The past is a different country.

Today, Scott Wilson of the WaPo reports that Obama is taking a new political tack, blaming Bush. Obama vowed to "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics," in his inaugural speech.

Wilson writes: "It hasn't taken long for the recriminations to return -- or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome 'inheritance' of its predecessor," and then begins his hatchet job making sure to interview the GOP's new voice of reason Eric Cantor who says: "It is the Obama economy and the Obama stock market. This is about today, and he's assumed his post."

Yes, lets move on by all means before someone remembers who's been running the country for the past eight years.

I wrote this in response:

Is a news story or an editorial? Gosh, president Obama has invoked the word "inherited," a dozen times or so to rightly point out that he can't fix this "mess" that was eight years in the making, in just 60 days.

What a partisan! To the barricades!

How many times did the Bush administration (including Ari "Mr. Credibility" Fleischer) use the words "September 11 2001" to bludgeon any critic who dared question them?

I seem to recall a Washington Post editorial from Feb. 6 2003 -- the day after Colin Powell's dog and pony show at the UN with his dire warnings of Saddam's robot planes flying over Manhattan -- titled "Irrefutable" which stated:

"It is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Now, there's some credibility for you!

This despite the reporting of their own reporter, Walter Pincus, who consistently questioned the intelligence claims of the administration.On March 18 2003 Pincus wrote an article titled: "Bush Clings To Dubious Allegations About Iraq," writing that:

"As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged -- and in some cases disproved -- by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports."

Alas, a voice in the wilderness. The Washington Post was too eager to sell Bush's trumped up war to its readers and any such nay-saying was in bad taste. If only the Post had been as interested in delving into the obvious flaws in Bush's case for war as they are now about Obama's failure to turn the clock back to January 20 2001, he wouldn't need to be reminding us about who drove us into this ditch in the first place.

While Obama fiddles: On a sliced penis and hunger strikes at Gitmo.

Two items of note here.

1) The Telegraph reports that, according to secret British documents, UK resident and current Gitmo inmate, Binyam Mohamed, was tortured by Morracan interrogators while British MI6 agents peppered them with questions for him.

A British judge just ruled that the documents couldn't be released because "the Bush Administration 'had threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation with Britain if the information were made public.'

According to the Telegraph’s sources, the documents describe particularly gruesome interrogation tactics:

"The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, 'is very far down the list of things they did,' the official said.

Another source familiar with the case said: 'British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn’t do anything about it.'"

The rub here is that this is a major political scandal in the making for the Labour Party.

The Telegraph:

"David Davis, the former shadow home secretary who first highlighted the case, said: 'What has become clear is that the information being held back is not protecting the American government who have made a clean breast of their involvement in torture, but the British government, where at least two cabinet ministers have denied any complicity whatsoever. 'It is very clear who stands to be embarrassed by this and who is being protected by this secrecy. It is not the Americans, it is Labour ministers.'"

But never mind all that, it's time to look to the future. OHB says he's going to shut down Gitmo at some point or another. Meanwhile, though, there are 42 Gitmo inmates on hunger strike:

2.) Hunger Strike at Gitmo:

AP:

"'We have 42 hunger strikers,' said Captain Pauline Storum, spokesperson for the facility, who said the figure includes 31 detainees being force-fed . . .

The feeding process is administered by registered nurses and is conducted in a humane manner focused on the care of the detainee, as well as protection of medical personnel and the guard force," she said.

'Practitioners use industry standard equipment and procedures -- the same that may be found in any civilian healthcare facility,' she said."

Uh huh . . . Enter the "Padded Cell on Wheels."

The NYT reported in 2006 the so-called "industry standard equipment" being employed is a restraint chair and the "procedures" include stuffing a hose down the hunger striker's nose. Fawzi al-Odeh, a Kuwaiti detainee, according to his lawyer "said he heard 'screams of pain' from a hunger striker in the next cell as a thick tube was inserted into his nose.

"Another lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said one of his three Bahraini clients, Jum'ah al-Dossari, told him about 10 days ago that more than half of a group of 34 long-term hunger strikers had abandoned their protest after being strapped in restraint chairs and having their feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted . . .

'He said that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves,' Mr. Colangelo-Bryan added."

In a telephone interview yesterday, the manufacturer of the so-called Emergency Restraint Chair, Tom Hogan, said his small Iowa company shipped five $1,150 chairs to Guantánamo on Dec. 5 and 20 additional chairs on Jan. 10, using a military postal address in Virginia. Mr. Hogan said the chairs were typically used in jails, prisons and psychiatric hospitals to deal with violent inmates or patients."

Just like in "any civilian healthcare facility."

Force feeding is moral?

NYT:

"'There is a moral question,' the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., said in an interview. 'Do you allow a person to commit suicide? Or do you take steps to protect their health and preserve their life?'

Dr. Winkenwerder said that after a review of the policy on involuntary feeding last summer Pentagon officials came to the basic conclusion that it was ethical to stop the inmates from killing themselves. 'The objective in any circumstance is to protect and sustain a person's life," he said.'"

The good doctor ought to talk to a lawyer about that. The International Committee of the Red Cross says:

"The issue of force-feeding constitutes the link with situations of coercion and torture. As is well known, the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Tokyo of 1975 prohibits any participation in torture, whether actively, passively or through use of medical knowledge, by a medical doctor. Article 5 of the Tokyo Declaration also stipulates that prisoners on hunger strikes shall not be force-fed, though few doctors know exactly why this clause is included. One common interpretation is that force-feeding is viewed as a form of torture . . .

In cases of real voluntary total fasting, usually by politically motivated prisoners or prisoners supporting a specific cause, be it ethnic, religious or otherwise, there may be a will to go all the way' and accept the physiological consequences of a prolonged fast.

In countries where prisoners’ rights are not fully respected or even completely disregarded, and where torture is practised; hunger strikes may be a last resort for prisoners wanting to protest against their situation."

I'd say for most of the detainees at Gitmo, after six years of detention without being charged with a crime, and having no hope of ever being released (never mind the penis slicing) they're pretty much out of options for protest beyond refusing to eat. What I want to know is if the "Emergency Restraint Chair" is still in use, and if it is, what Obama is doing about stopping its use. If he condones this type of illegal brutal tactic for breaking a perfectly legitimate form of protest, then he's buying into BushCo's crimes and tarnishing his reputation just as badly.

What difference has this made?

[Read my previous post on this subject from Feb.18 2006 at LTAD.]

Jesus (Obama) decends upon the Siegesäule in Berlin.

"Before the largest crowd of his campaign, " AP reports, Barack Obama involked walls in his speech before some 200,000 Obama-mad Germans. [Perhaps, Obama should run for something in Germany?]

"'The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand,' Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city. 'The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand,' he said."

Hmm . . . Walls. Berlin. "Mr. Gorbechev tear down this wall." Couldn't the Germans have rebuilt the wall just so Obama could tear it down again?

Not to say the Obama campaign is getting a big head or displaying amazing hubris or anything. [I should say "chutzpah," Obama doesn't want to alienate the Israelis.]

Der Spiegel reports:

"Initially Obama wanted to hold his speech at the Brandenburg Gate, but the proposal drew widespread criticism in Germany. Given its charged history, Chancellor Merkel said, through a spokesperson, she thought the choice had been 'odd.' And even today, criticism continues about the hubris of holding a speech on such a grand scale when he hasn't even been elected president yet."

Wait! He isn't? Hell, he hasn't even been nominated yet. My God (Obama), imagine what's going to happen once he is elected! I don't think I can handle it.

The German press was agog about the Obamamania that went in the leadup to his arrival:

"Would he drive to the Chancellery in a motorcade or would he take a helicopter for his visit to Chancellor Angela Merkel? Obama's charter jet had barely touched down at Berlin's Tegel Airport, and reporters were already asking the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate how he planned to get around the city."

Helicopter? He can just fly around on his own, can't he?

In fact, I'm sort of surprised the Obama peolpe weren't able to sign the Pope up for this little show. I guess, Der Eisen Pope isn't ready to kiss the ring quite yet. Soon enough, soon enough.

So what's next for Obama? A trip to the International Space Station? I could just see him giving his acceptance speech to the covention from space, couldn't you?

Obama's soul firesale:

William Yardly reports in the NYT today the natives are getting restless in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

Young grassroots activists, the types who would have otherwise have been voting for Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich, got sucked into Obama's message of . . . whatever it is . . . and registered as Dems to vote for the new messiah.

Now, however, Yardly writes, "after critics have accused Mr. Obama of shifting positions on issues like the war in Iraq, the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, gun control and the death penalty — all in what some view as a shameless play to a general election audience "many of these kids have had it.

They're warning the Party they're going back to the green party or whereever they came from.

This is the part that kind of torks me off a little, this additude coming from the establishment, the grownups.

"Many Obama supporters said the most vocal complaining about various policy positions was largely relegated to liberal bloggers . . . 'I think it’s accentuated by the fact that Obama’s appeal is an appeal to idealism,' said Kari Chisholm, who runs a blog, blueoregon.com, and does Internet strategy for Democratic candidates.

'They believe their ideology is the only idealism and Obama’s is very mainstream. I’m not surprised they’re getting a little cranky. They’ve always been kind of cranky. A mainstream Democrat has always been too mainstream for them.'”

A mainstream Democrat? Richard Nixon would be a liberal crank these days compared to how far right the Party has gone. All that crazy stuff about the environment, the death penalty, government spying, taxpayer funded faith-based policies (and probably abortion, too, if Obama's handlers think he thinks he can get a bump in the polls) is so out there on the fringe for the Democratic party.

Before you know it, Obama will be leading the charge on the march to Tehran (he's already ceded jerusalem to Israel) and anyone who dares question that will also be some wide-eyed liberal crank.

I understand the all out effort to get the White House back, but not at any price. If Obama winds up just being tweedle-dum once he gets in, what's the point?

Barack Obama: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

AP reports:

"Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith. . . 'The challenges we face today ... are simply too big for government to solve alone,' Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. 'We need all hands on deck.'"

Right, so how about those particular deck hands provide their own funds? It seems to me the federal government was perfectly capable of handling the challenges of the Great Depression through the New Deal without resorting to giving tax-payer hand-outs to the purveyors of fear, ignorance and intolerance.

Even worse, however, than the fact that "Mr. Change" wants to keep Bush's Faith-based charity program alive; he actually wants to expand it!!!

AP:

"Obama's support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions could invite a protest from those in his own party who view such faith requirements as discrimination. . . [He] supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy."

Uh huh, and how does he propose to keep track of which funds are which? Can you say: "Bait and switch?"

AP:

"Like Bush, Obama was arguing that religious organizations can and should play a bigger role in serving the poor and meeting other social needs. But while Bush argued that the strength of religious charities lies primarily in shared religious identity between workers and recipients, Obama was to tout the benefits of their 'bottom-up' approach. 'Because they're so close to the people, they're well-placed to offer help,' he was to say."

Fine, they can help from the bottom up on their own time with their own money. They can't come close to the kind of massive effort so desperately needed today that the federal government could provide. What this country needs now is a top down approach along the lines of the New Deal. Massive public works programs to repair our crumbling infrastructure, conservation programs to save our soil and water, jobs programs for the young in the CCC mold etc.

But, never mind about all that, Obama has his heads in the clouds, just like Bush . . .

AP:

"Obama also planned to talk bluntly about the genesis of his Christian faith in his work as a community organizer in Chicago, and its importance to him now.

'In time, I came to see faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work,' he was to say."

You know, that's great. I'm glad Obama has a healthy fantasy life and he believes in omniscient beings that tell him what to do (just like Bush). What we need, though, are folks right down here on earth who aren't so preoccupied with killing each other over which one's God is mas Macho that they actually have time to help real people who are really hurting.

You do the "Lord's work" on your own time Barack. I expect you to do our work with our secular tax money on our time.