Not So Fast

The reality of what Obama's going to choose to do as President as far as cleaning up Bush's mess on torture from a legal standpoint is beginning to sink in, as Steve Benen points out.

Specifically, Obama explained, "When it comes to my attorney general he is the people's lawyer... His job is to uphold the Constitution and look after the interests of the American people, not to be swayed by my day-to-day politics. So, ultimately, he's going to be making some calls, but my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed looking at what we got wrong in the past."

On a related subject, Obama wasn't sure if he'd be able to close Guantanamo within his first 100 days, but made his position abundantly clear about what will happen to the notorious detention facility: "We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our constitution. That is not only the right thing to do but it actually has to be part of our broader national security strategy because we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values."

Obama also made clear his discomfort with the administration's interrogation policies: "Vice President Cheney I think continues to defend what he calls extraordinary measures or procedures when it comes to interrogations and from my view waterboarding is torture. I have said that under my administration we will not torture."

But when? The longer Gitmo remains open, the more Obama loses on being able to make a sea change, a clean break, with Bush's failed policies...and the more of a chance Bush has of getting away with it.

Don't be surprised if 100 days turns into 200, or 500, or never. We'll still be in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gitmo in 2012, and Obama will say we're of course moving forward.

[UPDATE] What Digby said.

But I would suggest that Obama contemplate one little thing before he decides to try to find "middle ground" on torture. It is a trap. If he continues to torture in any way or even tacitly agrees to allow it in certain circumstances, the intelligence community will make sure it is leaked. They want protection from both parties and there is no better way to do it than to implicate Obama. And the result of that will be to destroy his foreign policy.

If the man who represents the second chance this country's been given around the world to repudiate the horrors of the Bush years is revealed to have perpetuated the same horrors, his credibility and foreign policy will be in shambles. And there are many people buried in the intelligence and military establishments who would be happy to make sure that happens.

Damned if he does support Bush's policies, damned if he doesn't...and when he decides to walk down the middle of the road, that's when he gets hit by the bus.

The difference of course is if he makes a choice, one is clearly the right thing to do, and the other damns all of America as torturers and thugs.

[UPDATE 2] The Double G weighs in and lets Obama have it.

Let's emphasize what Obama is actually saying about why he can't close Guantanamo right away. Here is his answer when asked if he'd close Guantanamo in the first 100 days:

It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize and we are going to get it done but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true. And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.

What he's saying is quite clear. There are detainees who the U.S. may not be able to convict in a court of law. Why not? Because the evidence that we believe establishes their guilt was obtained by torture, and it is therefore likely inadmissible in our courts (torture-obtained evidence is inadmissible in all courts in the civilized world; one might say it's a defining attribute of being civilized). But Obama wants to detain them anyway -- even though we can't convict them of anything in our courts of law. So before he can close Guantanamo, he wants a new, special court to be created -- presumably by an act of Congress -- where evidence obtained by torture (confessions and the like) can be used to justify someone's detention and where, presumably, other safeguards are abolished. That's what he means when he refers to "creating a process."

Amazingly, when discussing the same topic, Obama vowed that "we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values." How? By creating a new court just for accused Islamic radicals that allows us to use confessions and other evidence that we obtained through torture? That sounds like exactly the same "message about our values" that we've been sending.

Obama has to make a choice here...either we don't torture people or we do. All the rationalization in the world doesn't change that basic, black and white choice. Either we torture Muslims or we don't.

That single choice will either bring America back from the brink, or push us over into the dustbin of broken Empire.

Who Benefits?

Much sound and fury is being made of the NY Times article this weekend involving a story about Bush turning down an Israeli request for bunker buster bombs for a raid against Iran several months ago.

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.

This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence developed on Iran.

Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.

So who exactly benefits from the leak? Not Bush, that's for sure. His reputation as a belligerent warmonger has been cemented in time over the last seven years, beyond rehabilitation with 10 days left in his term.

Most likely the Bushies are sending across the bow of Iran. The one thing Bush was adamant about in 2008 was not allowing Israel to use Iraqi airspace. With Iraq being under UN mandate, not even Bush would risk that.

But that mandate expired on Dec. 31, 2008. It's not like Iraq has an air force or anything. This is pretty much a warning to Iran.

The question is now what Obama will do about Israel.

Let It All Burn Down

I've said time and time again that as much as I gripe about Obama, the other side purely hates him and wishes to see him destroyed with such rancor that they would rather see the economy annihilated than to see his stimulus plan pass. To them, this is just the opening salvo in Armageddon. Steve Benen discusses this over at Washington Monthly.

Apparently, the base won't be truly pleased unless congressional Republicans, in the face of a drastic economic crisis, opposes any government effort to stimulate the economy at all. Michelle Malkin has begun calling a rescue package the "Generational Theft Act of 2009." Don Surber believes Obama's plan, tax cuts and all, is "evil."

Oh my.

This is the same group of people that refuse to bat an eyelash when Bush autohrized torture, illegally spied on American citizens, killed untold thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Pakistan, and turned the executive branch into a playground for civil rights abuses and powermongering.

But we're supposed to believe Obama's stimulus plan is more "evil" than all those combined. To the wingnuts, everything they don't like is merely a rehash of the battle over immigration reform in 2005-2006. They believe they can hold the line and excorciate anyone who dares oppose them, whipping up a faux populist uprising with scare tactics. They mean to brutally crucify anyone who crosses the picket line and goes with Obama on this program. "We'll make them pay," the wingnuts promise.

But the difference this time is the fact the Democrats are in charge. Elections have consequences. The Right is scrambling for relevancy, and the wingnuts are howling now that they have been reduced to a meaningless dull roar from the peanut gallery.

So, the wingnuts preen like Snidely Whiplash, twirl their moustaches, and promise dire consequences for the country unless the GOP listens to them NOW.

When enough of the GOP starts ignoring the wingnuts, they are through. The wingnuts know this. They have drawn the line here, because if the Republicans cross it with Obama, they are done and gone.

And finding out you're expendable, like millions of Americans who lost their jobs last year and the millions who will continue to do so because of Bush's policies, is a rough, rough thing.

[UPDATE] And unless I miss my guess, the number one target of the wingnuts crying "traitor!" is going to be the man Obama beat...John McCain.

Reverting to the role of Republican foil that made him an unpopular figure for many conservatives, John McCain argued on Friday that historical circumstances should compel his GOP colleagues to work closely with Barack Obama.

"There are not many times in history," he said, "that a president has come to office with as many challenges as the president-elect does and that's incumbent then upon all of us to try and do all we can to work with him."

Appearing on Fox News for one of the few times since losing the election, McCain offered a supportive assessments of the president-elect's agenda. He acknowledged the need to pass a stimulus, but said he would reserve judgment until he saw the final package.

"All I can say to you is that I want to see the stimulus package I want to see what it does, I want to see what kind of provision it has in it," he told Neil Cavuto. "I think the president-elect is going to marshal public opinion. Right now his approval ratings and hopes of the American people are very high," he later added.

I almost feel sorry for McCain. They are going to crucify him on the right, and I bet they will actively work for his defeat in 2010. "No More McCains" will become their battle cry.

Not Stimulating Enough

Obama's domestic economic team of Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein have put out the estimates of the effect of Obama's stimulus plan on the economy. The Kroog calls it too little, too late.

The key thing if you want to do comparisons is to note that I made estimates of the average effect over 2009-2010, while they do estimates of effect in the fourth quarter of 2010, which is roughly when the plan is estimated to have its maximum effect. So they say the plan would lower unemployment by about 2 percentage points, I said 1.7, but their estimate may actually be a bit more pessimistic than mine. They have the plan raising GDP by 3.7 percent, but that’s at peak; I thought 2.5 percent or so average over 2 years, again not much difference.

So this looks like an estimate from the Obama team itself saying — as best as I can figure it out — that the plan would close only around a third of the output gap over the next two years.

One more point: the estimate of what would happen to the economy in the absence of a stimulus plan seems kind of optimistic. The chart above has unemployment ex-stimulus peaking at 9 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and coming down through the year; the CBO estimates an average unemployment rate of 9 percent for 2010, so the Obama people are more optimistic than the CBO, and a lot more optimistic than I am.

Bottom line: even if I use the Romer-Bernstein estimates instead of my own — there really isn’t much difference — this plan looks too weak.

Personally, I think the estimates of the worst-case scenario unemployment rate of nine percent are far, far too optimistic. Businesses have done everything they can to keep from having to lay people off...and we're going to see quite a bit of them go over the edge in 2009 and have no choice but to lay off a healthy chunk of their employees. This in turn is only going to stall out the economy even further. I don't think even Krugman is giving enough weight to the fact that Americans buying things is the singular engine of our economy, and Americans aren't buying, we are screwed.

Worst case scenario is closer to 12 or 13%, with a real unemployment U6 number of twice that. I think we're going to come awfully damn close to those numbers, and that it will take well into the end of next decade for us to recover. By then America will be a very different country. It took us 16 years and a World War to get us out of the last Depression.

And by that time, the world will have passed us by. America is Britain, circa 19th century. Who will rise to take our place, Russia? China? India? Who knows.

The decline of the American Empire is upon us.

A Dozen In The Back

Another bloody New Year's Day police shooting in America, by cops to a black man, this time in New Orleans.

The New Orleans man, 22-year-old Adolph Grimes III, traveled to his grandmother's home near the French Quarter in order to celebrate New Year's Eve with his fiance and their 17-month-old son. Three hours after arrival, around 3 a.m., he was found dead a block from the front door.

The Orleans Parish coroner said Grimes was shot 14 times, including 12 times in the back.

"This violence has to stop. My child's death will not be meaningless. He did not die in vain," said Grimes' mother, Patricia Grimes.

An editorial in The Times-Picayune said the shooting "demands answers."

Despite the fact that the seven officers involved in the incident have been reassigned, Superintendent Warren Riley has refused to answer "fundamental questions" about the shooting and maintains that Grimes fired upon his men first.

Several dozen people protested the New Orleans Police Department on Thursday morning to demand justice for Grimes' death.

A mix of people walked paced in front of a police station carrying signs with slogans like "Down with the government" and shouting to passers-by "You could be next!"

A group of black ministers and advocates has called for the department to be purged of "trigger-happy" officers and the Grimes family's attorney, Richard Jenkins is certain an investigation will show rogue cops and sloppy police work.

"I just think it was some bad officers who were out there and imposing their will on the community," Jenkins said.

Two things.

One, you get shot in the back, it suggests your back was to the person with the gun and you're in the process of getting away. If Grimes was running, I'm thinking it would take one, maybe three bullets max in the back to bring the guy down under any circumstances. Seven officers were involved in the shooting. It's entirely possible all seven fired two shots at Grimes and hit. It's entirely possible all seven officers had an open shot at Grimes and were all shooting at the same time...but twelve bullets at pistol range on a target moving away suggests to me Grimes was shot, fell face down, and then an officer or two emptied his gun into Grimes's back.

Two, the worse the economy gets, the more of this we're going to see in America's cities. If the national average of the "real unemployment rate", what the Labor Department calls the U6 number, which is the collection of all the folks out of work, no longer looking for work, or underemployed, is now at 13.5%, then there are places in America where that number is much, much higher. I'm betting NOLA is one of them. There are places in this country where hope and change cannot come fast enough.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition

• Another 3 hour pause, another day of Israeli tanks shelling Gaza.
• Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon faces 12 counts of bribery and fraud.
• The UN is calling for an investigation into possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
• Obama says his stimulus jobs plan could create or preserve 3 to 4 million jobs, 90% in the private sector.
• US drivers are holding onto their older cars longer, meaning 2009 could be even worse for dealers.

Smells Like Victory

While I grouse, gripe, and whinge about Obama and the Dems more than I should, things like this remind me the GOP is always, always much worse (h/t Shakesville):

This is such great news:

In the spring of 2007, the Supreme Court told Lilly Ledbetter, a twenty-year employee of Goodyear Tire in Alabama, that if she wanted to take legal action against the wage discrimination she had suffered, she should have filed a complaint within 180 days of the first discriminatory paycheck she received. Since she hadn't, she had no standing to recover decades of lost wages. The Supreme Court did not make it clear how Ledbetter was supposed to have known that she was being discriminated against after only 180 days on the job, seeing that Goodyear forbade employees from discussing their salaries, and Ledbetter only found out years later, thanks to an anonymous note.

Today Congress took a step toward correcting that injustice. The House passed both the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, restoring and establishing basic protections for employees who are subject to wage discrimination. The Ledbetter Act repeals the 180 day requirement, while the Paycheck Fairness Act protects employees from retaliation by employers if they bring complaints and allows them to sue for compensatory and punitive damages.

Both acts will now go to the Senate, where, if they pass (encourage your senators to vote for them here), they stand to become some of the first bills (soon-to-be-)President Obama will sign into law.

Let's all take a moment to remember how the totally sucktastic GOP nominee John McCain did not support this legislation, instead admonishing women to get more "education and training."

Still loving that he won't be our next president.

It always can be worse, folks. Imagine McCain as President right now, and his crazy ass promises that the totally unregulated free market could fix all the problems we have right now.

In the end, the good guys won in November, and we're seeing results right off the bat.

Feeling Burly

The nameless corporate interests behind California's Prop. 8 are back, this time DEMANDING11!!! that the state of California change their "unconstitutional" campaign finance laws that identify donors...you know, to prevent people from finding out who the nameless corporate interests astroturfing crap like Prop. 8 are.

The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, cites numerous examples of threatening e-mails, phone calls and postcards – including death threats – allegedly made by opponents of the November ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in the state.

Ron Prentice, chairman of the Yes on 8 campaign, charged the harassment was made possible by the state's "unconstitutional campaign finance disclosure rules."

California's Political Reform Act, which voters approved in 1974, requires the name, occupation and employer of any individual who makes a campaign contribution of $100 or more.

In an interview, Prentice said the suit was prompted by "hundreds of people who informed us of harassment, intimidation and threats that came to their places of employment as well as their homes."

"This is a small percentage of all those who have been contacted by those who oppose Proposition 8," Prentice said. "This could significantly influence participation in the future for social issues if this kind of intimidation continues to be allowed because of disclosure laws."

Just keep in mind the entire point of this exercise is to have the Supremes eliminate disclosure laws at the federal level so that corporate America can freely donate to whatever legislation they want passed without all that bad PR.

The whining to the refs to have the Nasty Evil Homosexuals stop picking on Cali's avowed bigots (who gleefully removed the civil rights of their fellow citizens, mind you) is disingenuous, transparently self-serving, and just assholish in the extreme. No sympathy at all. It's a land mine, meant to go before the US Supreme Court so that Scalia can take his swing at ending transparency and sunshine laws.

Remember, privacy for donors to politicians is more important than privacy for a woman's own body, or dignity for equal rights to all Americans.

Gotta love it.

The Whole Rotten System

Turns out the muni bond pay-to-play system that snagged Bill Richardson's nomination as Commerce Secretary may be a huge tangled web of mess that could bring down a lot of people.

Ever since New Mexico governor Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination for Commerce Secretary citing an investigation into the company that obtained a contract to advise the state on bond deals, news reports have been making reference to a broader nationwide probe of alleged price-fixing and corruption in the municipal bond industry, which the New Mexico investigation grew out of.

Here at Muckraker, we've started looking into that larger ongoing story, and today the New York Times delivers a helpful takeout on the subject -- though many of the details still remain murky.

As the paper explains, federal and state investigators have over the last few years gathered evidence of what looks like a collusion scheme by financial firms that work with state and local governments on municipal bond deals worth around $400 billion each year.

Explains the paper:

E-mail messages, taped phone conversations and other court documents suggest that companies did not engage in open competition for this lucrative business, but secretly divided it among themselves, imposing layers of excess cost on local governments, violating the federal rules for tax-exempt bonds and making questionable payments and campaign contributions to local officials who could steer them business. In some cases, they created exotic financial structures that blew up.

And crucially, the paper makes clear that this isn't just an isolated case, but rather goes to the very heart of the municipal bond system.

People with knowledge of the evidence say investigators are not just looking at a few bad apples, but also at the way an entire market has operated for years.

A former IRS investigator estimated to the Times that as much as $4 billion has vanished into the system as a result of the schemes.

So gosh, it's looking more and more like the sick, broken system in the banking sector was par for the course in state and local government finance across the country, and of course with states and counties across the country in dire financial straits things will only get much worse.

How many trillions will it take to bail out where YOU live?

Yet Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

From Atrios:

CNBC tells me that World Wrestling Entertainment has announced a 10% staff reduction.

We're truly #%@&*$ up the ass with a chainsaw.

It's Official

Governor Blagojevich has been impeached by the Illinois House.

The Democratic-controlled House voted 114 to one to impeach the two-term Democrat, clearing the way for a trial in the state Senate, where conviction by two-thirds of its members would result in his removal from office.

Rep. Barbara Currie, a Chicago Democrat who headed the inquiry committee that recommended impeachment, told the House Blagojevich had betrayed the public trust, "a public servant who has chosen not to serve the public ... who has betrayed his oath of office ... who is not fit to govern."

And the band played on...

Question: how does the evidence at the State Senate trial affect his Federal trial? I'll have to look into that. I do know the standards of evidence are vastly different.

Roubini In '09

Speaking of the last post and how on the economic disaster "nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure it out" according to the Dickster down there, Nouriel Roubini's outlook into 2009 is even more dismal than his proven predictions in 2008. (emphasis moi)

Last year’s worst-case scenarios came true. The global financial pandemic that I and others had warned about is now upon us. But we are still only in the early stages of this crisis. My predictions for the coming year, unfortunately, are even more dire: The bubbles, and there were many, have only begun to burst.

Snow Jobbed Again

534,000 jobs lost in December, unemployment rate is now 7.2% and rising. Vice-President Nameless One says the failing economy is not the White House's fault because "nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure it out". Stock futures are higher because we "only" lost half a million jobs. I'm sure that's a relief to corporate America and Wall Street.

Which of course if you've been paying attention to this blog and several other far smarter people than myself over the last 18 months, you know for a fact that's complete bullshit.(h/t TPM)

1.9 million net jobs lost in the last four months. Half a million so far in 2009. Absolutely sure the 2.6 million or so jobs lost last year (the most since 1945) will pale in comparison come 12 months from now. Five million? Six? Eight? Ten? The real unemployment rate went from 12.5% to 13.5%. Gaining a whole percent a month in this rate is something I think will continue for most of 2009, to that 20-25% range. That's the number to keep an eye on, because it's the percentage of people who are really out of work.

Long way to the bottom still.

Carter-izing The Wound

Obama's been tigh-lipped on the whole Gaza invasion situation, calmly bringing up the "one President at a time" clause and refusing to send "mixed signals."

Well, whether it's close enough to January 20 to do something, or the situation in Gaza is so bad a response is now deemed necessary, that clause just went out the window as the Guardian is reporting Obama is planning "low-level talks" with Hamas.

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three ­people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start ­contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

The question is who leaked this story and why? The response from the rabid right is predictable: Obama is apparently the worst person since Neville Chamberlain, and he's aiming to destroy the US, Israel, and delicious pie.

I have to wonder if this leak was made precisely to prevent Obama from talking to Hamas at all. Certainly now he will face immense pressure from the Israel lobby to continue the same failed policies of Preznitman From Preznitland, as Obama will be viewed as a President with something less than unconditional and total support for Israel's every action, which of course is against the rules.

Combine this with the Village barrage on Obama claiming that he's now under assault from his own party for a stimulus package neither side of the aisle likes, and the crusade to Jimmy Carter-ize Obama is on: painting him as a weak President that doesn't have the respect of anyone in Washington or the world.

You know, like Bush is now.

It's possible this is all smoke and mirrors to make Obama look like he's standing up to the Liberal Spending Machine or something (odd plan, given that Senate Democrats have the backbone content of jellyfish on a good day) but it's pretty clear the one thing we can be sure of is that Obama's information control policy is becoming increasingly useless in the environment of Washington. Leaks happen. Everyone uses them as weapons to advance an agenda or to slow an opposing agenda, and so far Obama's not playing the game too well.

[UPDATE] John Cole over at Balloon Juice smells a rat too.

The report mentioned above is in the Guardian, and the Obama team is already denying the leak. For me, the only question is who is planting the leak- is it just wingnut conservatives trying to hamstring the Obama foreign policy, or is it pro-Israel groups trying to box Obama in and move him towards a more pro-Israel by forcing him to slap down Hamas with vigorous denials about this report?

Isn't one group pretty much composed of the other? Either way this looks as John says like a move to cut Obama off at the knees with the Israeli lobby and ensure nothing along the lines of "the new administration legitimizing Hamas" can happen. As I said above, the leak appears to be a weapon aimed at preventing Obama from dealing with Hamas at all.

StupidiNews!

• Despite a UN resolution for a cease fire, Israel pounds Gaza for a 14th day.
• Illinois lawmakers are recommending full impeachment proceedings against Blago.
• The US Postal Service is making major cutbacks in delivery routes across America.
• The country braces for the worst monthly jobs report in 34 years.
• Using Tetris to fight PTSD? One study shows it might be a "blockbuster".