Rug Burn Junky on 26/12/2010 at 17:08

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Someone here is clearly ideologically blind, but it ain't me.

You: "Bush bad! Obama Bad! They both equal!"

I have no illusions that the current administration has entirely clean hands, but that's a far cry from the systematic, and widespread abuses that occurred under the previous administration. There's no point discussing this with you, because if you can't concede this at the outset, you are either biased or retarded. Case closed. Personally, I've come to assume both, based on the simplistic binary analyses you display, but others may be more charitable. This is again an instance where you don't deserve to be addressed with facts and explanations of how it all works, because it will be wasted on you.

Oh, and btw, next time you get the urge to say something fucking stupid like this ("Or is it like your vague and long since disproven assertion that unethical practices on Wall Street had nothing to do with the financial crisis?") and misquote me, just STFU. That's not what I've said, and the real world's more complicated than that. Nothing's been "disproven" except in your feeble little mind.

Queue on 27/12/2010 at 19:04

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Is it safe to assume that Sarah Palin has your vote?

Queue on 27/12/2010 at 19:16

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Do you mean the Ralph Nader of the 60s-80s (who stood up against Big Business and social wrongs with his Nader's Raiders); the Ralph Nader of the 90s (who stood up against environmental wrongs with his Green Party); or the Ralph Nader of the 2000s (who's just a self-important dick)?

Queue on 27/12/2010 at 19:43

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I can't argue with that-- I'd take a potted-plant over Palin. Or Huckabee (I love it...the spell checker thinks it should be "hackable".).

That's how I got to spend the latter part of "my family's Christmas dinner", listening to the praises of Palin and Huckabee, our next President and V.P. Apparently they are the ones who'll return this country to God and morals. Oh, and the baby Jesus got rid of allllll the oil in the Gulf spill, too.

So a Deviant, Liberal, Socialist, Tree-Hugging Fuck like me can't love his family and understand the difference between right and wrong because I don't give a shit if the gays want to get married or not (just don't spend my tax dollars to buy them a wedding gift), and that the baby Jesus was about as effective in dealing with the oil spill as a shit-load of Native-American hair tampons.

Rug Burn Junky on 27/12/2010 at 22:02

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I'm sure in your paranoid fever dreams you believe that, but that's not what's actually happening. Your newfound love of Glenn Greenwald is cute and all, but you need some perspective, and you need to stop reading him like chicken little just because he reinforces your desire to hate Obama. In order to justify this viewpoint, you need to dismiss as trivial actual positive changes being made by the current administration, because its not convenient to your narrative ("it's only because of bad press"). That's simply intellectually dishonest, and you have no credibility to accuse anyone else of an ideological bent.

The rise of the surveillance state has been a long time coming, but accelerated mightily under Bush. Being the runaway train that it is, and accounting for the poison pills that the last administration has put into place in modern politics, Obama's acquiesence is regrettable but understandable.

The key difference is, Bush was explicitly advocating for the legitimization of that surveillance state, which is fundamentally more problematic than any specific acts thereunder. That's true from his own statements ("I'd authorize waterboarding again.") right down to the Bybee and Yoo memos.

It is the fundamental difference between a proactive policy and individual decisions. Yes, Obama's made undesirable decisions, and the pattern is troubling. But the explicit policies of Bush left no question as to how extreme his administration's views were, and created a framework to enable a massive increase in rights violations, now and across future generations. If you even had an inkling about how government functions you would understand why this is worse.

And yes, what's happening to Bradley Manning is atrocious. Of course, none of it rises to the same level as Yoo/Bybee explicitly authorized, and was carried out on Cheney's orders in GitmAlso, much of it is used and endorsed by the prison system every day against other "criminals," with absolutely no compunction. Now, point us to where Obama explicitly authorized that. Because there sure as hell exists evidence that Bush was explicitly aware of and approved the treatment of detainees in Gitmo. This is an important distinction, because blaming it on his administration requires a chain of authorization showing that it's actually his administration acting, and not the independent discretion of reactionary military officers.

Plus, I'm sure if Obama were to intervene on Manning's behald, it would be treated rationally and fairly, and nobody on Fox News or in the Senate Republican Leadership would demagogue him and call him a pansy....

More importantly, NONE of this changes the fact that your initial insecure flailing (stating that that memo supports your larger point) is patently wrong on its face. Recognizing that foreign prosecution of an American administration is problematic is a different question entirely, and that's true even when that prosecution would deal with the scumbags which populated the Bush administration.

You have at least a modicum of exposure to some facts, and you are usually able to put this into rudimentary narratives to support a preconceived idea. The problem is that your facts are always incomplete, and the logic you use is rather consistently lacking in its application. As per usual, that's been the case here.