Maha Shout Out
by digby
I just passed on to Barbara “Maha” O’Brien a couple of bucks and if you have any to spare to help her out, it would be a nice progressive tribute on a day like today to do the same. Barbara is a longtime Democratic activist and prolific liberal writer who has been blogging since practically the beginning. She wrote one of the first books on the phenomenon.
Like a lot of Americans, she’s feeling the pinch. Hard. And she could use some help.
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Not Playing The Blame Game
by digby
Republicans will be holding the Democrats accountable for things they haven’t done until we are all long dead:
Senate Democrats hoped to confirm Hillary Clinton as secretary of state this afternoon, but John Cornyn appears to have succeeded in forcing a one-day delay. With Cornyn objecting to the unanimous consent motion for a voice vote today, Harry Reid has scheduled a roll call vote for tomorrow. In a statement, Cornyn says he’s “pleased to have the opportunity to have a full and open debate and an up-or-down vote” on Clinton’s nomination. “Important questions remain unanswered concerning the Clinton Foundation and its acceptance of donations from foreign entities,” he said. “Transparency transcends partisan politics and the American people deserve to know more. While I look forward to having this open discussion later this week, today I join my colleagues in celebrating the historic Inauguration of our 44th president. It is a monumental achievement in our nation’s history and a cause for pride for all Americans.”
They just can’t help themselves. What an ass.
Recall some of Cornyn’s inspirational words on transcending partisanship in the past:
“If Anyone Thought The Anger And Political Sniping That Infested The Capital During The Campaign Would End After The Election, They Were Flat Wrong. Partisan Attacks In Lieu Of The Facts Have Replaced Ideas, Action And Cooperation.” (Sen. John Cornyn, “Attacks On Rove ‘More Anger And Political Sniping,’” Press Release, 7/13/05
and:
“Sadly, These Attacks Are More Of The Same Kind Of Anger And Lashing Out That Has Become The Substitute For Bipartisan Action And Progress. While Republicans Focus On Accomplishing An Ambitious Agenda For The American People, Some Democrats And Their Allies In The Hyper-Partisan Interest Groups Continue On Their Path Of Smear And Distract.” (Sen. John Cornyn, “Attacks On Rove ‘More Anger And Political Sniping,’” Press Release, 7/13/05)
Oh, and on FoxNews right now they are all screeching about how ungracious Obama was toward Bush in his speech and reminding their audience that progressives are historically racist eugenecists who are promoting a program of class envy.
Smell the bipartisanship.
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Make Them Stop
by digby
I am watching people from somewhere in this country parading down the street in front of the White House, before the new president, with brooms and lawnmowers. And none of the gasbags could be bothered to explain who these people are or what that means because they are so in love with the sound of their own voices saying the words “historic” and “symbolic” over and over again that they just don’t have the time.
In fact, they are barely acknowledging the parade participants at all. Instead, like broken records they are repeating the same mind-bendingly annoying, empty phrases they’ve been repeating on a loop for the past three days.
As dday said this morning, the only way to watch this stuff is with the sound off.
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Compare/Contrast
by dday
I guess the Obama people must feel like they got what they wanted out of the Rick Warren invocation, but from my vantage point it was a wooden and erratic address. Outside of the parts where he was quoting Scripture, it was hard to even understand his point half the time. When he started rambling about how God was “compassionate and merciful to everyone… and you are loving to everyone” it didn’t even seem like it was written or thought out at all, despite the fact that he read the whole thing without making eye contact with the crowd. He looked hurried and rattled, and I have to think that the mass outcry against his appearance had to play a part in that. Either that or he’s a star on a small stage who didn’t translate to the step up in class.
For comparison’s sake, check out the amazing work of the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who spoke of justice and charity and aid for the least among us. I’d say it was no contest.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.
And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.
Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little, angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together, children, pledging that we won’t get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone, with your hands of power and your heart of love.
Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around — (laughter) — when yellow will be mellow — (laughter) — when the red man can get ahead, man — (laughter) — and when white will embrace what is right.
Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.
The point that those who Digby refers to as the Religion Industrial Complex want to avoid is that there’s no need to reinvent the liberal relationship to faith. It already exists in the application of many religious teachings, in the notions of peace and justice and equality and tolerance, and in the common effort seen in the civil rights and the global peace movements. The religious right has hijacked these principles for the purposes of authoritarian extremism, and what is sometimes depicted as the “religious left” would rather accommodate those extremist views. It’s a false choice.
And it didn’t hurt to here a little nod to non-believers up on that platform today. For a second I actually thought I lived in a country where church and state were separate. Not bad.
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More Good People
by digby
This is excellent news:
A Georgetown source forwards over an email from that school’s administration, reporting that Professor Marty Lederman‘s class will be canceled — because he’s joining the Obama administration. Lederman, another former Clinton Office of Legal Counsel lawyer, is perhaps the most prominent of several high-profile opponents of the Bush Administration’s executive power claims joining Obama, a mark that he intends not just to change but to aggressively reverse Bush’s moves on subjects like torture. With hires like Barron, Johnen, and Lederman, Obama is not just going back to Democratic lawyers: These are anti-Bush lawyers. Lederman has been, in particular, an early and vocal critic of torture, and has suggested Bush Administration officials have committed specific crimes in that regard.
Anyone who’s been following legal issues on the blogs over the past few years knows Lederman from his posts on Balkinization. Greenwald points out that Lederman will be in the OLC, which is even better. Like Glenn, I am much relieved that the administration has chosen people with a strong track record of principled criticism against the legal atrocities of the Bush years to go in and clean up John Yoo’s mess.
But, as always, vigilance and critical observation is also required. There have been many examples of people with great reputations for stalwart independence and high ethical standards being persuaded to cut corners for the greater good of the government/department/country/president. (Michael Mukasey is one such person, if I recall.)
Obviously, I don’t expect anyone in the Obama administration to be faced with the kind of choices that came from Cheney and Addington, so that’s not the worry. But as Glenn points out, there is a lot of pressure from the permanent political establishment to hedge, and Obama has named some others to the DOJ who are in favor of doing just that.
I don’t know Lederman by anything other than his writing, but if it indicates anything it indicates a man with an unerring commitment to the principles of the constitution. I don’t expect any shennanigans and I certainly don’t expect Marty Lederman to be writing legal opinions defending them, should anyone try. But you never know. Let’s hope this is one area where principle will always be practiced over pragmatism. Some things just aren’t negotiable.
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New Day
by digby
*I was going to put up “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead” but it seemed inappropriate to the this moment of reconciliation. But I hummed it.
h/t to bb
Masses On The Mall
by dday
I’m watching the inauguration ceremonies from home, and it’s far better with the sound off, let me tell you. The scene of maybe a million people in Washington today is a little wild. You don’t often see that many Muslim sympathizers in America (tee hee). My Twitter feed is exploding with friends on the Mall providing their onsite reports.
It’s not unimportant. This many people motivated to be a part of this event might just be the uniquely American desire to witness history and the ability to say you were there. It also can mean, and I think it does mean, that Americans from all over the world are ready to be a part of their government again. There were many of us the past eight years and longer, who ducked our heads, who disassociated from this country, who failed to recognize it. And while today has a lot of ceremony and symbolism, I look forward much more to tomorrow. There will be a genuinely well-liked man at the seat of power, who ran on a firm break from the current policies, and who is asking the citizens for which he will work to serve. He has told us who he is, a somewhat cautious, introspective, incrementalist moderate, but he has inspired an entire generation of Americans to tell him who they are.
Barack Obama will not be measured by how his initial policies succeed. He will be measured by how he reacts should those policies fail. Will he listen to those screaming for change? Will he take the commitment of millions to heart and fight for them? Will he adapt?
Looking out at the millions on the Mall, I think he can ill afford not to.
Today is about returning power to the people who made this country.
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Winks N Nods
by digby
Big Tent Democrat picked up on something that I’ve noticed emerging as a village meme: the idea that liberals expect the CIA to torture when they “really need to” even if it is illegal.
While the Beltway wants the torture policy of the Bush Administration swept under the rug and forgotten, Bush Administration officials are working at cross purposes with their Media enablers. Outgoing CIA chief Michael Hayden yesterday said:
“These techniques worked,” Hayden said of the agency’s interrogation program during a farewell session with reporters who cover the CIA. “One needs to be very careful” about eliminating CIA authorities, he said, because “if you create barriers to doing things . . . there’s no wink, no nod, no secret handshake. We won’t do it.“
I don’t know where this comes from unless they have decided that Alan Dershowitz fairly represents the liberal position, which is just bizarre. But as far as I know, he’s the only one who has asserted that he had “no doubt that if an actual ticking bomb situation were to arise, our law enforcement authorities would torture” and so argued that we should legalize it. It was a perverse argument based upon the assumption that we all agreed that the government must torture at times and therefore we must ensure that it’s done with all the “i”s crossed and the “t”s dotted. It’s one of those dry, bureaucratic arguments in the service of extreme immorality that chills you to the bone when you read it.
Perhaps there are others who make this argument and I’ve missed it. Surely there are those, including yours truly, who know very well that the government was torturing long before Bush and Cheney made a fetish of it. But to the best of my knowledge, only Dershowitz thinks that because they’ve “always done it” we should legalize it.
This isn’t a complicated argument. Torture is immoral. It is illegal. It elicits false confessions and bad information. It creates ill will among people all over the world and puts the United States on the same moral level as some of the worst regimes in history. It should not be used at all, ever.
If Hayden is actually saying that sanctions against torture means that they will not do it under any circumstances, then that’s the best argument for sanctions there is.
Update: Oh, and lest anyone still think of dredging up the argument that the Guantanamo prisoners, many of whom were tortured, are the worst of the worst, this article in today’s NY Times should put that to rest:
While hundreds of suspects have been released from the detention camp in the seven years it has been operating, the recent decisions came after the Bush administration said it had reduced the population to the most dangerous terrorists.
While Mr. Bismullah’s case was decided by a military panel, the rulings for the other 23 detainees occurred in habeas corpus hearings in federal court. Since a Supreme Court decision in June gave detainees the right to have their detentions reviewed by federal judges in habeas cases, the government has won only three of them. The government is appealing some of the rulings it lost.
The cases provide a snapshot of the intelligence collected by the government on the suspects and suggest that there was little credible evidence behind the decision to declare some of the men enemy combatants and to hold them indefinitely.
In a decision on Wednesday ordering the release of a prisoner who had been a Saudi resident, Judge Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court said the government’s case was largely based on inconsistent accusations from two other Guantánamo detainees whose credibility the government itself had questioned.
That case involved Mohammed el Gharani, who was detained when he was 14. One of the government’s claims was that Mr. Gharani had been a member of a Qaeda cell in London. His lawyers at the British legal group Reprieve argued that the government’s assertions would have meant that he was a member of the cell at age 11.
“Putting aside the obvious unanswered questions as to how a Saudi minor from a very poor family could have even become a member of a London-based cell,” Judge Leon said, “the government simply advances no corroborating evidence for these statements.”
In a separate case involving five Algerian detainees, Judge Leon, an appointee of President Bush, ruled last fall that he was not persuaded by the government’s claim that the men had planned to go to Afghanistan to fight Americans. The claim, he ruled, turned out to have been based on an assertion from a single unnamed person in a classified government document.
“The government’s failure in case after case after case to be able to prove its case calls into question everybody who is there,” said Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer for 17 Uighur detainees from western China who were ordered released by a federal judge in October. The Justice Department has appealed that order from a federal district judge, Ricardo M. Urbina, and the men are still at Guantánamo.
Yes it does.
I’ve heard rightwing gasbags cheering that Obama said in the Washington Post interview that he would consider his first term a failure if he was unable to close Guantanamo. They naturally assume that means he’s planning to drag it out. Let’s hope they are wrong.
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Schlock Artists
by digby
Julia has more on the inaugural cost nonsense that seems to be sweeping the media today. But this really takes the cake:
Bush’s inaugural donors were mostly individuals, lobbyists and companies with a vested interest in high oil prices, deregulation,** and the mortgage bubble. The Obama team isn’t taking money from lobbyists or companies, has lowered the top donation from Bush’s $250k to $50k, and (we find tucked into the bottom of a Politico story about “big donors”) all but 5,632 of the 200,000 donations they’ve received were less than $200, for an average donation of $34. Which, I guess, is why two days before the inauguration right pundit pushback has been reduced to this:
Even President Bush — who presumably counts himself among that group — said last week that Obama’s inauguration is “a moment of hope and pride.” That’s not exactly how Michelle Malkin describes it. “Jan. 20 has turned into a schlock inauguration, (where) every last moocher has come to cash in on Obama,” says the conservative blogger and pundit. “There are some of us who want to bang our heads against the wall.”Lest we forget, this is what Ms. Malkin considers a tasteful inauguration.
I think I blacked out the Bush inaugurations because I did not recall Bush’s “tasteful” inauguration.
Dear God:
Diners attending any of three candlelight inaugural dinners will be treated to a menu best described as “donor’s delight,” a compilation of dishes intended to honor major Bush campaign fundraisers. The chef’s challenge: 4 courses and 12 brand names, representing millions in donations By Deanna Swift WASHINGTON, DC—Just call him the “Iron Chef” of the White House. Executive Chef Walter S. Scheib III is facing a major culinary challenge: how to create an inaugural menu that pays tribute to the brand names of a dozen top Bush campaign and GOP donors. From Coca Cola to Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Pilgrim’s Pride turkeys, Scheib’s dishes must satisfy the most powerful appetite on Capitol Hill these days: the taste for money. “I’ve never had to create dishes that include soda, doughnuts and canned fruit before,” says Scheib, who received his training at the Culinary Institute of America, and cooked at the Capitol Hilton in Washington and the Boca Raton Club before accepting the honor of “top toque” in the White House kitchens. But he says he’s not worried. “I’ve already changed the way I cook and have given up all French recipes. This should be a snap,” says Scheib, referring to the White House’s ban on béchamel and beurre blanc after France refused to support the administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq. But preparing a meal that includes not one, but two varieties of doughnuts can test the mettle of any chef, Scheib concedes. Krispy Kreme Inc. gave more than $90,000 to the Republicans in 2004, while Dunkin Donuts has been a long-time GOP supporter. Scheib’s solution: use the Krispy Kremes as the basis for Snowballs in Hot Fudge, a sauce made from Nestlé Nesquick, the product of another major donor, Nestlé CEO and Bush ‘pioneer’ Joe Weller. Dunkin Donuts old-fashioned cake doughnuts, meanwhile, will become part of a sweet and savory stuffing for an old-time turkey dinner. The birds: Pilgrim’s Pride Whole Butter Basted Turkeys. Pilgrim CEO Lonnie Pilgrim was a Bush pioneer in 2004, pledging to bring in more than $100,000 in contributions to the Bush/Cheney campaign. Figuring out how to incorporate Coca-Cola into the meal was an altogether different matter, says Scheib. “It’s a refreshing cola beverage, there’s no doubt about it. But how do you cook with it? I had no idea.” In the end, Scheib used the Coca-Cola as the basis for a brine, thus killing two birds, so-to-speak, with one stone. The Pilgrim’s Pride Whole Butter Basted Turkeys benefit from their overnight soda bath, while Bush ‘ranger’ Barclay T. Resler, Vice President of Government Relations for Coca-Cola, gets some much deserved credit for rounding up more than $200,000 in campaign contributions
And to think I’ve been teasing average small time capitalists for selling Obama kitsch.
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Sacrifice
by digby
MSNBC commentator: … The subtext of all of this [call to service] is “hey Americans, you’re gonna have to do your part too. There may be some sacrifices involved for you too.” Do you think he’s going to use his political capital to make those arguments and will it go beyond rhetoric?
Andrea Mitchell: It does go beyond rhetoric. He needs to engage the American people in this joint venture. That’s part of the call. That’s part of what he needs to accomplish in his spech and in the days following the speech. He needs to make people feel that this is their venture as well and that people are going to need to be more patient and have to contribute and that there will have to be some sacrifice.
And certainly, if he is serious about what he told the Washington Post last week, that he wants to take on entitlement reform, there will be greater sacrifice required from a nation already suffering from economic crisis — to ask people to take a look at their health care and their other entitlements and realize that for the long term health and vitality of the country we’re going to have to give up something that we already enjoy.
Right. Old and sick people are going to have to give up something they “enjoy.” That’s assuming they “enjoy” being able to eat and go to a doctor. Of course, Andrea Mitchell won’t have to give up what she “enjoys.” She’s a multi-millionaire.
It’s hard for me to believe that we are going to have this conversation while the government is giving hundreds of billions of dollars to bankers who see it as a handout to be used to enrich their stockholders and themselves. And I am as stunned as I always am that we are going to have this conversation while the government insists that the United States must spend more on its military than all the other countries in the world combined.
But I really can’t believe that we are having this conversation when social security is well funded for decades and yet the current problems are staring us right in the face. I can only assume that Obama must feel that he has to solve every problem anyone can possibly conceive of in the future as well as the problems of the present and I’m sorry, that is the very definition of hubris. Social security is not an issue he needs to put on his already very full plate and I can’t imagine why anyone thinks it is, unless they want to barter it away for cooperation on something else, which is unacceptable.
I would guess that they are worried about being called tax and spend liberals, so this is why they are talking up “fiscal responsibility” as some sort of hedge. With the gasbags blathering on all day about how he’s being “given” a trillion dollars to “play with” I can see why they would be nervous. But the way to combat that is not to put “entitlements” on the table, but to reassure people that these problems are solvable and that they are putting programs in place to solve them. The proof is in the pudding on this one. The opposition is only interested in sharing bipartisan success, not failure.
It’s possible that they want to position health care reform as entitlement reform, but I do not think it will work. The forces that want to destroy the safety net are influential and well funded and they are selling entitlement “reform” in just the way that Andrea Mitchell describes — as something the American people must give up in order to set the country on the right course. They will not sit still while someone tries to sell it as anything other than necessary cuts in benefits or complete elimination of the programs. That’s the whole point.
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