Tag Archives: Obama

02.13.16
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The ugly upcoming nomination battle

So Antonin Scalia, the flabbergastingly partisan Supreme Court justice whose rulings for the last 15 years were less judicial and more a highbrow translation of AM radio, has passed away.  No one wished for his death; just his resignation. He was a man who was loved, I’m sure. Still, in light of things like the insane and potentially catastrophic (and, it has to be noted unprecedented) ruling to stay the Clean Power Bill, this is an opportunity to move forward.

But it’s going to get ugly. If you listen closely, you can hear a thousand thinkpieces being written that will argue how it is tyrannical for a lameduck to nominate a Supreme Court justice. Senators are already limbering up for the nomination fight, practicing teary piousness about how the President owes it to the legacy of this great American patriot to nominate a “true Constitutional conservative”.  The confluence of an election year, Scalia’s unique role as berobed channeler of the right-wing id, and the unerring antipathy to letting Obama have any normal Presidential prerogative will make this perhaps the ugliest fight in Supreme Court history.

The prerogative is the important thing. Republicans take it as gospel that anytime Obama behaves like a President he is acting like a king. This time will be no different. A quick look back makes it seem like this is the latest in his term a President has had a Supreme Court nomination since LBJ, but that’s due to justices generally not resigning in an election year. This is different. There is nothing that can be done.  Barack Obama is still the President. It is 100% within his rights to nominate a justice, and 100% in his rights to nominate a justice

Barack Obama is still the President. It is 100% within his rights to nominate a justice, and 100% in his rights to nominate a justice  with whom he is aligned, politically and judicially. This being an election year doesn’t change that.

So when you hear an argument that Obama owes it to Scalia’s memory to appoint a true Constitutional originalist like Scalia (which he only was when it suited him, and which is a bankrupt and idiotic ideology anyway), or that he should do the right thing and postpone having 9 Justices for at least a year, remind them of Article II, section 1.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Note it doesn’t say “3 years” or “but during an election year he shouldn’t do anything.” Obama was elected by a large majority for a four-year term, with all the Presidential perogatives that entails. No true Constitutionalist could argue otherwise.

06.11.13
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Snowden Spills His Secret

Edward Snowden, the 29-yr-old responsible for one of the largest national security leaks in US history, has an auspicious name.   In Catch-22, Joseph Heller’s biting, terrifying, wildly-funny and scathing satire on the the whole nature of war, the corruptibility of man, and, most importantly, the self-defeating loops of logic man twists himself into to justify inherent barbarism in a civilized age (of which the eponymous catch is just the most famous example), the main character, Yossarian, is haunted by an unknown character named Snowden spilling his secret.

The chronology of the book jumps back and forth, but the driving action is that something snapped in Yossarian when Snowden told him his secret.  The madness of the enterprise revealed itself in full for Yossarian.   It isn’t until late in the book that we see what caused the driving action, what really was Snowden’s secret.  (and spoiler alert here, I guess, though it was published almost 50 years ago, so come on).  While on a bombing mission, Yossarian’s plane took flack, and Snowden was injured.  Yossarian went to help the moaning man, complaining of the cold, and at first saw a good-sized wound on the man’s leg, but nothing absolutely fatal.  But then Snowden’s secret was revealed.  Yossarian removed the man’s jacket, and saw that a huge piece of flack had torn through his stomach.  The jacket had been weakly holding everything in, but then it all came out: all that made Snowden, blood and organs and flesh, poured out onto the floor and onto Yossarian.   The whole inner-workings were brought to light.  Man is just flesh, and war is designed to destroy that flesh.   The whole sick nature of everything was revealed.

It isn’t really stretching the point to say that Edward Snowden did much the same thing, only a bit neater (and honestly, it makes me think the name is fake.  It is almost too perfect).   The apparatus that this amorphous war has created has been brought to light.  I think most people suspected it, but the depth is stunning.  And perhaps the most surprising part is that everything that is done is legal.  Laws were passed by elected officials that allow for the government, which has also arrogated unto itself the right to assassinate American citizens and throw people in jail for indefinite periods without a trial, can mine nearly everything you do online and on the phone.

This is raw power, and it is scary.  The thing is, there can be arguments for why the government needs this, or why it is absolutely necessary for national security.   The problem is that we never had them (and I am a little worried that now the argument is going to be more about whether Snowden is a traitor or a hero than what he helped expose).   This is poison to a country that fashions itself as a democracy and an experiment in self-governance, as Charlie Pierce would put it.

So these are the things we can now discuss, now that they have been brought kicking and screaming into the sunlight.  Should the government be able to monitor your online and telephonic presence to any extent?  If yes, how much?  Does merely drawing connections between who is calling whom without actually listening in really invade your privacy?  Who gets to decide this?  The President? (not just this one, but any.  For Dems- of whom I am one- who think it is OK because of Obama, imagine that Scotty Walker somehow becomes the next President.)

More than that, at least in my opinion, is the question of worth.  The biggest elephant in the room, that no one would touch with a ten-foot pole, and other cliches of the type that we’ve been using for 12 years to avoid the real issue, is that guaranteed safety is at best illusory and at worst an invitation to live in North Korea, only without the dumpy charisma of Dear Leader Jr.   What we have done is upended our country, and our idea of privacy, due to a major and horrifying terrorist attack.  This was completely understandable, but terrorism is also a rare thing, and something that happens, and is, at the end, not 100% avoidable.  People will always want to hurt others, and unless we want to live in a police state, one who is constantly sending troops and robots around the world to do our bidding, it won’t ever be completely solved.

The problem is we weren’t really asked.  We were taken advantage of due to our fright, and our apathy.  This was partly the product of a strange confluence: this scarring, shattering, atavistic attack was roughly coincidental with the rise of social media and the death of public reticence.   We all have given up a lot of privacy.   Hell, right now, I am imagining there are people who want to know what I am thinking about this, and hoping that my picture reveals a “mysterious charm, like Batman”.   The government in a large way is merely taking what we have given.

But now they have to ask.  Now, thanks to Snowden, every elected official will have to take a stand on what they think of this (assuming the media does their job, and that is a big assumption).   We can finally talk about what has been done in our name, for us, to us.   A country of the people and by the people can’t have it any other way.  So it is messy and horrible and a stinking bloody peak into the world right under our fragile skin, but this was a secret that needed spilling.   America’s great sin over the past decade has been to not talk about this new kind of war.   If we don’t, one day the satire of Catch-22 is going to seem like a gentle look at a softer past.

05.23.13
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Live blogging Obama speech

1:59 There is a lot I fault this Admin with regarding terrorism, but I also find the other side completely irrational and self-defeating and willing to do anything to destroy the POTUS.   But these stirring words, even though I agree with them, just ring so hollow after 12 years of this increasingly desperate nonsense.   If something can change now, it will be positive, but so late.  So many wasted lives around the world.  There was a chance after 9/11 to remake the world into something better.  But it was trashed, burnt away by gleeful pyromaniacs and sneering playground bullies.   Its cold and stupid logic persisted, and in some ways was heightened.  I think this Admin is doing a better job, but it is relatively worse, given expectations.  The idea that now, 12 years on, we’re trying to formulate a strategy to met the challenge, and, even worse, that no one really thinks we’ll be able to, is the whole rot of our political and moral culture in one depressing run-on sentence.

More thoughts later, perhaps.  Comments are always open.

1:53 “I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack, because this is worth being passionate about.”  That is excessively well-done.

1:52 I was worried he was going to quote Daniel Tosh.  Phew!

1:50  I love seeing the President be heckled.  It reminds me that we’re all right.  He handled it well.  I also did not expect all the applause.  I couldn’t really understand her, so I don’t know who they were applauding, but it is clear that everyone is on the same page.

1:50 People are going to say this is really partisan, and it is, but absolutely right.  It is crazy that it is suddenly dangerous to try people in courts.

1:47 I like when they point out that we actually have been able to try terrorists with relative ease over the years.

1:45 “I look forward to working with a collection of kill-crazy destructive vandals to help them paint me as a secret Muslim who wants to institute Sharia law”

1:44 It is true that they want to shield for journalism, but just because the law doesn’t exist isn’t a reason not to obey its spirit.   That was just a huge bit of cognitive dissonance, on a level we don’t usually see from this Admin.

1:41 Despite my carping, I’ve liked about 65% of the speech.  Maybe 75%.  But much of this is what I liked in 2007 and hasn’t translated into smarter action.   He came really close to the John Kerry line about how terrorism can be a law enforcement issue.   But not close enough.

1:40 Greg sums it up over on the twitter, which is where the cool kids hang out.

On diplomacy – yes, US has to be active. But US practices risk avoidance not risk management.

1:36 OK, so he got the people who hate the drone strikes and think they are a huge immoral and illegal over-reach angry in the first half-hour.  Now he is talking about foreign aid as a much better investment than military strikes.  Feeding people in Yemen and building wells.   So now everyone else will be angry.

1:35 “We cannot take action everywhere these radical ideologies take root”.   Yes, and yes again!  Too bad that is seen as wimpy.  Hell, we had people want to storm into Chechnya and Dagestan a few weeks ago (and frankly, I would have bought their plane tickets).

1:31 OK, I agree with the idea that in extreme cases citizenship doesn’t really matter.  That has been true in other wars.   I don’t even disagree that al-Awlaki was plotting against the US.  But the huge issue for me, at least, is that we crossed this incredible pass for someone who really wasn’t a major threat.  He was a little more dangerous than John Walker Lindh, perhaps (and doesn’t that seem like such a distant name from a far-off time), but he was not the impossible danger that made it worth taking these steps.

1:30 Nixes any drone strikes on US soil, brings up legal twister of due process.   Not judicial process.

1:28 Congress is briefed on every strike.  Might be over-estimating the popularity of Congress, here.  “Oh, Congress says it is ok?  Well, then I’m on board!”

1:26 As many people have pointed out, the idea that these drone strikes result in less civilian deaths (despite the Franciscan flagellation, which seemed honest, about these deaths) is partly a result of a morally obtuse concept that military-aged males near drone strikes are by definition non-civilian.

1:22 State sovereignty is great, but the question has always been: who is the state?  We deal with governments like Salih’s, whose “the state is me” ideas didn’t really pan out beyond the Yemen version of the Beltway.  (The Jambiya?)

1:20 This is true- America is at war with AQ and others.  It is “affiliated” that is the tricky thing.  We still don’t know who everyone is.  Oh wow- that was the heart of this speech.  “Legal doesn’t make it moral”.   This is what many of us who voted for Obama want to hear- be strong, but don’t over-reach.  We haven’t seen much evidence of this, and that is a disappointment, but maybe this is a turning point.

1:17 That’s great we aren’t triggering firefights with tribesmen with whom we have no beef.   But we sometimes drone the living death out of these self-same tribesmen.   This is saying all the things that I want to hear, but there is a certain dissonance with action.

1:13 Define it not as a boundless war on terror, but specific actors.  This, right here, is what people have been saying for 12 years.   But while this sounds great, working with Pakistanis, Yemenis, the AU to get rid of al-Shabab, it elides the fact that many of these actions are wildly unpopular in the countries that we are acting in.  I believe in partnerships, of course, but working with the wrong actors is almost as bad as going solo, and sometimes worse.

1:12 Bringing up all the other terrorist attacks before him.   Two things here: one, saying that we don’t have to have a national freakout every time something bad happens, and two, saying: really?  You want to impeach me over Benghazi?   Come on!

1:10  McVeigh wasn’t a Muslim!

1:09 I like this analysis of the difference between local operatives, regional affiliates, etc.  Some groups are just collections of names and guns.  We can’t use a blanket approach, and lump everything under the “islamist” umbrella.   But while the rhetoric is there, it still needs to translate to action.

1:07  Brings up James Madison.  Charlie Pierce just sat up straight.   It is also amazing that, in 2013, saying that we need to define the scope of this battle against extremism makes for a big speech.   12 years on.

1:06  I never really liked the “we spent abroad and not here” tactic, but it is undeniable.   It just smacks of isolationism.

1:04 Osama is dead.  If you had that on Speech Bingo, you aren’t terribly creative, are you?   There was nice talk about stopping torture, but that just serves to remind that we did torture people, and no one has been punished.  Just more rhetorical rug-sweeping.

1:03 Brings up Iraq.  Saying that it shifted focus shouldn’t be controversial, but somehow always is.

1:01 Doing the Obama thing where he links our history into the issues of the day- our character, our shared experiences, our “commitment to constitutional principles”.    This is a common trope for him, and for others, of course, but he seems to do it with a special intensity, perhaps because he has always had to try to prove he is “American”.   It sets a tone for a “this isn’t radical what I am about to say”.

OK, so we’re going to be live-blogging the Obama speech.  Haven’t done this in a while.  I know it is more of a twitter thing, but I’m old-fashioned.   The important things to look at in terms of Guantanamo are if they are planning to release anyone, or just shift detainees to federal supermax prisons stateside.