Tainted Saints

Tom Friedman [on Sunday had] some very harsh words for both the Israelis and Palestinians, both of whom — he claims — are not serious about reaching a peace agreement.  As a result, these are the principles which Friedman — rather surprisingly — advocates the U.S. should follow:

Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”

Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.” . . .

If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us.

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A Goldman executive as COO of the SEC’s enforcement division.  This is all consistent with the observation of Desmond Lachman — previously chief emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and IMF deputy director — regarding “Goldman Sachs’s seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs,” which he cited as but one of the many “parallels between U.S. policymaking and what we see in emerging markets.

Read entire article here…

This is for the legion of folks out there who bristle every time President Obama is criticized from the Left, as though it’s some kind of betrayal…

“Thousands of Americans marched in Washington yesterday to demand a fulfillment of Obama’s long-stated and oft-repeated commitments on issues of gay equality, in what the NYT calls ”the largest demonstration for gay rights here in nearly a decade.”  That protest was preceded the day before by a virtual consensus 0f gay rights activists expressing extreme disappointment  and frustration with Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday night, where he merely repeated the same pledges he’s been making for two years with no added specificity or time commitment…”

Read more…

Yesterday, Joe Lieberman quietly added an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill, with the tacit approval of the White House, that serves to “‘legalize suppression’ of evidence of American war crimes” by blocking the release of abuse photos:

“…our torture regime was systematic, pervasive, brutal, fatal, and — becuase it was the by-product of conscious policies set at the highest levels of government — common across America’s “War on Terror” detention regime.  These photographs would have documented those vital facts; combated the false denials from torture apologists; fueled the momentum for accountability; and revealed, in graphic and unavoidable terms, what was truly done by America’s government.  But a Democratic-led Congress, at the urging of a Democratic President, are now taking extraordinary steps — including an act of Congress which has no purpose other than to suppress evidence of America’s war crimes — to ensure that this evidence never sees the light of day.”

Frankly, I’d rather have an openly lawless President who makes little attempt to hide blatant violations of the Consititution, than a faux liberal President who gets away with the exact same shit and worse just because he’s more subtle about it, and he’s a Democrat (Bill Clinton flashback, anyone?)

“…the Obama administration has aggressively defended, justified and embraced the overwhelming bulk of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies — the exact ones that caused liberals and Democrats to object so vehemently over the last eight years:  imprisonment with no trials, maintaining a legal black hole at Bagram, military commissions, renditions, warrantless eavesdropping, claims of state secrets to prevent judicial review of presidential lawbreaking, legal immunity for all but the lowest-level war criminals, abuse-guaranteeing Patriot Act powers, impenetrable walls of secrecy in the national security context.”

The fact that the Washington Post is aiding and abetting Obama is no different than what Judy Miller did for Bush at the New York Times.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/06/obama/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/30/iran/index.html