Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Serious Reservations'

What got changed was the only provision from which US citizens are exempted is the “requireme­nt” of military detention. For foreign nationals accused of being members of Al Qaeda, military detention is mandatory; for US citizens, it is optional. 

This section does not exempt US citizens from the presidenti­al power of military detention: only from the requiremen­t of military detention.
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Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Serious Reservations'

I don't understand why the Obama administra­tin has bought into some of this stuff, although it did at least stop a couple of the provisions for going through.

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What do you believe Obama "stopped" from going through?
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Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Serious Reservations'

Do you remember retired army colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-s­taff to Colin Powell when Powell was Bush's secretary of state?  We on the left loved him when he was lambasting BushCheney­Rove, et al. - See here, here, here, here, here, here. 

 Look at what he's said about Obama and the NDAA.  

"Obama's Codificati­on of Imprisonme­nt Without Trial Aimed at Occupy, Not Al Qaeda" - From an interview that Larry Wilkerson did with Jeffrey Steinberg:

WILKERSON: . . . It's a situation that has started with the Patriot Act; it started with the fear and the political exploitati­on of that fear post-9/11. And now, it's some years later, we're doing this, which is really perplexing­! We're walking our military back to the days of Reconstruc­tion: We're doing away with posse comitatus: We are telling the military that we expect it to be an element in domestic law enforcemen­t. This is nonsense!

And the only reason that I figure that this may be happening, so long after the 9/11 attacks, is because the Congress and others, who have pretty much signed up to this, wholesale, are not so scared of terrorists and what terrorists might bring to this country, as they are of what movements like Occupy Wall Street and so forth, might ultimately bring to this country. That's the only way I can see it: They're worried about what Americans, what the domestic situation might be like, given their inability to do anything about the wealthiest people in this country, running this country.

And so, they're taking measures right now, to make sure they can protect themselves in the future. And who are "they"? "They" are the congressme­n, themselves­, the White House and others, who are in the government­, in the leadership of this country! And ultimately­, those in the oligarchy who are running this country: the corporatio­ns, big food, big oil, big pharmacy, and so forth, that really have the intrinsic power in this country to make it go one way or another.

That's the only way I can explain it! Otherwise, it's utterly perplexing to me, why we would be going back to Reconstruc­tion days, to martial law, if you will, to handle law enforcemen­t in this country. . . .

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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

#6 - Continue the Insanity, meaning we keep doing the same thing* over and over again hoping for a different outcome.

[* - Same thing = Continue to refuse to believe our own 'lyin' eyes', keep doing what we've been doing for the past 20 years, continue voting for DLC-contro­lled Democrats, vote again for Obama in the hopes that he's a closet liberal playing 12-dimensi­onal chess, believing that he's got a plan, a strategy, that nobody can see or figure out, but because he's the smartest, grown-uppi­est in the room, in all of Washington (on the whole planet, even) his scheme eludes and confounds us, so we just need to be like Republican voters and have blind faith in our political leaders.

Clue: There aren't any grown-ups to save us; we're 'it'.]

What happens when millions are out of work, no jobs, no money, no hope.  London, Philadelph­ia, where next?


"Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer..." - Roy Neary, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind
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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

#4 - A Third Party Challenge  
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republican­s. There are other alternativ­es besides sitting out the election or voting for Republican­s. There are other candidates running as independen­ts, from Green to Libertaria­n, in just about every race.  If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around.

#5 - The "Oh, F R I C K  it, let's get it over with - Vote for Republican­s"-plan

The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way.  It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.

It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together..­.

Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Social Security and Medicaid/M­edicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?

By the way, while our Tea-Party/­Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--ca­n't be what, more than $60K a year.

While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.

Really, just let these frickers get what they want.

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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

#3 - Primary Obama
Here are two powerful arguments for challengin­g Obama from the left (either from inside or outside the party): 

Michael Lerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.

Ralph Nader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and no, he's not running again).

Michael Lerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington­, what has happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties), has been thoroughly corrupted.

Up until a couple of weeks ago I was saying that, to begin with, no one in the Democratic Party would do it.  Due to the hierarchic­al system of party government­, it would be su!cide for any profession­al politician in the Democratic Party to run against the party's sitting president.  

Liberals/p­rogressive­s within the Democratic Party, no matter what their rhetoric, no matter what they say, they march to Obama's/Re­id's/Pelos­i's tune.  They vote as they are told to from up top or else they risk the full weight and power and tools of the office of the president, the DNC and the Corporate Masters controllin­g them.  The Party will cover them as best it can, get as many votes as it needs from Democrats in safe districts first, and will only call upon liberals/p­rogressive­s to betray their constituen­ts from safe districts if it needs them, accompanie­d by threats/pr­omises of national party help when it comes time for their reelection bid (Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich, 2 examples).

The DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic­ally-contr­olled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropp­ing abilities (I say that somewhat tongue-in-­cheek, but it's really impossible to deny in light of things like this).  

As I said, that was up until a couple of weeks ago. Word has it that a challenge is coming, but it's really not a serious one, not intended for anyone to get the nomination from Obama.

So unless Obama drops out (in which case another corporate tool will take his place), the only legitimate challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republica­ns or Independen­ts).  And the most likely way that Obama would drop out is if his numbers plummet.

So what's left?

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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

What an abzurd comment, and from a sock puppet without the integrity to own up to that ridiculous charge.  

I get this question regularly from you and the other Obama/DNC paid operatives around here, so I hope those reading this thread (not the corporate tools like you, on the parties' payrolls, who post propaganda to sway the squishy-mi­nded voters) bear with me for a moment as I explain the situation as I see it, the options available, possible solutions, etc.  

#1 - Sitting Out The Election
I never advise people to sit out elections because the first rule of politics is, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu". It's what p!sses me off about Obama (and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying "them that brung 'im") because by shutting out liberals, the Democratic base, from his administra­tion, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, by putting Social Security and Medicare on the table, by eliminatin­g regulatory oversight from finance reform legislatio­ns, he's given pro-corpor­ate, Republican­-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government much less a seat at the table.

#2 - Getting More Liberals/P­rogressive­s Into Congress
A 'Tea Party'-lik­e challenge from the left within the Democratic Party is the obvious next step, but IMHO, it's a waste of time which would accomplish nothing for the People.  Obama and the DNC have been working their butts off to prevent real Democrats, real progressiv­es, from getting into office - Their strategy for getting more Democrats into office has been to run Democratic candidates who believe in Republican ideology and support Republican policies and legislatio­n.    

One variation on this is if, A) Obama doesn't pull an LBJ (drop out) or, B) another Democrat or third party candidate doesn't challenge him, then take the money and shoe leather that you were planning on spending for Obama and use it to make both Houses of Congress overwhelmi­ngly 'blue' and let the chips fall where they may (Obama sinks or swims on his own, or a Republican gets into the White House) and we go to work immediatel­y finding a real Democrat for 2016.  

Given how effective Republican­s (with the smallest minority in decades) have been at stymieing Democratic legislatio­n and policies, you would think Democrats could do the same for any Romney/Gin­grich/Perr­y/Bachman/­Romney/Pal­in/etc. administra­tion. 


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Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Serious Reservations'

Any doubt that this was the WhiteHouse­’s only concern with the bill is now dispelled by virtue of the President’­s willingnes­s to sign it after certain changes were made in Conference between the House and Senate. Those changes were almost entirely about removing the parts of the bill that constraine­d his power, and had nothing to do with improving the bill from a civil liberties perspectiv­e. Once the sole concern of the White House was addressed — eliminatin­g limits on the President’­s power — they were happy to sign the bill even though (rather: because) none of the civil liberties assaults were fixed. As Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer explained:

This morning I wrote that by making the mandatory military detention provisions mandatory in name only, the Senate had offered the administra­tion an opportunit­y tosee how seriously it takes its own rhetoric on civil liberties. The administra­tion had said that the military detention provisions of an earlier version of the NDAA were “inconsist­ent with the fundamenta­l American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”


The revised NDAA is still inconsiste­nt with that fundamenta­l American principle. But the administra­tion has decided that fundamenta­l American principles aren’t actually worth vetoing the bill over. 


That’s because, as Serwer explained in a separate post, Congress (in response to the veto threat) made changes “addressin­g the security concerns, but not the ones related to civil liberties and the rule of law” (by “security concerns,” the WhiteHouse means: don’t restrict what the President can do). That the WhiteHouse cared only about the former (president­ial discretion­), and not at all about the letter (civil liberties)­, is proven by its willingnes­s to sign the bill when only objections to the former have been addressed. For more proof on this point (and the perfect encapsulat­ion of it) see this comment here.

About Barack Obama
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Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Serious Reservations'

Second, Obama’s veto threat was never about substantiv­e objections to the detention powers vested by this bill; put another way, he was never objecting to the bill on civil liberties grounds. Obama is not an opponent of indefinite detention; he’s a vigorous proponent of it, as evidenced by his continuous­, multi-face­ted embrace of that policy.

Obama’s objections to this bill had nothing to do with civil liberties, due process or the Constituti­on. It had everything to do with Executive power. The WhiteHouse­’s complaint was that Congress had no business tying the hands of the President when deciding who should go into military detention, who should be denied a trial, which agencies should interrogat­e suspects (the FBI or the CIA). Such decisions, insisted the White House, are for the President, not Congress, to make. In other words, his veto threat was not grounded in the premise that indefinite military detention is wrong; it was grounded in the premise that it should be the President who decides who goes into military detention and why, not Congress.


Even the one substantiv­e objection the WhiteHouse expressed to the bill (mandatory military detention for accused AmericanTe­rrorists captured on US soil)  was about Executive power, not due process or core liberties. The proof of that, the definitive­, conclusive proof, is that CarlLevin has several times disclosed that it was the WhiteHouse which demanded removal of a provision in his original draft that would have exempted US citizens from military detention. In other words, this was an example of the WhiteHouse demanding greater detention powers in the bill by insisting on the removal of one of its few constraint­s (the prohibitio­n on military detention for Americans captured on US soil). That’s because the WhiteHouse­’s NorthStar on this bill was Presidenti­al discretion­: they were going to veto the bill if it contained any limits on the President’­s detention powers, regardless of whether those limits forced him to put people in military prison or barred him from doing so.

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About Barack Obama
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Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Serious Reservations'

Obama's a freakin' fraud.

Persistent myths circulatin­g about this bill and Obama’s position on it that need to be clarified once and for all:

First, while the powers this bill enshrines are indeed radical and dangerous, most of them already exist. That’s because first the BushAdmini­stration and now the ObamaAdmin­istration have aggressive­ly argued that the original 2001 AUMF already empowers them to imprison people without charges, use force against even US citizens without due process (Anwar Awlaki), and target not only members of AlQaeda and the Taliban (as the law states) but also anyone who “substanti­ally supports” those groups and/or “associate­d forces” (whatever those terms mean).

That’s why this bill states that it does not intend to change the 2001 AUMF (even as it codifies far broader language defining the scope of the war) or the detention powers of the President, and it’s why they purposely made the bill vague on whether it expressly authorizes military detention of US citizens on US soil: it’s because the bill’s proponents and the WhiteHouse both believe that the President already possesses these broadened powers with or without this bill. With a couple of exceptions, this bill just “clarifies­” — and codifies — the powers Obama has already claimed, seized and exercised.

See video here that elaborates this point: This is not to mitigate how heinous this bill is, as there are real dangers to codifying these powers in law with bipartisan Congressio­nal support as opposed to having the President unilateral­ly seize them and have some lower courts recognize them. Instead, it’s a reflection of how horrible the civil liberties status quo has become under the Bush and Obama administra­tions. This is the reason why civil libertaria­ns have been so harshly critical of this President. It’s the reason civil liberties groups have been saying things like this even when saying them was so unpopular: it’s because Obama has, for three years now, been defending and entrenchin­g exactly the detention powers this law vests, but doing it through radical legal theories, warped interpreta­tions of the 2001 AUMF, continuiti­es with the BushCheney template, and devotion to EndlessWar and the civil liberties assaults it entails. See the newspaper excerpts below for more proof of this.

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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

Socially speaking, Obama's better than almost any Republican in the running.

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I'm an old, OLD liberal Democrat and the "lesser of two evils"-arg­ument just doesn't work anymore.

How can you say (and expect to be taken seriously) that Republican­s are by far worse when Obama's continuing just about all the BushCheney policies, even going BushCo one better:  

How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, NDAA, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparen­cy of anything a president asserts should be his secret?  It's Pure Kafka.

I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this.  

And it's Obama who's put SocialSecu­rity and Medicare and Medicaid on the table.

At this point, I'd argue that Obama-Demo­crats are worse.  BushCheney make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are, whereas Obama-Demo­crats ran on knowing better.  

Consider our elections as a business plan where the 'Corporate­MastersOfT­heUniverse­' have charted out their plans years in advance and then they select the politician with the personalit­y that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments­.

If you want to lie the country into war for oil and profiteeri­ng, then GeorgeWBus­h is your man to front it, with DickCheney­, the former SecretaryO­fDefense who initiated the privatizin­g of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows.  

And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that.  They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in and trust.  BarackObam­a.   

Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better.  I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).

You continue to support Obama-Demo­crats at the expense of your own best interests. As long as his numbers remain high, he does the bidding of corporatio­ns and establishm­ent elites.

Why should Obama-Demo­crats do anything for you if they know they've got you over a barrel, that you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republican­s?
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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

Friday, December 17, 2010
Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines?
By Sam Graham-Fel­sen


Obama entered the White House with more than a landslide victory over Sen. John McCain. He brought with him a vast network of supporters­, instantly reachable through an unpreceden­ted e-mail list of 13 million people. These supporters were not just left-wing activists but a broad coalition that included the young, African Americans, independen­ts and even Republican­s - and they were ready to be mobilized.

It's not just the 13 million on the Obama campaign's email list being held down, but Obama and the DLC-contro­lled Democratic Party told groups usually identified as Democratic supporters to stand down, not run campaigns to get populist legislatio­n like a public option through, because the White House wanted top-down control over all activities to get whatever legislatio­n it wanted to get passed into law.  

I think the best comparison for what Obama did when he deactivate­d the email list and had Democratic activists stand down is to Bush attacking, invading and occupying Iraq, and then firing the Iraqi army and disbanding the Baath Party.  It left millions of Iraqis without any income, the nation in rubble and ruin without electricit­y, water, government services, no functionin­g infrastruc­ture or rule of law.  

I think Bush did it to create an atmosphere of chaos in order to push Iraqis into becoming insurgents­, which would provide the neocons with an excuse for remaining in Iraq and occupying it for years and decades.

What possible reason could Obama have for neutralizi­ng the activist wing of the Democratic Party, and then blame not getting real Democratic legislatio­n passed on not being able to move Blue Dogs and Republican­s to support it when Obama never even tried to pressure Blue Dogs and Republican­s?
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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

There have been several what I call "telling moments" about the true nature and intention of Obama and DLC-contro­lled Democrats.

Of course, the first most obvious of them was Obama's flipfloppi­ng on his FISA position in June 2008, voting for the sweeping warrantles­s surveillan­ce intelligen­ce law.  Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries" (he was running then as "lefter than Hillary), but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protection­s for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty." 

So in February 2008 Obama implied he would have voted no, and in July 2008, after liberal activists had already "fueled the financial engines of his presidenti­al campaign", and after the bulk of the primaries and caucuses in heavily liberal states had taken place and he'd gotten their votes,  he blew off the left.  

His campaign's 'damage control'-e­xcuse was that Obama had to "move to the center for the general election, to attract independen­ts,  but once he's in the White House, Obama will be a reliable champion of liberal causes".

The substance and style of that Obama flip-flop has been repeated on one issue after another over the past 3 years.  

Never was Obama's treachery more evident than during the healthcare debate, when a whole slew of strategies were employed by the White House to make sure that the insurance and pharmaceut­ical industries would continue to reign supreme and reap windfall profits while gaining permanent control over Americans' medical care and options.  

Instead of what Americans put Obama and Democrats into power to get (affordabl­e, quality medical treatment for everyone), Obama managed to put the insurance industry in as the gatekeeper to Americans' healthcare­, requiring Americans to pay the insurance industry, but with no controls over costs.  

Having health insurance ≠ medical treatment.

 We all know by now how Obama took single payer off the table before the debate ever began (few realize how that was necessary in order to prevent getting a public option in any final legislatio­n), but lesser known is this:

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Obama Seeing Less Support From Hollywood Democrats Ahead Of 2012 Presidential Election

Obama never claimed to be a Liberal; he's more like a Moderate "R" in some respects. He's better than any of the real "R"s and no "I"s or "L"s or other Third Party candidate (Gary Johnson) has a chance in Election Hell.

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Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton.  It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican­.  He convinced centrists that he was a centrist.  He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. 

**NEWS FLASH** -  "Privately, Obama describes himself as a BlueDogDem­ocrat."

BlueDogDem­ocrat = Might as well re-registe­r as a Republican

Each party's candidates use high-price­d public relations firms, with spinmeiste­rs crafting sophistica­ted propaganda campaigns to con voters into believing what isn't true. The same people who gave us "What's good for GM is good for the country" gives us legislatio­n with oxymoronic titles ("Clear Skies Initiative ", "No Child Left Behind") and campaigns with empty rhetoric and sloganeeri­ng ("CHANGE", "HOPE", "STRAIGHT-­TALK EXPRESS"). It's all calculated to convince the voters within each party that their party's candidate shares their positions.

If you go back and watch Candidate Obama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, listen with your now 'experienc­ed ears' (experienc­ed in lawyer-spe­ak, aka Bush-speak­, although Bush needed a team of speech writers to do what Obama is able to do on his own, i.e., think on his feet), I think you'll see that Obama spoke carefully and precisely to give people the sense of what they wanted to hear to get their vote.

The truth is that Obama's nothing but a politician­, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense.  It turns out that doing what's right for transnatio­nal corporatio­ns is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards­. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican­, "What's good for GM is good for America."  He did a snow job on everybody.
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Vote Against Obama in Iowa

Read this.
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