Sunday, June 28, 2009

I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you

Well, actually, I'm not.

Since the news that Obama plans to issue an executive order permitting terror suspects to be held without a trial date, or really much hope of one, happened to accidentally come out on a summer weekend, I wanted to make sure you saw it.

CC
who still thinks he was a better choice than McCain, but hasn't forgotten what it was like to be a Hillary supporter early last year when Hillary was "just more of the same" while Obama was made of kittens and fairydust and was going to change politics forever and ever.

Ps. While I'm in a pissy mood anyway, here's Obama's current scorecard on campaign promises, and here's a guy arguing that the promises kept/promises broken record looks remarkably like Obama is only keeping the promises that give him more power and ignoring campaign promises like "posting bills on the internet for public comment," which admittedly seems like a much better idea if you are unfamiliar with, say, youtube commenters.

Anyway, compared to a Cheney-style power grab, it's really not that big of a deal, but still...

4 comments:

Joel Monka said...

That scorecard missed one: NAFTA And taxing healthcare benefits is not a done deal, but it's on the table- after he crucified McCain with it.

I can't yet comment on your remarks about the primaries without conflating it with the election we just had in Salt Lake.

PG said...

"Since the news that Obama plans to issue an executive order permitting terror suspects to be held without a trial date, or really much hope of one, happened to accidentally come out on a summer weekend"

I assume that's a sarcastic "accidentally" and you actually believe that having the news come out on a summer weekend was deliberate. However, I'm not exactly sure what the "news," at least as released by the White House, is. According to the article, "White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. ... These officials, as well as others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations."

That doesn't look like an artfully-timed news release by the Obama Administration.

And the scorecard doesn't look like Obama keeps only the promises that give him more power. How does banning lobbyist gifts to executive employees; requiring all new executive employees to sign a form stating that their hiring was not based on political affiliation/ contributions; restoring the 30-day time frame for former presidents to review records before they are released; granting Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba; ... well you get the idea -- how do any of those promises kept constitute Obama's having more power, while the broken promise of ending the income tax for seniors making less than $50k a year* would constitute Obama's having less power?

* Which I always thought was a phenomenally stupid idea -- the median earnings for a man working a year-round, full-time job are only $45k, so why should retired people with even more money than that be exempted from taxes?

Regarding Joel's points:

Everything is on the table regarding health care reform, possibly even abandoning the public option that is the only thing that would constitute actual "reform." Maybe some folks missed the multiple times during the campaign when Obama refused to take things off the table, including talking to the Axis of Evil sans preconditions. He's not much of a "We'll never do that, ever ever!" kind of guy.

As for NAFTA, the idea of making a drastic tightening of trade conditions during a severe recession is giving me a Smoot-Hawley flashback. I wish people would be more realistic about what is possible for Obama to do in the post-Sept. 15 economic downturn.

kim said...

Hi Joel!
*waves*
Nice meeting you at GA, however briefly!

That Obameter shows more promises kept than broken, by a long shot. I'm not happy with everything Obama is doing, but he does have some really complex waters to navigate. I'm sure glad I don't have his job!
But I would like my partner, Joyce, to have an hour to talk to Obama about economics. I think Obama has drunk the right-wing koolaid about how it works, and needs some perspective.

word verification: imoingly
What a great word -- what would it mean?

Joel Monka said...

Kim- Yes, it WAS nice! I've planned to blog about all the poeple I finally met, but I'm still sick.