress.
To put it another way (more consistent with the fact in 83), Obama wasn't politically constrained by TARP. He was constrained because he chose to defend TARP and the financial status quo.
85: There was genuine anger about the bailouts on the right (along with their usual list of greivances).
Republican primary season
Does anybody know which GOP primaries will remain winner-take-all, or are various states still making that decision?
There was genuine anger about the bailouts on the right
On the right of what? Not on the right of Congress, or among Republican leaders.
There was genuine anger about the bailouts on the right (along with their usual list of greivances).
"Genuine" is the political pundit's counterpart to the sportswriter's "legit."
On the right of what? Not on the right of Congress, or among Republican leaders.
Among the people who voted for those Republican leaders. Of course the question remains of why Obama should listen to people who vote for Jim Sensenbrenner, let alone the cynical nihilist jelly donut himself.
Isn't Manning basically just in the US Army equivalent of Supermax confinement? I.e., roughly the same treatment we give to very serious criminals domestically? (isolation, limited access to TV, visits in restraints). And he has been charged with a crime and will ultimately get a (military) trial and has access to counsel and visitors, etc.
That seems wildly disproportionate to his level of risk but is pretty far cry from "torturing" unless you want to call the ordinary treatment of serious criminals that goes on in tons of US prisons "torture" (and tbh you might have a moral case, but this isn't waterboarding or anything that falls within the legal definition of the anti-torture laws).
Pawlenty vs. Mittens worries me.
Agreed. There are pawlenty of things to worry about there. (Hi, I steal jokes from Jon Stewart.)
Isn't Pawlenty from Lilliput? And isn't Romney a Mormon?
Isn't Manning basically just in the US Army equivalent of Supermax confinement?
He's currently being denied underwear at night, because he made some flippant remark about how if he really were a threat to himself he could use the elastic from his boxers or something. And the decision to take away the skivvies was made without proper psych review. So, I'm going with, no, different.
I deny myself underwear most nights, Stanley. I mean, if you want to stop by.
Isn't Manning basically just in the US Army equivalent of Supermax confinement?
For roughly a year now, without having been convicted of anything.
I mean, this may be a "the real scandal is what's legal" situation, but the treatment doesn't seem that different than my one former client who was in a max security state prison. The difference with Manning, of course, is that he's not actually violent.
90: On the right of what?
On the right of Susan Collins, who was the 60th vote in the Senate, and who insisted on chopping off the last hundred billion or so in state assistance and jacking up the proportion of the overall package that went to low-stimulus tax cuts.
That seems wildly disproportionate to his level of risk but is pretty far cry from "torturing" unless you want to call the ordinary treatment of serious criminals that goes on in tons of US prisons "torture" (and tbh you might have a moral case, but this isn't waterboarding or anything that falls within the legal definition of the anti-torture laws).
This is a fair point. I'd answer it with:
(1) extended solitary confinement is torture for anyone, and I should be making more of a fuss about the treatment of prisoners on an ongoing basis.
(2) when this kind of treatment is imposed on convicted criminals, it is supposed to be either as punishment for adjudicated misconduct within the prison, or as a safety measure. While I don't think either of those justifications is sufficient to justify the treatment of convicted criminals the way we do, neither one is applicable to Manning (who hasn't been convicted of anything). The apparent motivation for the ill-treatment brings it into a different category.
(3) As I understand the treatment he's been getting, some of it is unusual even by the standards of prisons. Forced nudity? Awakening every hour, twenty-four hours a day? The latter seems to fall into the sleep-deprivation category of torture to me, if I understand what they're doing to him accurately.
100: and she did that because she was angry about TARP? She voted for TARP!
Just because the right has a long list of imaginary enemies and no ability to point their anger in any non-destructive direction doesn't mean they don't occasionally notice when they are getting fleeced. I wouldn't claim that Obama could have converted many of them by demagoguing Wall Street, but he might have amped up their cognitive dissonance enough to make them shit themselves.
and she did that because she was angry about TARP? She voted for TARP!
She was for it, before she was against it.
he might have amped up their cognitive dissonance
I'd love to see him amp up the cognitive dissonance by arguing that we should return to the tax rates we had when Ronald Reagan left office.
@23 (on the off chance anyone could be bothered): If it is the stupid application of a stupid protocol, it's not necessarily easy to solve. Obviously he or they could directly intervene, but doing so would breach a lot of all-but-stupid protocols. I really believe it is dangerous to oversimplify; if you want solutions to be simple we invariably wind up facing much worse problems. Maybe I'm the last one that doesn't feel ashamed to be an outspoken centrist?
Find another country that will take them, bribe another country to take them if necessary (59)
Harper's ran a thing a while back that excerpted cables from diplomats in many different countries, all explaining why no detainees could be placed there. It was very depressing. Maybe I can find it...
Actually Robert I think that this the standard security/torture state in action. Define a course of conduct that would be permissible in extreme circumstances (suicidal/Psychotic/ticking time bomb). Then amazingly it turns out that when you apply it to everyone it's not that bad, I mean we've all agreed it's ok some of the time. Kind of like when Israel approved torture in "extreme" circumstances, but then found the military was using it in routine cases.
107: Having seen stupid protocols in place in non-security, non-governmental situations, IME it's fairly easy to avoid using them in stupid ways if the higher-ups convey that they don't want you to do that. Cossacks, czar.
Lilliput as in Gulliver's Travels? In the sense that he's from...Minnesota? Nope. Don't get it. Pretty sure there's a joke there, but not getting it.
My fear is that Romney's got all the sweet oligarchy money and thus will be a real force, but, yeah, dude's a Mormon, and Pawlenty is an evangelical Baptist (according to Wikipedia) who has been carefully learning to fellate the Tea Party. So I worry that, in the absence of enough Crazy, either of them could come out of the primaries looking like an actual reasonable candidate.
Mostly, though, I feeling disappointed and petulant that I will be denied my Republican primary freak show. I bought a lot of popcorn.
but he might have amped up their cognitive dissonance enough to make them shit themselves
There's a joke here to be made involving dog whistles and the Brown Note.
it's behind a paywall, but includes this:
French NSA-equivalent Jean-David Levitte noted that congressional opposition to the president's plan to close Guantánamo had given French authorities less room for maneuver on this subject, as the French public wondered why France should accept detainees who were too dangerous to be transferred to the United States.--U.S. Embassy Paris
and this
Refugee status in Brazil for an applicant abroad is not usually granted until after the refugee has received refugee status from the country where the refugee is located. Brazil believes that the migrants at Guantánamo Bay do not fit into this category because the U.S. government has not "formally recognized" them as refugees. If they were formally recognized, the U.S. government would allow resettlement in the United States. --U.S. Embassy Brasília
and this
Kuwaiti Minister of Interior Shaykh Jaber told the ambassador: "You know better than I that we cannot deal with these people. I can't detain them. If I take their passports, they will sue to get them back. We are not Saudi Arabia; we cannot isolate these people in desert camps or somewhere on an island. We cannot compel them to stay. If they are rotten, they are rotten, and the best thing to do is get rid of them. You picked them up in Afghanistan; you should drop them off in Afghanistan, in the middle of the war zone." --U.S. Embassy Kuwait City
103:and she did that because she was angry about TARP? She voted for TARP!
No, she did that because she needed political cover, which is a thing that politicians seem to feel is very important. And her vote for TARP was one reason she felt she needed that cover. She didn't want to get driven out of the Republican Party, as subsequently happened to Arlen Specter.
Still. We couldn't bribe the Cook Islands, or wherever, to give them passports?
I mean, this may be a "the real scandal is what's legal" situation, but the treatment doesn't seem that different than my one former client who was in a max security state prison. The difference with Manning, of course, is that he's not actually violent.
That would be one difference. Another is that he hasn't actually been convicted of anything. Another is that, AFAIA, these methods are being used purely to make him suffer physical and psychological discomfort (and/or to get information from him), not to control his behavior in order to protect the physical safety of himself or anyone else. That's the definition of torture.
Also, defending anything that happens to someone as "no worse than Supermax" is absurd on its face.
I bet we could, but I bet it would take enough money that that would turn into a whole other thing about the economy and budgets and whatever, such that it wouldn't be any more politically feasible than just letting them into the US.
@110: that really depends on how authoritarian the chain of command is; if it isn't very authoritarian, I am sure it is not "Cossacks, czar." As unfair this is for people caught up in the mess, I would hope it's impossible to apply a 'simple' solution.
It isn't improbable that the stupid protocol is in fact a result of someone giving too much power to one, previously appointed or independently elected, official. Such type of a protocol seems to underly at least the original conception of something like the Guantanamo thing.
I will be denied my Republican primary freak show
Don't get too disappointed just yet. We could still see Gingrich, Santorum, and Bachmann in the mix (I continue to believe that Palin only pretends to be interested to further her TV career). And, of course, Mississippi Governor Foghorn Leghorn.
The military claims that solitary confinement is for his own protection. This since the other soldiers in prison will want to kill BM, who is accused of treason and of endangering military personnel.
His treatment is clearly punitive and inhumane. I think that this is popular with many Americans. People who criticize authority get punished, and that's popular-- look at Taguba's fate, or the anonymous senator who killed federal whistleblower protection.
107. What if there's conflict between operations people and higher-ups? A wink and a nod will not then be enough to change direction, and the paper trail will read "friend to criminals."
"no worse than Supermax"
SuperMax is bad, but its a picnic compared to SuperDuperMax.
The military claims that solitary confinement is for his own protection.
I wonder if Manning agrees?
Mississippi Governor Foghorn Leghorn
Nobody is actually seriously about Barbour, are they?
The military claims that solitary confinement is for his own protection. This since the other soldiers in prison will want to kill BM, who is accused of treason and of endangering military personnel.
Obviously that's unfalsifiable, possibly all the other prisoners are a serious danger to him, I can't possibly disprove it as I sit here.
But bullshit. I mean, seriously, look at how he's been treated, and tell me that it makes sense as a means of protecting him from attack by other inmates.
Mississippi Governor Foghorn Leghorn
This made me laugh. Now I want to see a web series covering the primaries with Foghorn Leghorn replacing Barbour in all appearances, little marionette strings attached to Mittens (or possibly edits showing him to be a robot, with audio loops, and sparks coming out of his neck), etc.
OTOH, I think coverage of the 2012 Presidential election could feasibly be replaced by the second season of Frisky Dingo without a significant loss of information.
Nobody is actually seriously about Barbour
Except for possibly large portions of the Republican base. I think he could be Vice-Presidential material.
Like maybe a Romeny-Barbour ticket? Not totally out of the question.
117: There's some pretty small countries out there. Maybe not the Cook Islands, which is at least a tax haven, but I bet you could talk, say, Vanuatu into issuing a couple of dozen passports out of the school lunch budget of the NYC public schools.
127: Please, please, please, please, please....
Seriously, Vanuatu sounds like the location of Sauron's vacation home.
What's the justification for Supermax prisons, anyway? People who read too many comic books and think we need something that would hold Magneto or the Juggernaut?
132: I don't think that's far off.
What's the justification for Supermax prisons, anyway?
Massaging the deep streak of sadism that runs through our national culture.
Look, I think that it's clear that the treatment of Manning is wrong, inhumane, and punitive. But from what I've seen I don't think it's "torture" in the same, clearly illegal under US law sense that the Bush administration was justifying, e.g., waterboarding, and that's a significant difference -- maybe the difference between the ordinary evil of the US security state and the extraordinarily brazen evil of the Bush administration, but still a significant difference.
these methods are being used purely to make him suffer physical and psychological discomfort (and/or to get information from him), not to control his behavior in order to protect the physical safety of himself or anyone else. That's the definition of torture.
For better or for worse, that's not the definition of torture. At least not legally -- there's obviously a conventional conversational sense of "torture" that's broader. But 18 USC 2340 defines torture as follows:
(1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) "severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from--
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality;
None of which seem to apply to the treatment of Manning.
I'd call prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation (although on rereading, I'm now not sure that I understood the 'awakening every hour' thing correctly, so maybe the latter doesn't apply) torture under 2B.
Supermax
Attica, and attacks on prisons by helicopters, probably. That and revenue transfer to depopulated places.
"other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;"
Intentional sleep deprivation seems to fall under this category.
No more masturbating to David Broder.
According to Wikipedia (my source for 100% of my EXTREME knowledge of the facts) he is required to be awake from 5am to 8pm, but can sleep for the rest of the night, although he has complaints about the light being too bright outside. If that qualified as torture under the statute, there are probably at least 5,000 people being tortured domestically right now. Who knows, maybe they are!
While I agree with 136, it does seem to apply with equal force to the sort of solitary confinement that's in use elsewhere. Which I suppose was Halford's original point about the monstrosity of what's considered legal. Now, however, I find myself confused: isn't there wealth of evidence that indicates that prolonged solitary confinement is illegal according to this statute? Help me, lawyers. Is this another Supreme fuck up?
None of which seem to apply to the treatment of Manning.
Didn't we ("we" nationally, not "we" here on this website) have this exact debate about waterboarding a few years ago? Until the people in power left, and everyone had to stop pretending to take their arguments seriously, and everyone was once again able to acknowledge openly that, yes, waterboarding was unqualifiedly torture?
This doesn't seem very different, honestly.
In a just world, every obituary would be a variation on "Some considered him the Dean of Washington journalism. Others insisted he was a heroin-addled pedophile. The truth, of course, lay squarely in the middle."
140: Wow, I think I'd come to think of him as immortal. 144 gets it right (some say).
Arguably torture under 2B; clearly cruel and unacceptable and I am not fucking getting into arguments about whether it's technically torture.
As for Quiggin's question: I vote for hypothesis 3 with a large side of 2. But I think the "political expediency" comes as much from the ruling class's firm conviction that laws are to be enforced only against the little people, as it does from actual public opinion.
141/142: the difference you're both missing is "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions)
Supermax and solitary aren't intended just to make you suffer, they're intended to keep you or others safe from physical harm. Manning isn't even alleged to be phyically dangerous to anyone.
140: Thank goodness. I was tired of being admonished to alternate hands.
For a brief moment, I misread 140 as referring to Mr. Brooks instead of Mr. Broder.
141: Yeah, I think I misunderstood the requirement that he respond to guards to apply to the night as well as the day. But my point stands with regard to isolation.
142: I don't know of a case that's attempted to describe solitary confinement as used in ordinary prisons as torture under the statute. I think it's clear that it is, but admittedly I wouldn't expect a US court to agree with me on that.
Generally, Manning's treatment, while unacceptable, isn't the core issue for me -- I'm more worried about what's happening at Bagram Air Force Base. But it's interesting as evidence of the administration's attitude -- they're willing to impose harsh treatment on an unconvicted prisoner with the world watching. Who knows what they're doing where we can't see?
I guess my fantasy of going on the Jon Stewart Show and getting the audience to chant "David Broder Sucks!" along with me is no longer operational. It will have to be, "David Broder Sucked!"--not quite as punchy.
And speaking of unlikely fantasies, I realized the other day that the Manning + Gitmo + similar stuff had prompted me to switch my running "Would you accept an invitation to the White House?" counter* from yes to no for the first time for a Democratic administration since late LBJ. Not a "reasoned" position, but a gut reaction.
*It's important to be prepared for these admittedly unlikely possibilities.
Glenn Greenward
http://www.salon.com/news/guantanamo/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/03/08/guantanamo
In other words, Obama -- for reasons having nothing to do with Congress -- worked from the start to preserve the crux of the Bush/Cheney detention regime. Even with these new added levels of detention review (all inside the Executive Branch), this new Executive Order is little more than a by-product of that core commitment, and those blaming it on Congress either have little idea what they're talking about or are simply fabricating excuses in order to justify yet another instance where Obama dutifully "bolsters" the Bush War on Terror template. Indefinite detention and military commissions are continuing because Obama worked from the start for that goal -- not because Congress forced him to do so.
Would anybody dispute this?
147 -- huh? That's a savings clause that means that the torture statute wouldn't apply to situations where you're inflicting suffering pursuant to a lawful sanction. It narrows the application of the statute -- it doesn't broaden it. The point is that even if the treatment of Manning isn't intended to be as a lawful sanction, it still isn't torture under the statute, except on a really extremely broad reading of 2(b).
Or are you saying that the ordinary treatment of a prisoner wouldn't fall within the statute because it qualifies as a "lawful sanction"? First, I think you are misunderstanding how these things work in actual prisons; the system can decide to put you in forced restraints, solitary, etc., basically at will and without recourse. If the torture statute was held to create a requirement that a prison system specifically justify the use of isolation in each instance on pure safety grounds before imposing isolation, the statute would apply to literally thousands of cases of solitary confinement. Second, presumably, in the Manning case, the military would also argue that the statute doesn't apply at all because it views Manning's confinement as a "lawful sanction" pursuant to a perceived risk of escape level or risk of injury to himself or whatever. Which may be bullshit, but isn't obviously more bullshit than the ways in which prisons ordinarily work.
When one Broder passes another shall arise to take his place*. And the balance of balance is thereby preserved.
* "At House EPA Hearing, Both Sides Claim Science"--John Broder, NYTimes.
Which may be bullshit, but isn't obviously more bullshit than the ways in which prisons ordinarily work.
What I'm going to say here is kind of sketchy -- I'm going to be close to saying stuff that I don't mean (that is, that it doesn't matter how we treat conventional prisoners). I don't mean that -- the way we treat conventional prisoners is a horrifying crime in itself, but it seems so unamenable to change through the political process that I spend less time thinking about it than I should.
That said, what's horrifying about the infliction of suffering on Manning is largely not that one man is being psychologically disassembled by the conditions of his confinement -- you're right, we do that to hundreds of thousands of people all over the country. It's that it's being done to an unconvicted prisoner for reasons that seem to be about demonstrating the power of the national security apparatus to punish without sanction of law -- just as it was with Jose Padilla.
144 and 148 bring lots of joy.
159.2 seems to nail it, for me.
Possibly OT, but can anyone recall seeing an article about health effects of the BP spill and resultant clean up in the American press comparable to from Aljazeera?*
Anyway, don't eat seafood. Or something.
*That said, this article doesn't sit entirely right with me. It seems less precise than one would expect? I read it quickly.
I just looked over the thing I linked to. It's kind of comforting that Aljazeera produces shoddy reporting, too.
I'd still expect to see a major American news organization at least attempt to explore the issue. Like, checking to see if bad stuff's happening after an unprecedented event seems like it's within the normal scope of investigative journalism.
159.2 makes a lot of sense to me. I'd still probably want to distinguish this a lot from the Padilla case as a demonstration of the "power of the national security apparatus to punish without sanction of law" since Manning is being properly charged with a real crime in more or less the ordinary course of military justice, unlike Padilla where the government wanted to detain him indefinitely and also deny him the right to habeas review.
But I'm getting sick of even semi-demi "defending" his treatment (which I'm not really trying to do, just to point out that it's not really at the same level of the Bush administration torture policy), so I'll stop.
(which I'm not really trying to do, just to point out that it's not really at the same level of the Bush administration torture policy)
This is something I find really maddening (not what you said, which is accurate and reasonable, but what the Obama administration is doing). They do seem to be doing significantly different, and less awful, stuff. But it's still intolerably awful. And it's really hard to either acknowledge the differences while still maintaining that the current status quo is intolerable, or to throw fits about the intolerability without looking as if you're refusing to acknowledge any differences.
164 generalizes to much of what is maddening in the last 30 years of national politics. Republicans push the awful bar, and then careful centrist Dems come along to unwind bits on the margins while being subject to full-throated attacks as gay Socialist-Muslim sharia-loving elitist wimps.
Writing 165 I thought of an insipid ratchet analogy that is so insipid and wrong that I feel compelled to share it. So it's a ratchet, and when the Republicans are in power it slips easily but the Dems are going the "hard" way and move it only a little until the pigfuckers get back in and turn it their way a whole lot. But you see the hard work of the Dems is actually unscrewing the nut, so everything is really moving in the right direction!
More details in my upcoming best-seller, "Who Unscrewed My Nut?"
This is a positive spin on the most recent Guantanamo order by a non-crazy, non-conservative, knowledgeable person. I don't really know enough to determine the right side of this, but it's interesting to see a bottom line that's as follows:
Before yesterday's order, detainees had essentially one shot to challenge the legality of their ongoing detention through the federal habeas process. If they lost in the D.C. district court and/or at the D.C. Circuit court on appeal, they had exhausted their potential avenues for review. This gives detainees another bite at the apple. As I noted yesterday, this is hardly to say it resolves all the many problems associated with the status quo at Guantanamo Bay. But are the detainees better off today than they were before the order was issued yesterday? Hard to see how the answer isn't at least marginally yes.
(None of the above should be implied as any disagreement with LB's 164, which I wholeheartedly endorse)
More from the same author:
Second, and probably more important, the new executive order is limited to the handling of the ongoing detentions at Guantanamo. (Per the text, "The periodic review described in section 3 of this order applies only to those detainees held at Guantánamo on the date of this order.... It does not create any additional or separate source of detention authority, and it does not affect the scope of detention authority under existing law.") In this respect, I read it to reject efforts by some to make more permanent the detention regime Guantanamo currently models. This is a good thing. And it seems consistent with the Administration's moves on detention policy elsewhere. Worldwide, the Obama Administration appears to have been working actively to get out of the "wartime" detention business, and wisely so. Having held tens of thousands of detainees since the attacks of 2001, the U.S. is now out of the detention business in Iraq, well on its way to getting out of the detention business in Afghanistan, and (according to the administration) entirely out of the secret-CIA-facility-detention business for good. The uniquely backwards Guantanamo regime - and a substantial reason why there is ongoing detention at Guantanamo at all - emerged patchwork and as a lesser-of-multiple-other-evils response to the foolishness of the Bush Administration on detention policy, a policy that needlessly ignored international law (among other legal strictures) over a period of years.
143: everyone was once again able to acknowledge openly that, yes, waterboarding was unqualifiedly torture
Well, uh, short answer? Only if it's done by foreigners.
169: I would like to see the study mentioned here updated through the last two years. Its results will stand as one of the more shameful media monuments of the last decade.
The New York Times defined waterboarding as torture, or effectively implied that it was, 81.5 percent of the time in articles until 1999, the study found. But during 2002-2008 -- when the George W. Bush White House made a concerted effort to normalize harsh interrogation methods for use on terror detainees -- the Times "called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles." That's 1.4 percent of the time.