Not everyone at DailyKos is screaming that the Kool-Aid is poisoned. Here’s a thoughttful analysis of the current brouhaha by a hard-left member who’s not disillusioned by Obama because he wasn’t illusioned in the first place.
By the way, I meant to ask: Have you studied the details of the positions Obama lays out at his website? Have you read The Audacity of Hope? Because those sources will provide you with a much better, more nuanced and fact-based understanding of the man and his policies than anything the media or the message boards provide.
One of the things that attracts me to him as a candidate is that he isn’t sound-bitable; he thinks through the implications of problems and policies, and looks for routes to solutions that go as far as pragmatically possible to do the job while at the same time getting as many people on board as possible, not just one segment of the ideological spectrum. I credit his service as a community organizer as a training ground for this approach, which I consider necessary to break through the partisan bullshit that currently paralyzes D.C.
I think this is the only workable approach to even beginning to fix the horrendous mess that will confront the next President, and I’m willing to live with the fact that such an approach will not always meet with my own policy stands. But then, I’m a pragmatic Independent rather than an ideologically driven leftist and/or Democrat. True, the policies I prefer happen to fall more to the left of the political spectrum, and I believe that entrusting control of the government to the Democrats seems necessary to achieve those policies at this time in political history. This does not, however, irrevocably tie me in lockstep with that party.
Indicative of a good President, not so hot for a candidate. He is thoughtful and complex, which would be OK if he could hide it better.
Ah the joys of a two party system. You don’t have to do anything good - you just have to be slightly less horrible than the other guy. That’s comforting. “Sure, they’ll both take a dump on you, but at least this guy won’t rape your mom too!”
I personally hate to see the companies rewarded for cowardly caving in.
Ah, I see. Not being punished = being rewarded.
Look, I’m angry at the telecom companies. But they were informed by the President of the U.S. that this was a fully lawful request. I know about and laud Qwest for its decision to question this further, but apparently the rest of them were too scared or dumb to do it.
What matters to me is to get FISA back in control. If letting the telecoms off the hook (still leaving the government on the hook!) is the price of this, I’ll take it.
It bugs the hell out of me, too. I wish we had a multiple-party system so we could force the parties to actually compete against the other guy, who’s competing against the *other *guy. Maybe then, we’d get some actual differences between the candidates.
My statement wasn’t meant to be a tu quoque argument- I wasn’t trying to imply that it’s okay for Obama to make the deal he did, because McCain didn’t even try. I’m just tired of people trying to use this as an excuse to not vote for Obama… after all, McCain is (in my mind) even worse in this situation, so using your vote to protest against Obama is actually a vote for someone who didn’t even care enough to take a position.
For the most part, I agree with your 2nd paragraph; I’m not happy with the stance Obama has taken on this, but as I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t expect to be happy with everything he does. But I fundamentally disagree with your 1st paragraph. Glenn Greenwald makes the argument much better than I believe I could in this opinion piece. Specifically, as concerns the “lawful request”:
It’s that last bit (about soldiers) that especially gets me. We (rightly) expect a soldier, who has been explicitly trained to follow orders with little question, to maintain a sense of the order’s legality or face prosecution. Yet we do not expect a corporation, with a battery of lawyers tasked specifically with knowing what is legal, to be held to even that standard? Since when does being “too scared or dumb” excuse illegality?
Gah, this entire issue gets me incredibly agitated. :mad:
Digital, just trying to put the best possible light on it. I’m not happy about it either. In fact I’d love to see the telecoms brought up on criminal charges, which this bill would not preclude.
As well you might, DG, if not for context. In a turd avalanche, how do you choose the biggest and stinkiest? For me, I think the attempt to make the Justice Department into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party is far more destructive and contemptible.
And as for the legal expertise available, that cuts both ways. The Bushiviks have scads of legal academics at hand who assure them of the utter legality of actions that fly in the face of our traditions and standards. In corporate life, as you may already know, a nod is as good as a wink. If you are a corporate lawyer, you very likely already know what the most desireable opinion will be. (I know this from years of radical hippitude…)
This issue will fade, either because Obama is revealed to be Osama’s stalking camel and John McBomb is elected in a shitstorm…ah, landslide…or because the Goddess shall cease to avert Her eyes and a solid majority of Dems takes power and the subpoenas begin to fly. In either case, this issue will vanish.
:mad: Bite your typing fingers!
:mad: Bite your typing fingers!
Anyway, I see no real problem with this bill as a workable compromise. If you want to enjoy your sausage, don’t visit the meatpacking plant.
I had quite forgotten about attorneys of integrity and scruple. I apologize to you both.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going after you personally. As I said, this issue gets me all het up, and the “scared or dumb” excuse was a trigger. IMO, two things need doin’ when discussing this issue: (1) accept (or at least understand) the political realities at work here and (2) never let it go unstated that the wiretapping was illegal and inexcusable.
I’ll assume the DG was a typo (could’ve been BG). I admit that I suffer an acute case of outrage fatigue – to the point that whenever I see Bush on the news, I just cast my eyes downward, shake my head, and mumble, “What a knucklehead.” Even though I agree that the “lackeys in positions of power” is a more threatening problem, there are certain things that really get to me. Being a computer guy, the wiretapping issue is one of them (as is the semi-related data mining issue, as in the TIA program).
I think my wife is a mite tired of listening to me rant about it, so I have to vent my spleen somewhere…and I dasn’t get my hopes up for subpoenas, lest I be in a state similar to Nov. 3rd, 2004 when they don’t happen.
That’s the problem right there. Telcos have enormous spying powers on citizens and their powers are growing every day in the post-internet age. They cannot and should not allow themselves to cooperate unlawfully with the white house. The president’s word is not the supreme law of the land in a republic. They should be even more scared of lawsuits and fines than they are of the president.
Furthermore, we’re talking potential corruption here. Several telcos received tens of billions of taxpayer money to give consumers Fiber to the home and upgrade the shamefully stagnating networks in this country (the U.S slipped from #1 to something like #18 in the past decade). They just pocketed the money and did essentially nothing. I’m not kidding! I don’t want the president telling them to cooperate in exchange for ignoring their crapulous behavior.
It was never out of control. It was simply ignored out of convenience and laziness. The concept of court order to get a warrant is not hard to understand and does not take long to get through when necessary. Heck, some warrants can even be granted after the fact in emergencies I believe.
This whole thing is bigger than Bush, Obama and McCain. I don’t care about punishing this administration per se. It’ll be punished when it loses the elections to the other party. I want the telcos to HEEL to the citizens they serve. Do not fuck with the citizen’s rights! That’s priority number 1. Period.
I read Obama’s statement with satisfaction at first but frankly, his explanation doesn’t convince me at all. And I’m a friggin supporter who is reading (and likes) his book and wants to vote for him. But I’ll be damned if I drink the kool-aid or swallow bullshit because he’s my candidate.
Note: I’m actually not bothered by his softening stance on the war. His explanations are sound and convincing and I’m perfectly happy with them. Not so with FISA, not so at all.
How is this a compromise? What did the Bush administration and those who supported them give up? No loopholes were left through which justice or even disclosure could be achieved. This was a cave-in, and not the first by the Bend Over Congress of 2006.
What has this won the Democrats who are supposed to be the opposition party? Does the lowest approval rating ever, lower even than that of Bush, bode nothing for the electoral consequences of the current path? It certainly hasn’t stopped the pundits from flinging shit – it’s only given them more shit to fling.
What good is advanced oversight, when the president refused to submit to even the minimal, almost obligatory oversight to begin with? Oversight has to be enforced to be any check on abuse, and this bill is a clear refusal to enforce even the least oversight.
What did FISA lack for intelligence-gathering capability that it now has? It was already alarmingly fast-and-loose with our rights, and that bullet has been bitten hard and the subject is not even brought up by constitutional scholars like Glen Greenwald and Jonathan Turley. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The supposed need for the bill is a Trojan horse. The whole point of the bill was to pass the immunity and to establish the principle that Congress will not tell the president that he must obey the law.
It may not be hopeless at this point. Rumor has it that the ACLU and the EFF are going to drive it to the supreme court, because the law clearly violates the 4th amendment. But if I understand right, it only takes a judge somewhere along the line to refuse to hear the case, and even that dies.
’Luci, I didn’t know you were an authoritarian nowadays. I guess if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.
I think it’s disappointing mostly in that it makes him seem to be willing to bend to corporate interests. That’s what really pisses me off more than anything. AT&T has been screwing us over for years, so I have very little sympathy for them having spied on us. I’m sure all of the appropriate people in the right places made a nice little tit for tat when it became necessary. We spy for you but you better help us out later, kind of thing.
That’s what concerns me here. It appears that Obama is capitulating on his promise to not let corporate interests run the government. That’s what basically pisses me off there. It remains to be seen how he behaves in the future, but I’m worried in general.
As far as the logic of the way things go, I see the point. The telcos were being told by the feds to do this stuff, and they complied. But it just goes down to the point that ATT doesn’t really give a shit about anything at all other than money. They consider their customers to be garbage and had no qualms about taking away their rights. You show me that there was some kind of serious external pressure and I might change my mind but knowing how ridiculous ATT is, I find it hard to believe they actually gave a shit. And you can substitude any random telco company here for ATT.
The knee slapper is that FISA is a secret, rubber stamping court. That fight was lost decades ago. Why even have a fig leaf? Why pretend? Have some dignity.
I have absolutely no idea what motivated you to turn my simple statement inside out. I am not aware that I have done you any injury.
I wrote a letter to Obama a while back. Just got the answer. I figure it might shed some light on things. Care to read?