EQUIPOISE

EQUIPOISE, Nice find by David Brooks to compliment President Obama on his confident, calm, and reflective response to a series of multiple crises from the oil spill to the collapse of Greece and to the alleged terrorist plots. Brooks' comments reflect the reason why Barack Obama obtained the largest number of popular votes in American history. As Peggy Noonan, Reagan's speechwriter, noted in her eulogy to her old boss "character does matter". While I love to swim in the ideological broth of American politics, I have to be honest that the American voter doesn't vote on ideology, something today's Republican party seems to have forgotten. This is especially true in American presidential politics where people take the measure of the man. President Obama wants to be a transformational President but my fears are that he absolutely must be if the country is able to turn the corner into a brigher future. But it is nice to be reminded by a conservative writer that our President is Cool.

The employment numbers are coming out tomorrow. Preliminary reports show that about 200,000 jobs were created this past month. Vice President Biden had predicted that the economy would show in a few months job creation at 250,000 to 500,000 per month. All this is good until you realize at this pace, the job losses from the Great Recession would only be recouped in roughly three years. That's with a strong recovery. As President Obama stated in Iowa, American businesses have used this recession to become more efficient and cost-cutting and hence may not be hiring back the employees they laid off. In out of the way places like MIT, NASA and a wind turbine plant, President Obama has been talking about his future for the American economy post-Recession. Without a basic economic transformation of this country, we are looking at a status quo of roughly 8% unemployment and the development of a permanent underclass that will require an expansion of a welfare safety net.

There seems to be one good development. Gotcha Politics, which we no longer can afford, seems to be failing. The Gulf Oil spill as Obama's Hurricane Katrina seems not to be gaining any traction. Rasmussen buried the findings about how the President rates on his handling of the crisis way down in his latest poll numbers. 20% rate the President's handling excellent, 23% good, 28% fair and 26% poor. Given his overweight to Republicans, the President is doing well.

Bad news for the birther cause. Governor Linda Lingle, the Republican Governor of Hawaii, gave an extended radio interview where she voiced her annoyance with all the requests for the President's birth certificate. She recalled how she was campaigning with John McCain in 2008 and began to take endless calls from her office on the subject. She had her own Health Director, a physician, to go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health. She told her radio interviewer that Barack Obama was born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii and that's the end of the matter. The Free Republic have absolutely gone nuts over this interview.

Mountebank. A nice find of Keith Olbermann to describe Rush Limbaugh but it can apply to so many on our cultural scene. One prime candidate is Rev.Rekers, who rented a male companion for his overseas vacation. The escort named "Lucien" agreed to be interviewed by a Miami paper in the wee-wee hours of the morning and admitted he was paid to have sex with the minister and once a day performed a naked massage on the clergyman. Lucien called his specialty the Long Stroke, a complex massage that entails a caress "across his penis, thigh..and his anus over the butt cheeks". With the teabagging visual I mentioned yesterday, conservatives will have a fuller array of sexual techniques at their disposal.

Franklin Graham showed up this morning at the Pentagon parking lot to pray, even though he was disinvited to the Pentagon's National Prayer Task Force meeting. Franklin accuses the President of being too tolerant of islam but too dismissive of Christians like himself. Billy's son claims that Christians are being persecuted for their beliefs and will soon not be able to prayer in public. As Jesus told his disciples in Matt. 6:6, you pray to God in private.

Joe Lieberman's bill to strip Americans of their citizenship is going ahead. The State Department would make the decision unilaterally and it would be automatic. Jonathan Turley pointed out that the bill would be instantly unconstitutional. But he also pointed out that the State Department's own terrorist list is fraud with problems. So if you have one ambiguity about what support means for an alleged terrorist group, and add it to the ambiguous nature of the terrorist designation in the first place, you have a royal legal mess. For instance, the ANC was only taken off the terrorist list last year, despite three democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa. So, should Randall Robinson be automatically stripped of his American citizenship for his years of advocating the cause of the ANC? Contrary to what Joe Lieberman and John McCain think, a person stripped of their citizenship still receives Miranda rights.

Back to more of the Omar Khadr trial. The disgraced interrogator continued to testify in the trial. He said that they used the fear of rape on Khadr. He said that they used 4 big black guys to catch little Afghan boys in the showers at the Bagram Air Force Base. The Afghan captives were afraid of being gang-raped to death by these American soldiers. So the interrogators used this fear and told Khadr himself that he would be raped once he was transported to Gitmo. He said that the detainees were chained into stress positions and routinely trussed up into a cage "in one of the worst places on Earth". They called Omar Khadr, then a teenager, 'Buckshot Bob' because he had three holes in his body from wounds and shrapnel in his face.

J Street has a new poll of the American Jewish community on U.S.-Israel relations.
69% firmly support active American engagement in bringing about Middle East peace, even if it means publicly disagreeing with or exerting pressure on both Arabs and Israelis. It was 66% eight months ago;
69% support the U.S. working with a unified Hamas-Fatah Palestinian Authority government to achieve a peace agreement with Israel, even when informed the U.S. does not recognize Hamas due to its status as a terrorist organization and its refusal to recognize Israel. The Truman Institute at Hebrew University reported that 69% of Israelis also think Israel should negotiate with a joint Hamas-Fatah government;
By a 76-24% margin, American Jews support a two-state, final status deal between Israel and the Palestinians along the lines of the agreement nearly reached eight years ago during the Camp David and Taba talks;
By a 69-31% margin, American jews opposed Avigdor Lieberman's calls for requiring Arab citizens of Israel to sign loyalty oaths as well as his threats against Arab members of the Knesset.

Marco Rubio has reversed his position on the Arizona immigration law because of the recent revisions. J.D. Hayworth is asking that the Phoenix Sons apologize for their opposition to the llaw. SIEU has announced it's going to boycott Arizona.

Charlies Crist. now feeling his freedom as an independent, has suggested he will veto the Flordia abortion law requiring women watch ultrasound pictures of the fetus prior to abortion.

A new candidate for best political ad is the Democratic Party's "Demon Sheep II", which attacks Carly Fiorina for her incompetence as HP CEO, her outsourcing 28,000 California jobs to India, buying two yachts and 7 jets and her golden parachute package of $21 million. Nice job but they didn't get her placing HP profits in offshore bank accounts to avoid US taxes, which she is on record as saying, and her love of the Celtic Tiger. But there is still time for more.

Haley Barbour says the oil spill in the Gulf "isn't especially damaging to offshore drilling."

President Obama threaten to veto the financial reform bill if it contains the GOP consumer agency, which he called "worse than the status quo" and he's made noises over the provisions to audit the Fed. The beat goes on.

Afternoon Coffee

Could we have a hand of applause for Samantha Power, Michael Posner and Harold Koh? These three are quietly trying to seek a way to repatriate Canadian-born terror suspect Omar Khadr. Khadr was apprehended when he was 15 and has now been sentenced to be tried before a military commission. The only problem is that American officials really do not want to try a child for war crimes. The government of conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has steadfastly refused to ask for Khadr's return and it is not about to provide Barack Obama any cover. But there are quiet bilateral talks under way.

Rep. Eric Massa (D.-N.Y.) has gone bonkers. He's peddling the notion that he was set up by the Democrats who want him gone because of his opposition to health care. Somehow he forgets that he was the one who sexually harassed his aide. It wasn't entrapment. To further entertain America, he will appear on the Glenn Beck show and will tell everything about Democrats and their plans for healthcare reform.

Arlen Specter today says that Democrats are so mad at Republican obstructionism that they don't care anymore and will push the bill through simply out of spite.

The California Republican Senator Roy Ashburn, who has been a leader in anti-gay legislation, finally crumbled and admitted he was gay. He had been arrested on a DUI with a male in his car after it was determined he had been in a gay club. Gay politicians commented that he was often seen cruising clubs. Ashburn blamed his anti-gay votes on his constituency but Equality California, a gay rights group, called that excuse lame. Ashburn actually sponsored or voted for bills that called for gays to be fired from their jobs or kicked out of public accomodations. Cenk at the Young Turks earlier this week raised an interesting question, "Are all conservatives gay?"

I haven't gotten the final note on whether this is bogus. But there was reported a group "Patriots for a Moral Utah" ,which is affilated with the tea parties, as proposing a bill to expel gays from Utah. Some reporters are convinced it's a hoax.

Teabaggers have changed their name to avoid being associated with a gay sexual technique. Instead they want to be called tea partiers--which, unfortunately for them, is gay slang for having "sex on crystal meth". I shudder to think the next port of call for these people.

Interesting and unusual polling news out of Kentucky. You would think with Bunning out of the picture and self-destructing before our eyes, Republicans would maintain the seat with the voters relieved Bunning was gone. Well, the Republican candidates support for Bunning's stance against extending the unemployment insurance has backfired. Right now both Democrats would win against either one of the Republicans. A long way out I know but this is one I never believed would change.

From Texas: Mayor White is within striking distance of Rick Perry. White has overwhelming positives in the approval ratings. If Obama does go for immigration reform and even if he fails, this might be the motivating factor for the Hispanic community to push White in.

In Beckistan, the war against Christianity continues. Beck is saying that when churches use the term social justice to address poverty and human rights, it's simply a "code word" for communism and Nazism, both ideologies known as warm and friendly to Christians and other faiths. Wait on second thought, the Nazis were very friendly to Mormans. He urges laypeople to discuss the issue with their priests and pastors and if the church doesn't stop preaching about social justice then people should leave the church. He finally got it right that the Nazis were on the right but he claimed that both communism and Nazism were one philosophy. In the United States, according to Beck, this comes down to rights of the workers and democracy. I am sure you will see punch backs from the "classic Christians" on this one. How about the Sermon on the Mount for instance? The material is too rich not for alot of blowback.

President Obama was in Pennsylvania slamming the health insurance industry and calling for the vote on healthcare. I shudder when the President plans to leave the mainland because all hell breaks out in Washington. With Eric Massa on the loose and liable to commute from one Fox news show to another, there is no telling how much damage control will have to be done and whether health care will be derailed by another shiny object. Mr. President, please don't go to Indonesia.

Since President Obama seems hellbent on weakening us, the DemocracyCorps poll is out that shows 58% support for Afghanistan, 55% on his policy on terrorism, 54% for his foreign policy , but only 46% for his policy on detainees and interrogations. If you are like me and flip to the Dailykos to check on President Obama's approval numbers, be aware that RS2000 has changed it criteria from likely voters to registered voters. That accounts for this week's 2 pt. drop to an abysmal 53% approval rating.

Thursday Morning Coffee--Mocha Java

The Obama Administration is trying to do the Bush people a favor--and they are getting no thanks. The new Solicitor General claims that we can hold "terrorists" for a sustained period of time without bringing charges because we are "at war". The Administration uses the state secrets defense in the trial brought by ACLU on behalf of those people who had been renditioned. Democrats are bringing a bill on the House floor to prevent civil litigation on these activities. The force-feeding of Gitmo detainees is upheld by a federal judge. And Leon Panetta says he will not prosecute CIA agents who engaged in the waterboarding and retention programs.

For reasons that escape me, conservatives who want desparately to defend Gitmo refuse to see how the Obama Administration just wants to move on and is actually protecting Bush operatives. Instead, Senators Inhofe and others are conducting political tours of Gitmo to try and save the facility.

Senator Leahy's suggestion of forming a bipartisan Truth Commission has met resistance from Republicans. But there are other reasons to oppose such a Commission. As Jonathan Turley of George Washington University argued on television, truth commissions are used in developing democracies that have a weak legal structure and are meant more to establish an historical record. The problem with creating one in the United States is that you are in fact arguing the Bush case that these episodes are unique and separate and that the United States can and will violate its treaty commitments. He has been the most forceful in arguing that if there is no legal investigation or prosecution then the Obama Administration owns the crimes. A ironic note on that is that the force feeding case in Miami became v.the Obama Administration, instead of the Bush Administration which did the deed.

Yesterday,Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada said he did not intend to raise the Omar Khadr case with Barack Obama next week. Canada's three opposition leaders called for Khadr's immediate release from detention in Gitmo. Khadr was wounded and captured by American soldiers in a July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. The opposition has maintained that Khadr was unlawfully recruited and used as child soldier. The Canadian authorities have planned a rather elaborate repatriation project that would include placing him in a foster home since his parents were close to bin Laden.

The Mohammed case even gets murkier. The Janitor, who was renditioned on the basis of satirical article on how to build an H-Bomb, has ,according to official documents, had his genitals sliced by a scalpel and subjected to more than waterboarding. What's strange is that the U.S. dropped all claims he was a terrorist last year and continue to hold him.

These cases will proliferate as bilateral issues in the months ahead. They are not only embarassing but it is rather doubtful the Obama Administration can avoid the onslaught of legal cases. One of the key issues of the Torture Convention, which we ratified under Ronald Reagan,was the responsibility of other countries to bring violators to justice. With the U.N. Special Rapporteur Mr. Nowak on record saying he had the documents on file approved by Donald Rumsfeld authorizing torture, I can't see a European prosecutor or government avoiding the opportunity to pursue this.