What’s your question for President Obama? I want to know how it feels to cover up for this:
The court papers describe horrific treatment in secret prisons. Mr. Mohamed claimed, for example, that during his detention in Morocco, “he was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution, and death.”
Explain that for me.
Mr. President, how can we be expected to trust two architects of the broken financial system (Messers. Summers & Geithner) to fix the ongoing bank crisis?
I’ve been wondering the same thing myself. The presence of these people in such prominent roles is downright scary.
He’s come out with quite an aggressive, combative tone hasn’t he?
kicking ass
jesus people.
I always notice his wedding ring.
NIE! NIE! READ IT, Mr. President!
four star answer on iran.
Good answer on flag-draped coffins. Perhaps that’s the same rationale on the state secrets thing.
Pet peeve: is it really pronounced “Tall-EEE-bahn”? That always sounds weird, to me.
Yes, that’s how it’s pronounced. As a rule of thumb, most systems of transliteration from non-Latin scripts use roughly the same set of symbols for vowel sounds as in western European languages like German and Spanish. The main thing to watch out for with Arabic is that O and U are both used to represent a sound like the ‘oo’ in ‘book’. That’s why, before the press settled on “Osama”, the government had been spelling it “Usama” in its internal documents.
Of course, “Taliban” is a Pashto word, derived from the Arabic “talib” — the -an ending is the plural suffix. (The Arabic plural would be “tullab”, but I leave the amazingly ornate triliteral consonantal root system of Arabic as an exercise for the reader, because I can’t claim more than a superficial understanding of Arabic morphology.) The word literally means “students”, in the plural: you have one talib, and two or more taliban.
While I’m normally a stickler for correct pronunciation of foreign words, I don’t make much of an effort in this case, because my very existence as an agnostic offends the Taliban. So you can call them what you like as far as I’m concerned. Personally, I prefer the pronunciation “sociopathic assholes”.
Just tuned in – any Helen Thomas questions 🙂
Right now!
Question about Pakistan maintaining safe havens for terrorists, and if he knows of any country in the M.E. with nukes.
(I’m assuming she means other than Israel)
woo hoo!
Helen is getting old. I’m glad she’s around for this though.
No she wanted Obama to mention Israel specifically if I heard her underlying question.
She was not pleased with the answer & tried to get him to respond to that (I believe) when she realized he was finished, but was cut off as he moved on to the next questioner.
He cut her off and knew what he was doing.
I think we saw the same thing & I do believe we are not blind, nor deaf.
It`s too bad that Helen Thomas, though he did acknowledge her warmly, was treated that way.
I cannot figure out why the next reporter called on, would not say, “Mr. President, Ms. Thomas is still waiting for a full answer.”
He did take several minutes (6/7) to answer each of the first three or four questions.
I think she was “Bushed’.
Obama is, after all, just a politician. An above average attractive politician, but first and foremost, just a politician.
True enough. Sigh.
I think she meant to include Israel. And she asked point blank about the Pakistani government’s involvement in harboring terrorists. Everybody else dances around that one, including Obama.
His bailout package darn well BETTER get credit flowing. Otherwise what’s the point?
Aw, God! A-Rod! No!
Sports questions? What a waste of a question.
At least they’ve moved on to baseball and aren’t asking him about college football anymore.
No prosecution = no crime. QED.
Fucking lawyers…
‘Change we can believe in’ is going to haunt this fool like herpes unless he starts to get the important stuff right.
Honestly, He’s also gotta explain to us why pissing on this economic wildfire is going to work and I am not satisfied with the “at least we’ll have new bridges if it doesn’t work” reason. IMHO, in less than one year, Road crews (etc) will find themselves being paid the cost of a loaf of bread as hyper inflation makes their contract-driven salaries worthless.
Sure this may be the best action to take if you must take one on a budget, but it doesn’t mean it has even a small chance of being effective given the mountain of debt and related instruments that have essentially come due. The numbers just don’t make sense.
As Boo has mentioned, the scale of this package may be off by a few fold. I can’t see it coming close to having any real effect until it is at least an order bigger(!): We keep talking about stimulus in proportion to our GDP. What does that have to do with anything? It has to be taken in proportion to the total bad debt. The worst number aggregating global debt and derivatives is over $1,000 Trillion dollars. We need to be talking about percentages of that number, applied globally, in concert, spent by all real players. If no one can afford that, why try?
It’s become quite obvious that the right actions will not even be discussed because they don’t hold out some fantasy of eventual taxpayer profit or magically fix everything for pennies.
The game is over.
Obama had his very limited chances, and it is indeed unfair that he was greeted with these conditions upon his inaugural. But I am afraid he’s blowing it. Bigtime.
Honestly, he never had a chance.
I’m afraid Bush’s “madness” was always as more about this coming crisis than the now obvious red herring of ‘terror’..
From an article I wrote in late 2002:
C’mon – are you telling me lone nutballs have been getting the signal right for almost a decade and the gov’t isn’t even thinking about this stuff?
I honestly wonder what they think they are up to in DC.
WE’RE DOOMED.
Nope, just in for an unambiguously rocky ride.
Unfortunately, the 10 year old boran2 boy couldn’t deal with someone other than him having mom and dad’s attention. I’ve missed a fair amount of the presentation.
My sympathies, Boran. I know the feeling. Our youngest daughter’s need for attention is logarithmically related to how interesting, urgent, important or even career-breaking we find something else.
The bank bailout is going to piss people off because it won’t require lending.
To be fair, to whom would the banks issue loans? A large part of the reason for our current crisis is that everyone who wanted a loan, including a great many people who shouldn’t have received loans — and I divide credit for that, no pun intended, equally between predatory lenders and foolish consumers — is already up to their eyeballs in debt.
Sooner or later, we’re going to have to move away from financing our booms with credit if we want to stop having the resulting busts.
“we’re clear about the fact that a nuclear Iran could set off a nuclear arms race in the region that would be profoundly destabilizing.”“
Ridiculous, illogical, and dishonest. Lets say, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that Iran IS pursuing nuclear weapons. He doesn’t think maybe the fact that Israel has hundreds of nukes, has been acting increasingly irrational, and has actually threatened to attack Iran, including explicit threats of a nuclear attack? How can it be Iran that could set off a nuclear arms race in the region when it is surrounded by countries that have significant nuclear arsenals, some of which are not all that stable – Russia, Pakistan, India, China, and the aforementioned Israel, unquestionably the greatest threat.
And then, of course, there are the threats from the United States, and the evidence having nuclear weapons just might be a deterrent.
The reality, of course, is that there is absolutely no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and abundant evidence that it does not. Iran is acting 100% within its rights under the NPT. It has every right and reason to develop nuclear technology for domestic civilian use, which is exactly what it is doing. Weapons grade Uranium is around 90% U-235, fuel grade typically around 3-5%. Iran is enriching to the 3-5% level, and has committed no violations of the NPT.
And so what if Iran were to get a couple of nuclear weapons in 5-10 years? Contrary to the propaganda, the leaders of Iran are not a bunch of wild-eyed nihilists who are going to ensure turning their country into a series of glass-lined craters by launching a few pathetic bombs at Israel, or stupider yet, the U.S. The Iranians are rational actors who are not interested in territorial expansion or military domination. Israel, not so much.
Should have proofread better. Let me try again:
Lets say, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that Iran IS pursuing nuclear weapons. He doesn’t think maybe the fact that Israel has hundreds of nukes, has been acting increasingly irrational, and has actually threatened to attack Iran, including explicit threats of a nuclear attack might have convinced Iranian leaders that was a good idea – you know, as a deterrent?
Exactly.
My take on Washington and Iran is that Iran has been so badly demonised in the US media for so long (since the fall of the Shah and most of all the hostages at the US Embassy)that even if an American politician knows the truth about Iran they feel they cannot afford politically to break with the hegemonic paradigm.
Whether Obama believes Iran is a threat is hard to fathom. At least he did make overtures last year about talking to Iran’s leadership.
Well, yes. Iran is a stable, peaceful country that has not attacked or invaded or made an aggressive move toward another country in nearly 300 years, and there is no evidence that they are interested in breaking this record. Its leaders are competent, rational actors who are interested in the advancement and security of their country. Israel, on the other hand, has been by orders of magnitude the most brutally aggressive country in the region throughout its history, and of course also the greatest destabilizing factor.
As for Iran’s “funding of terrorism”, both Hezbollah and Hamas are entirely home grown groups that exist only and as a direct result of Israeli occupation of their land. Iran’s “support” for Hamas is minor, and Hamas will continue to thrive with or without it as long as Israel holds the Palestinian territories in its grip and oppresses the Palestinian people. It support of Hezballah is neither as great nor as critical to Hezballah as propaganda would have us believe. In any case, Hezballah is arguably not a terrorist group, but a legitimate resistance and security organization (I know a number of Israelis who served in Lebanon who are adamant on this point), and has evolved significantly since the occupation ended into a formidable political force. Hamas, too, has evolved over its history from social and religious services organization, through resistance/terrorist group, to political force. And finally, neither of these groups qualifies as an “international terrorist organization”. Their goals are limited and very local, and any threat they pose to Israel is directly related to the threat Israel poses to Palestine and Lebanon.
And in the area of “support and funding of terrorism” Israel’s and the United States’ dwarfs anything Iran has ever done.
Yes, at least Obama has made noises about talking to Iran. Unfortunately, he is not approaching Iran with anything remotely like the respect he spoke of in his inaugural speech, but rather like a stern adult wagging his finger at a delinquent child, threatening dire consequences if the child does not do the adult’s bidding. Not likely to be a productive approach.
Regrettably, even liberal Americans are subscribers to the credo of American exceptionalism, which empowers the US to hector, lecture, and finger-wag at any nation on any subject because the US is so undeniably superior to any existing or conceivable nation or society.
Even if Obama doesn’t really believe this, I think he’s trapped by the politics of the dominant paradigm and the fact that most of the State Dept and the foreign policy commentariat, and probably his own staff, believe in it.
“Looking forward” is code for:
1) we no longer prosecute for war crimes as we did after WW II (we executed waterboarders)
and
2) we accept the “Nuremberg defense.”
I am sick at heart.