Let’s take a look at the second alleged broken promise on the list, shall we?
AFAIK, all we know is that the Obama administration has asserted the state secrets defense to keep litigation over Bush-era wiretapping out of court. Is that what you’re basing your claim on, Sam Stone?
One plausible inference from this is that the Obama administration has continued the program. However, given that the administration’s own report has said that the Bush program was ineffective and probably illegal, I’m not sure how strong that inference is. It seems plausible to me that the administration believes that litigation over the Bush program would expose some state secrets, as opposed to exposing the fact that the program is on-going.
I think reasonable minds can disagree over the import of the legal claims made re: Bush wiretapping, but it is important to acknowledge that you’re making inferences from inconclusive evidence. (The assertion of state secrets is its own disappointing kettle of fish, but I’ll stick to the allegations made by the OP.)
If you’d like to PitSam Stone or “tighty-righties,” either on their hypocrisy or their politics, open a Pit thread. If you want to debate the relative merits of the Bush II vs Obama administrations, feel free to open a separate thread in Great Debates. However, tu quoques and wild speculation about how some people might react if the situation was different offer no legitimate defense of Obama’s actions, (nor do they provide a legitimate criticism of this administration).
It’s ll fine and well to want to give Obama the benefit if the doubt, to give him more time. Washington is a intricate machine and change can take time. That’s why I’m most miffed by the Sunshine Law nonsense. That is something he could have instituted immediately. If the technology isn’t up to snuff to get the bills posted as soon as he would like all he has to do is NOT sign it until the bills get put up and are there for five days. I thought this was a really good idea and am disappointed that its not being done. And that falls squarely on his shoulders. He’s not who I voted for, but I was half-way pleased he was elected. I was very hopeful. Now, he seems to be both full of shit and more of a socialist than I feared. NOT socialist, just more socialist than I anticipated.
The original post is filled with horseshit and valid criticisms, mixed with no apparent discrimination between the two. Some of the horseshit has yet to be dealt with.
Inspector General Gerald Walpin was investigating an Obama supporter. This is true.
It’s also true that this inspector general had an apparently poor reputation, including criticism from a US attorney and a record of absences, and that a bipartisan panel voted unanimously to support the firing. Should it be investigated? Maybe so. If an investigation is called for, and then the administration blocks it, then charges of obfuscation can be fairly levelled. Until then, the allegations of impropriety are simply unsubstantiated rumor-mongering.
This is an outright fabrication. It is utter horseshit, not even remotely true.
The Obama Administration wanted a question from an Iranian source. They requested that a reporter from the Huffington Post, with clearly established Iranian contacts, could gather this question, but the question was neither pre-screened nor friendly. It was a surprise question, one of the toughest of the press conference. Helen Thomas’s criticisms of this situation were entirely unsupported. The mainstream press is going apeshit because they’re losing prestige (and money) to online sources, and that’s the entirety of this story.
More horseshit.
Obama already tried to close Gitmo. Anyone who pays genuine attention to Washington news already knows this. His first attempt was stopped by Congress when they refused to contemplate prisoner transfers to the mainland. Maybe our Canadian OPer is unaware, but the American president is not a dictator. He can’t always overrule the will of Congress. His plan was foiled, but he did make the attempt.
What’s worst about this fucking worthless original post is that there are many other valid criticisms of Obama that are completely missing. I’m too disgusted with the red-herrings in this thread to start listing them, but reading Glenn Greenwald’s blog at Salon is a great place to start. Today’s post is especially good, more worthwhile than this whole list put together because it deals with actual facts, as responsible people try to do.
Notice that Glennzilla uses the same local news announcement from Washington: the Gitmo panel has pushed things back. But he actually digs out the potential future problems from it instead of misrepresenting it. What a novel idea.
I’ll allow this - but it then points to some interesting behavior of Congressional Democrats, who were more than happy to snipe away at Gitmo when Bush was in office and then quickly blocked its closing once Obama was in office.
Are you counting the cancellation of the F-22 in that number? Because it is in the news today, and each one costs $150 million… Maybe Obama just canceled two-thirds of an F-22?
But here’s the thing. Closing Gitmo is going to be very difficult. I knew that before the election. At least Obama is trying to close it, as compared to Bush who started it in the first place, and didn’t give a thought to what the long term consequences would be. I don’t expect Obama to close Gitmo in his first year in office. I don’t expect him to get us out of Iraq in 16 months. I expect him to do what is reasonably necessary to move us in that direction and reverse the failed policies of Bush. Who knows how long that is going to take.
It doesn’t have to be. It’s not even partisan politics, as was pointed out, it’s just rank stupidity from Congress. The ridiculous fear of those Senators, dribbling down their legs in terror about people locked in jail, has got to be the single most craven and shameless thing I’ve seen all year.
Well on topic for the thread is another Glenn Greenwald post, specifically about Obama and transparency. It’s abundantly clear that the president is not consistently following through on his promises for a more open government. There are plenty of valid examples. There’s no need to make shit up.
I think that Obama gets maybe 66% of his decisions right (about 65 percentage points higher than the previous guy), but there’s no question that he has made some terrible decisions, especially in civil rights areas, and I completely support people like Greenwald who give him seven kinds of hell for those mistakes.
What does “here” mean? Predictions from a lot of people are that a new prison will be built on US territory outside of the fifty states - Guam has been mentioned. This would neatly solve the extraterritorial issue and remove NIMBY concerns from people who have to vote on the thing.
There are regularly scheduled flights to Guam for lawyers to attend to their clients’ needs, and the territory is pretty open, unlike Gitmo. International observation shouldn’t be an issue, though frankly it was accommodated at Gitmo fairly well.
Watch for it to happen - I’ll make it one of my predictions for the year.
The reason Congress did not appropriate any money to close Gitmo is the President did not have a plan on what to do. Once he has a plan, then he’ll get the money.
This recent article suggests the President has a team working on what to do, but it’s going to take time.
Also, it’s not the fear of Congress per se, but Congress voting the way the public perceives the fear of closing Gitmo. Most people don’t want it closed/detainees brought to the US.
I agree. When did senators become such spineless creatures? I feel a pit thread coming on.
Back on topic: yes, I am disappointed at those promises by Obama which have been broken (like the transparency stuff) or which seem to be stalled unnecessarily (like the DADT repeal). I also remain baffled by his choice of VP, unles Biden is a much better backroom dealer than he is a public speaker (which may well be so).
I do, however, think that Obama has been making effective use of soft power to rehabilitate America’s image abroad, weaken our enemies and otherwise begun to repair the damage done by the previous administration’s hamfisted approach to international diplomacy. I think it’s too early to tell whether his economic approach is going to be effective, and I’m willing to wait on certain other items on his agenda (albeit not forever). And I think he’s correct to start the health care reform process now, because it’ll take at least four years to even start to turn that particular political supertanker.*
So all-in-all, I think he’s doing generally okay, with a few disappointments and mistakes. But then with 500+ campaign promises to fulfill, a few dropped balls are to be expected.
While I think socialized health care is a good thing (I live in the UK these days and think the NHS is brilliant), it would take God Almighty Himself to come down and command America to implement it for it to happen, and even then He’d probably have to smite a few insurance execs first. With some luck Obama might get access to healthcare for some of the currently uninsured. Maybe.
Alarmist? People are finally getting around to reading the bill and finding out what is in it. There are backdoor methods to ration care and functionally eliminate private insurance. That’s a debate for another thread.
The point is that, true or not, people are starting to believe this. So Obama’s plan to remake society by socializing one of the largest sectors of our economy will, thankfully, probably go down in flames.
Lots of things in politics don’t *have *to be difficult.
And I don’t consider “closing Gitmo” to consist of shifting them to some new facility, call it “Hitmo”, without changing the system itself. It’s the system we have (or don’t have, depending on how you look at it) that is the problem, not so much the physical facility.
Oh, FFS. Is that what’s being referred to? I was wondering why I hadn’t heard about the dismissal of veritable hordes of IGs. See Media Matters for more about it.
My conclusion (formed back in June when this was going down)? Both Walpin and the subject of his investigation(s) were suspect. Nothing shady gets cast Obama’s way on this one.
Yet it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Obama has no interest in fixing that problem. Gitmo is a high profile case because of the media exposure it has received, so he’s happy to make a token gesture in that regard. But in Bagram, he’s fighting the same fight that Bush did.
Bagram is slightly different than Gitmo in that it could be considered to be in a theater of war. But the reality is that both Gitmo and Bagram were locations specifically chosen to get around some Constitutional stickiness. Bagram might be in a theater of war, but it’s prisoners come from all over. In fact, once Gitmo got into the limelight, many of the prisoners destined for there were shipped to Bagram instead.
In spite of all that, back in Feb, Obama’s administration opposed granting habeas corpus rights to Bagram detainees. In April, the district judge ruled that the Boumediene ruling applied in Bagram as well. I figured that would be the end of it, but Obama is now challenging it again. So it seems, at least to me, that Obama is trying to create a legal black hole in Bagram in the same manner that Bush did in Gitmo.
Just for completeness, let me quote Obama’s statement after the Boumediene ruling:
Uhh, not to divert the discussion too much to the fundamental issue being raised by the OP, that is, that Obama claimed he would have the most transparent Administration ever, but which Administration does the OP claim was the most transparent ever?
To say it another way, having the most transparent Administration ever does not require perfect transparency. It requires being better than its predecessors. So which President set the mark that Obama is falling short of?
This is a usual occurrence for first term (transition) presidents. Bush didn’t release his (in 2001) until August 22, and Clinton (in 1993) until August 28th.
But then, that information is in the link you gave so you knew that, right?
Remember when signing statements were bad? Democrats Oppose Obama Signing Statements. Obama’s doing exactly what Bush did. Adding signing statements to legislation indicating his intention to override it when he thinks it’s a good idea.
Remember when Dick Cheney met with oil execs, and then refused to release their names? The left went ballistic, specifically on the issue of openness and transparency in the White House.
This is a bit of a hijack, but I can’t let this go. Obama started off pretty good on foreign policy, and I said plenty of complimentary things about it between November and February.
But since then, it’s been an utter disaster. The Obama administration has habitually pissed on the U.S.'s best allies and sent mixed signals to America’s enemies.
First there was the serial insulting of Britain - first saying they were nothing special to the U.S., then the multiple diplomatic gaffes with gifts. Then there were the mixed messages to Iran and North Korea. North Korea is acting more aggressively than it has in years.
Then there were the ‘buy American’ clauses, which pissed off all the U.S.'s trading partners and even triggered retaliation from Canada.
Then he went to Russia and put missile defense on the table before the talks even opened - pissing off the Polish politicians who stuck their necks out a mile to allow putting the missiles in their country.
Also, his negotiations with Russia started from a position of weakness. He achieved nothing, got no concessions, but he did manage to let the Russians know that they could play hardball and get those missiles removed.
Next, the U.S. has managed to piss off India with its insistence on CO2 reductions there. Hillary Clinton’s effort was particularly ham-fisted, forcing the Indians to come out publicly and say there was no way in hell they were going to cut CO2 emissions, and that the U.S. was being insensitive to their economic situation.
Finally, Obama is turning the Honduras thing into a potential disaster. His rhetoric against the new government has emboldened Chavez, who is now talking about staging a military intervention in that country. Regardless of whether Zelaya shoudl have been exiled, it’s clear that he DID repeatedly violate that country’s constitution and ignore the demands of his own congress and Supreme Court. He also broke into a military facility. There is no way he should be returned as leader. That is simply not the right remedy for the overreach of exiling him after his legal removal from office.
But Obama has made exactly that demand, which the Honduran government cannot and should not meet, and therefore has set up a stalemate under conditions of escalating tension. Perhaps the worst diplomacy I’ve seen in a couple of decades.
That whole issue could have been resolved at once. The administration should have said something like this:
“While we agree that President Zelaya violated the constitution and was rightfully removed as President, his removal from his country was illegal. The Honduran Constitution is clearly weak in regards to remedy in this situation. Therefore, we call for an immediate constitutional convention in Honduras to correct the oversight. Elections are scheduled for November, and we insist that they be held on time, and that American observers be allowed in to verify that they are free and fair. The government of Honduras will pay restitution to ex-President Zelaya for his illegal exile, and immediately upon completion of a new election, Mr. Zelaya must be allowed back into his homeland if he should choose to do so, at which time he shall face any legal penalties clearly and unambiguously defined in Hondura law at the time of the activities in question.”
Had they done that, this issue would have ended. Instead, every tinpot dictator in Central and South America now thinks America has their back. Chavez is talking like Obama is his new BFF. And his military is on the move.
Obama took what should have been a minor crisis and turned it into a potential disaster. Even if there is no military action, OAS sanctions are hurting the economy of Honduras and risk spillover into the economies of other countries in the region at a very bad time.
And let’s not forget that Obama’s hardline position would actually remove a government friendly to the United States and install another Chavez. Won’t it be fun when the Russians have yet another country to sell arms to.
The people of Britain, India, and the new ex-Soviet states are the most pro-American people in the world. Their governments have been the most reliable allies. India is a huge trading partner. Whatever you do in diplomacy, you start by keeping your friends close. Obama has gone the other way. He’s pissed off allies and made things easier on enemies. This is definitely the wrong track.
First, the controversy about Bush’s signing statements was primarily about the EXTENT to which they were used. I don’t know that anyone but the typical fringe advocated that the President can never issue a signing statement. Clinton used them, Reagan used them, Carter used them, and Johnson used them, among many others. The issue what that damn near every bill passed by Congress and signed by W included numerous statements.
Second, the concern with Cheney was that he was in bed with big oil. Do you seriously believe that Obama is in bed with the health insurance lobby? Get real!
Third, as I said before, isn’t it reasonable to say that “the most transparent Administration ever” does not mean “metaphysical perfection in transparency?” To which Administration are you comparing Obama’s transparency?
For all conservatives complain about liberals viewing Obama as the second coming, they appear to be judging Obama’s successes and failures against Jesus’ record.