Meet the new boss. . . same as the old boss. . .

Good comment from Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive

Obama said it “firmly reestablishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance.”

But the ACLU notes that the bill “permits only minimal court oversight. The FISA Court only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what, or where will actually be tapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment.”

What’s more, in the incredibly rare instances where the FISA Court denies a warrant to the President, under the new bill the President can go ahead and do the wiretapping anyway while the appeals process continues, a process that the ACLU says can take two months.

Russ Feingold calls the idea that this is a good compromise “a farce” and “political cover.”

Says Feingold: “Anybody who claims this is an OK bill, I really question if they’ve even read it.”

Has Obama?

If not, that’s a problem.

And if he has, and still approves of it, that’s an even bigger one.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon:

It’s either that he “chickened out” or — as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders — Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he’ll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives — and I don’t know (or much care) what they are — Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush’s executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of “Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights.” Note that the very first line of Obama’s statement warns us that we face what he calls “grave threats,” and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good. Making matters worse still, what Obama did yesterday is in clear tension with an emphatic promise that he made just months ago. As the extremely pro-Obama MoveOn.org notes today, Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, back in in September, vowed that Obama would “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” MoveOn believes Obama should be held to his word and is thus conducting a campaign urging Obama to do what he promised — support a filibuster to stop the enactment of telecom amnesty.

And here from MS Bellows in HuffPo: Obama: In the Inspector General We Trust:

Dennis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, said in a conference call this morning that legislation expanding presidential power to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications is acceptable to Senator Obama because the United States Inspector General will ensure accountability.

In other words, the Obama campaign’s position is now that the duty and power to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, now resides primarily not with the President, not with the Congress or the Courts, but with a bureaucrat created by administrative law whose job is to conduct internal investigations of government agencies.

What I find particularly distressing is that there are, apparently smart people who are so emotionally invested in Obama as the black JFK that they are overlooking this rape of the Constitution.

Like this commenter from Huffpo:

pdohan See Profile I’m a Fan of pdohan

Fortune Magazine interview:

He sits in the corner of a sofa, one black, tasseled loafer propped against a coffee table. We’re in the presidential suite on the 41st floor of the New York Hilton. McCain has come here - between a major speech on the economy in Washington, D.C., this morning and a fundraiser tonight at the 21 Club - to talk to us and to let us take his picture. He is wearing a dark suit, as he almost always does, with a blue shirt and a wine-colored tie. He’s looking not at us but into the void. His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11. Finally he says, “Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.”

Not America’s dependence on foreign oil? Not climate change? Not the crushing cost of health care? Eventually McCain gets around to mentioning all three of those. But he starts by deftly turning the economy into a national security issue - and why not? On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain’s chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

Certainly another ‘Reichstag fire‘ complete with dead bodies of ordinary Americans would be greeted with glee in McCain’s war room. Why does this surprise anyone? These people are fascists and this is how fascists operate.

This line of thinking, of course, assumes Americans are too stupid to differentiate between a false flag attack, incompetence on the part of our counter-terrorist forces, or a masterminded attack by a true outside force AND the motivations and consequences of such an attack.

All they figure is that a majority of the American people, ’soccer’ or ’security’ moms, et. al., would simply stampede in fear to John McCain, begging him to take away the rest of our tenuous civil liberties and throw the entire Middle East into a nuclear cauldron.

And you know, sadly, they might just be right.

Which is why when I read stories like this I get genuinely concerned about what might happen as this election approaches or in the netherworld between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

I suspect there is quite a bit of planned mischief afoot.

NOT that I expect any less from Obama. Should some catastrophe happen between E Day and I Day after Obama wins, I would expect ‘Mr. Change’ to swear absolute fealty to the concept of massive retaliation. Like most Democrats, I would expect him to try to ‘out war’ the cons just to make sure people knew he wasn’t a weak kneed appeaser.

In any case, there’s too much smoke swirling around the latter months of the year not to be prepared for literally anything.

A great article by Robert Parry in Alternet that outlines just how serious Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama’s lies were in justifying the wiretapping immunity cave in.

I like this part:

A week after the “Protect America Act” was passed, the New York Times and the Washington Post published front-page stories explaining how the Bush administration had ambushed the Democrats.

Pressed up against the start of the August recess and the prospect of Republican taunts that Democrats were “soft on terror,” the Democratic leaders abandoned earlier compromise proposals and accepted the more expansive law. Their one point of resistance was putting a February 2008 sunset provision into the law.

Still, the Democratic cave-in in August 2007 provoked an uproar among rank-and-file Democrats. Pelosi’s office reported receiving more than 200,000 angry e-mails.

And in the end, what did all those angry e-mails accomplish? A temporary retreat leading to what happened this week.

And now, Saint Barack Obama, showing he’s no different from any of the other wanna be Washington insiders, endorses the sell-out.

HuffPo coverage

“Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.”

You can read the rest of his mealy mouthed response for yourself. Spoken like a true creature of the system. Same old scare tactics - this could have been said by any Republican.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss except better spoken.

Paul Kane in WashPo on what Obama said ‘back then:’

This marks something of a reversal of Obama’s position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the “Potomac Primaries,” but issued a statement that day declaring “I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty.”

Boy his civil liberties Iron Cross sure melted fast didn’t it?

Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) continue to oppose the new legislation, as does Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). All Obama backers in the primary, those senior lawmakers contend that the new version of the FISA law — crafted after four months of intense negotiations between White House aides and congressional leaders — provides insufficient court review of the pending 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies alleging privacy invasion for their participation in a warrantless wiretapping program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The immunity outcome is predetermined,” Feingold wrote in a memo today.

Predetermined - as is everything, isn’t it?

Ok, so what to do? I won’t assail progressives for voting for Obama. Hell, I know how easy it is to buy the hope he’s selling. I think it’s snake oil, but after all we’ve been through under Bush, I can understand the people who say they’d vote for anyone with a D next to his/her name than McCain. I would only caution those folks not to get their hopes up too high.

In reality, I understand that there is no real place for me in the American political system. Even the Greens, who I feel are not friendly to Second Amendment rights which I see as a natural right. And the Libertarians are too split between pro and anti war factions to be effective.

Essentially, in modern America, there is no one I feel I can cast a vote for in good conscience.

After 30+ years of political activity, I have come to the realization that the game is not for me anyway. And there is no one or no party that speaks to me. I have become an ‘auslander’ in my own country. Stuck here, watching the whole retched system circle the drain without any recourse to peaceful deliverance.

I don’t think I’m quite alone on falling into ‘observer’ status. I think there are many more like me out there who are now opting out of what they see as a fixed and rigged game. The basic problem, for those of us who used to be so politically active and believe so much that the system could work, is wanting to jump back in while knowing it’s a fool’s game. It’s hard to watch knowing that it’s not for you and nothing you can do will result in any meaningful changes.

What I can do now is simply to comment on what I see in order to at least impart some understanding to those seeking explanation for why a lifetime of voting doesn’t give us a just and decent society.

I’m voting Green or Socialist Worker in November. I can’t, in good conscience, vote for this pack of jackals or their puppet Obama. And speaking of him, has anyone heard a word from Lord Barack on the telecom immunity isssue?

Huffpo: Congress Strikes Immunity Deal for Telecoms

Yesterday House Democrats and Republicans effectively struck a deal to “provide what amounts to legal immunity to the phone companies that took part in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping.” Today the parties will vote on the compromise bill. The New York Times has details below on the compromise. The AP will have updates of the voting here.

Remember, it’s the best Congress money can buy:

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald posted the amount of money each of the major telecoms involved spent on lobbyists to curry a favorable outcome for this legislation. Read an excerpt below:

Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T spent $5.2 million in lobbyist fees (putting it well ahead of its 2007 pace, when it spent just over $17 million). In the first quarter of 2008, Verizon spent $4.8 million on lobbyist fees, while Comcast spent $2.6 million. So in the first three months of this year, those three telecoms — which would be among the biggest beneficiaries of telecom amnesty (right after the White House) — spent a combined total of almost $13 million on lobbyists. They’re on pace to spend more than $50 million on lobbying this year — just those three companies.

Why? Marty Kaplan sums it up in HuffPo:

The Democrats’ motive, of course, is mixed; one part fear of losing telecom campaign contributions, one part fear of being called terrorist-lovers, appeasers and similar bad names by Republican crooks, liars and smear-merchants in the coming campaign. The irony, of course, is that even though Democrats gave Bush and Cheney the very barebacking they wanted, the Republicans are already calling Democrats, and will continue to call them in the fall, America-haters, while the phone companies, having nowhere else to go to rent a congressional majority, would have continued to fatten Democratic coffers anyway.

snip

Makes you wonder how far the Democrats are willing to go to win the love of the loathed playground bullies. Let Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship? Make bipartisan loviedovie with Newt Gingrich? Take impeachment off the table? Oh, wait.

There is also loose talk that has been going on for some years that a great deal of the ‘eavesdropping’ and investigations done by the Bush/Cheney spooks were done on Democratic Congressman who are being blackmailed in one form or another to do the bidding of the military-industrial complex.

Face it people: under the two-party Punch and Judy show, you’re powerless.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m tired of being played for a sucker by the American political system. I’m 45 and I’ve been listening to the bullshit all my life and I no longer believe any change through the ballot box is possible. The only way they will break is under force and too many Americans long ago had any revolutionary spirit beat out of them. Perhaps when their children are starving or seized by forced conscription. Perhaps.

In any case, what we are seeing are the final shrieks of government of, by and for the people which, if you study enough serious American history, was more of a myth than a reality anyway.

What is coming down the pike is nothing more than red, white and blue fascism. All it will take is one more ‘terrorist attack’ to complete the long sought after mission of the authoritarians. And, as long as people like this are promised a piece of the face smashing fun, you’ll find many Americans cheering the death of the republic (they’re doing it now anyway on sites like Free Republic) and the ’setting accounts’ with ‘lib’ruls’ that will follow in it’s wake.

Read Joe Bageant’s latest articles if you need more background. He’s in Belize now which should tell you a lot about the smart people with means getting out now while the getting is good.