Obama reverses yet another campaign promise

[Weatherman]

WASHINGTON—In a slight shift from his campaign trail promise, President Obama announced Monday that his administration's message of "Change" has been modified to the somewhat more restrained slogan "Relatively Minor Readjustments in Certain Favorable Policy Areas." "Today, Americans face a great many challenges, and I hear your desperate calls for barely measurable and largely symbolic improvements in the status quo," said Obama, who vowed never to waver in his fight for every last infinitesimal nudge forward on the controversial issues of torture and the military ban on homosexuals. "Remember: Yes we can, if by that you mean tiptoeing around potentially unpopular decisions that could alienate a large segment of the populace." Washington insiders said that, while the new mottos are certainly in keeping with Obama's pledge of government transparency, they are significantly less catchy.

[saskganesh]

very good.

source?

[DontSayBanana]

I smell an Onion.

[saskganesh]

when you cut those, it means tears.

[jimmy olsen]

Nice find Weatherman. 

[Ed Anger]

Even better than the Onion, a fruitcake:

Ted Rall: It's increasingly evident that Obama should resign
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THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted May 29, 2009 @ 12:02 AM

MIAMI — 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 health care 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 nerve 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 George 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 George W. 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.

What they mean, of course, is that the hundreds of men and boys languishing at Guantánamo and the thousands of "detainees" the Obama administration anticipates kidnapping in the future cannot be convicted. As in the old Soviet Union, putting enemies of the state on trial isn't enough. The game has to be fixed. Conviction has to be a foregone conclusion.

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 of paragraphs 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.

Ted Rall is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate.

[Scipio]

I will gladly sacrifice Ted Rall for the safety of America.

[Ed Anger]

I will gladly sacrifice Ted Rall for the safety of America.

United Media Lays Off Ted Rall

By E&P Staff

Published: April 22, 2009 10:53 AM ET

NEW YORK Chalk up one more wildly talented cartoonist to be victimized by the economy.

"I've been laid off," reads the headline on the blog of cartoonist Ted Rall, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Rall, an editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, has served as editor of acquisitions and development at United Media for the past two years.

"My job was finding new talent -- comic strip artists, columnists and writers of puzzles -- to syndicate to newspapers," Rall writes on his blog. "Considering the circumstances, I enjoyed remarkable success. ... I am proud of what I accomplished."

In that position, Rall helped bring to newspaper pages such strips as Tak Toyoshima's "Secret Asian Man," the first daily comic about Asian-Americans by an Asian-American cartoonist, Keith Knight's "The Knight Life," and Dan Thompson's "Rip Haywire," among others. He recruited Signe Wilkinson to draw "Family Tree," and oversaw the transition of R. Stevens' Web comic "Diesel Sweeties" into daily newspaper version (which has since ended).

"So if you're a creator who was hoping to pitch me something, I'm sorry -- I can't help you anymore," he adds. "If you need a cartoonist, a writer, or an editor, or anything else, please drop me a line. I need work, and fast."

A Cambridge, Mass., native, Rall was syndicated by the former San Francisco Chronicle Features before joining Universal Press Syndicate in 1996 -- the year he was nominated for a Puitzer. His cartoons appear in more than 100 publications in the U.S., including the Los Angeles Times, The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., Tucson Weekly, Willamette Week, and The New York Times.

Rall's work earned him the Deadline Club Award by the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998 for distinguished work on behalf of disadvantaged Americans, and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism for Cartoons awards in 1995 and 2000.

In 2006, Rall celebrated his 10th anniversary with Universal Press Syndicate. Check out his then-interview with UPS, here.

LOL