This for many of Obama's supporters is a singular defining moment when the expectation is that rhetoric should be followed by resolute action and not more rationalizations and excuses being made about the criminal behavior of those members of the Bush Regime and those in the CIA , the US military, & the Washington Bureaucracy who claim to be just following orders. They could have refused to follow orders, they could have resigned, they could have gone public with what they knew and shared their moral outrage with their fellow Americans and with the International Community. It is after all considered permissible to disobey an order which is a flagrant contravention of US laws and the US constitution and Bill of Rights or which violate International Laws such as the Geneva Conventions.
Keith Olbermann: "President Obama, You Are Wrong"
Forgive me for the moment as I am having a Keith Olbermann moment of Moral Outrage- this too shall pass as we remember President Obama is just another American who believes in his country's Exceptionalism and its purity & rightness and its Moral Superiority over all other nations.
Newly released Top Secret Bush Regime Memos at Memorandum for John Rizzo Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency
Interrogation of01 Qoel1l1 Operorive
or try URL: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20090416_memos.pdf
Now with the release of these memos on torture and Obama's pledge to defend members of the CIA who took part in these inhumane, barbaric medieval practices all in the name of National Security we see that America once again thumbs its nose and gives the middle finger ala up yours! FU to the rest of the world.
America is fundamentally a nation devoted to a culture of secrecy and violence with a complete disregard for the rule of law ;that is it abandons all civilized norms when it sees fit. Since it claims not to be run by men or women or mere mortals but by GOD's Chosen Prophets who get their orders direct from GOD and so are only answerable to GOD and not mere Mortals.
But its claim to moral superiority is mere rhetoric to appease some of its citizens and as a means to delude itself and the rest of the world. America is still one of the worlds leading Bullies.
Part of course what is disturbing about these new memos is that there is no weight given to the fact psychological abuse is also a form of torture. Playing on an individuals phobias or using intimidation , using techniques to humiliate a detainee, attacking the individuals religious beliefs, making threats that his family will also be detained abused and tortured and his wife and daughters are to be raped etc. these under International Law are considered crimes - detainees are to be treated humanely and shown respect and dignity for their person- instead the CIA broke every rule or guideline possible and yet claim they did little harm because most of the victims did not die and their organs did not fail and besides the motivation of their tormentors was after all pure.
Is this how President Obama wishes to toss away any political capitol he may have had. As I have said the Republicans, conservatives, the Tea Bag Party crowd and the Religious Right may congratulate him on these cowardly actions but they are still going to remain his enemies as long as he is in power. Besides they believe he shouldn't have allowed these memos to be released and believe he should have condemned the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross and possibly decreed the Red Cross as an enemy of the United States because it revealed State Secrets to the world. Just listen to what O'Reilly and others on the right think of the Red Cross - they hold that organization in contempt as just another bleeding heart liberal leftist anti-American organization out to undermine America's National Security - OH My God the Red Cross actually told the truth about about how corrupt and cynical and Machiavellian those in power in America really are.
The bullies and psychopaths get rewarded with full immunity and are even going to get free legal counsel if needed and if they have to pay out money to their victims or to those countries who may take legal action the them and the United States the government will cover all costs.
As for those heroic individuals under the Bush Regime who risked everything by leaking information to the public and the media about these criminal activities they now should realize in this new state of affairs there positions and jobs are not safe. Anyone thinking of being a whistle-blower in America now know they are considered by those in power as the enemy out to undermine America's so called Good Reputation which in fact is a sham.
A country that allows Torturers to go scot-free should be isolated and regarded by all other civilized nations as a Rogue State.
It was a Rogue State under Bush and is now a Rogue State which can not be trusted since Obama like Bush and their predecessors believe that America is not bound by International Laws or Agreements or treaties which it has signed onto.
There have already been reports that abuse and torture of detainees has continued under the Obama Regime. I'm sure he has made Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and other right wing extremists happy at least for a day or two.
Is this Obama's legacy defending torturers , defending Warrantless wire taps, and Extraordinary renditions and his revolting Drone Wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan and his defending the War Crimes of his own nation and those of Israel. We now understand better Obama's reluctance to condemn the actions of the Israeli government in its brutal invasion of Gaza.
To have condemned Israel would have meant he would be forced to condemn America's actions as in its widespread abuse of detainees and its unjustified war of Aggression in IRAQ and the deaths of some 1,000,000 that is one Million Iraqis and not the bogus FOX NEWS BUSH OBAMA number of 75,000 dead Iraqis.When you declare as Bush. Cheney did that Iraq was a FREE-FIRE ZONE hundreds of thousands of innocents get shot , blown to bits, Napalmed( White Phosphorus) and when you turn whole cities like Fallujah into rubble tens of thousands are wiped out as a result of a racist genocidal hatred of all IRAQIS which pervades and permeates the American Military from the top down from the Commander In Chief to the soldier in the field who is told the more Iraqis killed the better- Is Obama going to excuse their behavior as well-oh yes he did he said American troops are doing a wonderful job in their CRUSADE against the ISLAMIC INFIDELS- so Obama sold out what's new about that?
As for his reaching out to Muslim and Arab countries it is mere empty rhetoric since he has little respect for the dignity of individual human beings how can he be trusted . In the end he is just another American who sees the rest of the world as either the enemy of America or to be used to promote America's goals and interests.
Torture Memos Gave CIA Legal O.K. to Bring Detainees to Brink of Death Jason Leopold, Truthout.org ,April 17, 2009
CIA interrogators were given legal authorization to slam an alleged "high-value" detainee's head against a wall, place insects inside a "confinement box" to induce fear and force him to remain awake for 11 consecutive days, according to a closely guarded August 1, 2002, legal memo released publicly by the Justice Department for the first time on Thursday.
The memo, signed by the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Jay Bybee, was written about a week after Bybee's office had given the CIA verbal authorization that subjecting the detainee to seven other brutal interrogation methods would not violate torture laws.
"This letter memorializes our previous oral advice given on July 24, 2002 and July 26, 2002, that the proposed conduct would not violate the prohibition against torture," wrote Bybee, who now has a lifetime judgeship on the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals. CIA interrogators would not be in violation of torture laws, Bybee wrote, because they would not be acting with the intent to inflict "severe pain or suffering" by subjecting detainees to the brutal interrogation methods outlined in the memo.
"To violate the [torture] statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," Bybee wrote. "Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture.
"Based on the information you have provided us, we believe that those carrying out these procedures would not have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering. The objective of these techniques is not to cause severe physical pain. First, the constant presence of personnel with medical training who have the authority to stop the interrogation should it appear it is medically necessary indicates that it is not your intent to cause severe physical pain."
However, Bybee added, "we wish to emphasize that this is our best reading of the law; however, you should be aware that there are no cases construing this statute, just as there have been no prosecutions brought under it."
Three other torture memos, written in May 2005 by Steven Bradbury, the former acting head of OLC, were also released on Thursday as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the ACLU filed against the Bush administration.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility investigated Bradbury, Bybee and former OLC attorney John Yoo, who is believed to be the principal author of the memo Bybee signed. The probe is said to have concluded that all three provided the Bush administration with poor legal advice and acted as advocates for administration policy rather than independent lawyers.
Bradbury's reinstated the torture methods and their legal justification after his predecessor, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the torture memos in 2004. Goldsmith said the torture memos were "sloppily reasoned" and "legally flawed."
The release of the memos followed weeks of intense debate and pit the White House and Justice Department against the CIA, which argued against releasing the documents. Unnamed CIA officials were quoted as saying that releasing the memos would provide al-Qaeda with a recruitment tool despite the fact that much of the information in the documents has been known for some time.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden sharply criticized President Barack Obama's decision to release the memos, telling The Associated Press the documents will now "deter other governments from cooperating with the United States because it shows the US can't keep anything secret.
(and as an example of whow detainees were treated the author includes details from the ICRC report:)
According to Zubaydah's account to the International Committee of the Red Cross, he was subjected to brutal methods.
"Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow," Zubaydah told an ICRC representative, according to the organization's report. "Measuring perhaps in area [3 1/2 by 2 1/2 feet by 6 1/2 feet high]. The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 1/2 feet] in height. I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck, they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room. I was also repeatedly slapped in the face....
"I was then put into the tall black box for what I think was about one and a half to two hours. The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe.
"When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury."
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Anyway I must interject at this point with a couple of comments:
It sounds like the sort of testimony we hear from other countries from detainees such as those held in Chile under the American backed and loved Pinochet Regime. He afterall was a Hero to t many of those in power in the US and he was helped by the CIA in how to do effective Interrogation Techniques.
In the same way the CIA helped the Shah of Iran and Saddam when he was still the beloved of those in power in America and the list goes on and on back at least to the 1950s . Over and over again the US and the CIA ousted popularly elected governments replacing them with brutal barbaric Regimes which were of course anti-Communists such as that of the South African Apartheid Regime which was also loved by many Americans til world public opinion became decidedly anti-Apartheid- but Jesse Helms and others told the world the South African Regime was one of the Good Guys as was Pinochet's Chile etc.
Is this the sort of Real-Politik ala Henry Kissinger that Obama is now buying into that as long as a country claims to be anti-Terrorists it is one of the good guys no matter what crimes it commits no matter how much it oppresses its own people and crushes all dissent in the name of National Security- the Magical Phrase which is cover any type of abuse possible.
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So in the end all these vicious sadistic SOBs care about is America keeping secrets. It doesn't bother them that they have developed outrageous criminal policies in their treatment of detainees. The Geneva Conventions and International Laws governing how prisoners are treated mean nothing to these people.One wonders how much further were they willing to go or did they go under the rationale of National Security. It also raises questions about whether the CIA and other US personnel have been using similar techniques even before these memos were written or even before 9/11.
Anyway it shows that the CIA and their enablers have no interest in the "Rule Of Law" except as for cover for their barbaric actions. What gives them the right to bash a prisoners head up against a wall repeatedly or to keep a man shackled for days forcing the prisoner to urinate and defecate on himself or to keep a man in what appears to be a coffin like box which restricts his movements and all the other inhumane techniques used.
How can President Obama read these memos and the ICRC report and other detailed information that is available pertaining not just to the 18 prisoners mentioned in the ICRC report but to the hundreds if not thousands according to some eyewitness reports of widespread use of these techniques and their myriad variations. This waqs a slippery slope the Bush Regime set out which according to Philippe Sands investigation for Vanity Fair shows led to widespread abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it appears Obama has as little interests in these non-Americans as did Bush and compay.
The cold bloodedness of the memos is in fact chilling claiming that waterboarding causes no pain or suffering. So waterboard all these lawyers and see what they think then. Waterboarding should soon become the newest home parlor game for the whole family. It shows how divorced these people are from reality . They think pain and suffering can only be caused when you cut into someone with a knife which is ok to do as long as your motivation like that of the members of the Inquisiton is pure in defense of the real or the church.
Michael Hayden is right to deplore these memos being made public not because other countries will believe Americans can not keep a secret but rather Americans do not abide by the rule of law and in fact treat the Geneva Conventions and International Agreements baning torture and the abuse of prisoners as a lot of twaddle by mamby bamby effeminate foreigners who are not willing to go the distance and get a bit of blood on their hands.
This information and evidence against the Americans should also put all other nations who claim to respect the rule of law on notice not to turn any prisoner over to the American authorities because any promises they make about treating prisoners or detainees properly can not be believed Even statements made recently by Obama are meaningless when he gives full immunity to anyone who believed they were doing what they were ordered to or that it was a matter of National Security.
As this article "Torture Memos Revealed " goes on to state Obama and the White House intentions-( a little aside :basically all is forgiven and we promise never to do it again- too bad they wouldn't accept such an apology from lesser criminals who are often left to rot in America's Prisons- The accuse - " yes i did a bad thing stole, raped , murdered, smoked pot, drove under the influence, shot a few liberals in a God less Liberal church or shot police officers who were going to take my guns a way- forgive me for I have sinned and I promise not to do it again Scouts Honor- ah well says the Judge you can all go free - so let the 2,000,000 prisoners being held in the us go free most of them never did anything as reprehensible as the Bush Regime, the CIA, the Pentagon and Medical Professionals and lawyers who aided and abetted in Torturing human beings who it seems even Obama sees as less than human guilty or not- GORD.)
Moments before the memos were released, the White House issued a statement from Obama, who was in Mexico on Thursday, which said that CIA interrogators who carried out the torture of 28 of the 94 "high-value" detainees and who relied "in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice ... will not be subject to prosecution."
"This is a time for reflection, not retribution," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."
However, documents released by the Justice Department last week in connection with a separate lawsuit the ACLU filed over the destruction of interrogation videotapes says the CIA began videotaping interrogations of two alleged "high value" terrorist detainees in April 2002, four months before Bybee issued his memo.
Attorney General Eric Holder said on Thursday he told the CIA that the federal government would provide legal representation "to any employee, at no cost to the employee, in any state or federal judicial or administrative proceeding brought against the employee based on such conduct and would take measures to respond to any proceeding initiated against the employee in any international or foreign tribunal, including appointing counsel to act on the employee's behalf and asserting any available immunities and other defenses in the proceeding itself."
"To the extent permissible under federal law, the government will also indemnify any employee for any monetary judgment or penalty ultimately imposed against him for such conduct and will provide representation in congressional investigations," Holder said. "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department."
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said the methods used by CIA interrogators, "read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines."
and Jason Leopold ends the article on the question of War Crimes and the position on the matter by the ACLU:( of course according the Bush Regime, Cheney, Rumsfeld , Condoleeza Rice, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Doug Feith and other Conservative Intellectuals such Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Michelle Backmann, Sara Palin, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter , Sean Hannity & FOX NEWS etc. the ACLU is a disreputable Commie Pinko Liberal anti-American Pro-Terrorists organization out to destroy America by any means necessary just like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Red Cross etc. )
War Crimes
Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said Bybee's memo along with three others written in May 2005 by former acting OLC head Steven Bradbury "are based on legal reasoning that is spurious on its face, and in the end these aren't legal memos at all - they are simply political documents that were meant to provide window dressing for war crimes."
Before leaving the vice presidency, Cheney acknowledged that he personally "signed off" on the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah and two other alleged terrorist detainees and personally approved brutal interrogations of 33 others.
"I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the [Central Intelligence] Agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," Cheney said in an interview last December with "ABC News." "And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."
and here's a more hopeful note though it may fall on deaf ears - by way of After-Downing Street.org
" Congressman Jerrold Nadler Calls for a Special Prosecutor for Torture", Afterdowningstreet.org, April 17, 2009
Congressman Jerrold Nadler has just publicly asked that the Attorney General appoint a special prosecutor. Please THANK HIM, and please ask him and ask your congress member to jointly send to Eric Holder the letter that Nadler and 55 other congress members sent to Michael Mukasey requesting a special prosecutor last summer, or an updated version thereof.
Here is a release from Nadler's office:
CONGRESSMAN JERROLD NADLER
8th Congressional District of New York
Nadler Applauds Obama Administration's Transparency on Torture Memos
Renews Call for Special Prosecutor and Congressional Investigation
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, praised President Obama and the Department of Justice for releasing four legal memos on the torture of detainees that had previously been concealed by the Bush administration. Rep. Nadler, however, called on the Obama administration to go further and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute those responsible for authorizing the torture. He also said that a Congressional investigation is absolutely warranted. Rep Nadler released the following statement:
“While I applaud the Obama administration for releasing these torture memos in the spirit of openness and transparency, the memos' alarming content requires further action. These memos, without a shadow of a doubt, authorized torture and gave explicit instruction on how to carry it out, all the while carefully attempting to maintain a legal fig leaf.
“These memos make it abundantly clear that the Bush administration engaged in torture. Because torture is illegal under American law – as the U.S. is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture – we are legally required to investigate and, when appropriate, to prosecute those responsible for these crimes.
“I commend President Obama for his unequivocal rejection of torture and for his resolve to move forward. The President's intentions are honorable, but don't go far enough. All history teaches us that simply shining a light on criminal acts without holding the responsible people accountable will not prevent repetition of those acts.
“I have previously urged Attorneys General Gonzalez and Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the torture abuses of the Bush administration, and now I will convey that same necessity to President Obama and Attorney General Holder. We sorely need an independent investigation that will provide accountability for these terrible crimes. This investigation should not be a witch-hunt to punish those rank-and-file C.I.A. operatives who acted in good faith on Justice Department instructions. At the very least, those who wrote and authorized the memos knowing full well that they were instructing others to torture must be held accountable to the law.
“We must have a criminal investigation if the U.S. is to reclaim its moral authority and prevent repetition of these crimes.
“As Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights said yesterday, ‘Whether or not to prosecute law breakers is not a political decision. Laws were broken and crimes were committed. If we are truly a nation of laws . . . a prosecutor needs to be appointed and the decisions regarding the guilt of those involved in the torture program should be decided in a court of law.’
“Furthermore, the revelations contained in these memos make it abundantly clear that we need additional Congressional oversight hearings on this matter. We intend to hold such hearings.
“Finally, I particularly want to thank the American Civil Liberties Union for their role in bringing these memos to light and for their vigilant efforts to ensure that the United States government does not engage in torture.”
Following are the memos released yesterday: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20090416_memos.pdf.
and so the CIA or Pakistani Proxy did torture the children of detainees in an article from Rawstory by way of Information Clearing House:
Bush Memos Parallel Claim 9/11 "Mastermind’s" Children Were Tortured With Insects By John Byrne Rawstory, April 17, 2009
-- Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears.
The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
While an additional memo released Thursday claims that the torture with insects technique was never utilized by the CIA, the allegations regarding the children would have transpired when the method was authorized by the Bush Administration.
At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts.
The statement was made by Ali Khan, the father of detainee Majid Khan, who gave a detailed account of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American guards in Pakistan. In his statement, Khan asserted that one of his sons was held at the same place as the young children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards,” the statement read. “They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.”
Missing detainee reappears in the newly released memos:
Newly Released Memo Inadvertently Reveals CIA Held (and Abused) Missing Prisoner at Mother Jones April 17, 2009
This story first appeared on ProPublica.org.
Since then, he has been considered a missing, or ghost detainee. But in the heavily redacted OLC memo dated May 30, 2005, government censors appeared to have missed a single reference to his name and confinement during a lengthy description of the interrogation techniques used against him. The reference can be found at the bottom of Page 7 in the memo, where Ghul’s surname is spelled "Gul."
According to the memo, Ghul was one of 28 CIA detainees at the time who had been subjected to the agency’s "enhanced interrogation techniques." Specifically, the memo says he was subjected to "facial hold," "facial slap," "stress positions," "sleep deprivation," a technique called "walling," in which a detainee’s shoulders are repeatedly smashed against a wall, and the "attention grasp," in which the detainee is placed in a choke-hold and slapped.
So it appears we now have evidence Ghul was in a CIA prison. Where he is today is still a mystery.
We’ve called the CIA, and they declined to comment.
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Another disappointed Obama fan writes:
"Darkness, Darkness No Amnesty for Torturers By Dave Lindorff April 17, 2009 "Information Clearing House"
...Now we have a president who is perhaps doing something worse. Admitting that the last administration of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney ordered up a program of illegal and inhuman torture of captives in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and in the so-called War on Terror that was launched by them in the wake of the 9-11 attacks in 2001, and offering up documentary evidence of the chain of command that set the country on this criminal course, President Obama now says that to move beyond this “dark and painful chapter in our history,” he will not seek or permit any prosecution of those who committed torture of captives.
“Nothing will be gained,” Obama said, “by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”
I’m not that concerned about whether individual torturers in the CIA or the military get prosecuted. If the president had said he would not prosecute people who “thought” they were acting under proper authority and behaving legally, but then added that he would pursue those who authorized and ordered them to torture, I would not have fussed. But that is not what he said. The implication of his statement, and the fact that he has not, this far into his term, ordered his Attorney General to appoint a prosecutor to investigate those who were responsible for the crime, given what he clearly knows about its authors, is the worst possible of travesties, and rises to the level of a war crime itself
...The issue is, do we as a nation now subscribe to the idea that the way to deal with evil perpetrated by ourselves is to bury it?
Isn’t that precisely what we have been for decades accusing the Germans and the Japanese of doing: burying in the mists of time their criminal behavior as a people and as a nation?
And now our president—whose own wife and daughters are descendants of slave victims of another era of American atrocities—is telling us we should do the same thing as Germany and Japan: forget and move on.
But the president is wrong. Darkness does not go away when the fog comes. It just gets darker.
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Naomi Klein writes in this article about how many Obama supporters are wondering if Obama not much of a change after all:
"Hopebroken and Hopesick:A Lexicon of Disappointment" By Naomi Klein April 17, 2009 "The Nation"
-- All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.
Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.
This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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