Obama's first 100 days

Family planning cuts irk activists
By: Josh Gerstein and Lisa Lerer. POLITICO
January 29, 2009 08:40 AM EST

President Barack Obama has been in office for just over a week, but already he has managed to upset some top leaders in a key constituency - women's groups - after he personally intervened to get family planning funds stripped from the House stimulus package.

Planned Parenthood led the charge, with President Cecile Richards sending an "urgent" e-mail to supporters on Wednesday decrying the deletion - calling it a "betrayal of millions of low-income women, and it will place an even greater burden on state budgets that are already strained to the breaking point."

"I'm stunned," she wrote, urging supporters to call the White House.

Other prominent women leaders joined in expressing their disappointment at Obama's move - which came after Republicans turned up the heat on Obama by highlighting the family planning proposal in the House bill to spur conservative opposition.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said she met with Democratic leaders in Congress Tuesday and received repeated assurances that the money will be restored in another way - but she made clear she's watching.

"I think the [Obama administration] should have kept it in there," Gandy said Wednesday in an interview. "But in their political calculus they felt this was something that would pass Congress rather easily as a stand-alone measure and didn't think was worth fighting for in the stimulus."

"I think that poor women's lives are worth fighting for," Gandy said. (...)

Funny editorial from Greg Palast:

Obama is a two-faced liar. Aw-RIGHT!
by Greg Palast

January 29, 2009

Republicans are right. President Barack Obama treated them like dirt, didn't give a damn what they thought about his stimulus package, loaded it with a bunch of programs that will last for years and will never leave the budget, is giving away money disguised as "tax refunds," and is sneaking in huge changes in policy, from schools to health care, using the pretext of an economic emergency.

Way to go, Mr. O! Mr. Down-and-Dirty Chicago pol. Street-fightin' man. Covering over his break-your-face power play with a "we're all post-partisan friends" BS.

And it's about time. (...)

Quote:

What explains the new President's two decisions: one to comply with international law and one to violate it? The President has received a huge amount of advice in recent months on the treatment of detainees; [b]he has likely heard little or nothing about international law's restrictions on the use of force.[/b]

In researching [i]The Power and Purpose of International Law,[/i] I looked into what lay behind the changes that took place in America with respect to general international law in the 1960s. American leaders until that decade were well versed in international law and demonstrated great respect for it, if not perfect compliance. By the 1960s, this knowledge and respect were demonstrably slipping away. One reason for the change appears to lie with the influence on U.S. foreign policy of Hans Morgenthau and his students.

[b]ITEM:[/b] [url=http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson01302009.html][color=mediumblue][u]Tri... more public dollars for corporate welfare[/u][/color][/url]

Quote:

After (1) threatening for eight years that the prospect of a trillion-dollar deficit spread over a generation or so is sufficient reason to stiff Social Security recipients and abolish debts to the nation's retirees, and (2) after the Bush administration provided $8 trillion over the past three months in cash-for-trash swaps of good Treasury bonds for Wall Street junk derivatives, the Obama Administration is now speaking of (3) some $2 to $4 trillion more to be given in just the next week or so.

The new president is obviously a dangerous schizoid.

George Victor wrote:

The new president is obviously a dangerous schizoid.

Lyndon Johnson on tranquilizers, perhaps.

Ethically challenged HHS nominee finally withdraws:

"Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, apologized Monday for failing to pay his taxes in full. He said earlier he was "deeply embarrassed" for a series of errors that included failing to report $15,000 in charitable donations, unreported car service and more than $80,000 in unreported income from consulting.

Daschle recently filed amended tax returns and paid more than $140,000 in back taxes and interest for 2005-2007.

A New York Times editorial on Tuesday called for Daschle to withdraw.

The paper's editorial board particularly took issue with Daschle saying he identified the unpaid taxes in June but did not pay them until his nomination for the top post at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The editorial also criticized Daschle for generating a sizable income from health-related industries while working in the private sector."

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/03/daschle/

Thanks for that update, MS - I had not read that as of yet.

It has been interesting seeing Obama in the news this past week admitting that he has "screwed up" and made mistakes re: his cabinet nominees who cannot seem to pay their taxes at a time of massive, massive deficit.

I wonder if he will ever admit his mistakes re: foreign policy. Afghanistan is "unwinnable" even with the huge addition of troops he is overseeing­. He will undoubtedly be trying to convince Harper to renege on his promise to get us out by 2011 (which is still far too long).  Do you think he will realize his errors by 2011 and try and get US troops out too?

Quote:

President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that [b]the change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of foreign prisoners[/b] - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be dismissed on national security grounds.

"Judges shouldn't play with fire," Justice Department lawyer Douglas Letter told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which is considering a suit accusing a San Jose company, Jeppesen Dataplan, of [b]arranging so-called extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA.[/b]

Once the judges privately examine the government's classified evidence, Letter said, "you will see that this case cannot be litigated."

Letter said [b]the Justice Department's position, previously argued by the administration of former President George W. Bush, has been "thoroughly vetted with appropriate officials of the new administration."...[/b]

Obama's nominee for CIA director, Leon Panetta, said last week that he approved of rendition for foreign prosecution or brief CIA detention, but not for extended confinement. Like his Bush administration predecessors, he also said he would require a foreign government to promise not to torture a prisoner....

"Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama's Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on this important civil liberties issue," the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, said after the hearing....

...Sweden recently awarded $450,000 in damages to one of the plaintiffs, Ahmed Agiza, for helping the CIA transport him to Egypt, where he is still being held and allegedly has been tortured....

Agiza and the other plaintiffs - one now imprisoned in Morocco, one held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and two who have been released without charges - accuse Jeppesen of colluding in their abduction and torture.

A Council of Europe report in 2007 identified the company, a Boeing Corp. subsidiary, as the CIA's aviation services provider....

[url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/BAGS15QB5B.D...

Quote:

THEY GOT blown out in the last two elections. From control of both houses of Congress and the White House, they now control none of the above. They nearly put their party's leadership body in the hands of a man who sees nothing wrong with a song called "Barack the Magic Negro." And the closest thing they have to a national spokesperson is talk radio jackass Rush Limbaugh.

So why are the Republicans dominating the mainstream debate about the top issue in U.S. politics: economic stimulus legislation. And why--why, why, why?--is the Obama administration letting them?

Two weeks after Washington was packed with millions of people celebrating the inauguration of Obama and the beginning of a new era with Democrats in charge, the Republicans--incredibly--have momentum on their side in national politics.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/04/looking-for-votes

And according to TomDispatch correspondent Dahr Jamail, they are not out of Iraq either, not by a long shot.

Iraq from the Inside of an Armored BMW
 

Already it's begun -- the endless non-departure from Iraq. The Obama plan, restated many times during the presidential campaign, involved a 16-month schedule for withdrawing not all U.S. forces, but only U.S. "combat troops." Now, his (and, of course, George W. Bush's) generals are showing visible evidence of dragging their combat boots in the sand on the subject. We were given fair warning. Over the last two years, numerous military figures have claimed that, as fast as they got into Iraq, it would be hell just getting all the U.S. stuff now embedded there out -- and that's without even taking into account the political situation in that country. Recently, according to military leaks to the media, "U.S. military planners" have come up with two alternate scenarios to Obama's 16-month plan. One is reportedly 19 months long, the other 23 months long, and -- here's a shock -- the two top generals in charge, Centcom commander David Petraeus and U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, favor the 23-month approach.

"Odierno and Petraeus have said that we really need 23 months to do this without jeopardizing the security gains that we've secured," was the way one typical anonymous official put it. President Obama has yet to show any sign of agreeing to this, but the pressure is evidently only beginning. Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service indicates that a "network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilizing public opinion against Obama's [16-month plan]... If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the ‘collapse' they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops." Stab in the back, anyone?

Oh, and in the bargain, the generals are evidently also planning to re-label some of those withdrawable combat forces among the still staggering 144,000 troops in Iraq -- the American invasion force of 2003 was only about 130,000 strong -- as non-combat "support troops" or advisors. They would, Robert Burns of the Associated Press writes, be "redesigned and reconfigured as multipurpose units to provide training and advising for Iraqi security force" and so would "be considered noncombat outfits." What's in a name, after all?

In the end, according to the New York Times, the generals hope to leave one third of American troops, almost 50,000 of them, in Iraq for an undetermined period (and that number, of course, doesn't including private security contractors) after the combat troops are withdrawn.

Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone and TomDispatch regular, is now back in Iraq and, in his typical, incisive way, he offers another view of just what "success" has meant for Americans, at least in Iraq's Sunni heartland. So slip into a well armored BMW with him and check out the scene for yourself. It's the only way a "tourist" is likely to be welcomed in this part of Iraq. Tom

Iraq's "Teflon Don"
The New Fallujah Up Close and Still in Ruins
By Dahr Jamail

Fallujah, Iraq -- Driving through Fallujah, once the most rebellious Sunni city in this country, I saw little evidence of any kind of reconstruction underway. At least 70% of that city's structures were destroyed during massive U.S. military assaults in April, and again in November 2004, and more than four years later, in the "new Iraq," the city continues to languish.

The shells of buildings pulverized by U.S. bombs, artillery, or mortar fire back then still line Fallujah's main street, or rather, what's left of it. As one of the few visible signs of reconstruction in the city, that street -- largely destroyed during the November 2004 siege -- is slowly being torn up in order to be repaved.

Unemployment is rampant here, the infrastructure remains largely in ruins, and tens of thousands of residents who fled in 2004 are still refugees. How could it be otherwise, given the amount of effort that went into its destruction and not, subsequently, into rebuilding it? It's a place where a resident must still carry around a U.S.-issued personal biometric ID card, which must also be shown any time you enter or exit the city if you are local. Such a card can only be obtained after U.S. military personnel have scanned your retinas and taken your fingerprints. (...)

martin dufresne wrote:

I know! Biden's remarks left me speechless, too!

martin dufresne wrote:

Sorry but for some reason, my post shows up in the Comment box but disappears when I try to post it.

Welcome to the new Elbbab!

Our motto: "Try to think of it as a feature." 

I'm guessing in about five years...after he is re-electd, then maybe just maybe a protest against Obama can at least be considered.

[url=http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/obamanocchio-1/][color=mediumblue]... #1[/u][/color][/url]

Quote:

President Obama made a “surprise visit” to the White House Press Room on Thursday. Undoubtedly, this was not an impulse or an accident, but a calculated attempt to create a new kind of photo-op. The idea was almost certainly to make news about the newness of this President not hiding from public-minded questioning. [b]The assumption must have been that the WH press corp would be so bowled over by Obama’s entrance that they’d fawn and gush over him and pump out puff pieces proclaiming his newness and openness.[/b]

Turns out, the reporters took advantage of the unheard-of chance by actually asking Obama a question!

“Why, Mr. President, are you nominating the Raytheon Corporation lobbyist William J. Lynn III to serve as Deputy Secretary of Defense? Isn’t that an egregious violation of your campaign promise and subsequent Executive Order to stop doing this kind of thing?”

Obama's answer? Not so new:

“The president brushed [the question] off, saying he would not return “if I’m going to get grilled every time I come.”

So, in other words, this “surprise visit” was old wine in a new bottle, a staged event all about coercive image-making, with no connection whatsoever to any new openness. If the Press Room is going to ask President Obama questions, then he’s not coming there. Simple as that.

.

[url=http://www.consumertrap.com/?p=839][color=mediumblue][u]Obamanocchio #2[/u][/color][/url]

Quote:

Of course, there is nothing complicated at all about Guantanamo. The United States illegally abducted scores of people it thinks are prone to terrorism and has illegally warehoused them for years, in the starkest possible contradiction to our alleged ideals and the simple rule of law.

Now, in order to live up to the rule of law, somebody has to admit that past violations of it have heightened ordinary Americans’ chances of being victims of future terrorism. Being illegally arrested and imprisoned does not generally calm one down.

Is Obama willing to show us clarity and respect and tell us the simple truth here?

Obviously not. Instead, we’re getting promise about the future designed to “signal a sense of motion, a sense of ferment and activity and direction.” Below the signals, there lies “the same argument Mr. Bush used to keep the prison open.”

So much for Obama's idea of bipartisanship. It seems like it was a good strategy, as at least he gave it a shot, and will be remembered for it.

Republican Taliban declare jihad on Obama

The president wants bipartisanship; the right has promised him all-out war

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article5733405.ece

From the outset, the Republicans in Washington pored over the bill to find trivial issues to make hay with. They found some small funding for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases prevention; they jumped up and down about renovating the national mall; they went nuts over a proposal - wait for it - to make some government buildings more energy-efficient; they acted as if green research and federal funds for new school building were the equivalent of funding terrorism. And this after eight years in which they managed to turn a surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit and added a cool $32 trillion to the debt the next generation will have to pay for. Every now and again their chutzpah and narcissism take one’s breath away. But it’s all they seem to know.

John McCain gives you the flavour. Fresh from a dinner in his honour hosted by Obama, he abruptly dismissed the stimulus package as the “same old” spending of the distant Democratic past. His closest Republican ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, declared: “This bill stinks.”

Pete Sessions, chairman of the Republican congressional committee, explained that the Republican strategy was going to be modelled on jihadist insurgency. “I’m not joking,” he added. “Insurgency we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban.”

Rush Limbaugh, the dominant figure among the Republican base, fresh from broadcasting a ditty called Barack, the Magic Negro, declared in the first week of the new Congress that he hoped the new president would fail. The stimulus bill got no Republican votes in the House, and only three Republicans - all from the Obama-voting states of Pennsylvania and Maine - backed him in the Senate. McCain went to the floor of the Senate to growl that three votes did not make the bill bipartisan.

Bitter? At the end of last week we saw just how bitter. One of the Republicans who had agreed to serve in Obama’s cabinet, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, abruptly pulled out, after what he described as “fair warning” to the president.

Gregg had been under intense pressure from the Republican base, especially in his home state, for cooperating with the devil. He claimed the reason for his sudden withdrawal was that he couldn’t stomach the stimulus. Yet only a week earlier he had said: “We need a robust [stimulus package]. I think the one that’s pending is in the range we need. I do believe it’s a good idea to do it at two levels, which this bill basically does, which is immediate stimulus and long-term initiatives which actually improve our competitiveness and our productivity.” He then tried to argue that his authority over the 2010 census as commerce secretary had been compromised. But that turned out not to be true, either: it was just that a census that could well add millions of Hispanic voters to the rolls had the Republicans eager to prevent a Republican imprimatur on it.

Gregg was a victim of fast-shifting Republican politics. Reeling from the election, watching a new president coopt some of their number and get alarmingly high approval ratings from the public, members of the opposition party made a decision to become an insurgency.

From the disciplined House vote against any stimulus bill to the Gregg withdrawal, they are busy trying to revive the clear ideological warfare of the 1990s. As they did with Clinton 16 years ago, they are going to war. The context – the worst global downturn in decades - is irrelevant. If you have safe Republican seats in a party dominated intellectually by rigid ideologues, then your path of least resistance is total political warfare. It is certainly easier than forging difficult and messy legislative compromises that might even redound to the president’s advantage if the economy recovers.

It’s not clear, however, that total war on the president is going to be a better way forward. Before the latest twist, a Gallup poll found that Obama’s handling of the stimulus package had almost twice the public support of the Republicans’. In a period of acute economic anxiety, Americans outside the Republican base may not be so thrilled to find a replay of the 1990s. Obama won in part because he seemed not part of that drama.

The Democrats and the liberal base have responded to all this with a mixture of cynicism and their own partisanship. They rolled their eyes at Obama’s outreach to Republicans; they hated the inclusion of the other party in the cabinet and had to swallow hard not to complain about the postpartisan rhetoric. Their cynicism is well earned. But my bet is that Obama also understands that this is, in the end, the sweet spot for him. He has successfully branded himself by a series of conciliatory gestures as the man eager to reach out. If this is spurned, he can repeat the gesture until the public finds his opponents seriously off-key.

Ask yourself this question: who, in the end, won the partisan warfare of the 1990s - Clinton or the Republicans? In 1993 the Republicans thought they had dispatched Clinton for good; he won re-election hands down three years later and left office, even after Monica Lewinsky, with high ratings. Obama may not believe that history repeats itself. But he’s surely aware that it often rhymes.

saga wrote:

I do not believe that the US would order Canadians away from the Hill that day. I believe the order came from Harper sent via the RCMP.

On the contrary, the US secret service is notorious for barging into other countries before presidential visits and insisting on all sorts of restrictions and conditions, as well as insisting that they be allowed to carry concealed handguns.

When the Emperor comes to visit you bloody well better kow-tow and avert your eyes!

And in contrast here is another Obama-ordered Drone attack in Afghanistan, with 15 killed this time. Not sure this strategy is going to win him many friends.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/15-killed-in-US-drone-attack-in-Paks-Kurram-agency/articleshow/4134849.cms

ISLAMABAD: In a second major strike in last four days, the US drones targeted a Taliban hideout in Pakistan's restive Kurram tribal region, killing

at least

15 people and wounding several others.

The drone fired two missiles at the hideout, where a meeting of the banned Tehrik-

e-Taliban Pakistan was being held, TV channels reported.

There was no official word on the incident. Though US drones target Taliban and al-Qaeda bases in Waziristan region, this was the first such attack in Kurram Agency.

Minutes after the strike, Taliban militants surrounded the area and were not allowing locals to approach the scene of attacks.

The missile strike came two days after another US drone attack in South Waziristan tribal region killed 32 people, most of them Uzbek supporters of al-Qaeda.

The $787.2 billion economic recovery bill — to be signed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday — dedicates $8 billion to high-speed rail, most of which was added in the final closed-door bargaining at the instigation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18924.html

While I didn't think that the whole stimulus bill came out as well as I'd hoped, this is nice.

More good news??

Tom Ridge is a self-confessed criminal. Why is Obomba allowing him to walk free?

[b]ITEM:[/b] [url=http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sahimi210209.html][color=mediumblue][u]L... about Iran's nuclear program[/u][/color][/url]

Quote:

Since February 2003, Iran's nuclear program has undergone what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself admits to be the most intrusive inspection in its entire history. After thousands of hours of inspections by some of the most experienced IAEA experts, the Agency has verified time and again that [b](1) there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran; and (2) all the declared nuclear materials have been accounted for, and there has been no diversion of such materials to non-peaceful purposes. Iran has a clean bill of health, as far as its nuclear program is concerned.[/b]

This is not what Israel, its lobby in the United States, and its neoconservative allies had expected. Such a clean bill of health deprives them of any justification for advocating military attacks on Iran. The illegal act of sending Iran's nuclear dossier to the United Nations Security Council and the subsequent, highly dubious UNSC resolutions against Iran have also not been effective. [b]So what is the War Party to do?

It has resorted to an international campaign of exaggerations, lies, and distortions. This campaign involves planting lies in the major media and on the Internet, making absurd interpretations of what the IAEA reports on Iran, and issuing dire -- but bogus -- warnings about the speed at which Iran's uranium-enrichment program is progressing.[/b] Such warnings have been around for over two decades.

I like this idea and hopefully the new president is listening    Barney Frank to Obama: Cut Military Spending

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/barney-frank-obama-cut-military-spending

Representative Barney Frank is one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives. As chairman of the Financial Services Committee, he's overseeing the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars to bailout Wall Street and stave off the mortgage crisis. The White House needs him, and he's been a dependable ally so far. Now he's leaning on President Barack Obama to cut the Pentagon budget.

On Tuesday, two days before Obama presents a proposed budget to Congress, Frank (D-Mass.) and other House Democrats called on the Obama administration to reduce military spending, setting up a potential clash between House liberals and the White House. At a White House summit on fiscal responsibility the day before, Obama had cast doubt on the future of an $11.2 billion project to upgrade the fleet of presidential helicopters. But Obama has shown no indication that he plans to reduce, or even freeze, overall defense spending, which will be around $650 billion this fiscal year.

President Obama plans to fund his ambitious plan to overhaul the nation's healthcare system with $634 billion in new taxes on wealthy Americans and cuts in Medicare spending over the next 10 years, administration officials said today.

The money will help the administration to begin paying the large costs of bringing healthcare to the more than 47 million Americans currently without insurance.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-obama-health26-2009feb26,0,6658120.story?track=rss

So it's not quite clear yet what exactly universal health care in the US will look like, but the money part of it is starting to get sorted out.

Uh oh.

It's not *that* exciting. It probably won't even be single-payer, but improvement is improvement.