Obama - from kind of annoying fear-mongering to fucking inexcusable.

Obama's fear mongering-the sky is falling-let's make everybody scared and use this crisis to pass a bunch of unrelated crap we've wanted for years is almost as amazingly fucked up as what the Republicans did with the Patriot Act. I say almost since, imho, stripping people of civil liberties and enabling a police state is worse than screwed up economic spending and politicking.

But the second bit is just insufferably fucked up. Perpetuating the absolute worst of the Bush administration and subverting every bit of the concepts of "hope" and "change." Absolute Presidential Fail.

Fear Is His Friend: Obama takes a page from Bush's crisis management book. - Reason Magazine:

"Just as the PATRIOT Act was a grab bag of legal changes that law enforcement and intelligence agencies had been seeking for years, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a grab bag of expenditures that leftish Democrats have long wanted, repackaged for the crisis du jour. In both cases, instilling fear was the key to suspending skepticism and cutting off debate.

...In a Washington Post op-ed piece last week, President Obama warned that if Congress did not immediately pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, "our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse." While Bush gave us the concept of the never-ending War on Terror, Obama has introduced the idea of the never-ending recession, a phenomenon that has never been seen before but that can be averted only by uncritically approving his spending priorities.

...At his press conference that evening he said "a failure to act will only deepen this crisis" and "could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.""

The Agitator » Blog Archive » Obama Punts His First State Secrets Case:

"Surprising even a judge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a lawyer for the Obama administration embraced the Bush administration’s position in the first state secrets case since Obama took power. The case involves five accused terrorist detainees who are attempting to sue a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging flights to accommodate the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program, which flew them off to be tortured by other governments.

...Obama has promised to review Bush’s invocation of state secrets privilege, including voicing his support for a reform bill working its way through Congress. But the case this week was his first opportunity to do something about it. He didn’t.

...To their credit, many Obama supporters are livid. Glenn Grenwald writes that Obama has failed his first major civil liberties test “resoundingly and disgracefully.” Andrew Sullivan writes that, “with each decision to cover for their predecessors, the Obamaites become retroactively complicit in them.” Hilzoy implores Obama, “you screwed this one up in a major, major way. Stop it. Stop it now.”"

Obama's "Disgraceful Abandonment" of Civil Liberties in Extraordinary Rendition Case - Boing Boing:

"The Wall Street Journal may have said it best today: "On State Secrets and Rendition, Holder Holds the Bush Line." Or, NPR -- "Deja Bush." Yesterday, the Obama administration invoked the "state secrets" privilege when opposing the reinstatement of a lawsuit alleging that a Boeing unit flew detainees to countries where they were tortured as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program."

The Agitator » Blog Archive » More Change We Can Believe In Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss:

"Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan, President Obama’s choice to represent his administration before the Supreme Court, told a key Republican senator Tuesday that she believed the government could hold suspected terrorists without trial as war prisoners.

...Just to be clear, what they’re saying here is that the federal government can declare someone an “enemy combatant,” then detain them “indefintely,” or for the remainder of the “war on terror.” Which essentially means forever (you don’t honestly think a U.S. president is ever going to declare terrorism defeated, do you?). No charges. No trial. Just, “Trust us, these people are guilty.”

And of course we’re now learning that way too many of them aren’t.

Closing Guantanamo had some symbolic value, but it doesn’t mean a thing if we’re just going to do the same thing in another facility."

You know, the thing that pisses me off to no extent, is this concept from on high that we need to trust in our government. NO WE DO FUCKING NOT. That the WHOLE POINT of America. A system of laws and NOT MEN. With a series of CHECKS AND BALANCES. Because the people in charge are NOT TO BE TRUSTED.