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The Wright Stuff: Obama's Pastor and the Ricketts Smear |
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Saturday, 19 May 2012 09:40 |
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Cox writes: "Republicans are rightly shamed by a Super Pac ad plan to tag Obama as a black radical. The irony is his very lack of radicalism."
Reverend Jeremiah Wright. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Wright Stuff: Obama's Pastor and the Ricketts Smear
By Ann Marie Cox, Guardian UK
19 May 12
 ebraska has already supplied the right with a billionaire boogeyman: Warren Buffet, hero of the secretarial pool and worldly philanthropist.
Now, the left has a Husker to hate: Joe Ricketts, the man for whom a group of Republican troublemakers dreamed up the perhaps-intentionally hilarious, to-be-sure-intentionally shocking "Plan to Defeat Barack Hussein Obama". The document's deadpan staccato phrasing has the punctuation-agnostic urgency and livid prose of a "Mission: Impossible" assignment memo (or an Austin Powers trailer). "The Plan. An Overview," reads the titular section:
"A five-minute unusually unique" – sic! – "film bringing his tutorship beneath Reverend Wright and others to the forefront of popular discourse … We start by raising an eyebrow. Teasers, hints of dark clouds to come. Buying print space, newspaper ads, kiosks at the airport, around the convention and skies overhead … A shocking message, the perfect radical messenger to attract attention, heavy press, two solid weeks of national television, heavy social media and a long-lasting web presence to run through the election."
I don't know why they would consider wasting all that time and money on ad buys when the message is so shocking it doesn't even always need verbs. Then again, the whole document is really a smoke-screen for an attack that is really only one word long. I'll give you a hint. The creators of the plan describe Obama as the "metrosexual black Abe Lincoln": which one of those terms, historically, is seen as a negative?
The Ricketts document wraps its attempts to undermine Obama in questions about "character", but Obama's connection to Jeremiah Wright doesn't unnerve conservatives because Wright has been inflammatorily critical of US policy. Obama's neighbor Bill Ayers was more literally up in arms about US policy; and while he's a touchstone of talk radio, no one is designing a game-changing campaign around him.
No, Wright is especially troubling because he has preached that black Americans are owed due to US policy, and that they should agitate until that debt is settled. And, in their hearts, I think most Americans (white and black) know that the debt exists – and that only black Americans will get to decide how and what its settlement means. There is no fear without basis in fact, and conservative chatter about Wright plays on the same anxieties that Wright himself stoked. White Americans will someday have to pay for the injustices that girded the early history of our country; we have an inheritance of guilt that cannot be assuaged by contemporary feints at fairness.
Republicans who recoil from engaging in the racial politics of the Wright connection aren't, after all, rejecting the premise. If anything, Romney's awkward repudiation (typically weird of him, by the way, to double-down on "repudiate" as his response to the ad; somehow overly formal and mildly grossed out by the idea of emotional engagement) to the Rickett material only underscores the message's volatility: it is political napalm, a poor weapon not because it is ineffective but because it burns everything it touches.
In other words, the problem with the Wright campaign as envisioned by Rickett's people isn't that it wouldn't work, it's that it would … and once you make your Rev Wright bed, people wearing white sheets are gonna want to lie in it, too.
Ironically, there is a more subtle criticism of Obama to glean from his attendance at Wright's church, one that's impossible to pin on the president as long as the attacks hinge on tying him more closely to Rev Wright than he has been already. Obama knew Wright for 20 years, but the most lasting impression Wright seems to have had on Obama's thinking is contained in a single turn of phrase: "The Audacity of Hope", a Wrightism significantly less divisive as any of the other quotes he's become known for.
Obama has said he wasn't even in the church to hear those. Taking Obama at his word, what we have is a guy who joined a church because he needed to join a church – to paraphrase Romney, he can't not have a church, he was "running for office, for Pete's sake". (Though now that he's been elected, he's free to sleep in on Sundays.) We have a guy who doesn't listen that closely to what his pastor has to say. In this understanding, Obama is less of a bombthrower than a gradualist in radical drag. He is craven and driven by political expediency – traits that are more typical of all politicians, black or white, and more insidious than the kind of racial bluster that no one above a congressman can get away with.
Obama's greatest fault isn't that he's different than all the other presidents who have come before him, it's that he's just like them. The really dangerous criticism buried in the Wright connection isn't that Obama believed all the things said in his church; it's that he didn't.
The worst thing you can say about Obama, really, is that he'll do almost anything to get elected. The same is true for Romney; he just has to have other people do it for him.
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The Politics of the Pipeline |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Friday, 18 May 2012 15:09 |
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Pierce writes: "For a time, it seemed, the Republicans in the Senate seemed bound and determined to attach approval of the pipeline to every bit of Senate business except the morning invocation. Now, though, it appears that some of the project's proponents have been softening a bit on that strategy."
Earlier this week, Trans Canada brought out its new proposed pipeline route to show the citizens of Nebraska. (photo: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Blog)
The Politics of the Pipeline
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
18 May 12
 ince the blog left Nebraska, there have been some interesting politics swirling around our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline. For a time, it seemed, the Republicans in the Senate seemed bound and determined to attach approval of the pipeline to every bit of Senate business except the morning invocation. Now, though, it appears that some of the project's proponents have been softening a bit on that strategy. Most notably. Senator John Thune of South Dakota and Kay Bailey (Yeah, I lost an election to Rick Perry, what's it to ya?) Hutchinson seemed disinclined to hang the pipeline on a transportation infrastructure bill. Now, doubtless, this has something to do with the fact that even Republican members of Congress realize that a lot of our highways are crumbling and a lot of our bridges are perilously close to falling into rivers and the like. However, and call me cynical, but I'm thinking that more than a few of them would rather hold off on the project so they'll have something to heckle the president about on the campaign trail:
"If it doesn't, obviously it is going to be an opportunity for Republicans to make the argument that the Democrats are not serious about, and the president is not serious about, an all-of-the-above energy strategy," (Thune) added.
Imagine that.
(As always, it's necessary to point out that the pipeline will carry the most poisonous fossil fuel in the history of man right down through the center of our country, through rich farmlands and the Oglalla aquifer, to refineries in Texas, whereupon it will be refined and sold on the open market to anybody who wants to buy it. Energy independence, my eye. Lower gas prices, my other eye.)
Meanwhile, since we left, at the beginning of this week, Trans Canada brought out its new proposed pipeline route to show the folks in Nebraska. It was not a hit:
"No matter what they say, this is still the Sand Hills. It's delicate ground," said Laura Meusch, whose ranch is on the south side of the Niobrara River, 18 miles north of Stuart. She fought back tears after viewing the aerial maps that confirmed that the new route for the 36-inch, high-pressure crude-oil pipeline will cross about 2 miles of her hay and pasture ground. "This is hurting awful bad," Meusch said.
Imagine that, too.
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FOCUS: How Odd that Mitt's Smitten With Clinton |
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Friday, 18 May 2012 13:13 |
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Reich writes: "Polls show Bill Clinton with higher favorability ratings than Obama, so Romney does what any vacuous opportunist politician does - try to associate himself with more popular, and maybe bring along some of those white males who voted for Clinton in '92 and '96."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
How Odd that Mitt's Smitten With Clinton
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
18 May 12
 itt Romney is full of praise for Bill Clinton even as he heaps scorn on Obama.
“Almost a generation ago, Bill Clinton announced that the era of big government was over,” says Romney, “Clinton was signaling to his own party that Democrats should no longer try to govern by proposing a new program for every problem.” By contrast, President Obama has “tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas.”
It’s politics at its stupidest. Polls show Bill Clinton with higher favorability ratings than Obama, so Romney does what any vacuous opportunist politician does - try to associate himself with more popular, and maybe bring along some of those white males who voted for Clinton in ‘92 and ‘96.
But it won’t work. It might even backfire.
I was in Bill Clinton’s cabinet. I was in charge of Clinton’s economic transition team even before he became President. I’ve known Bill Clinton since he was 22 years old.
Romney doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Clinton doctrine? As president, Bill Clinton raised taxes. Government receipts as a percent of gross domestic product rose from 17.5 percent in 1992, when Clinton was elected, to 20.6 percent in 2000, when he left office. Supply-siders screamed. They predicted the end of civilization as we know it.
In 2011, President Obama’s third full year in office, government receipts were down to just 15.5 percent of GDP.
Does Romney really prefer Clinton’s approach?
Under Bill Clinton, the top income tax rate was 39.6 percent. It’s now 35 percent, courtesy of George W. Bush. Obama wants to return to the 39.6 percent rate, but he doesn’t want to restore the Clinton rates on the middle class. Obama wants a lower rate on the middle class than the rate under Clinton.
(Romney doesn’t even mention George W. Bush, by the way. He now refers to him as “Obama’s predecessor.”)
So why, exactly, does Romney prefer Clinton over Obama?
The Obama administration has been far friendlier to business than Bill Clinton ever dreamed of. Obama bailed out Wall Street, no strings attached. He bailed out General Motors and Chrysler. His healthcare law creates giant benefits for Big Pharma and big insurance. By contrast, business hated Clinton’s major initiatives, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Think about the modesty of Obama’s healthcare plan (which was enacted) relative to Bill Clinton’s immodest one (which wasn’t, due largely to the opposition of Big Pharma, big insurance, and the AMA). Obama’s plan bears far more resemblance to Romneycare in Massachusetts than to Bill Clinton’s failed plan.
During the first three years of Bill Clinton’s administration the government invested far more in education, infrastructure, basic R&D, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (a wage subsidy for the poor) than has the Obama administration to date.
So Romney really prefers Clinton to Obama?
In his absurd attempt to drive a wedge between Obama and Clinton, Romney has even gone so far as to suggest Obama has a “personal beef” with the Clintons.
Doesn’t Romney know the Obama White House is brimming with veterans of the Clinton Administration – from Gene Sperling (head of the National Economic Council) to Alan Kreuger (chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors), to Hillary Clinton herself?
Doesn’t he know Bill Clinton is already campaigning hard for Obama?
And that almost everyone who served with Bill Clinton is dead set against almost everything Mitt Romney stands for?
Oh, one more thing. Romney has done whatever he can to appeal to right-wing evangelical Christians, from opposing same-sex marriage to decrying abortion. Perhaps Romney doesn’t remember Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath to cover up an affair with an intern?
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The NDAA's Coup d'Etat Foiled |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=10666"><span class="small">Naomi Wolf, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Friday, 18 May 2012 09:36 |
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Naomi Wolf writes, "One brave judge is all that lay between us and a law that would have given the president power to detain US citizens indefinitely."
Portrait, author and activist Naomi Wolf, 10/19/11. (photo: Guardian UK)
The NDAA's Coup d'Etat Foiled
By Naomi Wolf, Guardian UK
18 May 12
 n Wednesday 16 May, at about 4pm, the republic of the United States of America was drawn back – at least for now – from a precipice that would have plunged our country into moral darkness. One brave and principled newly-appointed judge ruled against a law that would have brought the legal powers of the authorities of Guantánamo home to our own courthouses, streets and backyards.
US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City's eastern district, found that section 1021 – the key section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, "facially unconstitutional". Forrest concluded that the law does indeed have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought the lawsuit against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a "chilling impact on first amendment rights". Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA from becoming law.
In her written opinion, the judge noted that she had been persuaded by what the lead plaintiffs – who include Pulitzer prize-winner Chris Hedges of the Nation Institute, editor Jennifer Bolen of RevolutionTruth, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, co-founder of Occupy London Kai Wargalla, Days of Rage editor Alexa O'Brien, and the Icelandic parliamentarian and WikiLeaks activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir – had argued. In their testimonies (in court and by affidavit), these plaintiffs compiled a persuasive case that they had "standing" to sue because it was reasonable for them to worry that they could conceivably could be detained indefinitely under the section 1021 law because their work requires them to have contact with sources the US government might assert were "terrorists" or "associated forces" of al-Qaida.
The key claim made by the plaintiffs – of which Judge Forrest was persuaded – was that the language in section 1021 is so vague that it could sweep up anyone. The law fails to define or specify what "associated forces" or the concept of "substantial support" actually mean.
I attended the hearing as a journalist supporting the plaintiffs, providing by affidavit examples from my own experience of how the NDAA's section 1021 had already affected my reporting. (Princeton professor Dr Cornel West and I are also standing by to become plaintiffs, if called upon, in the next round.) I was also there to read in court Birgitta Jónsdóttir's disturbing testimony: she had been advised by her own government not to attend the hearing in person because the US government would not give Iceland a written assurance that it would not detain her under the NDAA if she did so. US federal agents have already confiscated her Twitter account and personal bank records.
The back-and-forth between Judge Forrest and Obama administration's lawyers that goes to the heart of the judge's ruling was stunning to behold. Forrest asked repeatedly, in a variety of different ways, for the government attorneys to give her some, any assurance that the wording of section 1021 could not be used to arrest and detain people like the plaintiffs. Finally she asked for assurance that it could not be used to sweep up a hypothetical peaceful best-selling nonfiction writer who had written a hypothetical book criticizing US foreign policy, along lines theater the Taliban might agree with. Again and again (the transcript from my notes is here), the two lawyers said directly that they could not, or would not, give her those assurances. In other words, this back-and-forth confirmed what people such as Glenn Greenwald, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the ACLU and others have been shouting about since January: the section was knowingly written in order to give the president these powers; and his lawyers were sent into that courtroom precisely to defeat the effort to challenge them. Forrest concluded:
"At the hearing on this motion, the government was unwilling or unable to state that these plaintiffs would not be subject to indefinite detention under [section] 1021. Plaintiffs are therefore at risk of detention, of losing their liberty, potentially for many years."
The government's assertions become even more hellishly farcical. Forrest further observed:
"An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so. In the face of what could be indeterminate military detention, due process requires more."
This upholding of the US constitution and the rule of law is a triumphant moment, but a fragile one: Judge Forrest has asked Congress to clarify the language protecting America's right to trial and the first amendment's protections on speech and assembly. And now, Thursday, Representatives Adam Smith (Democrat, Washington) and Justin Amash (Republican, Michigan) have presented an amendment to Congress an amendment that does just that. Those who vote against it therefore will be voting clearly, and without any ambiguity, for stripping Americans of their constitutional rights and reducing them to the same potential status as "enemy combatants" and Guantánamo prisoners. The House thus votes for or against the power handed to the executive by the NDAA to hold any of us, anywhere, forever, for no reason. There can be no hiding from this; the lawyers defending the administration's position made that perfectly clear.
What truly disturbed me in that courtroom was the terrible fragility of all the checks to power that are supposed to be in place to protect us against such assaults on democracy. Many senators, including my own, Chuck Schumer, had sent out letters to their own worried constituents flat-out denying our fears about what section 1021 does. No major news media organisations attended the original hearing (except Paul Harris of the Guardian and Observer). The trial and the NDAA itself have been so inadequately reported by mainstream outlets that I keep running into senior editors and lawyers who have never heard of it. I recently cornered one southern Democratic senator at an event and asked him why he had voted to pass the NDAA. He asked what my objection was.
"It allows the president to detain Americans without charge or trial," I pointed out. His aides had assured him this was not the case, he replied. "Have you read the bill?" I asked. "It's 1,600 pages," he replied.
This darkness is so dangerous not least because a new Department of Homeland Security document trove, released in response to a FOIA request filed by Michael Moore and the National Lawyers' Guild, proves in exhaustive detail that the DHS and its "fusion centers" coordinated with local police (as I argued here, to initial disbelief), the violent crackdown against Occupy last fall. You have to put these pieces of evidence together: the government cannot be trusted with powers to detain indefinitely any US citizen – even though Obama promised he would not misuse these powers – because the United States government is already coordinating a surveillance and policing war against its citizens, designed to suppress their peaceful assembly and criticism of its corporate allies.
The lawyers for the government have endless funds (our tax dollars); the plaintiffs' lawyers all worked pro bono; the plaintiffs themselves paid their own way to make their case. Yet, by these slender means, what was essentially a coup in two paragraphs has been blocked from advancing under cover of ignorance and silence to becoming the supreme law of the land. But should our democracy hang by such a tenuous thread that it relies on the sheer luck that this case was heard by a courageous judge with a settled belief in the constitution of the United States?
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ll day yesterday, the pundits told us that exposure of the borderline obscene, nakedly racist advertising plan 
