Noel's Blog » obama

Tweet for 2010-06-21

admin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Facebook Bios: Truth or Fiction? – http://nyti.ms/dyj8V8 #
Does It Matter if Obama Loses the Pundits? – http://nyti.ms/cPBRO2 #

Tweet for 2010-02-14

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

At UPenn's Liberty Bell Debate classic. Reading Benard Crick's in Defense of Politics. #
RT @BreakingNews: Myanmar frees 82-year-old deputy leader of opposition party, Tin Oo, after nearly 7 years in detention – AP #Burma #
RT @SocialMedia411: Obama Is Hiring a Twitterer …and Facebooker / MySpacer (WallStreetJournal): http://bit.ly/cx7mGi [Actually, DNC is] #
RT @OR318: March 18 Movement commemorates "risks taken by bloggers around the world to tell their stories" http://www.march18.org #
RT @openculture: 250 Free Courses referenced in US News & World Report – http://bit.ly/ayCvao – can be found here: http://bit.ly/4XS2T #oer #
RT @BreakingNews: Prime Minister Tymoshenko calls Ukraine's
presidential vote rigged, vows to challenge in court (Her braids are too tight) #
Russian President Medvedev write about photography. http://bit.ly/907ASq. Makes him seem a bit more human. #

“Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”!? – Give Me a Friggin’ Break!

Noel — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:29:12 +0000

This will eeventually become a post about debate, but before that I will be a brief tirade against Dick Cheney (a.k.a. the Penguin). It shouldn’t come as a surprise to the few readers of this blog that I find Cheney’s defense of “enhanced interrogation techniques” morally bankrupt. To date, I had largely dismissed Cheney’s Orwellian attempt to classify waterboarding as an “enhancement” on normal interrogation techniques, not thinking it worthy of a response on this blog. It was bad enough that Cheney is now calling for full disclosure of memoranda on his administration’s authorization of torture after he spent eight years insisting that as Vice President he enjoyed both the privilege of keeping executive secrets but that since the Vice President presides over the Senate that he was free to ignore the Presidential Records Act. It’s been embarrassing to watch Cheney insist, within just a few months of leaving office, that America is not as safe as when he and his henchmen were terrorizing the world. Though I’m sure he’d never admit it publicly, I suspect Cheney is hoping there will be a terrorist strike against the United States just so that he can blame it on Obama. Cheney, who will shamelessly wrap himself inside a shroud of patriotism whenever it suits his purposes, has proven time and again that he is more interested in preserving his privileged existence and shameful legacy than he ever has been in insuring well being of the American people. OK, so what does any of this have to do with debate? There is no debating that Cheney is evil at this piont. He’s proven that point over and over again. The debate lesson comes from President Obama’s press conference in which he responded, indirectly to the Penguin’s defense of waterboarding. I realize that I could have just begun with the debate lesson, but this is my blog and I felt like tweaking the Penguin again.

Anyway, here’s the part of last night’s news conference that caught my attention as a debate coach:

Rather than insisting that waterboarding was not necessary, Obama took a much stronger position, one that gave him the moral high ground in this debate. In defending his decision to end the practice of waterboarding of detainees he address specifically the question of whether waterboarding migh have been an effective technique:

I am absolutely convinced [ending waterboarding] was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

Obama’s claim that the “we could have gotten this information in other ways” is on its face unwarranted. It would indeed have been difficult if not impossible for Obama to have presented evidence in support of the claim that none all of the information gathered from waterboarded detainees necessarily could have been gotten using other interrogation techniques, a fact Obama I’m sure was well aware of. Instead, the President offered an indictment of waterboarding and torture that was more far reaching in the form of an argument by analogy and evidence by authority:

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.

And then the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking short-cuts, over time, that corrodes what’s — what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

Obama doesn’t cite Churchill as having believed that ordinary interrogation techniques could have been used to gain the same information that might have been gained had he authorized torture. Impicitly, Obama is conceding that Churchill very well migth gave gained information from the British detainees that might have proven useful, but the point Obama made is that even with the blitz ongoing Churchill stood his ground. As Obama continued it became clear without him ever having to concede the point explicitly, that his argument against torture was more far reaching and categorical than it sounded at first. Resting now on Churchill’s example, Obama’s argument against torture no longer depended on his being able to prove that he specific information gained from detainees waterboarded under the Cheney administration could have been gathered using other standard means.

With this argument, Obama’s case against toture in general and waterboarding in particular became logically and rhetorically independent of the claim that the detainees who were waterboarded did not provide any information that could have been gained through other means. Without ever explicitly conceding to proponents of waterboarding that rejection of “enhanced interrogation” might, in the short term, have limited the ability of intelligence services to gather information, Obama made that point that if Great Britain could withstand the blitz without resorting to torture, then surely the United States could also say “we don’t torture.”

Associating his decision to bar waterboarding with Churchill’s decision, also served Obama well. With Obama already being compared favorably with Roosevelt, likening his decision to Churchill’s was a subtle and effective way of reminding people that his decision to end the practice of waterboarding detainees put him in a league with stateseman of far greater stature than the Penguin. It also played well on the other side of the pond.

I continue to think that those who have pointed to Obama’s use of new media as the key to his success in getting elected president are mistaken. Hilary Clinton, who originally announced her candidacy through a web address, and John McCain, whose insurgent campaign against George W. Bush in 2000 was widely viewed as being ahead of the curve in its use of new media, both tried to mock Obama’s eloquence and questioned whether there was any substance behind Obama’s words. In the end, though, it wasn’t Clinton or McCain’s inability to master new media that lost them the presidency, it was their inability to raise the level of their rhetoric to match Obama’s. None of the other candidates running for the President in 2009 could respond effectively to Obama’s words, which with the power of independent new media, were heard again and again. Time and again throughout the campaign and now in his presidency, Obama has proven the value of debate skills. Against Cheney’s insidious attempts to promote torture and undermine American ideals, what America and the world needed was a powerful public advocate who could explain and justify good public policy in a powerful and unwavering voice.

Reflections on the First Hundred Days

Noel — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:56:28 +0000

Finally, Obama’s first hundred days in office are over. I was getting tired of all the talk of the “first hundred days.” I’m sure this Sunday all the morning talk shows will touch on this artificial milestone and various pundits will reveal their scorecards. Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Bill O’Reilly and other right wing members of the the so-called “liberal media” will mark Obama’s first hundred days in office a complete failure. Echoing our former vice-president, I’m sure we’ll here that Obama has made us less safe from terrorism, and in typical hypocritical form, we’ll be told that Obama’s stimulus package, despite the fact that the outgoing Bush administration had called for this package, marked a “return” to the days of the “tax and spend Carter administration.” The liberal members of the media will, no doubt, praise Obama for this first hundred days in office, comparing him favorably to Roosevelt and will assure people that Barack Obama is no Jimmy Carter.

Since Ronald Reagan was an admirer of Franklin Roosevelt and supporter, at least initially, of the New Deal, the right has been relatively muted in its criticism of Roosevelt, even as its sort tirelessly to dismantle Roosevelt’s legacy. I thought it rather fitting, then, that when Arlen Specter announced his change in party affiiation he invoked Reagan’s name, telling of how he came to Washington in 1980 as a Reagan Republican who felt his party had since shifted too far to the right. Whether the Republican Party today is really much further to the right than Reagan was or whether it’s just that America has moved more towards the left is something I question. With George W. Bush likely to go down in history as a president who managed the economy even worse the Herbert Hoover, that Obama would be compared to Hoover’s successor. Hopefully Obama will not be asked to guide the United States through either a depression as long or as deep as the Great Depression or a war anywhere near the scale of World War II, it is arguable that no president since Roosevelt has taken over as President with as many challenges as Obama has faced or with as much political capital. Like Roosevelt, Obama came to office ith a remarkable amount of good will. Even Republican lambasted Rush Limbaugh when he foolishly claimed that he was hoping that President Obama would fail.

In truth, what Obama has done is the first hundred days is only the preface to his presidency. Despite the democrats strong showing in the 2008 elections, Obama could not have expected to rush through programs of the size and scope of the frst New Deal during his first hundred days in office. Unlike Bill Clinton, who stumbled through his early months in office, revealing himself and his administration ill-prepared to take over the White House, President Obama has proven himself able to respond well to setbacks and to push his agenda forward. Regardless of how history eventually judges the stimulus package that the administration got through Congress, getting it throught Congress on the President’s self-imposed timeline was impressive in and of itself. Obama’s first hundred days haven’t been without their setbacks: the embarassing revelations about cabinet appointees, to many of whom had to withdraw their names from consideration for posts, the “retention bonuses” paid to AIG bankers, the earmarks in the stimulus package, etc. On the whole, though, Obama seems to be pursuing his agenda with more vigor than Clinton ever pursued his, and has been spending his political capital wisely.

Obama could not in his first term in office put together a set of new policies and programs to rival the New Deal or even the Great Society. However, barring a major terrorist attack on the United States are some other unforeseen event, Obama’s fate will depend on how quickly the economy rebounds. If three years from now the economy is showing signs of life, Obama will be rewarded for the quick action he took to try to stabilize and stimulate the economy during his first hundred days. If the economy is still mired in depression, the budget deficit ballooning, unemployment still rising, and inflation’s inevitable rise starting to proceed, no one is going to care about the first hundred days office.

Welcome Mr. President

Noel — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:24:24 +0000

I know I still need to blog on the afternoon sessions from yesterday’s YouthCamp, but we’ve found a bar that has a fat yet very acrobatic and entertaining cat. The cat has kept us entertained well so late that blogging has become difficult.

Last night I lost bet and had to buy a round of drinks after reacting with disbelief that there was something as stupid sounding as “Acrobatic Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Acrobatic Rock ‘n’ Roll, I am sorry to say, inexplicably readlly does exist; it seems like a completely moronic activity. It does look pretty dangerous, though, so perhaps the people stupid enough to do this sort of thing will end up winning some Darwin Awards and remove themelves from our gene pool.

Istanbul is all abuzz that President Obama is coming to town. The guy’s rock star.