Category: Barack Obama

Spiegel interviewed Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers. The interview, ‘Obama Deceives the Public’, touches on a subject close to Ellsberg, which is whistleblowers. He explains:

For instance, the Obama administration is criminalizing and prosecuting whistleblowers to punish them for uncovering scandals within the federal government.

Ellsberg gives the example of the indictment of Thomas Drake by the Obama administration as an example of how “Obama is continuing the worst of the Bush administration”. Drake provided information to reporters about the shortcomings in the NSA. By indicting Drake, Ellsberg thinks it shows a double standard by the U.S. president.

For Obama to indict and prosecute Drake now, for acts undertaken and investigated during the Bush administration, is to do precisely what Obama said he did not mean to do — “look backward.” Of all the blatantly criminal acts committed under Bush, warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, aggression, torture, Obama now prosecutes only the revelation of massive waste by the NSA, a socially useful act which the Bush administration itself investigated but did not choose to indict or prosecute!

Bush brought no indictments against whistleblowers, though he suspended Drake’s clearance. Obama, in this and other matters relating to secrecy and whistleblowing, is doing worse than Bush. His violation of civil liberties and the White House’s excessive use of the executive secrecy privilege is inexcusable.

Ellsberg doesn’t “even listen anymore” to Obama’s rhetoric. For him, Obama has demonstrated that “his actions are totally uncoupled from his public statements… He has turned 180 degrees.”

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Cheney Spews by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon

President Obama, speaking from Louisiana today, criticized BP for spending big money on television advertising and shareholder dividends, suggesting the company was prioritizing its own interests over those of Gulf residents.

Every day it’s something different! Yesterday it was TV ads, last week it was crime!

“We have an obligation to investigate what went wrong,” Obama said. “If our laws were broken, leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice.”

If our laws were broken?

BP was cited by OSHA for 760 egregious willful violations between June 2007 and February 2010!

Egregious! Meaning “flagrant, outstandingly bad!”

Willful! Meaning it wasn’t some sort of “oopsie, we didn’t mean to do it!”

760!

That’s 97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors over the past three years!

My solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice.

So what are you waiting for?

Round ’em up! Lock ’em up in Guantanamo! Throw away the key!

BP also killed 15 people in Texas in 2005, and the case was still pending when Obama walked into the Oval Office in 2009.

In 2009, the British-based company paid $87.43 million for a single Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violation for willful negligence that led to the deaths of 15 workers in a 2005 explosion at a Texas refinery. BP handed over $50 million to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for the same crime.

BP paid Obama a couple of fines for the criminally negligent homicide of 15 workers, and the $137 million total of those fines amounted to BP’s profits for two whole days, at $6 billion per quarter, $2 billion per month, $66 million per day!

So Barack Obama isn’t exactly a hanging judge when it comes to punishing corporate criminals, even for homicide, and I guess it isn’t suprising that all he does is bitch, bitch, bitch, while the Gulf of Mexico fills up with oil.

But wasn’t this a perfect time to turn around the Republican meme that the federal government is always the problem, and never the solution for any problem?

Wasn’t this a perfect time to put the best and brightest in one big room, and keep them locked up until they solved this goddamned problem?

The federal government of the United States put a man on the moon!

And now all Obama can do is bitch, bitch, bitch?

The federal government of the United States defeated two enormous industrial and military powers in WWII!

And now all Obama can do is bitch, bitch, bitch?

Most of the cops I know don’t use language from the Book of Revelation to describe a crime scene, but P.J. Hahn, a candidate for Chief of Police in Kenner, Louisiana and currently director of coastal zone management for Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, somehow rose to the occasion as an enormous orange slick washed up on his local beach.

The oil has reached the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It has turned marshlands into death zones for wildlife and stained beaches rust and crimson. Some said it brought to mind the plagues and punishments of the Bible.

“In Revelations it says the water will turn to blood,” said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish. “That’s what it looks like out here – like the Gulf is bleeding. This is going to choke the life out of everything.”

And meanwhile in Afghanistan, let me introduce you to Matiullah Khan!

Mr. Matiullah is one of several semiofficial warlords who have emerged across Afghanistan in recent months, as American and NATO officers try to bolster – and sometimes even supplant – ineffective regular Afghan forces in their battle against the Taliban insurgency.

His main effort – and his biggest money maker – is securing the chaotic highway linking Kandahar to Tirin Kot for NATO convoys. His company charges each NATO cargo truck $1,200 for safe passage, or $800 for smaller ones, his aides say. His income, according to one of his aides, is $2.5 million a month, an astronomical sum in a country as impoverished as this one.

In some cases, these strongmen have restored order, though at the price of undermining the very institutions Americans are seeking to build: government structures like police forces and provincial administrations that one day are supposed to be strong enough to allow the Americans and other troops to leave.

This is a full-tilt protection racket, on the model of Al Capone’s “safe streets” in Cicero Illinois, where nobody would mess with you, as long as you played ball with Big Al.

A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces other less powerful entities to pay money, allegedly for protection services against external threats (usually violence or property damage, and sometimes perpetrated by the racketeers themselves).

In this case, the “other less powerful entities” include NATO and the United States.

Ever since Barack Obama found some oil on a beach…

He has been trying to look angry, but he just looks weird!

So it would probably be better if he stuck with his usual expressions…

“I would like to thank the Academy for this award as Cutest President Ever!”

…and left making angry faces to really angry people like Britney Spears.

I personally find it difficult to restrain my criticism of Obama, as he appears to be a recidivist lickspittle to the plutocracy, completely unfit for duty to the nation, the most non-hopiest, non-change-iest fucker ever born.  Nevertheless, I found these admittedly grim comments by Stoneleigh on Obama’s “historical context” worth taking into account, as well.

Replying to Erltonsquire (first quote, all emphases mine), she writes:

Erltonsquire,

I don’t want America’s first black president to be blamed for the next depression. He means too much as a symbol.

I don’t want to see that happen either, as the consequences for racial harmony could be catastrophic. Unfortunately, however, circumstance dictates that is exactly what will happen. Anyone elected at such a time takes the blame, whether or not it can plausibly be construed as his fault. Look what happened to Hoover’s reputation.

The two candidates at the last election were fighting over the poisoned chalice. I think it’s very unfortunate that Mr Obama won at this particular time and is now in the line of fire. I actually feel very sorry for him and especially his family. I don’t think he has any idea what is about to hit him politically. Unfortunately he encouraged people to believe he had the power to change things, which he doesn’t. It is very dangerous for politicians to believe their own propaganda and willingly step up on to a pedestal. It just means they have further to fall.

Whatever one may think of current events, it actually makes little sense to focus on blaming the president, as his actions are so constrained, and events are so dependent on long term socieconomic moves that precede his term. The system is larger than any man and it is simply broken. A blame game won’t help anyone. Sadly nastier and nastier blame-games are exactly what increasingly angry people engage in in such times. I always suggest that people save their energies for more constructive purposes that can actually benefit their loved ones.

Mr Obama is in the wrong place at the wrong time. All he can do is cheerlead while presiding over a sclerotic and dysfunctional system that is completely unresponsive to the needs of the populace. Such a system can no longer do anything constructive. Sadly the destructive power that remains is still being deployed, and probably will continue to be so on a wider and wider scale. Tragically, this will be Mr Obama’s legacy, whatever he personally does or does not do.

June 1, 2010 8:24 AM

Hard to gainsay much of anything said above, and what a mouthful!  I do think Stoneleigh’s acuteness reaches its vanishing when she says,

I always suggest that people save their energies for more constructive purposes that can actually benefit their loved ones.

One last question: Can Wall Street create catastrophe bonds for politicians?  Because I want in!

Since both the Obama administration and BP have an obvious interest in under-estimating the amount of oil which Deepwater Horizon has already dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, it isn’t surprising that everything these partners in crime produce for public consumption is bullshit.

On Thursday, U.S. Geological Survey director Marcia McNutt announced that the Flow Rate Technical Group — a panel of scientists from government and academia — had determined that the overall best initial estimate for the rate of flow from the leak was between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of oil per day.

But it was impossible for members of the team that analyzed the oil plume video to estimate the upper boundary of the oil spilled, according to the Ira Leifer, a researcher at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Steven Wereley, a researcher at Purdue University.

Wereley and Leifer were both members of that team, and Leifer participated in the satellite image analysis as well. Both researchers say that the seven minutes of video that BP provided to the plume team was not sufficient to estimate the upper boundary of the amount of oil — only to give a lower-end estimate.

“What everyone on the panel agreed was that due to the low-quality data BP provided to us, it would be irresponsible and unscientific to estimate an upper bound to the emission,” said Leifer. “So what we presented in the [plume team] report is a range of expert opinions on what the lower bound is.”

Wereley said he was surprised to see the estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels and was “disappointed” with the way that the press release was phrased.

“I was really confused when I read the press release yesterday,” he said. “I had to read it several times.”

So the figures which are quoted all over the media with the phony appearance of upper and lower bounds, “between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of oil per day,” really only apply to the lower bound, and the best independent estimate of the upper bound remains the figure which Professor Steve Werely provided for NPR on May 20:

100,000 barrels per day, and at 42 gallons per barrel, that’s….

4,000,000 gallons per day.

If we split the difference between that upper bound and the lower bound from the USGS, we arrive at a middle-of-the-road estimate…

60,000 barrels per day, and that’s…

2,400,000 gallons per day.

And that produces a middle-of-the-road estimate that the total amount of oil which Deepwater Horizon has already dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in 42 days is about…

100,000,000 gallons already!

That’s almost ten times as much as the Exxon Valdez, but what the heck!

Who’s counting?

Excerpts from Obama’s Oil-and-Water speech yesterday in New Orleans…

What is striking about today’s debate about oil and water mixing in the Gulf of Mexico is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s – in arguments that go back forty years or more.

In the early years of the environmental movement and opposition to the offshore drilling, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of Big Oil of being hippy tree-huggers.

Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of corporate America itself – by defacing Exxon signs; by blaming Shell Oil for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor the CEO’s who enrich us all by enriching themselves.

Most Americans never bought into these simplistic world-views – these caricatures of left and right. Most Americans understood that concern for the environment does not make you a hippy tree-hugger, and that there is nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America’s corporate hierarchy.

And yet the anger and turmoil of that period never entirely drained away. All too often our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments – a fact most evident during our recent debates about oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, when those who opposed offshore drilling were tagged by some as eco-freaks, and a corporation providing its full resources to shut down the leak was accused of criminal negligence.

Given the enormous challenges that lie before us, we can no longer afford these sorts of divisions.

Just in time for your Memorial Day Viewing Pleasure

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

White House energy czar Carol Browner said in a news release Sunday that government scientists believe the oil gusher would increase as much as 20 percent from the time the pipe is cut to when a containment valve is in place.

Browner says the Gulf oil spill is probably the biggest environmental disaster the U.S. has ever faced.

HuffPo commenter:

According to wikipedia, Browner earned more than one million dollars as a lobbyist in 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Browner

Browner is now married to former Congressman Thomas Downey. The marriage, his second, her third,31][32] took place on June 21, 2007 in Riverhead, New York.[29]Downey heads a lobbying firm that includes clients involved in energy policy.[4 In 2006 she and Downey collaborated on behalf of Dubai Ports World, but were unable to convince Senator Charles Schumer to their view during the Dubai Ports World controversy.[33]

Her 2008 income was between $1 million and $5 million from lobbying firm Downey McGrath Group, where her husband is a principal.[42] She also reported $450,000 in “member distribution” income, plus retirement and other benefits from The Albright Group.[42]

http://online.wsj.com/article/…

The husband of Carol Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s presumed pick for a new White House energy adviser post, has lobbied on energy and environmental issues, with clients including Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Keyspan Energy.

In 2006, Ms. Browner and Mr. Downey collaborated on behalf of Dubai Ports World, which had arranged to buy a company that operated six major U.S. ports, including ports in New York and New Jersey. The company, owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, drew congressional furor. In February of that year, the two paid a visit to New York Sen. Charles Schumer to discuss the issue; Mr. Schumer played a central role in killing the ports deal.

Thanks to the finest minds in the world, nearly 6 weeks in, we know exactly what they’re dealing with:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

BP spokesman John Curry says the company does not know how much oil is contained the vast reservoir nearly three miles beneath the seafloor.

Curry said Sunday that the company didn’t have time to properly analyze how much was in the discovery well. He says if the oil rig had not exploded, BP PLC ultimately would have drilled another well to complete that analysis.

Curry says the uncertainty over how much oil is in the reservoir does not change BP’s response.

Author and activist Naomi Klein has been visiting Louisiana, and conducted a short on camera interview with Al Jazeera about her impressions of the disaster response to BP’s oil leak catastrophe…

Senator Dick Durbin once described Capitol Hill as being owned by the banks. He said the banks ‘own this place’ describing why it was so hard to get financial reform through in Washington, and  all I can say from having spent the week here in Louisiana is that it really feels like the oil and gas industry owns this place.

I think we’re dealing with two factors here. One is an election strategy for the Obama Administration, they want to keep some distance, they don’t want to own the disaster fully, they want to still have somebody to point fingers to. But then there’s also just this major attitude in this administration from day one really, to trust industry.

And so, even when the industry creates the disaster – I’m sorry to make these analogies with the financial sector, but we saw it with the banks as well – they melted down the economy but then we still heard from the Obama Administration as well as the Bush Administration starting with them but carried through from the Obama Administration, ‘we’re not going to tell the banks how to do their jobs, they’re the experts, we’re going to stand back’.

And now they’re doing the same thing with the response to the greatest, what looks like the greatest environmental catastrophe, or what could very well prove to be he greatest environmental catastrophe this country has ever seen. And I think people are very confused by this because this is clearly a national emergency, so why is it that BP is in charge of the whole operation?

Obama: sputter, sputter, bullshhhhhhhhit

[My friend M sent me the following thoughts which I crosspost here from Fire on the Mountain with permission.]

Our son-in-law, Lee, earns his living as a fisherman in Key West. Has done so for 30 years. Today is his 52nd birthday and he is now, effectively, jobless for the rest of his life. Being a small fisherman has always been an iffy proposition, because you’re dependent so much on the weather, and for the last few years, the weather has become totally unpredictable. Also for the past five years NOAA has been imposing increasingly severe restrictions on what fishers can catch — how much and when and where — all in the name of preserving fish populations.