Posted on 05/29/2009 10:19:03 AM PDT by cycle of discernment
Ted Rall: It’s increasingly evident that Obama should resign
May 28, 2009
by Ted Rall
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?
Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now--before he drags us further into the abyss.
I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.
In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street. Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime"--contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.
Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.
Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.
"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."
"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.
Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried. Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?
The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted."
In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime--an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime--in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.
It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.
© 2009 Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate and is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
This thread is priceless.
And what would be wrong with that? The only thing better would be an INTENTIONAL offending of Muslims.
Now that wouldn't be a bad thing.
16 seconds...
It’s the whole fact that he’s attacking the false messiah in the first place.
Dude, that is funny. Cold, but funny.
I agree with you-Biden is a disgusting serial liar, a slanderer , and an idiot, but I don’t think he’s an antiwhite/antiAmerican/antiwest/antiChristian/antiIsrael/moslem appeaser (if not worse...) like BHO. I think Pelosi is about as bad as BHO, but even less intelligent and less competent, and so less of a threat. I don’t *get* why so many seem to fear Joe Biden the plagiarist more than BHO the communist/marxist/racist POS.
Could be amusing. Biden “We brought you a bit of America - BBQ Pork rinds! These are the BEST!”
Gee, Ted, maybe had you all looked at his credentials, asked the right questions, heck, asked any hard questions, and looked past his racial makeup, you might have come to the same conclusion we did.
He’s fraud. He is a Hollyweird construct.
This part nailed it:
Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street. Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime"--contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.
With BHO systematically throwing all his best supporters under the bus, and cozying up with those who hate him most, he must acknowledge that power comes from either voluntary cooperation or brutal compulsion - and he's eroding the former very rapidly, even in his own base a la Rall. Only brutal compulsion is left, and by publicly admitting to seriously considering "preventive detention" he shows an expectation that consent of the govern will give way, and by extention that the only course to maintaining his power is, indeed, brutal compulsion.
At this rate, his own party will remove him before 4 years are up. Biden may follow suit, and I doubt Pelosi will be Speaker then. So who's #4?
Biden is stupid, but he doesn't have a colossal anti-American chip on his shoulder like The First Thug.
He should quit Zero is worthless period and making a fool of himself more everyday.
We can wait out Biden thru 2010 and 2012...Zer0 will destroy us before this year is out.
Gee whiiz, Teddy - did Obama Claus leave a turd in your Christmas, er, excuse me, holiday stocking?
Is that just a bit of buyers’ remorse setting in?
Useful idiots like Rall never learn from history. They’re the first ones thrown under the bus - or shot in the head - by the regimes they vote and applaud into power.
Ted Rall still has a beat down waiting for him from me...
Welcome to the dark side Ted, you disgusting piece of whale s____.
Assclown Rall should take a gander at Yuri Bezhmenov’s 1985 interview - wherein he describes exactly what happens to filth like Teddy once they’re done with them.
Hence Rall being scared, and writing what he did so publicly and articulately. He knows where this stuff leads, and is stunned to find himself on the wrong side of it despite his prior fawning support.
Rall suddenly understands the “thrown under the bus” phenomenon so common around BHO.
Yup. Not only that, but I can’t see the leftists rallying behind him. Joe Biden was as much help to the D ticket as John McCain was to the R ticket. People voted for either Obama OR Palin. The rest of the ticket was just there. Easily beatable in 2012.
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