harikari.com

RUFKM?

Do I miss a president who had no regard for the Constitution?

Do I miss a president who gave away trillions in tax cuts to the super rich?

Do I miss a president who started two wars and didn’t finish one of them?

Do I miss a president who authorized torture?

Do I miss a president who lied about wiretapping U.S. Citizens without warrants?

Do I miss a president who spoke English like it was his second language?

Do I miss a president who appointed two Supreme Court Justices that built the majority opinion that says corporations are people?

Do I miss “heh heh heh…?” (well, a little maybe.)

Do I miss a president with a callous disregard for those less fortunate than himself and “his base?”

Do I miss a man with the morals of a laughing hyena?

No!!!  I don’t miss him one little bit.  In fact, I miss a migraine headache more than I miss him. 

Minnesota Public Radio story here and here.

Washington Post story here.

President Obama must have read Paul Krugman’s January 18th column in which he wrote about how “Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter,” which led into:

Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks.

But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth — if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy’s troubles didn’t start on his watch.

Obama got the message:

Now, even as health care reform would reduce our deficit, it’s not enough to dig us out of a massive fiscal hole in which we find ourselves. It’s a challenge that makes all others that much harder to solve, and one that’s been subject to a lot of political posturing. So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight.

At the beginning of the last decade, the year 2000, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.

Now — just stating the facts. Now, if we had taken office in ordinary times, I would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit. But we took office amid a crisis. And our efforts to prevent a second depression have added another $1 trillion to our national debt. That, too, is a fact.

That’s a fact he needs to wield as a hammer far more often than he did during his first year in office.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a way bigger deal than the outcome of the Massachusetts election. 

Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

…

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, an author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, called the ruling “a terrible mistake.”

“Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns,” said Mr. Feingold, a Democrat.

Giving corporations the right to fund election campaigns is an absurdity.  This kind of ruling is what I feared most following Bush’s Supreme Court appointments. 
 
Corporations have been around far longer than our country, and our founding fathers were very wary of extending privileges to economic entities.  They were way more concerned with living, breathing human beings.  The Bill of Rights was written for the benefit of people, not companies – and there lies the ultimate irony of this ruling. 
 
The driving force behind getting this case to the Supreme Court came from The Right, and they are the faction that, when it comes to appointing Supreme Court Justices, scream for “strict constructionists.”  Nowhere in the Constitution are there any rights granted to corporations.  Why?  Because corporations can amass huge quantities of money and they can live forever.  Our founders did not approve of giving such entities a voice in electing representatives of the people, because they knew that corporate contributors would fund campaigns of candidates that, once elected, would satisfy the wants and needs of business, not people.
 
Goldman Sachs is huge and they reported $13.4 billion in profits today.  They should not be allowed to fund the campaigns of congressmen because their interests and the interests of your average American are vastly different.  As a result of today’s ruling, one huge corporation like Goldman Sachs will be able to blast the grassroots campaigns of reform candidates clean out of the water. 
 
The Plutocracy just got way bigger today.  Say goodbye to the Republic, because it’s a thing of the past.  It’s a sad day in the history of our country.  A travesty.

In the wake of the Christmas Day effort by Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to destroy an in-flight airliner over Detroit, Republicans are hammering home with renewed vigour the myth that Democrats are weak on national security.  Yet by any reasonable measure the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration, with the enthusiastic support of congressional Republicans, has proved to be a national security as well as a foreign policy calamity.  And whilst it’s true that many Democrats voted for the Iraq War resolution, there can be no real doubt that the quest to invade Iraq was driven by the Republican Bush administration and its right-wing supporters in the GOP. 

Even setting aside the human and monetary cost, the adverse consequences to America have been severe indeed.  Perhaps the most serious is the fact that our failure to implement and sustain long term security and reconstruction in Afghanistan after driving out the Taliban has enabled the latter to rejuvenate and return as a more formidable enemy; one that we must now commit almost 100,000 troops to combat just when we were getting out from under the crushing Iraq commitment.  And the refusal of General Tommy Franks and then Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to commit American forces such as rangers to the effort to trap and destroy the remnants of al-Qaida in the White Mountains at Tora Bora, which stands as the best opportunity we’ve had to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, must rank as both a colossal error of judgment and failure of nerve that ensured the terrorist organization’s survival.

Not only did our focus on Iraq divert needed military expertise and resources away from Afghanistan but, as we’ve learned to our cost recently, it also resulted in neglect of countries such as Yemen where branches of al-Qaida have taken root and flourished. 

If invading Iraq had truly been part of the war against al-Qaida rather than a fantasy and hoax peddled subliminally to the American people by the Bush administration and its right-wing cheer leaders at Fox News, maybe it could be forgiven.  But Saddam Hussein was hated by Islamic extremists and he, in turn, hunted them down as ruthlessly as anyone else who potentially threatened his hold on power.  Our invasion of Iraq may have unseated a tyrant but it also replaced an Iraq that represented a bulwark against al-Qaida with one in which a branch of the latter was able to establish and operate with devastating consequences, not least to the Iraqi people.

The Bush administration made other bone-headed decisions in the name of national security: Guantanamo and the secret CIA  prisons in Eastern Europe, torture, electronic domestic surveillance without court supervision to name but a few.  Along with the unprovoked invasion of Iraq they represent a darker America, one that is less than what we aspire to be.

Al-Qaida cannot destroy America but they can inspire a reaction that might change us into something we would hardly recognize.  Dick Cheney and the Republicans started us down that path in the panicked aftermath of 9/11 when what we showed was less strength than fear and weakness. President Obama and most Democrats recognize that in our quest to stay safe from attack we must not surrender what it is that makes us proud to be Americans in the first place.  That would indeed give the victory to al-Qaida.

Via Paul Krugman’s blog, via Frank Rich’s column, I came upon a study of income gaps titled Striking it Richer.  The report includes several graphs of income disparity, including this one that shows what percentage of total income the top o.o1% took from 1913 through 2007:

The top .01% (top 14,988 US families, making at least $11.5m in 2007) share increased from 5.46% in 2006 to 6.04% in 2007 leaving well behind the 1928 peak of 5.04 percent (Figure 3). This shows that 2007 was an incredibly good year for the super rich.

2007 wasn’t too bad for the rest of us either, but not near as good as it was for our overlords.

Everything changed in 2008, but the data is not available yet, so no graphs.  The report does make a prediction though.

The economic landscape has obviously changed dramatically since 2007 which marks the peak of Bush expansion. We know from National Account statistics that real incomes per family will fall in 2008 and 2009. Evidence from past recessions suggests that, in general, the top percentile income share falls during recessions, as business profits, realized capital gains, and stock option exercises fall faster than average income. Therefore, the most likely outcome is that income concentration will fall in 2008 and 2009. 

Based on the US historical record, falls in income concentration due to recessions are temporary unless drastic policy changes, such as financial regulation or significantly more progressive taxation, are implemented and prevent income concentration from bouncing back. Such policy changes took place after the Great Depression during the New Deal and permanently reduced income concentration till the 1970s (Figures 2, 3).

Last week the House passed a financial regulation bill that not one Republican supported.  Apparently everything is okay with the Repugnicans.  They think we don’t need to do anything prevent another financial catastrophe that will require the bottom 90% of us to bail out the billionaires who gamble with our money and lose.

Krugman explains:

Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.

Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.

In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” As Democrats have pointed out, three days before the House vote on banking reform Republican leaders met with more than 100 financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies. But it also reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy.

Come on Democrats!  That includes you Blue Dogs in the Senate.  Start acting like you won something last November.  We voted for change, and we want it.

Greg Saunders has a post up over at The Talent Show about how much the Presidential Prayer Team website has changed since Barack Obama was sworn in as president. 

The organization used to claim to be non-partisan, but I could find no such claim on their website today. 

The Saunders’ post includes archived screen shots from the past that prominently feature photos of President Bush, including one with images of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington photoshopped in standing next to Bush and touching his shoulders as their heads are bowed in prayer.  Another archived page shows the site used to mention Bush and Cheney’s name on the front page.  Today’s front page has no photo of President Obama or anyone else in his administration and it does not mention his name.

The Bible quote that used to be displayed in the masthead has been moved to the “About Us” page where it is displayed in very faint grey font against a white background.  One gets the feeling that they don’t really want you to read that part.

Go to The Talent Show now for more about this.

We at harikari.com have been ranting about our country’s illegal policies for detention and torture since the blog was launched in 2005.  Continuing investigations have uncovered evidence supporting claims that many of the several hundreds of prisoners incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay and who knows where else have been tortured, beaten, and even killed by agents of the U.S. Government.  Subsequent releases of hundreds of detainees that were held without the right to habeus corpus proved that the overwhelming majority of prisoners were not in fact “the worst of the worst.” 

This week’s edition of This Modern World puts it all in perspective. 

Be sure to click on the image for a link to the whole comic.

America has sold its soul to the devil, and won’t even bother to stop and take a look at what it has become.

Monsters indeed…

This week Obama led a Town Hall meeting to discuss healthcare reform.  The forum was open to those in favor and those opposed.  Here’s the story as printed in The Seattle Times.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Fans and foes of President Obama’s push to overhaul health care descended on a high school here on Tuesday to challenge him and hear him fight back against the criticisms — some outlandish — that have slowed the legislation’s progress.

“Parasites!” yelled the protesters on the right side of the school driveway.

“Ignorants!” yelled the protesters on the left side.

While apparently failing to convert the people outside who protested from the right side of the driveway, Obama sought to reassure the people gathered inside the school gymnasium that health-care reform does not mean that Americans will lose coverage or surrender treatment decisions to the government.

“Where we do disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that has actually been proposed,” Obama told the meeting of about 1,800 people.

…

Unlike many of Obama’s town-hall-style meetings, usually filled to the rafters with supporters, Tuesday’s meeting included skeptics from whom he sought out questions.  At one point he asked that only people who disagreed with his approach raise their hand to be called on.

You know who he was talking about, the Queen of the Lunatic Fringe, Ms. Sarah ”Stop Making Things Up” Palin.  (See below for more on that.)   

What struck me about that opening of that article was that ”fans and foes” were both welcome. 

Remember four years ago when Bush was appearing at Town Hall meetings to push for Social Security reform?  Foes weren’t allowed in to the meetings.  People who disagreed were screened out, and if any managed to sneak in, they were kicked out.  Here’s an excerpt from a March 2005 Washington Post story:

Three Denver residents yesterday charged that they were forcibly removed from one of President Bush’s town meetings on Social Security because they displayed a bumper sticker on their car condemning the administration’s Middle East policies.

The three, all self-described progressives who oppose Bush’s Social Security plan, said an unidentified official at an event in Denver last week forced them to leave before the president started to speak, even though they had done nothing disruptive, said their attorney, Dan Recht.

…

This is not the first time people have complained about heavy-handed monitoring of who can attend — and speak at — Bush’s events promoting his Social Security plan. A newspaper in Fargo, N.D., reported that when Bush came to the city on Feb. 3, more than 40 residents were barred from attending the event.

The president has held Social Security rallies in more than a dozen states this year. The crowds are closely monitored for possible disruptions, and protesters are quickly escorted away.

Protesters often stand out because the crowds are packed with Bush supporters, who have been invited by a local GOP House member or organization. Those onstage at most of the town hall meetings are carefully screened people from the area who agree with the president’s Social Security proposal. The participants typically rehearse what they will say with members of the president’s advance team and rarely, if ever, say anything critical about his plan for private accounts.

Yes, I remember… Bush was banking on some political capital that he said he won in the 2004 election to push through his plan to destroy Social Security, but he wasn’t going to waste any of his capital on people who disagreed with him.  Best to keep them away.  They might have asked him an intelligent question that he wasn’t prepared to answer.  Wouldn’t want to look stupid or anything…

The Washington Post reports:

Four months after he was sworn in, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta learned of an intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress since 2001, a revelation that prompted him to immediately cancel the initiative and schedule a pair of closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill.

The next day, June 24, Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees of the program and the action he had taken, according to Democratic and Republican members of the panels.

…

“Instructions were given not to brief Congress,”  Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in an interview.

…

CIA officials brought the program to Panetta’s attention, and when he realized it potentially conflicted with what the committees had been told, he immediately went to Capitol Hill, according to officials who discussed classified material on the condition of anonymity.

…

Reactions to the Panetta briefing split along partisan lines.

Wow… split along party lines.  Shocking…

Read all about it here.

And for some excellent commentary on this story, read John Nichols’ article in The Nation.  Excerpt:

Pelosi said the Central Intelligence Agency had failed to inform her about the character and extent of the harsh interrogations.

Pelosi accused the CIA of “misleading the Congress of the United States.”

Republican senators screamed.

…

No matter what anyone thinks of Pelosi or waterboarding, there is a clear case for dramatically expanding congressional oversight of the CIA. Of course, more House and Senate members should have access to briefings — and should have the authority to hold CIA officials (and their White House overseers) to account for deliberate deceptions. But that ought not be the first response to the latest news.

Step one must be to get to the bottom of exactly what the CIA was lying about.

That would be nice, but I think it’s going to be a while before we uncover all the misdeeds of Bush’s only successful endeavor:  Mendacity, Inc.

Everybody who doesn’t know already wants to know if waterboarding is torture.  They simply aren’t satisfied with what our own courts have decided or what Jesse Ventura said on the Larry King show not long ago:

Larry King: You were a Navy S.E.A.L.

Jesse Ventura: Yes, and I was waterboarded [in training] so I know…It is torture…I’ll put it to you this way: You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

Nope.  They have to figure it out for themselves.

Today was Mancow’s turn.  He agreed to subject himself to waterboarding thinking he could tell all his listeners that it’s really no big deal.  Some water on the face… a little up the nose… no big deal.  Well, here’s how it went down:

Listeners had the chance to decide whether Mancow himself or his co-host, Chicago radio personality Pat Cassidy, would undergo the interrogation method during the broadcast.  The voters ultimately decided Mancow would be the one donning the soaked towel and shackles, and at about 8:40 a.m., he entered a small storage room next to his studio that was compared to a “dungeon” by Cassidy.

“The average person can take this for 14 seconds,” Marine Sergeant Clay South answered, adding, “  He’s going to wiggle, he’s going to scream, he’s going to wish he never did this.”
 
With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand,  Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.  
 
Turns out the stunt wasn’t so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop.  He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.
 
“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child.  “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.“

Okay then… another convert.  WATERBOARDING IS TORTURE! 

Oh but they say it’s not if it’s not for very long.  How long is that?  Six or seven seconds and Mancow saw the light.  Watch the video on The Huffington Post.

Next up?  I nominate Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (although he is not human, so it would not affect him like it did Mancow), Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, and Stephen Bradbury.  Line them up in their orange jumpsuits.  There’s plenty of water to go around and there are Marine seargents ready and waiting to torture the assholes that authorized it.