Archive for the 'Obama' Category

Surprised Obama awarded NBA Rookie of the Year Honors

As soon as I saw the headlines, I knew that the right wing religious nutters were going to go crazy over this:

The Nobel Committee said he won it for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”. The committee highlighted Mr Obama’s efforts to support international bodies and promote nuclear disarmament. Mr Obama - woken up with the news early on Friday - said in an address at the White House that he was “surprised and deeply humbled” by the award.

Sure enough:

The Taliban Friday condemned the decision to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama, saying he had “not taken a single step towards peace in Afghanistan”.

“We have seen no change in his strategy for peace. He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan. He has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan or to make this country stable,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP. “We condemn the award of the Noble Peace Prize for Obama,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location. “We condemn the institute’s awarding him the peace prize. We condemn this year’s peace prize as unjust.”

Ever notice how the wingnuts love to repeat the same point over and over? Something tells me that Mujahid’s fellow wingnuts in America will soon be issuing similar condemnations of the Nobel committee.

Professional lunatic and full-time racist Jerome Corsi (speaking on the White Supremacist Channel, natch)

What do you do after you’ve saddled America with its stupidest president ever by writing a book that turned out to be a pack of lies?

If you’re Jerome Corsi, you’d follow that up with a series of books, each crazier than the last. First there was Atomic Iran, which alleges that various Democratic politicians are deliberately trying to help Iran obtain nuclear weapons. Corsi followed that with Black Gold Stranglehold, in which he claims that petroleum is not a finite resource produced by millions of years of compression and heating of organic material, but is instead a fairly common product of ongoing biochemical reactions beneath the earth’s surface (a “fact” that is kept secret by a vast conspiracy, of course). Then came The Late Great U.S.A., in which Corsi warns of an imminent merger of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. And just before the election, Corsi published Obama Nation, in which he accuses President Obama of being a radical leftist Islamic jihadist.

And while he was writing crazy books, collecting fees for giving speeches to far-right organizations, and making frequent appearances on Sean Hannity’s show, Corsi still found the time to allege that John McCain has ties to organized crime and that 9/11 was an inside job.

Now Corsi has yet another deranged theory. According to him, Barack Obama was admitted to Harvard Law School thanks to “radical Islamic influences” at the university. Corsi also claims that radical Muslims paid for Obama’s education at Harvard.

So now I have a question for all those people who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 because they believed Corsi’s lies about John Kerry: don’t you feel a bit foolish now, having been duped by such an obvious lunatic? And given the damage that Bush wound up doing to the country at home and abroad, don’t you think you should start evaluating your sources just a bit more carefully before making up your mind about a given candidate or political issue?

Actually, Obama didn’t do too badly. According to the wingnuts, Obama shouldn’t be able to function without his teleprompter (link link), but it’s broken several times and Obama seems to be able to articulate his policies and views without it.

But it’s easy to see why the wingnuts have made such a big deal out of Obama’s supposed over-reliance on the teleprompter. They’re just trying to draw attention to their smooth-talking hero, who spoke so eloquently with or without a script:

The following comes direct from our inbox and was sent to us by the Jewish Voice for Peace.

Dear Richard,

We’ve asked Prof. Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Middle East History at Stanford University, to give us his impression on President Obama’s speech in Cairo today. We’re sharing his response with you.

An articulate and charismatic President of the United States named Barack Hussein Obama giving a speech at Cairo University co-sponsored by al-Azhar, the most eminent institution of Muslim learning - now that’s a new picture. Its enormous symbolic value is President Obama’s biggest asset as he implements policy on the entire range of difficult issues he mentioned. The President stated, “Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” This is an excellent basis for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The President did not provide details on how the conflict should be resolved beyond general support for “two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.” But the meaning of this formulation is now contested due to its empty repetition by presidents and prime ministers whose actions and inactions have undermined it. Instead President Obama emphasized U.S. rejection of “the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” saying nothing about the future of those settlements already existing and their nearly 500,000 inhabitants.

By limiting himself to an apparently pragmatic “first step,” President Obama may have made his task harder. If he does not produce concrete results very soon on this limited, albeit it absolutely necessary, measure, then the potential value of his fine words in Cairo will soon diminish.

Joel Beinin

June 4, 2009Stanford, CA

Professor Joe Beinin of Stanford University.

(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)

Reformist presidential hopeful Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Remember when all the neocons, led by Republican standard-bearer John McCain, told us that Obama’s plan to engage with the Iranian government amounted to appeasement, which would only embolden Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s anti-Western president? Maybe it’s time those neocons admitted that they were wrong:

Iran’s presidential hopeful Mir-Hossein Mousavi takes the lead in 10 major Iranian cities, the local Press TV reported Wednesday, citing a recent poll.

The poll conducted in Iran’s 10 big cities showed that Mousavi is surpassing the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by 4 percent, the report said. Some 38 percent of the people expressed their support for Mousavi while 34 percent others supported Ahmadinejad.

Mousavi, who is considered the major rival of Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections on June 12, has repeatedly criticized the incumbent government’s economic policy which he called an alms-based one. On Saturday, Mousavi also accused the incumbent president of “disgracing” the Iranian nation on the international scene.

So, just after Obama released a videotaped statement offering constructive engagement with the Iranian government, an offer that was immediately compared to the Munich agreement with Hitler (link link), the Iranians responded by throwing their support to Ahmadinejad’s main rival.

By demonstrating a willingness to negotiate, Obama took Ahmadinejad’s best issue off the table. For the most part, urban Iranians don’t like the restrictions that Iran’s reactionary government places on them, and they’ve been chafing under the effects of Ahmadinejad’s disastrous economic policies. The only reason Ahmadinejad maintained his support among urban Iranians was the fact that the American and Israeli governments kept playing into his hands with their hyper-aggressive, rejectionist stance toward Iran. Both countries refused to negotiate with Iran and repeatedly threatened attacks, which allowed Ahmadinejad to paint his pro-Western rivals as being either naive or disloyal. Now that the US no longer seems intent on bringing about Iran’s destruction, Ahmadinejad must succeed or fail on the basis of his ill-conceived domestic policies.

None of this should come as any surprise. Recall that Iran regularly elected pro-Western reformers until 2005, when Bush’s anti-Iranian bluster and militaristic foreign policy convinced many Iranians that negotiating with the West was tantamount to appeasement, and Ahmadinejad was elected president. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the neocons to admit that they were wrong about the efficacy of Bush’s foreign policy.

***

Just because Mousavi has taken a lead in the cities doesn’t mean that he’ll win the election. Rural Iranians, like rural Americans, seem more susceptible than their urban counterparts to demonization of foreign leaders and arguments that rely on a simplistic, good vs. evil view of international relations.

***

What’s always bothered me most about the neocons’ criticism of Obama has been their insistence that negotiating itself is an act of appeasement. It seems obvious that the moment of capitulation is not when one begins a negotiation, but when one gives in to demands without getting anything in return.

***

As usual, Obama’s overture to Iran inspired critics on the left as well as on the right. The latest salvo appeared last Saturday in the New York Times:

President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.

Mr. Obama is backing away from the bold steps required to achieve strategic, Nixon-to-China-type rapprochement with Tehran. Administration officials have professed disappointment that Iranian leaders have not responded more warmly to Mr. Obama’s rhetoric. Many say that the detention of the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi (who was released this month) and Ayatollah Khamenei’s claim last week that America is “fomenting terrorism” inside Iran show that trying to engage Tehran is a fool’s errand.

But this ignores the real reason Iranian leaders have not responded to the new president more enthusiastically: the Obama administration has done nothing to cancel or repudiate an ostensibly covert but well-publicized program, begun in President George W. Bush’s second term, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destabilize the Islamic Republic. Under these circumstances, the Iranian government — regardless of who wins the presidential elections on June 12 — will continue to suspect that American intentions toward the Islamic Republic remain, ultimately, hostile.

In other words, by failing to publicly acknowledge an ongoing destabilization campaign, an act which would have profound consequences in terms of confronting Iran on its nuclear program and which would likely ensure Ahmadinejad’s re-election, Obama has missed a golden opportunity to thaw relations with Iran and put the US and Iran on the path toward normalization of relations. It seems obvious, though, that the most important step toward constructive engagement with Iran would be the defeat of Ahmadinejad at the polls. And there’s no reason that ending the covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian government has to be a public affair.

And is it really true that many Obama administration officials have been privately saying that engaging with Tehran is a fool’s errand? Or was that just a poorly-constructed paragraph?

Look at how sad they are! And according to the liberal media, it’s all Obama’s fault!

Here’s a recent headline from NBC News, the flagship of the liberal media:

Sobbing Kindergarteners Snubbed for Steelers?

According to the story, a busload of kids were turned away from the White House, and their parents say it was because they arrived 10 minutes late for a tour. The story goes on at length with details of the trouble and expense the kids and their parents went through, and how disappointed the kids are.

Sounds pretty bad, huh? And only those few who read all the way to the end of the piece learn this bit of information:

The White House tells a slightly different story. A spokesperson said the group was actually supposed to be there at 9:30, but they held the gates for the group until 10:30, 15 minutes longer than they told the group, but when they still hadn’t arrived, they had to draw the line.

Frankly, that sounds like it’s probably a lot closer to the truth than the outraged ranting of the parent quoted in the article. It seems as though a media outlet with a pro-Obama bias would have given the president the benefit of the doubt.

They may dress alike, but they govern very differently

Recently, it’s become fashionable on the left to pretend that Obama is essentially the same as Bush. He’s decided not to prosecute military and intelligence personnel who participated in torturing detainees. He hasn’t nationalized the banking system. He hasn’t used the Endangered Species Act to limit carbon dioxide emissions. But is it fair to say that Obama hasn’t brought any change to Washington?

Every week, Obama announces major policy changes. In the past few days, Obama has brought more openness to government by putting several databases online, put protections in place for consumers who use credit cards, and signed legislation that will help curtail wasteful defense spending. It’s hard to imagine Bush doing any of that.

As for the alleged similarities, it seems as though Obama’s critics believe that anyone who disagrees with them about tactics must be an ally of Bush. Obama hasn’t used the Endangered Species Act to save the polar bears from global warming, but that’s because the act is a poor tool for combating greenhouse gas production:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, “The single greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice due to climate change.” But he said comprehensive policies are needed to address the global risks—and global emissions—of greenhouse gases rather than a mixture of actions carried out for specific species. As quoted in the New York Times, he said, “It would be very difficult for our scientists to be doing evaluations of a cement plant in Georgia or Florida and the impact it’s going to have on the polar bear habitat. I just don’t think the Endangered Species Act was ever set up with that contemplation in mind.”

What Obama has done is push a comprehensive climate change bill, despite heavy opposition from oil and coal companies. So you may disagree with the way that Obama is fighting global warming, but it’s not fair to say that he’s no better than Bush.

We see the same pattern on issue after issue. Obama has chosen not to prosecute torturers, but he hasn’t condoned or authorized use of torture, either. That sets him far apart from President Bush.

Ironically, the biggest difference between Obama and Bush has probably been the thing that’s inspired Obama’s critics to say that the two presidents are alike. In 2000, Bush campaigned as a “uniter, not a divider”, and went on to preside over one of the most divisive administrations in American history. Obama made a similar pledge, but he’s sticking to it:

Obama pressed hard — although with some hiccups — on the stimulus package, but its magnitude was less than what many liberals were hoping for. He is attempting to push forward, through his budget, issues like health care and cap-and-trade, but these things were at the core of his positioning throughout the primaries and general election.

Meanwhile, Obama has angered the left on a number of issues ranging from the decision to have Rick Warren give the invocation at the inaugural, to the bank bailout, to his abortive attempt to name Judd Gregg as his commerce secretary, to his appointment of Larry Summers, to his committing additional troops to Afghanistan, to his position on state secrets. Obama has also come in for some liberal fire for his purported lack of urgency on issues like the Employee Free Choice Act and repealing the ban on openly gay troops in the military.

Obama promised to seek common ground with Republicans when possible, and he’s done that. Unsurprisingly, that’s angered a lot of people who wanted to see Bush jailed for war crimes and an immediate end to the war in Iraq.

I sympathize with Obama’s critics. I’d like to see Bush in jail and the Iraq War ended sooner rather than later. But it’s disingenuous to pretend that Obama’s position on the war is the same as Bush’s, or that they have the same policy on torturing detainees. And it’s just not accurate to say that Bush and Obama are the same, or even similar.

Bristol Palin, living proof that ‘abstinence only’ education doesn’t work, is now a leading advocate of abstinence education (despite the fact that until recently, she said it was not realistic for everyone).

From Politico:

Obama’s budget eliminates funding for Community-Based Abstinence Education, the mandatory Title V Abstinence Education program, the Compassion Capital Fund, and Rural Community Facilities.

This is no surprise, but it’s a reminder of the way in which a budget shifts not just money but also priorities and politics. In this case, it will will cut off streams of funding to religiously oriented groups allied with the Bush White House.

I’m glad that my tax dollars are no longer being squandered on a program that never worked.

Best abstinence-only link ever right here.

It’s almost impossible for any none Americans to even come close to comprehending how the hell some millions of citizens of the United States, the world’s wealthiest country, could ever be allowed to find themselves in such a shocking sort of sickening situation as this is.

Poverty hits African Americans hard

BBC correspondent Matthew Price continues his journey across America, and reports from Chicago, Barack Obama’s home town, where African American community leaders fear the recession is dragging down their communities more than most.

(snip)

Poverty is growing across the United States. Many communities are affected. Yet a number of studies suggest that African Americans in general have been hit harder than others.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, black unemployment has risen to 13.4% since the recession began in December 2007. The national unemployment rate is 8.5%.

One of the largely untold stories of America’s economic decline is the disproportionate effect it appears to be having on African Americans.

Read the rest of this remarkably revealing report.

[Sigh.]

If only “socialism” wasn’t such a shocking swear word in the states, eh?

Who knows though?

Maybe the blessed Obama truly does have the balls he so strongly hinted he had — last year.

Maybe now that his presidential honeymoon period is over, Barack will be brave enough (and care enough), to bring about some real change : as opposed to simply some more, same old, same old, ‘small change’.

Eh?

(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)