american-ombudsman
I realize it has been a while…
…but to be honest, I haven’t been this pissed off since Obama was inaugurated. However, this week, I believe the current administration has hit two very critical impasses. I see a very real possibility of this president simultaneously approaching road blocks on two issues very important to his progressive base, torture and the public option.
I guess the main reason I decided to write this today was yet another Friday night news dump from Holder’s Justice Department. It is a practice made popular by the Bush administration PR people, just release the worst pieces of news on Friday night. Maybe they get talked about on Friday night shows, but they probably miss the Saturday papers, then get covered on Sunday in ink and on the morning shows, but very rarely does a story survive all the way to Monday. A more cynical person than myself might go as far as to say that Tiger Woods’ high powered PR people employed this very tactic this week. Obama’s people came in to power claiming they would get away from this type of media manipulation, but this past one was just the latest in a string of Friday night press releases in the first year of this administration. This administration has strayed from their campaign promises of transparency time and time again, and this occasion just seemed to be the proverbial straw on the camel’s back for me.
Of course, that is just a general frustration that has built up over the past year, but what was in this particular Friday dump was exceptionally upsetting to anyone that claims to be a civil libertarian. The Justice Department attempted to slip by the American people, through shady PR tactics, the fact that they have decided that the lawyers that justified torture techniques employed under the Bush administration are guilty only of bad judgment. Now, I don’t have any high powered constitutional law degrees, but it doesn’t take much of a scholar to find on google the fact that water boarding has been considered torture since the Spanish Inquisition. Dick Cheney was on ABC just this past weekend saying, “I was a big supporter of the water boarding.” The man was on national television advertising that he had committed a war crime, daring the new Justice Department to do something about it. Sadly, today we know who has won this high stakes game of chicken. Darth Vader himself. I will find it extraordinarily embarrassing if another country has to hold hearings on whether or not our leaders violated the Geneva Conventions, which by the way, the Yoo memo, clearly states doesn’t apply to the war on terror. With that kind of legal advice, no wonder we are where we are in this situation right now. The rule of law has taken a beating in this country since 9/11. Obama banned the techniques employed by the Bush people as one of his first moves in office, there is just a logical disconnect between that position and DICK being on ABC openly saying he made our soldiers water board detainees. If nothing happens to these war criminals, we will be throwing out precedent we set at the Nuremburg trials when we rejected the Nazi lawyers defense of “bad judgment.” This situation clearly frustrates me, more on this in the weeks to come.
Obama pretty much ran on health care reform, and it is a widely held opinion that the best way to really reform the American health care system is to offer a public insurance option that private companies must compete with to keep prices down. With the story coming out of California in the last ten days of a Wellpoint company trying to price out a lot of its older policy holders with a rate hike as large as 39% in some cases, the time for the public option is now. For supporters of the public option, there have been promising developments in the past few days. As of last night, 20 senators had signed a letter proposing that Senate Democrats pass health care reform with a public option through a process called budget reconciliation. Although the Bush administration was able to pass a bunch of legislation through this process with only a simple majority (51 votes) on the final votes, they had to get several Democrats in line to make procedural votes on what to include on the final bill before it is voted on UP or DOWN. My understanding is that there will not be the procedural votes needed to even get the public option included on the final bill. Not only did the Democrats miss their opportunity while holding a 60 seat super majority, but they are beginning to look weak and Republicans smell blood. In the end, I am sure Obama will push through a reform bill so his people have something to hold up while they’re campaigning in the midterms this year. But a reform bill without a strong public option will be ineffective at best. I just hope the Democrats in the Senate can get their shit together and pass something before November. If not, they just don’t deserve to be there, and I’m sure they won’t like the results of the upcoming elections. It is already going to be a tough year for incumbents, please don’t shoot yourselves in the foot.
It is going to be a shit show running up to this election cycle. I just want to get one thing off my chest before I am done for the day. The Republicans were called out this week by the conservative newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, for trashing the stimulus in national statements while also going around their districts touting the benefits of the stimulus funds that they unanimously rejected. Even old man Murdoch appears to have had enough of the hypocrisy. The Republicans have made the political calculation that they need to become obstructionists while in the minority. They have ground our political system to a halt, and made it clear as day that they want no part in solving America’s problems. I feel sorry for anyone that rewards the GOP in the next election cycle with any of their votes.
