Time to reassess. The Obama campaign to keep Plan B unavailable.

Via Atrios, Irin Carmon at Salon

[District Court Judge Edward Korman] repeatedly slammed his hand down on the table for emphasis, interrupting the government counsel’s every other sentence with assertions like, “You’re just playing games here,” “You’re making an intellectually dishonest argument,” “You’re basically lying,” “This whole thing is a charade,” “I’m entitled to say this is a lot of nonsense, am I not?” and “Contrary to the baloney you were giving me …” He also accused the administration of hypocrisy for opposing voter ID laws but being engaged in the “suppression of the rights of women” with the ID requirement for the drug.

Judges saying things like this is unusual. The Department of Justice and the Obama Administration in general need to re-think how much they want to placate the right. On the Plan B story, at least, they simply look like fools.

Meanwhile, I’d like to buy Judge Korman a drink. After dealing with these liars, I’m sure he needs one.

Gag reflex

Obama showers praise on Peña Nieto

Barack Obama discusses business and the drug war with Mexican president

US president plays down war on drugs and praises Enrique Peña Nieto for his boldness over economic reforms
…
The two presidents announced the formation of a high-level working group to explore ways of pushing the economic relationship forward, and Obama showered praise on Peña Nieto for his “boldness” in pushing economic reforms within Mexico
…
“We had a wonderful relationship with President Calderón,” Obama said, “This is a partnership that will continue.”

Jo Tuckman wrote the article. She didn’t write the headline or the front page link shown in bold. The Guardian is responsible. But just seeing this applied to a president who is generally believed to be completely incompetent, to have been brought into office through electoral fraud and bribery, and who is currently pushing to privatize the national patrimony for the benefit of Big Oil… one almost longs for Dubya.

Almost.
____
Added: Richard Grabner‘s take on the visit.

Benghazi “consulate” was a CIA station

Melvin Goodman, former CIA analyst, at Consortium:

It’s now apparent that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was no ordinary consulate; in fact, it probably was no consulate at all. The consulate’s primary mission was to provide an intelligence platform that would allow the CIA to maintain an operational and analytical role in eastern Libya.

… Both the State Department and the CIA share responsibility for seriously underestimating the security threat in Libya, particularly in Benghazi.

Any CIA component in the Middle East or North Africa is a likely target of the wrath of militant and terrorist organizations because of the Agency’s key role in the global war on terror waged by the Bush administration and the increasingly widespread covert campaign of drone aircraft of the Obama administration.

U.S. programs that included the use of secret prisons, extraordinary renditions, and torture and abuse involved CIA collaboration with despotic Arab regimes, including Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. The U.S. campaign to overthrow Gaddafi didn’t clean the slate of these abuses; it merely opened up the opportunity for militants and Islamists to avenge U.S. actions over the past ten years.
…
The CIA failure to provide adequate security for its personnel stems from degradation in the operational tradecraft capabilities of the CIA since the so-called intelligence reforms that followed the 9/11 attacks.
…
There were other complications as well. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was an extremely successful and popular ambassador in Libya, but he had become too relaxed about security in a country that had become a war zone.
…
The success of the Bush and Obama administrations in compromising the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General has ensured that the Agency’s flaws have gone uncorrected. The politicization of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 was the worst intelligence scandal in the CIA’s history, but there were no penalties for those who shared CIA Director George Tenet’s willingness to make phony intelligence a “slam dunk.”

This is a balanced analysis that shows that the causes of the attack and the response, both on-the-ground and at senior levels, are distributed around the entire system, from Susan Rice to Ambassador Stevens himself. Barack Obama does need to take responsibility for having failed to end politicization of the Agency and for having failed to end US involvement in torture, not to mention for permitting Rice to speak before the facts were known. I feel fairly certain in saying that a Romney presidency would have done worse. But I want to see a second Obama presidency that does much, much better.

A Pro-Obama video worth watching

It’s fun and well-done. I sent it to a right-winger who keeps sending me shovelfuls of BS. Hopefully like garlic to a vampire.

Bobblespeak translations, 1st presidential debate

Jim Lehrer: Thanks to the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates, an Anheuser Busch-run front to foster pretend-debates, the candidates will be presenting their best focus group-tested word salads.

We will limit the salad composition to US-related stuff delivered in what are supposed to be two minute segments which will become Clint Eastwood style ramblings thanks to my incapacity as a moderator. After segments supposedly about the economy, healthcare, and government, but instead dealing with whatever the candidates want to talk about, there will be two minutes or whatever the candidates decide for closing statements or whatever.

If an audience member makes any noise, he or she will be on the next plane to Guantanamo. However, you are required to express your approval that these two corporate-approved candidates will deign to pretend to represent you.

What are the major differences between the two of you about how you would go about creating new jobs?

Obama: I want you to know that I love my wife and am skipping out on our 20th anniversary to prove to her and all Americans that I’m willing to suffer too.

Back before me, someone really screwed things up. I’d say it was the Republicans, but that might sound partisan. Thank God the American people are desperate enough to keep running the hamster wheel rather than rioting in the streets like the Greeks.

The auto industry has recovered even if wages are way down and 5 million low-wage jobs have been created to employ teachers and firefighters laid off to satisfy the Austerian god. Mitt says that if we give money to the richies and let corporations run the joint, all will be well.

I have a different view. I want to adopt Mitt’s basic platform, but be nicer to small businesses and spend a little money on education. Also, we really could save some money if we stopped spending it all on blowing things up and killing people.

So, do you want to vote for George W. Bush II or the man who continued his policies?

Romney: I’m glad to hear you love me more than Michelle, Barry. This is obviously a very tender topic.

People keep coming up to me and my wife and asking if we can help, and of course the answer is no because we have to protect our hundreds of millions, but elect us and something good will happen someday.

My plan has five basic parts. North American energy independence, which will create four million jobs in Canada and leave us in thrall to Ottawa instead of Mecca. Second, do something to make Mexicans buy our stuff. Maybe send gunboats to Tampico or something. Third, do something to China when they cheat, like call them harsh names or threaten to close Wal-Mart. Next, eliminate government. Fifth, more money to billion-dollar a year businesses, which are technically called “small,” in the same sense that someone with herpes technically doesn’t have a sexually transmitted disease because you could get it by French kissing.

Small businesses create all the jobs. I know because I spent my entire career snuffing them out.

Barry believes that government is necessary, whereas we all know that corporations run things like schools and hospitals and jails better.

Lehrer: So, are you a big government tax-and-spend liberal, Mr. President?

Obama: I’m not going to respond because I want to talk about education. We’ve adopted Republican ideas on testing and merit pay and union-busting in what I call Race to the Top and 46 states have bought into it. Now I want to hire a hundred thousand teachers except the Republicans have already cut about three times that number, which means I only want to cut 200,000 teachers.

I’m also willing to adopt Mitt’s plan for corporate tax rates but I want to preserve loopholes for manufacturing and also bribe companies to stay here instead of to go overseas.

And I’ll adopt Mitt’s plan to drill baby drill, but I’d like to spend a few billion on solar and wind.

Also austerity and/or tax cuts. Now, I want austerity and some tax cuts, while Mitt wants austerity and tax cuts measured only in oodles

[This is as far as I got. It really was remarkable for its evasions by the candidates and ineffectual noises by the moderator.]

The basic debate factcheck

Romneycat reviews the debate

All from NYT:

Catherine Rampell: Mr. Romney promised to create 12 million jobs over the next four years if he is elected president. That is actually about as many jobs as the economy is already expected to create, according to some economic forecasters.

Robert Pear [fact check FAIL]: Listing his objections to the new health care law, Mr. Romney said: “It puts in place an unelected board that’s going to tell people, ultimately, what kind of treatments they can have. I don’t like that idea.” [Pear fails to point out that the Board cannot act without the assent of Congress, meaning that this is a lie, and that if people have the money to pay for it, of course they can get treatment, so a double lie].

Richard Perez-Pena: “I’m not going to cut education funding,” including grants for college, Mr. Romney said…. The governor’s position paper on education says he would “refocus Pell Grants dollars on the students who need them most,” suggesting that fewer people would qualify. Democrats also interpret the budget plan of his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, to mean a steep cut in the size of the program.

Catherine Rampell [fact check FAIL]: Mr. Romney said repeatedly that Massachusetts has the top-ranked schools in the country.

Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a large national standardized test, The Daily Beast ranked Massachusetts at the top. [but what connection is there between that and Romney policies as governor?]

John Broder: A number of readers, including Patty Freeman-Lynde from Athens, asked about Mr. Romney’s charge that half the companies invested in under the president’s green energy stimulus have gone out of business.

That is a gross overstatement. Of nearly three dozen recipients of loans under the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, only three are currently in bankruptcy, although several others are facing financial difficulties.

Trip Gabriel: Mr. Romney rejected the charge. “I’m not going to cut education funding,” he said. “I don’t have a plan to cut education funding.”

But in the past Mr. Romney has said he would do just that.

Richard Perez Pena: Mr. Obama said of his opponent that “when he tells a student you should borrow money from your parents to go to college,” it calls into question whether Mr. Romney realizes that some people “don’t have that option.” [but maybe Romney was referring to borrowing money to start a business, which certainly resonates with the majority of American families who do not have the money to start a business].

Robert Pear [fact check FAIL]: Mr. Romney said in the debate that Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul would allow the federal government to “take over health care,” an assertion rejected by the president.

The 2010 health care law clearly expands the role of the federal government. But it also builds on the foundation of private health insurance, providing subsidies for millions of low- and moderate-income people to buy private insurance.[Pear manages not to state that Robamneycare is clearly not a "take-over"]

Annie Lowrey: Mr. Romney argued that Dodd-Frank, Mr. Obama’s financial regulatory reform law, designated certain financial firms as “too big to fail,” giving them a “blank check” and implicit government backing.

The law does designate some financial institutions as “systemically important.” But it also puts them under significant additional regulatory scrutiny and requires them to write “living wills,” telling the government how to unwind them.

Michael Cooper: Repealing Mr. Obama’s health care law, which Mr. Romney said he would do, would actually increase the federal deficit.[unstated: this refutes the Romney claim that Robamneycare adds to the deficit]

So, there you have it. Romney will get a bounce because he gained stature simply by standing on the stage with the President and not coming off as a complete ass.

But he’s still a lying schmuck, and his policies cannot save this country.

Meanwhile, better fact checkers, please. Also, a debate moderator would help.

Obama at Ft. Stewart

I listened to the Obamas speaking at Ft. Stewart, Georgia on April 27th. The speech was introduced in part by a letter recounting the experience of a veteran who was swindled by a for-profit online college.

Obama said that things had gotten so bad that college recruiters had gotten Marines with serious brain damage to sign up to take courses. Other people had been hounded into taking out high-interest student loans. And everyone was finding it hard to sort through the claims of various schools. He promised that online colleges would have to produce a simple FAQ sheet called “Know Before You Owe.”

It was not great oratory. I would have wished that he would have used it as a teaching moment to talk about the competition between funds for veterans’ benefits and for weapons systems and about the need to have a strong economy as the engine to drive a strong military. But both he and Michelle connected to the troops. And his best line was one that the general public should hear and think about (my paraphrase):

“You know that you rise and fall as one unit. All Americans rise and fall as one nation.”

If we really believed this, it would put an end to the silly Randian narcissism that imagines that if we only punish those who are lazy enough, we will make them reform, and that if we do not, then at least the right people–identifiable by their wealth– will be rewarded. The truth is that all of us, rich and poor, are part of a nation in decline precisely because we are a house divided.

Burnt sacrifices to the war on some drugs

DemocracyNow:

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to Honduras, where a fire swept through an overcrowded prison Tuesday night and killed more than 350 inmates. It’s the world’s deadliest prison fire in a century. According to the Associated Press, most of the inmates who died had never been charged, let alone convicted. More than half were either awaiting trial or being held as suspected gang members.

A local official says an inmate called her moments before the fire and told her he was going to set the facility on fire and kill everyone inside. Many of the prisoners burned to death in their cells.
…
AMY GOODMAN: Honduran prisons are plagued with overcrowding, due in part to drug trafficking arrests. The United Nations says Honduras also has the highest murder rate in the world. All this comes as the country recovers from a 2009 coup.

For more, we’re joined by Dana Frank, professor of history at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Honduras correspondent for The Nation magazine. Her most recent piece appears in the New York Times; it’s called “In Honduras, a Mess Made in the U.S.”

What happened here? What do you understand, Professor Frank?

DANA FRANK: Well, let’s be clear right off: this was not a natural disaster. There were two previous prison fires like this in 2003 and 2004, when people died because the police either deliberately set the fire to kill gang—alleged gang members or because they allowed it to happen because of overcrowding. There have been reports saying that this should have been cleaned up long ago, and it’s just gotten worse and worse.

The other thing to understand is, when the fire broke out, the prisoners were locked down. There are many, many, now, testimonies from prisoners who managed to survive, saying that the police—the police, they’re guards. And I want to understand that these—underscore that these are regular police that manage the prisons; they’re not prison guards in a separate system. The prisoners that escaped are saying—or that survived, are saying that the police threw away the keys, they laughed at them, they refused to open the cells. And one prisoner is saying that they shot at the prisoners. And when the prison—and so, these people died because they died in their cells screaming, trying to get out, locked down in their cells. And human rights advocates are underscoring that penitentiary officials have a sacred duty to protect the lives of those inside.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dana Frank, there were some reports that firefighters were delayed in being able to get to the fire to put it out?

DANA FRANK: Absolutely. The police wouldn’t let the firefighters into the prison for 30 minutes. They also tear-gassed and fired at family members who were rushing to the prison to try to figure out what was happening. And there were also the firefighters 15 minutes away at the U.S. Air Force base, at Soto Cano, that were also not there.

AMY GOODMAN: Hundreds of prisoners killed. Can you talk about the relationship between the Honduran government and the United States and where you think that weighs in here?

DANA FRANK: Well, you know, but this is the ongoing coup regime. It’s really important to not act like the coup that happened on June 28th, 2009, is somehow over. The same people are controlling the Honduran government. Pepe Lobo has appointed, for example, Daniel Orellana, the head of the prisons, was one of the—the chief of the police at the time of the coup.

And all of this is being supported by the Obama government. You know, the Obama administration has, in fact, just in its budget two days ago, asked for a doubling of the U.S. military aid to Honduras. They’ve just spent $50 million to expand Soto Cano Air Force Base, as this—knowing full well about the total corruption of the ongoing Lobo government. And this is a really—a tremendously outrageous thing that the Obama administration is doing, and people need to be paying more attention to this.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dana Frank, the impact of the spreading U.S. war on drugs on—especially on Central America, as thousands of inmates from U.S. prisons are released from prison, deported down there, the growth of crime and drugs, and then the government crackdowns on drugs in those countries?

DANA FRANK: Well, you know, human rights defenders in Honduras will be the first to say that the drug problem is very serious, and it’s growing. They would also be the first to say that it’s mushroomed since the coup, in this context on complete impunity. There’s no functioning judicial system. And it’s important to understand that the Lobo government is completely in bed with the drug traffickers. So you can’t say here’s the government helping clean up the drug traffickers, and here’s the drug traffickers; it’s all corrupt from top to bottom. And the Honduran police and judicial systems are especially—are especially corrupt.

The problem is, there’s been a lot of spin saying, “Well, we have to spend even more money on the Honduran military and police in order to fight drugs.” And that’s just throwing money at the same problem, because you can’t make a distinction between the Lobo government and its police and the drug trafficking. And this is the issue all over Central America, this militarization in the name of fighting drugs, which is not what the Honduran human rights people, it’s not what the Honduran opposition is calling for. They are the first to suffer from the drug issues. But they say that this corrupt government, very highly backed and increasingly backed by the Lobo administration in the United—excuse me, the Obama administration in the United States, is the problem here. And so, it’s really important to not let this spin to the right to increase militarization of Central America in the name of fighting drugs or cleaning this up.(emphases added)

Update: KPFA take on it here. American University Professor Adrienne Pine is the interview.

Shorter State of the Union and Response: a Duet

Obama: Everyone should join the Army to learn what it means to be an American.

Mitch: Private enterprise blew up the American economy, so it should be given all power to fix it.

Everything else is commentary.

No one will have to ask, “Is this good for the Jews?”

Chemi Chalev, Haaretz

The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu consider ordering a Mossad hit team to assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama so that his successor will defend Israel against Iran.
…
Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, also blasted Adler on Friday, saying “There is absolutely no excuse, no justification, no rationalization for this kind of rhetoric. It doesn’t even belong in fiction. These are irresponsible and extremist words. It is outrageous and beyond the pale. An apology cannot possibly repair the damage. Irresponsible rhetoric metastasizes into more dangerous rhetoric. The ideas expressed in Mr. Adler’s column reflect some of the extremist rhetoric that unfortunately exists — even in some segments of our community — that maliciously labels President Obama as an ‘enemy of the Jewish people.’ Mr. Adler’s lack of judgment as a publisher, editor and columnist raises serious questions as to whether he’s fit to run a newspaper.”

Anti-Iran hysteria has gone way, way too far.

Even if you are a rock-ribbed conservative like, say, Abe Foxman, it must be obvious that Israel’s long-term ability to survive in the Middle East is dependent on the goodwill of the United States. When the proponents of that state start talking about assassinating the president of their benefactor, it raises the question in the benefactor’s mind of whether that state is a friend or an enemy.

Thing is, the right has become so radicalized that this sort of talk is pretty normal for them. Listen to the Republican debates. Obama is, they say, “dangerous.” The undertone is that his re-election would be intolerable. And if more Americans vote for him than for his opponent? What then?

In Israel, the slanders against Obama for taking the most timid stands against illegal settlements, settlements that most Israelis repudiate, are vitriolic. If there is the slightest criticism of, say, the bombing of civilians as in Operation Cast Lead, the response is outraged. The US is being placed in a position where it cannot assert its own interests or voice its own opinion. David Rubin, an Israeli mayor, for example, wrote:

Obama is a similar case. This president, whose sympathies clearly lie with the Islamic world, is no friend of Israel. His lack of appreciation for the Israeli narrative was obvious long before his victory in 2008. It’s no coincidence that his first major foreign policy speech was given in Cairo, during which he repeatedly proclaimed his deep respect for the religion of Islam. It’s also no coincidence that he bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Last but not least, it’s no accident that he has chosen not to visit Israel even once during his term.

What Rubin is saying is There. See? He hates us because he talks to Arabs. It’s obvious.

Or from Chaim Levenson of Haaretz:

“The Obama administration is an enemy of the Jews and the worst regime there ever was for the State of Israel,” said Yossi Naim, the head of the Beit Aryeh regional council, at the Ra’ana meeting.

This kind of raw hate has gotten to be normal as the US, not just under Obama but also under Bush, has dragged its feet in agreeing to bomb Iran. So it’s no surprise that a Jewish newspaper publisher would think that it’s alright to discuss the possibility of murder completely openly in the pages of his newspaper.

This is not good for the Jews. It’s not good for anyone.