Published on Sunday, January 31, 2010 by the Boston Globe

Obama’s Meager Pitch Meets a Brick Wall

by Robert Kuttner

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S State of the Union address was a reminder of why so many Americans invested so much hope in this man - and why he often makes us want to scream. There it all was again - the sheer decency, the intelligence, the plea for an appreciation of complexity, the call to higher purpose combined with feeble particulars, and the signature pursuit of impossible common ground.

"What the American people hope,'' he said, "what they deserve - is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our differences, to overcome the numbing weight of our politics.''

But this just isn't in the cards, no matter how much the president wishes it. The Republican response to his high-mindedness was the same tactic the GOP has been successfully deploying all year: total obstruction.

Obama made a strategic mistake in framing the problem as "the numbing weight of our politics,'' as if the problem were "politics'' in general. It isn't. The problem is a president with one set of remedies to a dire economy downturn, and Republicans who simply won't play, even when he meets them more than halfway.

Vermont's independent senator Bernie Sanders put it well. "In order to dance, you need a dance partner, and there ain't no dance partner out there.''

When Obama boasted of all the tax cuts he had delivered - the preferred Republican remedy for everything - there were cheers from the Democratic side of the aisle, while Republicans sat in stony silence. "I thought I'd get some applause on that one,'' he teased, looking over at the Republican seats.

Despite his conciliatory gestures, Republicans oppose his jobs plan, they oppose his bipartisan commission to reduce the deficit (a conservative favorite); they may even reject his plan to shift $30 billion in repaid bank-bailout funds to help small business.

And that's only half the problem. With unemployment at 10 percent and still rising, Obama's proposals are too meager to make much of a dent. "The House has passed a jobs bill,'' he said. "I urge the Senate to do the same . . . I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay.''

What Obama didn't say was that the $154 billion jobs bill had squeaked through the House, 218-214, on the initiative of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with no help from him or his staff; or that the Senate counterpart is in the range of just $80 billion. The economic drag from cuts in state and local government outlay will more than offset the stimulus of this skimpy new federal spending - which will be resisted by Republicans whether it is $8,000 or $800 billion just because it is Obama's.

The speech also had bold and compassionate words for the economic frustrations of parents juggling work and family, young adults saddled with college loans, and elderly people and their caregivers. But the actual program he proposed was a medley of small-bore tax credits that will neither deliver much help nor alter the deeper economic forces at work.

The gap between the call for sweeping change and what he is actually proposing, much less delivering, does serious harm to Obama. The Republicans get this even if he doesn't.

Given the wall-to-wall opposition, he might as well propose medicine strong enough to do the job. And might as well call out the Republicans for their sheer obstruction. On both counts, he'd win some respect for nerve and leadership.

This president is embattled. He should sound embattled. But instead, he is doubling down on the same strategy that has failed him - sweet reasonableness. His call for the Republicans to help him salvage some shred of health reform sounded almost like a pitiful plea. "Don't walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close.''

One Nebraska voter spoke for disillusioned Obama fans everywhere in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "You listen to the sales pitch,'' said 30-year-old Kevin Fischer, "and you're so excited, and then it arrives and you open the box and it just crumbles . . .''

Coming barely a week after the shock of the Massachusetts US Senate election, this speech was billed as evidence that Obama had heard the wake-up call. If he is to save the economy and his presidency, Obama must do better.

© 2010 Boston Globe

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe. He is the author of Obama's Challenge and other books.

DISSIDENT VOICE

Obama’s Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual

by Stephen Lendman / January 30th, 2010

The response to Obama’s first State of the Union address was predictable. Democrats loved it. Republicans were skeptical to critical, while the media tried to have it both ways.

The New York Times called his tone “colloquial, even relaxed” in quoting him stating “the worst of the storm has passed,” then The Times saying “Americans are concerned, even angry.” He urged Democrats not to “run for the hills,” called for an end to “tired old battles,” and focus(ed) intently on the issue of most immediate concern to the nation, jobs.”

A Times editorial headlined “The Second Year,” saying “The union is in a state of deep and justifiable anxiety about jobs and mortgages and two long, bloody wars. President Obama did not create these problems, and none could be solved in one year. (He) used his (address) to show the country what he has learned and how he intends to govern in the next three years. (It) was a reminder (of his ability) to inspire with a grand vision and the simple truth frankly spoken. It was a long time coming.”

A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Staying the Course (but) with a little more humility, and a touch more bipartisanship…. But whether this outreach is anything more than rhetoric will depend on a change of policy.” It “could be a long year,” concluded the Journal.

CNN.com was more upbeat saying “Obama outlines ambitious agenda for ‘lasting prosperity,’ noting that the “president struck an optimistic tone and avoided lofty rhetoric in stating that the cost of inaction will be great.”

The Washington Post’s EJ Dionne called Obama “a conciliator (who’s) willing to fight.”

The Post’s Eugene Robinson called his rhetoric “determined, patient, forceful, good-humored, at times even mischievous. He looked relaxed and in control. (For) the first time in months (he) reconnected with the language and themes that got him elected.”

Time.com headlined “Confident Republicans Give Obama a Frosty Reception.” At the same time, columnist Joe Klein called his speech “a terrific performance….easily digestible, user-friendly… but it was also a fighting speech…. This was Obama at his best.”

In its customary supportive role, The Nation magazine’s Robert Dreyfuss headlined “Two Cheers for Obama on Foreign Affairs,” saying “it was a pleasure to listen to (him), especially after eight years of his predecessor’s alarmist warnings and warlike thundering (so) let’s take a moment to appreciate Obama’s speech last night.”

The Nation’s Melissa Harris-Lacewell called his address a “National Rorschach Test… given meaning by the viewer more than by the subject. (Obama tried) to break through this psychological angst… to remind Americans of the situational constraints he faces; to shift… despair back to optimism,” and remind people that the crisis began under his predecessor. “As he has done exquisitely since the campaign, (he) contextualized these difficulties within a broader historical sweep (by) insist(ing) that the “American story… is replete with examples of gritty determination (to overcome) seemingly insurmountable obstacles.”

From the Financial Times: “Obama pledges renewed focus on jobs” as his “number one” priority (while) at the same time pledg(ing) to right the economy and continue pushing for healthcare and financial sector reform.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi sounded the Democrat response saying: “Tonight, President Obama presented a vision to the American people of a stronger union, a new foundation for prosperity and a thriving middle class. Working together, we will adopt a bold agenda for our economic growth.”

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch called Obama “completely tone deaf (by) blaming all our problems on George W. Bush (and) doubl(ing) down on his commitment to a Washington-knows-best strategy that will only make matters worse.”

From House Minority Leader John Boehner: “The American people were looking for President Obama to change course tonight, and they got more of the same job-killing policies instead.”

As a candidate, Obama promised change, a new course, sweeping government reforms, addressing people needs, and “ensur(ing) that the hopes and concerns of average Americans speak louder in Washington than the hallway whispers of high-priced lobbyists….”

A year later, hope is disillusion, frustration, and anger over promises made, then broken with a growing awareness that Obama represents business as usual, a reality rhetoric can’t change.

His top political, economic and national security officials are former administration members — from Wall Street, the military, and other key power centers for continuity, not promised change.

He presides over a bogus democracy under a homeland police state apparatus, embraces torture and political persecution like his predecessor, and continues unbridled militarism, imperial wars, and a shocking disregard for the law.

A January 27 Dana Priest Washington Post article revealed a secret Obama “hit list,” the same policy George Bush authorized to kill US citizens abroad claimed to be supporting terrorism “against the United States or US interests,” whether or not it’s true.

He looted the federal Treasury for Wall Street, plans new monetary measures to control the world’s money, and favors handouts to the rich at the expense of beneficial social change.

He embraces the same Bush administration policies, targets dissenters, Muslims, Latino immigrants, environmental and animal rights activists, and lawyers who defend them too vigorously.

He spies illegally on Americans, destroyed decades of hard won labor rights, wants public education privatized as another business profit center, and scorns democracy in favor of hard-line rule.

He backs rationing healthcare, destroying Medicare, and enriching insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains. He wants legislation passed to empower agribusiness, let corporate polluters reap huge windfall profits by raising energy costs, and create a speculative bonanza for Wall Street with a new carbon trading derivatives scheme.

He wants all Americans monitored with a national ID card, favors preventive detentions for uncharged detainees, and opposes protection for whistleblowers and journalists to protect their identity.

He ignores growing poverty, hunger, and homelessness, refuses help for budget-strapped states, and chooses rhetoric, theater, deceit and cynicism, not progressive change to address a national emergency.

His State of the Union address reflected “yes we can,” “hope (and) change,” and another pledge that “Tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before…. The time to take charge of our future is here,” at the same time he invaded Haiti, occupies the country with 20,000 combat troops, obstructs essential aid from reaching millions, and claims it’s a humanitarian mission.

Rutherford Institute president and constitutional lawyer, John Whitehead, says he’s “afraid (of) the state of the nation” in his January 27 augustforecast.com article, citing “Ominous developments in America (that) have been a long time coming,” covering some of the above perspectives and more.

“As national borders dissolve in the face of spreading globalization, (it’s likely) that our Constitution… will be subverted in favor of international laws….The corporate media (act mostly) as a mouthpiece for government propaganda, no longer… as watchdogs, guarding against encroachments of our rights…. We have lost our moral compass…. Americans have largely lost the ability to ask questions and think analytically… we no longer have a sense of right and wrong or a way to hold the government accountable,” the way Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence – that when government fails the people, it’s their right “to alter or abolish it,” and replace it with one that works.

In his January 27 article titled “State of the Union Rhetoric, 2010: Economic Euphemisms and Internal Contradictions (Part II),” economist Michael Hudson cited growing dangers, unlikely to be addressed or reversed:

• America’s “road to debt peonage;”
• “Debts that can’t be repaid;”
• rising defaults;
• the illusion of “borrowing out way out of debt;”
• an economic recovery favoring oligarchy, “the FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate – not the ‘real economy;’ ”
• America’s “Bubble Economy (leaving) families, companies, real estate and government so heavily indebted that they must use current income to pay banks and bondholders,” making it unavailable for goods and services; and
• the “most dangerous belief that the economy needs the financial sector to lead its recovery by providing credit,” when, in fact, Wall Street wrecked the economy by “predatory lending….casino gambling,” and looting the federal Treasury to cover losses.

Hudson worried that Obama’s speech would “celebrate this failed era.” In fact, his policies embrace it, will continue to going forward, and proposing a discretionary spending freeze, the part most important to increase, is counterproductive and ludicrous. Specifically he said:

“Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security (meaning militarism and imperial wars), Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will.”

A Road to Perdition Agenda

Obama’s rhetoric hides a failed agenda he’ll continue, serving capital and militarists, not people in dire need. He wants more business tax cuts and windfalls to stimulate growth and new jobs, repackaged Reaganomics that cost record numbers of job losses in the past two years, well over 500,000 in December alone based on the broader household survey.

As a result:

• real unemployment tops 20%;
• 11 million full-time jobs were lost since late 2007;
• over four and a half million jobs were lost since Obama took office;
• a record 9.3 million Americans work part-time;
• in 2009, a record 2.8 million homes were foreclosed, realitytrac.com saying “a massive supply of loans…. loom(s) over the housing market,” many to become delinquent in 2010 and beyond, perhaps for years; and
• an epic debt overhang crushes the economy, exacerbated by a $13 trillion giveaway to Wall Street; another $10.7 trillion pledged amounting to a virtual free money blank check; and similar largess goes for militarism and homeland security at a time dire people needs go begging.

Smooth rhetoric belies Obama’s failed agenda, one he’ll continue without progressive change under new leadership that cares, what neither party offers nor ever will with priorities leaving millions out of luck and on their own.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM-1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening. Read other articles by Stephen, or visit Stephen's website.

This article was posted on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 12:00pm and is filed under Corporate Globalization, Economy/Economics, Espionage, Health/Medical, Media, Military/Militarism, Obama.

While Obama bashes lobbyists, Geithner's Treasury organizes secret briefings for them

By Brent Budowsky - 01/28/10 01:43 PM ET

To understand why Americans are so angry with Washington, and why I have called for the replacement of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, don’t miss the story broken by Bob Cusack, managing editor of The Hill newspaper.

Cusack reports that staff for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner organized private, off-the-record, confidential briefings for lobbyists about the president's State of the Union address and major programs.

These briefings were available to lobbyists, and not the general public. They were secret, and not open to the media, and not to be reported publicly. The president attacks lobbyists while his Treasury secretary gives first-class tickets to insider special interests, while the rest of the American people fly standby.

Wall Street lobbyists pushing for huge bonuses get the first-class ticket; taxpayers who paid for the bailout weren't invited. Banking lobbyists whose companies received more than $20 billion of help through various government agencies get to sing, "Fly me to moon" in private briefings, while jobless workers have to sing, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" in the cold outside.

Insurers who raise premiums get the inside poop from the Treasury, but customers being ripped off with high premiums or foreclosed on their homes aren't invited to the insider festivities and can't even read about it in newspapers that are not allowed to report it.

If the president wants to fight the "fat cats" and be the populist of the month, he should order these closed meetings ended, and when any insider meetings occur, they should be open to everyone and, even better, televised on C-SPAN.

Otherwise, the administration will not be praised for change or populism or reform, but will create even more cynicism against business as usual, which this latest Treasury Department venture represents, big time.

Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/78571-while-obama-bashes-lobbyists-geithners-treasury-organizes-secret-briefings-for-them

The contents of this site are © 2010 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsisiary of News Communications, Inc.

Prez Speak with Forked Tongue: After Obama rips lobbyists, K St. they get private briefings

After Obama rips lobbyists, K St. insiders get private briefings

By Bob Cusack - 01/28/10 11:02 AM ET

A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union.

The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.”

The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison.

The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes.”

The calls are scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, with the first topic being job creation and economic growth.

Another call, at 1 p.m., is on government reform and transparency. Republicans have criticized the Obama White House for not being more transparent in its discussions with Congress on healthcare reform. Obama recently acknowledged that the legislative process has not been as open as he promised on the campaign trail.

Other issues that will be addressed on Thursday include education, climate change and healthcare reform.

A handful of lobbyists told The Hill on Thursday morning that they received the invitations and were planning to call in.

Some lobbyists say they are extremely frustrated with the White House for criticizing them and then seeking their feedback. Others note that Democrats on Capitol Hill constantly urge them to make political donations.

One lobbyist said, “Bash lobbyists, then reach out to us. Bash lobbyists [while] I have received four Democratic invitations for fundraisers.”

In his State of the Union on Wednesday, Obama once again targeted K Street: “We face a deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap, we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve.”

The Treasury Department referred The Hill’s request for comment to the White House, which at press time had not responded to questions on this issue.

On Thursday afternoon, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated in an e-mail, "As part of our effort to reach out and engage with the public and policymakers, it is standard for our outreach team to organize a conference call, so that we can include people who are not in Washington, after a major speech or announcement through the president's priorities. These calls are targeted at a diverse group of community and government leaders including mayors, governors, faith groups, women's organizations, representatives from the African American and Latino communities to share as much information about the administration's agenda as possible. The calls, which include question-and-answer sessions, typically include hundreds of people from across the country..."

Lobbyists say the Obama White House has held many off-the-record teleconferences over the past year.

For example, lobbyists and others were invited to a teleconference with “senior Obama administration officials” on Monday to discuss the administration’s plan to improve the lives of middle-class families.

The invitation, which is addressed to “Friends,” emphasizes in bold and italics that “this call is for background information only and not intended for press purposes.” It advises callers to tell the operator “you’re joining the ‘White House Briefing Call.’ ”

Another lobbyist said these types of teleconferences occur “all the time.”

And that is why many on K Street are exasperated with Obama’s use of lobbyists as a punching bag. Some have said they understood why he used strong rhetoric on the campaign trail but are irritated the White House solicits their opinions while Obama’s friends in Congress badger them for political donations.

This article was updated at 12:11 p.m. and at 4:50 p.m.

Published on Thursday, January 28, 2010 by TomDispatch.com

Obama’s Secret Prisons

Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the “Black Jail,” and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan

by Anand Gopal

[The research for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.]

One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town's bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost's dust-doused streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaar-goers for ransom.

But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat, handwritten note on Red Cross stationary to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away. U.S. forces had picked him up while he was on his way home from the bazaar, the terse letter stated, and he didn't know when he would be freed.

Sometime in the last few years, Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan's rugged heartland began to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of the night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In the secretive U.S. detentions process, suspects are usually nabbed in the darkness and then sent to one of a number of detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.

This process has become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition airstrikes. The night raids and detentions, little known or understood outside of these Pashtun villages, are slowly turning Afghans against the very forces they greeted as liberators just a few years ago.

One Dark Night in November

It was the 19^th of November 2009, at 3:15 am. A loud blast awoke the villagers of a leafy neighborhood outside Ghazni city, a town of ancient provenance in the country's south. A team of U.S. soldiers burst through the front gate of the home of Majidullah Qarar, the spokesman for the Minister of Agriculture. Qarar was in Kabul at the time, but his relatives were home, four of whom were sleeping in the family's one-room guesthouse. One of them, Hamidullah, who sold carrots at the local bazaar, ran towards the door of the guesthouse. He was immediately shot, but managed to crawl back inside, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Then Azim, a baker, darted towards his injured cousin. He, too, was shot and crumpled to the floor. The fallen men cried out to the two relatives remaining in the room, but they -- both children -- refused to move, glued to their beds in silent horror.

The foreign soldiers, most of them tattooed and bearded, then went on to the main compound. They threw clothes on the floor, smashed dinner plates, and forced open closets. Finally, they found the man they were looking for: Habib-ur-Rahman, a computer programmer and government employee. Rahman was responsible for converting Microsoft Windows from English to the local Pashto language so that government offices could use the software. He had spent time in Kuwait, and the Afghan translator accompanying the soldiers said they were acting on a tip that Rahman was a member of al-Qaeda.

They took the barefoot Rahman and a cousin of his to a helicopter some distance away and transported them to a small American base in a neighboring province for interrogation. After two days, U.S. forces released Rahman's cousin. But Rahman has not been seen or heard from since.

"We've called his phone, but it doesn't answer," says his cousin Qarar, the spokesman for the agriculture minister. Using his powerful connections, Qarar enlisted local police, parliamentarians, the governor, and even the agriculture minister himself in the search for his cousin, but they turned up nothing. Government officials who independently investigated the scene in the aftermath of the raid and corroborated the claims of the family also pressed for an answer as to why two of Qarar's family members were killed. American forces issued a statement saying that the dead were "enemy militants [that] demonstrated hostile intent."

Weeks after the raid, the family remains bitter. "Everyone in the area knew we were a family that worked for the government," Qarar says. "Rahman couldn't even leave the city because if the Taliban caught him in the countryside they would have killed him."

Beyond the question of Rahman's guilt or innocence, however, it's how he was taken that has left such a residue of hate and anger among his family. "Did they have to kill my cousins? Did they have to destroy our house?" Qarar asks. "They knew where Rahman worked. Couldn't they have at least tried to come with a warrant in the daytime? We would have forced Rahman to comply."

"I used to go on TV and argue that people should support this government and the foreigners," he adds. "But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so? I don't care if I get fired for saying it, but that's the truth."

The Dogs of War

Night raids are only the first step in the American detention process in Afghanistan. Suspects are usually sent to one among a series of prisons on U.S. military bases around the country. There are officially nine such jails, called Field Detention Sites in military parlance. They are small holding areas, often just a clutch of cells divided by plywood, and are mainly used for prisoner interrogation.

In the early years of the war, these were but way stations for those en route to Bagram prison, a facility with a notorious reputation for abusive behavior. As a spotlight of international attention fell on Bagram in recent years, wardens there cleaned up their act and the mistreatment of prisoners began to shift to the little-noticed Field Detention Sites.

Of the 24 former detainees interviewed for this story, 17 claim to have been abused at or en route to these sites. Doctors, government officials, and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, a body tasked with investigating abuse claims, corroborate 12 of these claims.

One of these former detainees is Noor Agha Sher Khan, who used to be a police officer in Gardez, a mud-caked town in the eastern part of the country. According to Sher Khan, U.S. forces detained him in a night raid in 2003 and brought him to a Field Detention Site at a nearby U.S. base. "They interrogated me the whole night," he recalls, "but I had nothing to tell them." Sher Khan worked for a police commander whom U.S. forces had detained on suspicion of having ties to the insurgency. He had occasionally acted as a driver for this commander, which made him suspicious in American eyes.

The interrogators blindfolded him, taped his mouth shut, and chained him to the ceiling, he alleges. Occasionally they unleashed a dog, which repeatedly bit him. At one point, they removed the blindfold and forced him to kneel on a long wooden bar. "They tied my hands to a pulley [above] and pushed me back and forth as the bar rolled across my shins. I screamed and screamed." They then pushed him to the ground and forced him to swallow 12 bottles worth of water. "Two people held my mouth open and they poured water down my throat until my stomach was full and I became unconscious. It was as if someone had inflated me." he says. After he was roused from his torpor, he vomited the water uncontrollably.

This continued for a number of days; sometimes he was hung upside down from the ceiling, and other times blindfolded for extended periods. Eventually, he was sent on to Bagram where the torture ceased. Four months later, he was quietly released, with a letter of apology from U.S. authorities for wrongfully imprisoning him.

An investigation of Sher Khan's case by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and an independent doctor found that he had wounds consistent with the abusive treatment he alleges. U.S. forces have declined to comment on the specifics of his case, but a spokesman said that some soldiers involved in detentions in this part of the country had been given unspecified "administrative punishments." He added that "all detainees are treated humanely," except for isolated cases.

The Disappeared

Some of those taken to the Field Detention Sites never make it to Bagram, but instead are simply released after authorities deem them to be innocuous. Even then, some allege abuse. Such was the case with Hajji Ehsanullah, snatched one winter night in 2008 from his home in the southern province of Zabul. He was taken to a detention site in Khost Province, some 200 miles away. He returned home 13 days later, his skin scarred by dog bites and with memory difficulties that, according to his doctor, resulted from a blow to the head. U.S. forces had dropped him off at a gas station in Khost after three days of interrogation. It took him ten more days to find his way home.

Others taken to these sites never end up in Bagram for an entirely different reason. In the hardscrabble villages of the Pashtun south, where rumors grow more abundantly than the most bountiful crop, locals whisper tales of people who were captured and executed. Most have no evidence. But occasionally, a body turns up. Such was the case at a detention site on an American military base in Helmand province, where in 2003 a U.S. military coroner wrote in the autopsy report of a detainee who died in U.S. custody (later made available through the Freedom of Information Act): "Death caused by the multiple blunt force injuries to the lower torso and legs complicated by rhabdomyolysis (release of toxic byproducts into the system due to destruction of muscle). Manner of death is homicide."

In the dust-swept province of Khost one day this past December, U.S. forces launched a night raid on the village of Motai, killing six people and capturing nine, according to nearly a dozen local government authorities and witnesses. Two days later, the bodies of two of those detained -- plastic cuffs binding their hands -- were found more than a mile from the largest U.S. base in the area. A U.S. military spokesman denies any involvement in the deaths and declines to comment on the details of the raid. Local Afghan officials and tribal elders, however, steadfastly maintain that the two were killed while in U.S. custody. American authorities released four other villagers in subsequent days. The fate of the three remaining captives is unknown.

The matter might be cleared up if the U.S. military were less secretive about its detention process. But secrecy has been the order of the day. The nine Field Detention Sites are enveloped in a blanket of official secrecy, but at least the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations are aware of them. There may, however, be others whose existences on the scores of military bases that dot the country have not been disclosed. One example, according to former detainees, is the detention facility at Rish Khor, an Afghan army base that sits atop a mountain overlooking the capital, Kabul.

One night last year, U.S. forces raided Zaiwalat, a tiny village that fits snugly into the mountains of Wardak Province, a few dozen miles west of Kabul, and netted nine locals. They brought the captives to Rish Khor and interrogated them for three days. "They kept us in a container," recalls Rehmatullah Muhammad, one of the nine. "It was made of steel. We were handcuffed for three days continuously. We barely slept those days." The plain-clothed interrogators accused Rehmatullah and the others of giving food and shelter to the Taliban. The suspects were then sent on to Bagram and released after four months. (A number of former detainees said they were interrogated by plainclothed officials, but they did not know if these officials belonged to the military, the CIA, or private contractors.)

Afghan human rights campaigners worry that U.S. forces may be using secret detention sites like Rish Khor to carry out interrogations away from prying eyes. The U.S. military, however, denies even having knowledge of the facility.

The Black Jail

Much less secret is the final stop for most captives: the Bagram Internment Facility. These days ominously dubbed "Obama's Guantanamo," Bagram nonetheless offers the best conditions for captives during the entire detention process.

Its modern life as a prison began in 2002, when small numbers of detainees from throughout Asia were incarcerated there on the first leg of an odyssey that would eventually bring them to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the years since, however, it has become the main destination for those caught within Afghanistan as part of the growing war there. By 2009, the inmate population had swelled to more than 700. Housed in a windowless old Soviet hangar, the prison consists of two rows of serried cage-like cells bathed continuously in white light. Guards walk along a platform that runs across the mesh-tops of the pens, an easy position from which to supervise the prisoners below.

Regular, even infamous, abuse in the style of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison marked Bagram's early years. Abdullah Mujahed, for example, was apprehended in the village of Kar Marchi in the eastern province of Paktia in 2003. Mujahed was a Tajik militia commander who had led an armed uprising against the Taliban in their waning days, but U.S. forces accused him of having ties to the insurgency. "In Bagram, we were handcuffed, blindfolded, and had our feet chained for days," he recalls. "They didn't allow us to sleep at all for 13 days and nights." A guard would strike his legs every time he dozed off. Daily, he could hear the screams of tortured inmates and the unmistakable sound of shackles dragging across the floor.

Then, one day, a team of soldiers dragged him to an aircraft, but refused to tell him where he was going. Eventually he landed at another prison, where the air felt thick and wet. As he walked through the row of cages, inmates began to shout, "This is Guantanamo! You are in Guantanamo!" He would learn there that he was accused of leading the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (which in reality was led by another person who had the same name and who died in 2006). The U.S. eventually released him and returned him to Afghanistan.

Former Bagram detainees allege that they were regularly beaten, subjected to blaring music 24 hours a day, prevented from sleeping, stripped naked, and forced to assume what interrogators term "stress positions." The nadir came in late 2002 when interrogators beat two inmates to death.

The U.S. Special Forces also run a second, secret prison somewhere on Bagram Air Base that the Red Cross still does not have access to. Used primarily for interrogations, it is so feared by prisoners that they have dubbed it the "Black Jail."

One day two years ago, U.S. forces came to get Noor Muhammad, outside of the town of Kajaki in the southern province of Helmand. Muhammad, a physician, was running a clinic that served all comers -- including the Taliban. The soldiers raided his clinic and his home, killing five people (including two patients) and detaining both his father and him. The next day, villagers found the handcuffed corpse of Muhammad's father, apparently dead from a gunshot.

The soldiers took Muhammad to the Black Jail. "It was a tiny, narrow corridor, with lots of cells on both sides and a big steel gate and bright lights. We didn't know when it was night and when it was day." He was held in a concrete, windowless room, in complete solitary confinement. Soldiers regularly dragged him by his neck, and refused him food and water. They accused him of providing medical care to the insurgents, to which he replied, "I am a doctor. It's my duty to provide care to every human being who comes to my clinic, whether they are Taliban or from the government."

Eventually, Muhammad was released, but he has since closed his clinic and left his home village. "I am scared of the Americans and the Taliban," he says. "I'm happy my father is dead, so he doesn't have to experience this hell."

Afraid of the Dark

Unlike the Black Jail, U.S. officials have, in the last two years, moved to reform the main prison at Bagram. Torture there has stopped, and American prison officials now boast that the typical inmate gains 15 pounds while in custody. Sometime in the early months of this year, officials plan to open a dazzling new prison -- that will eventually replace Bagram -- with huge, airy cells, the latest medical equipment, and rooms for vocational training. The Bagram prison itself will be handed over to the Afghans in the coming year, although the rest of the detention process will remain in U.S. hands.

But human rights advocates say that concerns about the detention process still remain. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that inmates at Guantanamo cannot be stripped of their right to habeas corpus, but stopped short of making the same argument for Bagram. (U.S. officials say that Bagram is in the midst of a war zone and therefore U.S. domestic civil rights legislation does not apply.) Unlike Guantanamo, inmates there do not have access to a lawyer. Most say they have no idea why they have been detained. Inmates do now appear before a review panel every six months, which is intended to reassess their detention, but their ability to ask questions about their situation is limited. "I was only allowed to answer yes or no and not explain anything at my hearing," says Rehmatullah Muhammad.

Nonetheless, the improvement in Bagram's conditions begs the question: Can the U.S. fight a cleaner war? This is what Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal promised this summer: fewer civilian casualties, fewer of the feared house raids, and a more transparent detention process.

The American troops that operate under NATO command have begun to enforce stricter rules of engagement: they may now officially hold detainees for only 96 hours before transferring them to the Afghan authorities or freeing them, and Afghan forces must take the lead in house searches. American soldiers, when questioned, bristle at these restrictions -- and have ways of circumventing them. "Sometimes we detain people, then, when the 96 hours are up, we transfer them to the Afghans," says one U.S. Marine, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They rough them up a bit for us and then send them back to us for another 96 hours. This keeps going until we get what we want."

A simpler way of dancing around the rules is to call in the U.S. Special Operations Forces -- the Navy SEALS, Green Berets, and others -- which are not under NATO command and so are not bound by the stricter rules of engagement. These elite troops are behind most of the night raids and detentions in the search for "high-value suspects." U.S. military officials say in interviews that the new restrictions have not affected the number of raids and detentions at all. The actual change, however, is more subtle: the detention process has shifted almost entirely to areas and actors that can best avoid public scrutiny: Special Operations Forces and small field prisons.

The shift signals a deeper reality of war, American soldiers say: you can't fight guerrillas without invasive raids and detentions, any more than you could fight them without bullets. Through the eyes of a U.S. soldier, Afghanistan is a scary place. The men are bearded and turbaned. They pray incessantly. In most of the country, women are barred from leaving the house. Many Afghans own a Kalashnikov. "You can't trust anyone," says Rodrigo Arias, a Marine based in the northeastern province of Kunar. "I've nearly been killed in ambushes but the villagers don't tell us anything. But they usually know something."

An officer who has worked in the Field Detention Sites says that it takes dozens of raids to turn up a useful suspect. "Sometimes you've got to bust down doors. Sometimes you've got to twist arms. You have to cast a wide net, but when you get the right person it makes all the difference."

For Arias, it's a matter of survival. "I want to go home in one piece. If that means rounding people up, then round them up." To question this, he says, is to question whether the war itself is worth fighting. "That's not my job. The people in Washington can figure that out."

If night raids and detentions are an unavoidable part of modern counterinsurgency warfare, then so is the resentment they breed. "We were all happy when the Americans first came. We thought they would bring peace and stability," says former detainee Rehmatullah. "But now most people in my village want them to leave." A year after Rehmatullah was released, his nephew was taken. Two months later, some other villagers were grabbed.

It has become a predictable pattern: Taliban forces ambush American convoys as they pass through the village, and then retreat into the thick fruit orchards that cover the area. The Americans then return at night to pick up suspects. In the last two years, 16 people have been taken and 10 killed in night raids in this single village of about 300, according to villagers. In the same period, they say, the insurgents killed one local and did not take anyone hostage.

The people of this village therefore have begun to fear the night raids more than the Taliban. There are now nights when Rehmatullah's children hear the distant thrum of a helicopter and rush into his room. He consoles them, but admits he needs solace himself. "I know I should be too old for it," he says, "but this war has made me afraid of the dark."

This piece appears in print in the latest issue of the Nation magazine. To catch him in an audio interview with TomDispatch’s Timothy MacBain discussing how he got this story, click here.

© 2010 Anand Gopal

Anand Gopal has reported in Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. His dispatches can be read at anandgopal.com. He is currently working on a book about the Afghan war.

Obama, faux fighter-in-chief

Americans elected a visionary, not a fighter

In the run-up to Barack Obama's State of the Union address, the so-called narrative question is whether the president will be -- pick a curtain -- party leader, president, conciliator or fighter.

Depending on whose head is talking, the president's problem is that he's been: (a) playing party politics and not leading the nation; (b) stuck in community-organizer mode, seeking consensus rather than fighting.

So agitated have SOTU speculators become that some have resorted to counting the number of times Obama uses the word "fight," or some variation thereof, in recent gatherings and speeches.

At a Monday morning meeting of his Middle Class Task Force, Obama said: "We're going to keep fighting to renew the American dream." Later, he said, "Joe [Biden] and I are going to keep on fighting for what matters to middle-class families." By one reporter's count, Obama used the word "fight" or "fighting" four times in a seven-minute speech.

In Ohio last week, according to another tabulator, the president used fighting words more than 20 times: "I won't stop fighting to open up government," he said. "I won't stop fighting to bring back jobs here." And, "I'll never stop fighting."

By Monday morning, Politico's Mike Allen was quoting a White House official who said key themes of the SOTU would include "creating good jobs, addressing the deficit, changing Washington, and fighting for middle-class families."

Not to leap to conclusions, but it would seem that Obama intends to fight. Like The Narrator in "Fight Club," he has tired of hugging victims and wants to punch the daylights out of . . . somebody. But didn't Obama run on just the opposite?

We're not a nation of red states or blue states, he told us. We are the United States of America. Except we're not -- and that's the problem Obama faces Wednesday night. The emergence of Obama's heretofore-absent pugilist merely adds another layer to the real challenge before him. Is he trustworthy?

For a year now, Obama's visionary, unifying words haven't matched the results. It isn't entirely his fault, but his leftward agenda took him far from center field where he was when optimistic Americans watched his pregame warmup. Since last January, watching him has been like watching a movie where the soundtrack hasn't been synchronized with the actors' lips.

Meanwhile, we have become not a purple, but a Brown nation. As in Scott. Like Obama himself, Brown -- an imperfect candidate under any other circumstances -- was the right man in the right place at the right time.

Brown's unlikely Senate election hinged most likely as much on the X-factor of trust as on his promise to be the 41st vote against health-care reform. Voters may not have known the finer points of his résumé, but they "knew" him. They recognized him from the sandlot. They'd seen his truck. They trusted his regular-guyness.

The Obama administration has taken note, and so the new war whoop is populism. Having noticed that Americans are most concerned about jobs and out-of-control government spending, the president is suddenly riveted by middle-class despair. And, of course, the anger.

Everybody's ticked, if for different reasons. Tea-party activists are enraged by expanding government, higher taxes (even though many of those in the throng received tax cuts as part of the stimulus package) and health-care reform that, though comprehensive, managed to leave out tort reform. The left is angry because Obama wasn't tough enough to push through legislation despite Democratic majorities in both houses.

Even Obama, the usually imperturbable sphinx -- the man with the straight face and the light-switch smile -- is getting hot under the collar. He doesn't mind a good fight, he says. Perchance, to bring 'em on?

It is traditional for presidents to paint a rosier picture of circumstances than reality warrants, and Obama isn't likely to veer from that script. The hope-and-change agent can hardly wear a sad face as he appraises his first year. But neither can he portray himself as a slugger in chief.

Americans didn't elect a fighter; they elected a visionary who promised a new spirit of cohesion, cooperation and community. While some now may view their romance with hope as a one-night stand, voters are reliably fickle. They can be courted and persuaded, but first they have to trust.

Regaining trust is Obama's real challenge, and being true to his own character is fundamental to that end. Americans know a faux fighter when they see one. If Obama comes out swinging, he is likely to lose.

kathleenparker@washpost.com

Published on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)

Obama’s Human Rights Policy a Disappointment

by Stephen Zunes

The Obama administration's record on human rights has been a major disappointment.

In part because the Bush administration abused the promotion of democracy and human rights to rationalize its militaristic policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Obama administration has at times been reluctant to be a forceful advocate for those struggling against oppression. For example, Obama was cautious in supporting the ongoing freedom struggle in Iran, in part because he believes that more overt advocacy could set back what he sees as the more critical issue of curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions. He is also aware of how the history of U.S. interventionism in that country, overt threats of "regime change" by the previous administration, and the U.S. invasion of two neighboring countries in the name of promoting democracy could lead to a nationalist reaction to such grandstanding. (Despite this caution, however, the Iranian regime has falsely accused Obama of guiding the massive pro-democracy movement that is challenging the increasingly repressive rule in that country.)

Harder to defend is Obama's continuation of the Bush administration's policy of arming and training security forces in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Jordan and other dictatorial regimes in the region.

During his highly anticipated address in Cairo last June, Obama failed to praise his autocratic host, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. He also invited leading critics of the regime, including secular liberals and moderate Islamists, to witness his speech. On the other hand, he refused to criticize the Mubarak regime, acknowledge its autocratic nature, or address any concern over its thousands of political prisoners - even when pushed to do so in a BBC interview. Indeed, Egyptian grassroots pro-democracy group Kefaya chose to boycott the speech, demanding that Obama show his commitment to democracy in deeds, not just words. Obama's foreign aid budget includes over $1.5 billion in unconditional aid to the Mubarak dictatorship. And Washington didn't publicly express concern when Egyptian police attacked American human rights activists attempting to deliver relief supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip last month.

Most of the opposition to Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been based on cost and the dubious prospects of victory. But there is concern that the government for which Americans are expected to fight and die is a serious abuser of human rights. Not only did U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai steal the most recent presidential election, but his cabinet includes a number of notorious warlords who have engaged in serious crimes against humanity. Furthermore, U.S.-backed Afghan security forces have engaged in gross and systematic human rights violations, and U.S. bomb and missile attacks killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan since Obama assumed office. Similarly, U.S. forces remain in Iraq, and billions of dollars support the sectarian regime despite ongoing violations of human rights by Baghdad's rulers. The recent dismissal of charges against U.S. Blackwater mercenaries, who massacred 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad's Al-Nusur Square, and the Obama administration's refusal to extradite them to face justice have also raised concerns regarding the U.S. commitment to basic human rights.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Obama administration rejected calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to suspend military aid to Israel following its use of U.S. weaponry against civilian targets in last year's war on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 700 civilian deaths, over 300 of whom were children. Even worse, Obama has pledged to increase military aid over and above the more than $10 billion provided to the Israelis by the Bush administration. The Obama administration called on Israel to freeze expansion of its colonization efforts in the occupied West Bank and threatened to cut planned loan guarantees to the Israeli government if it continues to refuse. But Obama still rejects conditioning direct aid and has similarly refused to call on Israel to withdraw from the its illegal settlements, as required under international humanitarian law and confirmed through a series of UN Security Council resolutions.

When the UN Human Rights Council investigation led by Richard Goldstone documented war crimes by both Hamas and the Israeli government - confirming previous investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others - the Obama administration rejected the commission's findings, calling them "deeply flawed." Rather than challenge the content of the meticulously documented 575-page report, U.S. officials instead issued strong but vague critiques. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was particularly critical of the report's recommendation that Palestinians and Israelis suspected of war crimes should be tried before the International Criminal Court. "Our view is that we need to be focused on the future," she argued.

The human rights community was initially pleased when Obama appointed Michael Posner, cofounder and director of Human Rights First, as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. However, Posner took the lead in quashing the Goldstone Commission report, insisting it "should not be used as a mechanism to add impediments to getting back to the peace process." Ironically, just weeks earlier, the Obama administration argued during a UN debate on Darfur that war crimes charges should never be sacrificed for political reasons.

The Obama administration has shown a lack of concern for democracy and human rights outside the Middle East as well. Washington initially raised objections to the coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. But then Obama - in opposition to virtually the entire hemisphere - recognized the November elections that took place under a censured media, widespread political repression, and a boycott by pro-democracy forces. The administration also pledged to continue sending over half a billion dollars of aid annually to the Colombian regime, despite its notoriously poor human rights record. It even signed an agreement that allows U.S. forces to be stationed at seven military bases across that country. Though ostensibly the focus is to curb the drug trade, such aid has also been used in broader counterinsurgency efforts that have serious human rights consequences.

Rejecting calls by liberal Democratic members of Congress, leading human rights groups, Pope Benedict XVI, and most of the international community to participate, the Obama administration decided to boycott the UN Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva. And most disturbingly, the Obama administration decided to continue the Bush administration's policy of remaining one of the few nations in the world to refuse to sign the international treaty banning landmines, completing its review process in secret without allowing for any input from human rights organizations.

Despite all this, there have been some gestures in support of individual human rights activists. For example, in an unprecedented move, the White House hosted the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, with Obama personally honoring this year's recipients, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, who have been struggling for human rights under the repressive Mugabe regime. The White House also intervened on behalf of the 2008 winner, Western Saharan nonviolent activist Aminatou Haidar, as she verged on death from a hunger strike following expulsion from her country by Moroccan occupation authorities. The Obama administration has failed, however, to demand that Morocco honor a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a World Court ruling allowing the people of Western Sahara the right of self-determination.

To Obama's credit, there is now a subtle but important shift in the U.S. government's discourse on human rights. The Bush administration pushed a rather superficial structuralist view of human rights. It focused, for instance, on elections - which can easily be rigged and manipulated in many cases - in order to change certain governments for purposes of expanding U.S. power and influence. Obama has taken more of an agency view of human rights, emphasizing the rights of free expression, particularly the right of protest, and recognizing that human rights reform can only come from below and not through imposed means.

In the short term, however, Obama's failure to more boldly address human rights concerns have alienated much of Obama's progressive base of support. The right wing, meanwhile, disingenuously portrays Obama as retreating from his predecessor's supposed support for democracy and human rights. Although the Bush administration provided even more assistance to governments engaged in human rights abuses and used pro-democracy rhetoric largely as a ruse for empire, Obama's lukewarm support for human rights has enabled right-wingers to seize the moral high ground. As a result, the perceived weakness of the Obama administration's human rights record raises important ethical and political questions.

© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)

Published on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by The Progressive

Obama Wrong to Prioritize Deficit Reduction

by Matthew Rothschild

I'm worried that President Obama is going to focus too much on the deficit in his State of the Union speech this week and in his actions throughout this year.

I'm worried because such a focus will make it less likely that he'll be able, or even inclined to, pass the kind of massive jobs bill we need to bring down unemployment.

Not to push such a bill through would be a moral failing of the highest order: We can't let 15 million people languish on the unemployment lines. And it would also be a political failing: He's setting a trap for himself here because if he doesn't solve the jobs problem, Democrats will face a debacle in November.

I'm also worried because the obsession with the deficit will give ammunition to those who want to shoot holes in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security-the programs that largely make up what remains of our safety net, especially for the aged and the disabled.

Obama himself is in favor of a Congressional bill establishing a bipartisan commission to study-and all but order--ways to cut costs in these so-called entitlement programs.

But I can't stand that word "entitlement." It makes us sound like we're spoiled little brats to want the retirement funds we've already paid for, and the health care that should be our right to have.

There's always trillions for war and bank bailouts, but when we come to claim what is ours, all of a sudden the cupboards are bare. If you're concerned about the budget deficit, stop averting your eyes at the pricetags dangling from the Pentagon and Wall Street.

Also, the idea that Obama is still tilting at the bipartisan windmill is not a good sign at all.

Nor is it a good sign that the Democratic bill would fast-track any recommendations that this commission comes up with-providing no ability to amend or filibuster it. (See Dean Baker's excellent commentary here: www.huffingtonpost.com.)

During his presidential campaign, Obama accused his opponent, John McCain, of wanting to cut Social Security.

If Obama and Congressional Democrats empower such a commission to justify that cut and then ram it through, this would be a huge double cross.

© 2010 The Progressive

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

The state of Obama

Salon

The state of Obama

The president's State of the Union address couldn't come soon enough for anxious Democrats -- or voters

By Mike Madden

Reuters/Jason Reed

U.S. President Barack Obama walks down the White House Cross Hall to the East Room

WASHINGTON -- When President Obama last bustled up to the Capitol to give a report on the state of the nation, it was a lot more perilous. Wall Street's collapse had left the economy in free fall; major banks and auto manufacturers still seemed on the verge of collapse at any moment, and the unemployment rate was nearly 8 percent. Obama, though, looked stronger than ever. He had just signed an economic stimulus package into law, his approval rating hovered in the mid-60s and the Republican Party appeared to have absolutely no idea how to respond to what looked for all the world like an activist, energized Democratic majority in Congress.

Less than a year later, you might have noticed things have changed -- and not with the kind of change Obama and Democratic partisans or lawmakers particularly want to believe in. Unemployment kept rising all year, bumping along at 10 percent for the last three months. Yes, the car companies are still in business, but only thanks to an infusion of federal cash. Wall Street thrived, and is now just about back to the pre-panic days, with Goldman Sachs paying out an average half-million bucks in bonuses to each employee. And Obama? Well, if the last few weeks have been any indication, his state might not be even quite as good as the union's.

So even for a guy who's been known to give a decent speech every now and then, Obama will walk into the House chamber Wednesday night with a lot riding on the address. He needs to remind Americans of how bleak the future looked a year ago, and how close the nation came to a disaster far worse than the present (which is bad enough as it is); reissue his call, from a year ago, for bold action and investment in order to make the future better; smack Democratic lawmakers out of the daze they've been in since Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate election; push healthcare reform, his top domestic priority for months, out of legislative limbo; and maybe most important, he needs to give voters tangible signs that he understands their frustration over how slow any economic recovery has been to reach most of their pocketbooks, for all the billions of dollars flowing out of Washington. All in the same hour-long (or so) speech. Because by the time next year's State of the Union rolls around, Congress might look very different.

"He needs to show that he has a plan that puts the economy back on track, so those who are running for reelection in 10 months under the Democratic banner will have something to take to voters other than a lot of anxiety and anger," said Michael Meehan, a Democratic strategist.

Complicating matters, though, the White House is already sending mixed signals about what's going to be in the speech. Obama will call for a three-year freeze on discretionary domestic spending on anything besides national security -- which, most analysts believe, is exactly the kind of spending the government needs to be doing more of to get the economy moving again. Not to mention that it undermines the type of rhetoric Obama might otherwise need to use to defend the rest of his agenda. "This has no social redeeming value whatsoever," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future. "It miseducates the country, it represents an ideological retreat which doesn't make sense ... The administration defends it as being merely symbolic, but the symbolism is entirely wrong."

Late Tuesday, aides put out word that the speech would also include a pay freeze for political appointees and senior advisors -- which is the sort of thing it might have been helpful to announce hand-in-hand with the spending freeze, so it looked like more of a coherent package. And Obama's own remarks lately, about his willingness to be a one-term president, don't exactly mesh with the new fighting political spirit the White House says the return of 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe heralds.

Still, progressives are hoping the speech can help remind people that they elected Obama in the first place to do something about the mess the country was in after George W. Bush's administration. "We don't need tinkering around the edges," said Anna Burger, chairwoman of Change to Win, a labor coalition. "We need big, dramatic action" -- on everything from healthcare to jobs to holding bailed-out banks accountable for what they do with tax dollars. That means ending the tortured self-doubt that gripped Congress in the last week. "You just got to buckle down and do the gusty thing and take your hits," said Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who served as the Obama transition team's liaison to progressive groups in 2008. "I think we do far better doing that than by panicking and suddenly dropping your agenda and dropping everything we told people we would fight for." The populist tone the White House has been striking since the Massachusetts election can only go so far without the economy actually improving -- which is going to take work. "As long as the economy is in bad shape, it's going to be hard for us," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. "Nobody should think that any generic message, any overall message itself, is going to be sufficient to overcome the real economic conditions that people face."

Republicans seem eager to present their simple "no" answer to whatever Obama says. "The president ought to start by saying we're going to put the healthcare bill on the shelf," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "No. 2, I hope the president will indicate that we're not going to allow taxes to go up this year ... I hope we'll hear the president say that, as soon as possible, the government is going to get out of the business of running car companies, banks and insurance companies so that we can be reassured, as we hope to have a better year in growing jobs and improving the economy, that the government is going to diminish its currently very intrusive role in our economy."

Which means some Democrats think there's an opportunity for Obama to use the speech to lay out the stakes for the election year ahead. "He needs to raise in people's minds the question about whether or not they really want to turn back the clock and adopt the policies that got us into this mess in the first place," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Salon. "This is not about pointing fingers, it's much more about letting people know what Republicans are likely to do if you hand the keys of the car back over to them ... This election cannot just be a referendum on ourselves."

The elections, of course, are a long way off. And there's no telling what can happen in 10 months in politics. If you don't believe that, just take one more look back at February 2009. But if Obama wants to change the dynamic in time for the 2011 State of the Union, he needs to start Wednesday night.

Mixed Signals: Will Obama Be Hard Enough on Wall Street?

Mixed Signals: Will Obama Be Hard Enough on Wall Street?

By Robert Kuttner, AlterNet. Posted January 25, 2010.

Obama knows he needs to be more populist when it comes to the banks, though it remains to be seen how hard he'll fight.

What a week!

As many progressive critics have been arguing for the past year, if President Obama did not cease behaving as the ally of Wall Street, the right wing would emerge as populist champion of the forgotten American. The election results in Massachusetts have now provided the exclamation point.

The loss of Ted Kennedy's former senate seat seems to have gotten the president's attention. Obama is belatedly getting in touch with his anger, as it were. He has turned up the rhetorical heat against the banks. But will he walk the talk?

Are we seeing a true shift in the Obama presidency where he revises his theory of change and discovers that political progress sometimes requires confrontation before you reach consensus? Or are these simply gestures of expediency and desperation?

So far, the signals are mixed. With the State of the Union Address getting drafted and re-drafted, debates are still raging inside the White House: Should Obama, after the Massachusetts wake-up call, be more conciliatory, or more feisty; more progressive or more centrist?

On the banking front, Obama has begun signaling a welcome populism. First, even before the Massachusetts vote, he called for a surtax on bank profits -- a relatively small and symbolic gesture than neither brings in a lot of money nor alters the banks' toxic business models, but a start.

Next, he intervened with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd to prevent Sen. Dodd from compromising away the House-passed consumer financial protection agency, one of the few provisions of the House version of financial reform that has some teeth. Literally the day before the president acted, Dodd had put out the word that he would have to throw the proposed agency under the bus in order to get Republican support for other provisions.

The agency has been a favorite of Obama's since last June, when it became part of the administration's June 17th White Paper on financial reform, despite skepticism from Geithner and Summers, only because Obama personally insisted on it. What's interesting about Obama's move last week is not just that he is supporting tough reform legislation, but that he got involved personally, calling Dodd to the White House and extracting his support. Until now, Obama has been mostly hands-off when it comes to financial reform, leaving the details to Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.

Even more significantly, Obama resurrected Paul Volcker as a senior adviser and embraced a Volcker proposal to revive the Glass-Steagall Act, an idea that Summers and Geithner have been resisting all year.

The 82-year old Volcker turns out to be one of the best organizers in Washington. In addition to forcefully speaking out about the need for a new Glass-Steagall, to keep commercial banks out of the business of speculating in securities, Volcker enlisted several other financial Brahmins to add their voices of support, including the Republican former chair of the SEC, Bill Donaldson, and the former CEO of Citigroup, John Reed.

Though Obama's public embrace of Volcker and Glass-Steagall was unveiled as part of the post-Massachusetts damage control, it has been in the works since before Christmas.

Geithner, who is again in political trouble because of investigations about his role in insisting that the government's bailout of AIG flow through to Goldman Sachs and other banks at 100 cents on the dollar, had his office quickly put out the word that Geithner had really been in support of Volcker's plan all along. But that's total malarkey.

The support for Volcker came mainly from Vice President Biden and from chief political adviser David Axelrod. In the White House debates, it was often Obama against most of his economic team, which has done its best all year to keep Volcker far away from Obama. Some dissenters on the economic team, such as Austan Goolsbee, sided with Volcker.

So Obama seems to get that he needs to be more populist both in tone and substance when it comes to the banks, though it remains to be seen how hard he'll fight. But banking reform is only one piece of the battle. Obama went the other way when it came to trying to salvage the re-nomination of Ben Bernanke to chair the Fed for a second term.

By the middle of last week, it looked as if the same popular revolt that gave Republicans Ted Kennedy's senate seat could take down Bernanke, who has emerged as a lightening rod for populist anger. Rejecting Bernanke's confirmation is an easy vote for senators who want to whack Wall Street, and there were murmurings of mass defections in the Senate Democratic caucus.

But with Bernanke's support crumbling, the White House pulled out all the stops. By Saturday, both Harry Reid and Dick Durban, the top two Democrat leaders in the senate, who have been wavering, pledged to vote aye. It now looks like Bernanke will survive, with more Republicans voting no than Democrats, and Democrats again looking like the party of high finance. The White House concluded that another political defeat for the president would be worse than the association with the unpopular Bernanke, who epitomizes the Obama alliance with Wall Street.

Even more ominously, Obama thus far is on the wrong side of the deficit-versus-jobs debate. Budget Director Peter Orszag and other deficit hawks in the administration have long been urging Obama to support a proposed fast-track commission that would bypass usual legislative procedures and compel an up-or-down vote on a compulsory deficit-reduction package designed to slash Social Security and Medicare spending.

This is, of course, appalling politics. It signals: we had to spend a ton of taxpayer money to rescue the banks and prop up the ruined economy. Now, gentle citizen, though you have paid once through the reduced value of your retirement plan and your house, you will pay again through cuts in Medicare and Social Security.

Since Christmas, Obama has been negotiating with the two key sponsors of the commission, Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Kent Conrad (D-ND). Last week, it looked as if they were close to a deal to have the White House appoint a more moderate version of such a commission, but after signaling support for the deal Gregg went out of his way to disparage that idea. Mercifully, it now appears that the deficit hawks in the Senate don't have the votes, since it would require some tax hikes as well as spending cuts, and most Senate Republicans won't touch anything that raises taxes. But on Friday, Obama himself said that he'd support a legislated commission, reversing his earlier position. The only hopeful sign is that he doesn't seem prepared to spend much political capital on it.

The politics of the deficit commission are all tangled up with the politics of how much to spend on a new jobs bill. In December, the House, with no assistance from Obama, narrowly passed a $154 billion jobs will, which also provides fiscal relief to the states and extends unemployment and health benefits for jobless workers. But the word from the White House is that Obama will not support that high a number, and will give more prominence to deficit reduction. So despite the rhetoric about Obama getting past the health-bill morass and emphasizing jobs, jobs, jobs, he hasn't yet put his money (ours, actually) where his mouth is.

Then there is the matter of the carcass of health reform, and the related question of whether Obama is willing to get tough with Republicans as well as bankers. The early signs are not encouraging. In a Wednesday interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama said that he'd look for areas of common ground, and by week's end, it appeared that the White House would be trying to get some kind of face saver that stopped far short of even the weak Senate bill.

With 59 votes in the Senate, the Democrats have more senators than the Republicans have had at any time since the 1920s. If Obama has discovered the virtues of leadership and occasional anger, he should be pummeling the Republicans for their sheer obstructionism, and asking the Senate leadership to enact key legislation with a simple majority of 51 votes through the budget reconciliation process. But on this front, Obama's conciliatory side still seems to be winning.

A little populism here and a little conciliation there is no game-changer. The worst strategy of all would be for Obama to be a populist on Mondays and Wednesdays, and a conciliator on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That would signal pure mush.

Democrats, unfortunately, default to this habit, because of an excessive reliance on a shallow reading of polls. You could see this tacking back and forth in the losing Gore campaign of 2000 and Kerry's failed run in 2004, where the candidate and his handlers oscillated between a progressive stance and a New Democrat one.

If Lincoln had based his decisions on polls, we'd still have slavery. Polls show that Americans resent corporate excesses, but value corporations as sources of jobs; that they are worried about the deficit but also frightened about unemployment; and that they are fearful of losing their health coverage but also anxious about the Obama version of health reform.

These, of course, are somewhat contradictory positions. It's normal for citizens to hold views that are not totally consistent. The job of a president is to fashion a coherent narrative and strategy of reform, even if some of it is momentarily unpopular, and to persuade the people to embrace it. A president who bases his posture mainly on a tactical reading of the polls is the opposite of a leader, and will be rejected for his weakness -- even if every one of his positions tracks majority support in the polls.

The administration's response to the twin loss of the 60th senate seat and a justifiably unpopular health bill could be a turning point in the redemption of Obama's presidency. So far, we've only seen a bare beginning.

Glass-Steagall lite: Barack Obama proposes limiting the activities of big banks

Obama and the banks

Glass-Steagall lite

Barack Obama proposes limiting the activities of big banks

Jan 22nd 2010 | NEW YORK
From Economist.com

REUTERS

IT IS a fair bet that one of Barack Obama’s new-year’s resolutions was to rattle Wall Street. A week after hitting America’s largest financial firms with a “responsibility” fee, to recoup up to $120 billion in bail-out losses, on Thursday January 21st the president proposed dramatic new curbs on their activities. Keen to show progress in at least one part of his agenda, especially after an election in Massachusetts stripped the Democrats of their super-majority in the Senate and put health-care reform in doubt, Mr Obama touted the plan as a way to cut the bloated giants of finance down to size and constrain excessive risk-taking with customer deposits. “Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail”, he thundered.

The implausibility of that claim should not detract from the potential impact of the plan. Though not a full return to Glass-Steagall, the law that separated commercial banking and investment banking in the wake of the Great Depression (and was repealed in 1999), it is at least a return to its “spirit”, as one official put it. Reflecting the possible dent it could put in profitability, bank shares tumbled, pulling stockmarkets down sharply around the world.

The first half of the plan concerns restrictions on the scope of activities. Banks that have insured deposits, and thus access to emergency funds from the central bank, would not be allowed to own or invest in private equity or hedge funds. Nor would they be able to engage in “proprietary” trading—punting their own capital—though they could continue to offer investment banking for clients, such as underwriting securities, making markets and advising on mergers.

The second part focuses on size. Banks already face a 10% cap on national market share of deposits. This would be updated to include other liabilities, namely wholesale funding. The aim is to limit concentration, which has increased greatly over the past 20 years, accelerating during the crisis as healthy banks bought sick ones. The four largest banks now hold more than half of the industry’s assets.

These proposals will be wrapped into a broader set of reforms that is grinding its way through Congress. A bill passed by the House of Representatives, but not yet taken up by the Senate, gives regulators the right to limit the scope and scale of firms that pose a “grave” threat to stability. The new plan goes further, requiring them to do so. It is also more radical than the increased capital charges for trading assets proposed by the Basel Committee of international bank supervisors.

The administration had until now seemed content to shackle the banks with tougher regulation, including higher capital ratios, rather than breaking them up or limiting what they could do. But it has warmed to the thinking of Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman and Obama adviser, who has long advocated more dramatic measures—indeed, Mr Obama dubbed the latest reforms “the Volcker rule”. Intriguingly, the rethink was prompted as much by banks’ behaviour over the past year as by their pre-crisis sins. In explaining their rationale, officials pointed to the fat profits some banks made in capital markets in 2009 while benefiting from state guarantees. On the same day as the plan’s unveiling, Goldman Sachs reported better than expected results, thanks largely to outsized investment-banking fees.

With details yet to be hammered out, the plan’s effects are hard to gauge. Commercial banks may be unfazed by curbs on trading. Most have already pared their prop-trading desks. JPMorgan Chase derives a mere 1% of its revenues (and 3-5% of its investment bank’s) from such business. But having to divest Highbridge, a big hedge-fund firm, would be “horrible”, says a JPMorgan insider. The bank thinks that may not be necessary since its capital is not invested directly in Highbridge’s funds. But no one is sure.

Things could be trickier for investment banks that became bank holding companies during the crisis. Having built up its deposit base, Morgan Stanley would face a hard choice between remaining a bank and going back to being a broker that can trade freely. Goldman, which gets 10% or more of its revenue from prop-trading, will surely do the latter. That raises an awkward question: once it is cut loose from banking restrictions, and from Fed funding, would it not continue to enjoy implicit state backing? Would it really be allowed to fail if it blew up? Officials argue that other reforms, such as central clearing for derivatives, will make it easier to let such firms die. Convincing markets of that will be difficult.

Enforcement could be tricky, too. Regulators will struggle to differentiate between proprietary trades and those for clients (someone is on the other side of every trade) or hedging. Getting it wrong would be counter-productive: preventing banks from hedging their risks would make them less stable.

Moreover, the plan is unlikely to help much in solving the too-big-to-fail problem. Even shorn of prop-trading, the biggest firms will still be huge (though also less prone to the conflicts of interest that come with the ability to trade against clients). As for the new limits on non-deposit funding, officials admit that these are designed to prevent further growth rather than to force firms to shrink.

They may, in any case, be pointed at the wrong target. Curbing the use of deposits in “casino” banking is an understandable impulse, but some of the worst blow-ups of the crisis involved firms that were not deposit-takers, such as American International Group and Lehman Brothers. And much of the losses stemmed not from trading but from straightforward bad lending (think of Washington Mutual, Wachovia and HBOS).

That just leaves the question of whether the plan will make it through Congress. Scott Garrett, a congressman, captured the mood on the resurgent right when he branded the proposals “a transparent attempt at faux populism.” Republicans are torn between distaste for government heavy-handedness and reluctance to be seen giving scorned bankers an easy time.

Mr Obama certainly cannot be accused of going soft on moneymen. In December, Mr Volcker complained that the reforms proposed so far had been “like a dimple.” With his eponymous rule now on the table, he has changed his tune.

How to Squander the Presidency in One Year or Less

Published on Friday, January 22, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

How to Squander the Presidency in One Year

Hey, Obama: How About Now? Can You Hear Us Now?

by David Michael Green

There's only one political party in the entire world that is so inept, cowardly and bungling that it could manage to simultaneously lick the boots of Wall Street bankers and then get blamed by the voters for being flaming revolutionary socialists.

It's the same party that has allowed the opposition to go on a thirty year scorched earth campaign, stealing everything in sight from middle and working class voters, and yet successfully claim to be protecting ‘real Americans' from out-of-touch elites.

It's the same party that could run a decorated combat hero against a war evader in 1972, only to be successfully labeled as national security wimps.

Just to be sure, it then did the exact same thing again in 2004.

It's the same party that stood by silently while two presidential elections in a row were stolen away from them.

How ‘bout dem Dems, eh?

One year ago today, there was real question as to what could possibly be the future of the Republican Party in America. That's changed a bit now.

And, speaking of ‘change', the one kind that Barack Obama did actually deliver this year was not that which most voters had in mind after listening to him use the word incessantly, all throughout 2008. Obama and his colleagues have now managed to bring the future of the Democratic Party into question, just a year after it won two smashing victories in a row.

Personally, I'm not real bothered by that. Today's Democrats are, almost without exception, embarrassing hacks who deserved to get stomped a long time ago.

What really upsets me, however, is what these fools have allowed to be done to the name of progressivism, and to the country.

Barack Obama has now, in just a year's time, become the single most inept president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been pissed away so rapidly, and what's more in the context of so much national urgency and crisis. It's astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in a single year.

It was hilarious, of course, when Michelle Bachmann invoked the Charge of the Light Brigade at a rally against "Obama's" (has he ever really owned it?) health care "initiative" (isn't that too strong a word to use?), quite oblivious to the fact that the actual historical event was one of history's greatest debacles. Obama, on the other hand, seems to be actually reliving the famous cock-up in the flesh. Except, of course, that he doesn't really "charge" at anything. He just talks about things, thinks about things a real long time, defers to others on things, and waits around for things to maybe happen.

This week, though, something actually did happen. Alas, not precisely what the president had in mind, however.

But the election in Massachusetts was only slightly less inevitable than the sun rising in the east each morning. It was the product of an amazing collection of abysmal choices and practices over the last year that has produced a meltdown of equally amazing proportions for this president and his party. It is fitting that it comes on the anniversary of the president's inauguration, a moment filled with so much hope for so many just a year ago.

What has Obama - this Conan O'Brien of presidents - done wrong in order to produce this devastating outcome? The short answer is: Just about everything imaginable.

More specifically:

* He does not lead. Americans, especially in times of crisis, want their daddy-president to pick a point on the horizon and lead them to it. Often - especially in the short term - they don't even care that much which point it is. They will happily follow a president whose policies they oppose if he will but lead.

* And if he will demonstrate some conviction. I have never seen a president so utterly lacking in passion. This man literally doesn't even seem to care about himself, let alone this or that policy issue. He doesn't seem to have any strong opinions on anything, a sure prescription for presidential failure.

* He has therefore let Congress ‘lead' on nearly every issue, another surefire mistake. Instead of demanding that they pass real stimulus legislation - which would have really stimulated the economy, big-time, and right now - he let those dickheads on the Hill just load up a big pork party blivet of a bill with all the pet projects they could find, designed purely to benefit their personal standing with the voters at home, rather than to actually produce jobs for Americans. And on health care, his signature issue, he did the same thing. "You guys write it, and I'll sign the check." Could there possibly be a greater prescription for failure than allowing a bunch of the most venal people on the planet to cobble together a 2,000 page monstrosity that entirely serves their interests and those of the people whose campaign bribes put them in office?

* Well, yes, now that you mention it. If you really want to bring your government crashing to the ground, why not spend endless months negotiating with vicious thugs, who will never vote for your legislation anyhow, because they are so entirely devoted to your destruction that they're willing to call you a granny murderer? What a great and winning strategy!

* Another possible strategic move even stupider than deferring to Congress to write major legislation is to cozy up with the least popular people on the planet - including, in fact, the real-life granny killers. Got an economy that is so raw it's leaving thousands in literal peril of losing their lives? Why not draft some legislation to bail-out the people who created that mess and guarantee that they retain their multimillion dollar bonuses?!?! You know, the same folks who are always talking about how great capitalism is and how important it is to take risks! The same ones who are always telling us how awful the government is - the same government that saved them from extinction. Those folks. That's right, bail out with outrageous bonuses the very people who need it least and who caused billions of people around the planet to suffer, while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves! That'll raise your presidential job approval ratings every time! And while you're at it, bring in the much beloved health insurance and pharmaceutical corporate lobbyists, and negotiate a deal with them to craft your high profile health care legislation! What voter can't get behind that?

* Another brilliant presidential tactic is to be such a Mr. Happy Nice Face that you acknowledge no enemies for the country, or even yourself. Not the health care corporate vampires who suck the blood out of Americans from San Diego to Bangor, providing absolutely no value-added health service whatsoever, while denying treatment to deathly ill human beings at every opportunity, all to rake in billions more in profits. Not the reckless pirates on Wall Street who bet all our money on insane gambles that wrecked the global economy, took government bail-out money to survive, and yet are still drowning in bonuses as rewards. Not the Republican Party who spent three decades downsizing the middle class, plunging the country into wars based on lies, deregulating every protection in sight, fattening up corporate cronies, wrecking the environment, trashing the Constitution and polarizing the country politically. And not even a catastrophic climate disaster speeding toward the planet with relentless determination. No! We must all be happy and talk nice! No bad guys. Not even the bad guys can be bad guys.

* While you're at it, if you're trying to run the most failed presidency ever, a really good idea is to campaign in the grandest terms possible, and then deliver squat. You know, talk about bending the arc of history. Invoke Martin Luther King's dream and his struggles and even those of the slaves. Ring the big bells of generational calling. Remind voters every thirty seconds that the country badly needs "Change!". Then get elected and turn around and continue the policies of your hated predecessor in every meaningful policy area. Only with less conviction. People will love that.

* A related brilliant move is to mobilize a giant army of passionate volunteers dedicated to putting you in the White House, and then do nothing with them once you get there, other than taking them completely for granted and never calling upon them to do anything in support of your agenda. Be sure to deflate their enthusiasm in every way possible.

* Even more importantly, if you're trying to run your presidency into the ground you'll definitely want to avoid mobilizing the general public behind your agenda. To make sure that you don't repeat the great legislative victories of FDR or LBJ or (unfortunately) Reagan or (really unfortunately) Little Bush, never use their method of appealing directly to the people. Never express your legislative program as a moral imperative, a great calling to the nation. Never attempt to rally the public behind your cause. Never express any urgency. And never call upon them to demand that Congress pass your bills. Then, you can rest assured they won't!

* And let's take it up a whole ‘nuther level, while we're on the subject. A successful president is one who articulates a strong and compelling narrative for the nation. So, in your quest to avoid rising even to mediocrity, be sure to leave a great big gaping canyon where that whole narrative thing is supposed to go. No New Deal, no Great Society, no New Frontier or War on Terror for you. Nope! Just a thousand little projects with little non-solutions to big problems. Hey, why not inject yourself into Cambridge, Massachusetts community police politics while you're at it! Or the New York State Democratic Party gubernatorial primary! Or you could deliberate for weeks about which breed of dog to get for your kids! That's a great use of the president's political capital!

* As long as you're walking away from the grand narrative, why not let the opposition define you as well? Let them say anything imaginable about you, and never respond. You're a socialist! No, you're a fascist! No, you're both! At the same time, no less! You're a granny killer! You're not really even an American! You're taking over the US for the Muslims! You're a massive taxer and spender! You're running around the world, apologizing for America everywhere you go! No worries. Just remember the golden rule, and your presidency is sure to sink: Never engage, never respond, never preempt, never attack, never fight back.

* In general, you'll also want to take the most important power the president has - the bully pulpit - and totally piss it away. Appear everywhere at once, all the time, saying lots of nice words, about a thousand different issues. But never with passion, never with compelling simplicity, never with repetition, and never with urgency. Pretty soon you'll turn being everywhere into being nowhere. Everyone one will tune out your ubiquitous self. Give up the high moral ground which is the most important asset of the office you hold, and you'll make sure that no one ever listens to you anymore. You will persuade the public of nothing. Except that you are irrelevant.

* But you can do better still. Help your enemies, so that they can crush you more effectively! Start by not even realizing they are your enemies. Then, treat them with greater respect than your friends, even though they've run the country over a cliff. Defer to them at every opportunity. Consult with them even as they insult you to your face. Allow them to run Congress, even though they have small minorities in both houses. Never force them to vote against simple, popular legislation. Never call their bluffs. Never associate them with the destruction they've caused. Never label them the treasonous hypocritical liars that they are. Help them to resuscitate the comatose near-corpse of their political party, just before it's about to die, so it can rise up and savage you.

* Another great trick for crashing a presidency is to pick all the wrong priorities to ‘fight' for. Imagine, for example, if FDR had substituted for his ‘Day of Infamy' speech right after Pearl Harbor a ringing call for an American revolution in cobbler technology! Yes, that's right, in response to the devastating surprise attack by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan, what if the president urgently called upon us all to start making really amazing shoes?! Before it's too late, and we all get blisters on our feet! Similarly, Mr. Obama, your spending the last year on (jive) health care and jetting around the world dipping your toes into foreign policy problems while Americans are losing their jobs and their houses is a fine way to kill your presidency. Guaranteed to work every time.

* And, finally, perhaps the most important thing one can do - and the thing that helps explain many of the other items above - is to adopt really, really pathetic policies. If you're doing a stimulus bill, for example, make sure that it's too little money, not targeted at real stimulative levers in the economy, costs a lot, doesn't kick in for a year or two, gives away about a third of the money to ineffective pet projects for Republican while none of them vote for it anyhow, and leaves the unemployment rate stuck at a miserable ten percent. Or, if you're doing a bail-out of the banks for the purpose of producing the liquidity essential to restarting the economy, let them take bonuses as big as they want, and don't actually require that they loan out to anyone the money you've given them. Or, how about spending nearly all your political capital on ‘health care' legislation, which is really an insurance company boondoggle bill instead? That's really what the people want, eh? No wonder Obama's not out there writing the narrative, fighting the good fight or crushing his enemies. Even he can't get excited about his own priorities, so extraordinarily abysmal are they.

All of this represents the best prescription I can imagine for wrecking a presidency, and Obama has followed it with exacting precision. Indeed, doing so would appear to be his only real passion. It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within.

And thus - while anything's possible, of course - I am hard pressed to see how the Obama administration is anything but finished. Consider his options from here.

He could turn to the right, like Clinton did in 1994. But the first problem is that he's already there. If you look carefully at his policies, he is basically running George Bush's third term. Regressives (conveniently) forget that. They call him weak on national security, even while he dramatically escalates the war in Afghanistan, hardly draws down in Iraq, breaks his own promise to close Gitmo, and smashes through the $700 billion mark in military spending for the first time, not even counting Afghanistan's costs. They ignore his Bush-cloned policies on state secrets, renditions, executive power and other civil liberties issues. They forget that Bush's health care bill was far more socialistic and far more fiscally irresponsible than Obama's, and that his bail-outs and stimulus actions were almost identical. So, in short, for Obama to turn to starboard at this point would literally require him to outflank the GOP to its right. Moreover, the Limbaughs and Becks and Palins would still excoriate him, no matter what. Worse still, such policies would only make the lives of ordinary Americans a lot worse, just as they have been doing for thirty years now. So what could be gained by a turn to the right?

Second, he could go small-bore, as Clinton also did in the 1990s. But, of course, these aren't the 1990s. FDR didn't win four terms during a Great Depression and a world war by focusing on school uniforms and V-chips. This is not the 1930s or 1940s, but it's close. People are hurting, frightened and angry. Obama is suffering badly already because he is not addressing their very tangible concerns. More of the same policy-wise will produce more of the same politically. Going this route, he'd be lucky if the public was kind enough to let him finish his single term as a James Buchanan wannabe, then go home.

The obvious solution, of course, would be a sharp turn to the left. Go where the real solutions are. Fight the good fight. Call liars ‘liars' and thieves ‘thieves'. Do the people's business. Become their advocate against the monsters bleeding them dry. Create jobs. Build infrastructure. Do real national health care. End the wars. Dramatically slash military spending. Produce actual educational reform. Launch a massive green energy/jobs program. Get serious about global warming. Kick ass on campaign finance reform. Fight for gay rights. Restore the New Deal era regulatory framework and expand it. Restore a fair taxation structure. Rewrite trade agreements that undermine American jobs. Rebuild unions. Fill the spate of vacancies in the federal judiciary, and load those seats up with progressives. Rally the public to demand that Congress act on your agenda. Humiliate the regressives in and out of the GOP for their abysmal sell-out policies.

All of this could be done, and most of it would be very popular, especially if it was backed by an aggressive and righteously angry Oval Office advocate for the people who knew how to use the bully pulpit to shape the narrative, to market ideas, and to mobilize public support.

But I doubt Obama has anything like the constitution for that sort of presidency. I think his personal disposition is so strongly controlling of his politics that he would rather preside as a three year lame-duck over a failed one-term presidency, than actually throw an elbow or two and make anyone uncomfortable. Think how unpleasant it would be.

Moreover, by blundering during the only chance he'll ever have at introducing his presidency, he's now created an additional set of problems for himself which may well be insurmountable, even if he were to now try to live up to his campaign billing. He needs Democratic votes in Congress to do much of anything, but they're all focused on the looming tsunami of next November. The very same people who might have swallowed hard and reluctantly followed the lead of inspirational new president Obama one year ago, today will join everyone else in the world and spit in the eye of useless, feeble, washed-up Barack. He's got zero leverage over his own party in Congress now. As for the public, it's gonna be pretty hard to now market himself as the great enemy of the people's enemies, when he's just finished a year of making secret sweetheart deals that benefit Wall Street bankers, health insurance pirates, and pharmaceutical predators, all while leaving his own base and the public he's supposed to be serving out in the rain. Politicians can reinvent themselves, but you need time and there are certain limits of plausibility that cannot be ignored, any more than you can ignore the laws of physics.

Of course, I don't give a shit about Barack Obama anymore, other than my desire that really ugly things happen to him as payment in kind for the grandest act of betrayal we've seen since Benedict Arnold did his thing. But what about the country?

Not so good there, either, I'm afraid. What happens when you have two parties to choose from, and one of them wrecks the country with dramatically evil policies so radical even backward America hates them, but then you turn to the other party, which spends an entire year on the campaign trail promising change, only to turn out nearly identical to the first lot when in government? What do you do?

One option is to find another party. To some extent that is happening, but absolutely not where it should be. The tea partyers are the ‘alternative' vision for salvation in today's America. (Very) unfortunately, they are not alternative in any sense, have almost no coherent vision whatsoever, and - as the possible third right-wing party for voters to choose from, out of three, obviously offer zero salvation whatsoever. All the tea party lunatics seem to know is that they don't like taxes and they don't like federal spending. But they can't even tell you what they'd cut if they actually controlled the government. My guess is that it would be nothing, just like the Republicans before them, or else they'd slash entitlement spending, which would surely make them one of the flashiest flashes ever to get royally panned by the public.

The other option, which the voters are now exercising, is to continue a process begun in 2006 of voting for the party which is not the party in power. Today, that means Republicans, as witnessed in Virginia, New Jersey and now Massachusetts. The absurdity of this, of course, is that it was these exact same people who created this astonishingly thorough mess we find ourselves in. What is Mitch McConnell or John Boehner or Sarah Palin going to do for Americans who don't have jobs? Cut taxes they no longer pay (and thus also further increase the national debt, by the way)? What will they do for those same folks who've lost their health insurance? Kill Democratic plans, even when they're nothing but corporate giveaways anyhow?

Americans will simply be more sick, more broke and more unemployed two, four or six years from now than they are at this moment, if they put the Republicans back in control of the government.

Of course, there's one other possibility, which is that this time the Cheney Party goes balls-to-the-wall, bringing down on our heads a full-on fascist dictatorship, serving corporate interests in total, and likely launching a couple of good wars abroad to complement the complete repression of dissent and freedom of expression at home.

Ridiculous? I try pretty hard every day - and it takes some work - to keep my most apocalyptic totalitarian nightmares for this country in check. But think about this chronological sequence for a second: The Democrats get killed in November for doing nothing while the public suffers. But they are still seen as the party in power in 2012, so they get killed even worse, with Obama sent packing and Palin or her equivalent moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But the new radical GOP regime's policies are even more detrimental to voters than Bush's or Obama's. Maybe the public is distracted for a year or two by some bullshit foreign policy ‘crisis' or another, but pretty soon they're getting real restless. After about six years now of suffering badly, they're getting real surly, and ‘anti-incumbent' doesn't begin to describe the mood of the country. Now they really want some serious change.

Of course, anything can happen - but which part of that sequence seems improbable? And if the answer is none, then the salient question becomes: What does the regime do at that point, faced with an angry mob? What are the Dick Cheneys and Sarah Palins of this world committed to? What are they capable of when pressed?

I don't think those questions really require a response. I think we all know pretty well the answers.

This is the country that Obama - the great Hope guy - is bequeathing us.

Dante said "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality".

Better stock up on the mist sprayers, Barack.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.