of course, while i'm dreaming, we need to elect democrats with stones--not the reid-pelosi variety.

It's great you recognize the continuity of policy. It comes from the easy manipulation of the media by vastly wealthy entities. The left likes this kind of thing because they believe it is working for them. But it's just an illusion. The continuity of policy is because of the continuity of the vastly wealthy entities that control elections. They are beneficiaries of the stimululus and other legislation to the degree that nothing under them will ever change.

In their own collective minds, they know how to run things. The citizenry are mere dupes. And, frankly, dems are more easily duped than reps.

From: The Center

Re: New location

We've moved! Please come visit us at our new location on the left. We look forward to hearing from you!

- I find the whole Obama is (worse than) Bush meme a little idiotic and shortsighted. Is he torturing?

Harper's Magazine
July 2009
We Still Torture: The new evidence from Guantanamo
by Luke Mitchell

Someone scanned the article and put it up as a pdf; ordinarily this would only be available by subscription to Harper's.

http://mathforum.org/~josh/articles/Mitchell-Torture.pdf

President Obama on playing golf, in an interview with ABC's The Early Show:

Pres. Obama: It is the--. It is the only time that for 6 hours. First of all that I'm outside.

Harry Smith: uh huh, uh huh.

Pres. Obama: And second of all, where you almost feel normal.

I would respectfully submit to President Obama, that the reason he feels abnormal is that he has betrayed his supporters by breaking the solemn promises he made during the campaign to restore the rule of law and respect the Constitution. I have no doubt that if he dropped the doublespeak and began fulfilling his campaign promises to bring about transparency and accountability in government, he would feel not just normal, but genuinely proud of himself.

I find the whole Obama is (worse than) Bush meme a little idiotic and shortsighted. Is he torturing? Is he lying us into war? Is he denying climate change? I dunno, maybe I'm missing something.

Having a "liberal" Democrat validate some of the worst excesses of BushCo turns those excesses into bipartisan "conventional wisdom."

In that sense, yes, Obama is worse than Bush.

Whoa whoa.. I think calling the Brookings Institution "neoconservative" is being disingenuous. Yes, yes I know that Brookings is often sounding more and more just like the crown jewel of the Establishment, CFR, and is anything but left/liberal/progressive. But I think we need to savor labels like "neoconservative" for venues like the Weekly Standard and AEI, lest they lose their true abhorrent meaning, yah know?

Shortly after Shrub announced his inane GWOT, I predicted that we would become Argentina or Chile complete with our own "disappeared ones" and torture. So it has come to pass. Those countries didn't begin to overcome the long, dark tea time of their souls until they stripped away the layers of secrecy and confronted their actions.

Clearly, we are not yet ready to exit our own long, dark tea time.

There was a huge newsdump last week, with the Washington Post reporting that President Obama intends to circumvent Congress and reassert indefinite detention authority by executive order....I initially assumed that the administration's move would be along the lines of what Wittes is proposing.

That isn't the case...Wittes told me personally that he thought Obama re-asserting--as Bush did--the inherent authority to detain terrorists suspects indefinitely would be "a disaster."

The Wittes proposal is not likely to make any civil libertarians happy. But unlike the administration's move--if the Post story is accurate--it does propose some meaningful constraints on the indefinite detention power, which up till now we've seen being used arbitrarily except where the courts intervene...

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=06&year=2009&base_name=preventive_detention_by_other

I think calling the Brookings Institution "neoconservative" is being disingenuous.

Ever heard of Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon, the two leading advocates for the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq? Ever heard of Haim Saban, who funds Pollack and other Brookings "scholars", who told the NYT: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel . . . . On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk." Ever heard of Ben Wittes, who has devoted himself for years to the creation of national security courts to allow preventive detention.

If "neocon" doesn't apply to that, what does it take?

V interesting and uncomfortable reading. Thanks. Yup, can't quite figure out why that sort of violent force feeding isn't torture. Is it is the field manual - as I recall those were the parameters that were used when saying we don't torture?

Homeruk: "- I find the whole Obama is (worse than) Bush meme a little idiotic and shortsighted. Is he torturing? Is he lying us into war? Is he denying climate change? I dunno, maybe I'm missing something."

First, nobody is saying that he is *worse* than Bush, he has still about 150 000 civilian deaths to go for that. But he is still torturing, in Bangram and elsewhere. Have you seen any lists of what secret CIA facilities have been shut down? Of what happened to the people there? About "renditions"? Maybe I have missed something? He is lying to us about war, or at least keeping silent. Have you seen any real strategic plan for the Af/Pak war? Complete with Cost/benefit analysis? Have you seen anyone try to set down a structural plan for how to re-assemble the individual rights of people? Habeas Corpus?

Greenwald: You could do much worse than interview Phil Carter (previously at Intel Dump) about these things. He must be screaming in his office every day now. (tell him fnord says hi)

I actually agree with Glenn almost 100% and still think he's a shrill, naggy bitch. What kind of pundit sits around baiting and then arguing with his own readers? Sheesh.

Sir, I thinkt hats why they call the internets an "interactive" medium. President Obama could catch a few hints...?