Obama’s A Genius! He Shows Why Unending Madness is Inevitable!

May 28, 2009

by George Thomas

Let the politics scream on. The Bush Cartel may earn some comeuppance, or may not. A careful reading and listening to all the political talk either demanding accountability under law, or soft-pedaling the whole thing while urging that we “turn the page,” reveals little but shouting. Finally, Obama appeared to invoke “the rule of law” in his May 21st security speech in one sentence, while in another describe the continued program of preventive long-term incarceration of ‘terrorists’.

What gives?

Dick Cheney did not disappoint. Within minutes he provided his usual mix of self-promotion in de-facto response to Obama. His speech was content-free, and we can ignore it as some more standard Bush administration dogma. Someone, somewhere, pule-e-ease find a way to shut Dick Cheney up before he convinces millions of our unread, unsophisticated citizens to swing US politics back to sheer madness. It could happen. I was alive way back during the second Dubya selection, and I know. But the depressing thought occurs to me: What would it matter?

Nancy Pelosi surely didn’t help with her news conference last week. She plunged into the question of whether the CIA had briefed her on interrogation procedures, and whether they had made specific mention of current use of certain “enhanced” techniques prohibited under international law, not to mention laws of the United States. She plunged on mindless of the obvious intentions of Republican mouthpieces to comb through all she said in search of tentative statements and uncertainties to distort.

The CIA lies to Congress “all the time” – an assertion which was found to be enough to damn Pelosi but not several others, Republican and Democratic congressmen and even CIA spokesmen alike. Sen. Graham even referred to his meticulous notes and found only one briefing, where the CIA stated there had been four, and found no mention of the use of waterboarding. The CIA then backed down, casting doubt on their own records-keeping accuracy, for which taxpayers pay big bux. Speaker Pelosi will probably survive as the political posturing has died down, yet the ideological bloviati have not backed down. The downside to the currently popular regime of surgical political posturing, however, may have doomed her political capital. Who knows?

Waterboarding! It sounds like a fun ocean sport, or something one does by a river rapids while picnicking on the bank with burgers, clams, dogs of all types, fizzy drinks and beer. But alas, no. It’s torture. Some news descriptions describe it as akin to the classic Chinese water torture, but I don’t know. Something about months of slow drip-drip-drip driving the prisoner mad diverges from descriptions of “waterboarding,” which inflicts the sensation of drowning. But never mind that. It’s prohibited specifically by law. And so what?

In essence, the most depressing scenario from the worst of my political nightmares goes like this: Obama tried to achieve the impossible in his major speech on security, and of course our political hack agencies (tax-supported) commenced immediate screaming. I believe the President miscalculated in this effort. That’s because the intelligence and interrogation functions of a modern sovereign state mired in the chaos of irreconcilable international disagreements, institutionalized saber rattling and the need to keep some of the nastiest measures secret, do not fit logically with US Renaissance-born values, even when the country’s constitutional makeup remains arguably impossible of improvement.

In other words, critics on the Left noted Obama’s outline of prolonged incarceration without known charge, and his very Bush-like statement of the reasons for it — in a word, “terrorism.” They then noted Obama’s repeated insistence that the US must proceed according to “the rule of law.” Ignore the strategy of “turning the page” on Bush administration lawbreaking, and ignore the possibly upcoming modern “Spanish Inquisition.” In Obama’s speech two monumental and irreconcilable ideas stood back-to-back.

In that one speech, possibly without fully realizing the implications, Obama expressed one of the most damning conundrums of our time, and one of the reasons why the USA will continue to baffle and outrage certain people and confound certain traditions. One could not help hearing an imagined Jack Nicholson voice shouting from way back in the convoluted long-term memory banks of the brain: “You can’t HANDLE the truth!”

Either it’s a sign that people with some expertise in irreconcilable cross cultural phenomena will enjoy future job security, OR……

The political screamers and morons will rise to the top. There’s more of them. I guess chaos, insecurity, unending war, rancor and insanity are more equitable in the employment opportunities department. Come on, Lefties! Show some “empathy!”

Er……. sorry.

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Written by George Thomas · Filed Under Editor's Choice

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Letter to the Editor: Good Cars need Good Teams - by R. A. Letcher, PhD

Good cars need good teams -- designers, engineers, line workers… and learning-oriented managers by Robert A. Letcher, PhD [Author’s note: I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of The New York Times, after that paper carried an article under the headline, "To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’", 02/15/2009.] It is widely accepted that you can't win a horse race without a good horse. Of course, it helps to have a lot of money and a good plan for spending it. But, you still need a good horse. The authors reminded me of this when they wrote: “The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.” I doubt GM and Chrysler can win this most important "automobile race" merely by having better accountants and more muscular negotiators: they still need a good "horse". That means the companies will have to show that their teams can still design and build cars that people are drawn to buy and willing to pay for: winners. I doubt they can. The problem isn't that they didn't know how to; it's that they don't know how to break out of the group-think that ensnarled them, their managers, their whole organizations, decades ago. I would be more optimistic, had the government also required the companies to include plans for transforming themselves into learning organizations. Aye, there’s the rub: learning entails risk-taking, not “yes people”.
Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
Fiscal Therapy - Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich. This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow. By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.
read more at Mother Jones
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