Saturday Night Moose Dancing

OK, time for some dancing. Seriously, get your moose butt up and dance. But do watch those antlers.

Tonight’s theme, dance music. I’ll spin up the victrola with a few to get you started.

First of course is Saturday Night Fever:

And while we’re dancing with Vinny, how could we forget the dance scene from Pulp Fiction:

Acceptable videos, good dance music or dance bits from movies/TV. OK people, let’s see some creativity and serious dancing.

Obama’s “bad negotiating” is Neither

Glenn Greewald has a good article out today on Obama’s “bad negotiating”. Glenn get’s it right, mostly. Of course we all know his blind side, like many liberal purists, that the Clinton’s are even worse than most in the GOP. But we’ll let that slide. Mostly. Read the whole thing, but I’ll pull out a few gems. He starts with a summary of extending the Bush tax cuts, continuing and extending wars, etc., etc., and then the recent willingness to accept GOP legislation to put the hardship on the backs of the poor:

All of that has led to a spate of negotiation advice from the liberal punditocracy advising the President how he can better defend progressive policy aims — as though the Obama White House deeply wishes for different results but just can’t figure out how to achieve them. Jon Chait, Josh Marshall, and Matt Yglesias all insist that the President is “losing” on these battles because of bad negotiating strategy, and will continue to lose unless it improves. Ezra Klein says “it makes absolutely no sense” that Democrats didn’t just raise the debt ceiling in December, when they had the majority and could have done it with no budget cuts. Once it became clear that the White House was not following their recommended action of demanding a “clean” vote on raising the debt ceiling — thus ensuring there will be another, probably larger round of budget cuts — Yglesias lamented that the White House had “flunked bargaining 101.” Their assumption is that Obama loathes these outcomes but is the victim of his own weak negotiating strategy.

I don’t understand that assumption at all. Does anyone believe that Obama and his army of veteran Washington advisers are incapable of discovering these tactics on their own or devising better strategies for trying to avoid these outcomes if that’s what they really wanted to do? What evidence is there that Obama has some inner, intense desire for more progressive outcomes? These are the results they’re getting because these are the results they want — for reasons that make perfectly rational political sense.

Exactly. Obama is doing all of this on purpose. He and his WH are not bad negotiators. Why so many Obama supporters are disappointed and are still scratching their heads over his “ineffectiveness” is still wondrous to behold. And why:

Why would Democrats overwhelmingly support domestic budget cuts that burden the poor? Because, as Yglesias correctly observed, “just about anything Barack Obama does will be met with approval by most Democrats.” In other words, once Obama lends his support to a policy — no matter how much of a departure it is from ostensible Democratic beliefs — then most self-identified Democrats will support it because Obama supports it, because it then becomes the “Democratic policy,” by definition. Adopting “centrist” or even right-wing policies will always produce the same combination — approval of independents, dilution of GOP anger, media raves, and continued Democratic voter loyalty — that is ideal for the President’s re-election prospects.

Exactly. Why would he do any different. It’s been the plan all along. He has make it clear to those of us that bothered to listen to him, that this is what he does. But then a bit later Glenn brings out the usual crutch for why 2008 didn’t matter:

Before Obama’s inauguration, I wrote that the most baffling thing to me about the enthusiasm of his hardest-core supporters was the belief that he was pioneering a “new form of politics” when, it seemed obvious, it was just a re-branded re-tread of Clintonian triangulation and the same “centrist”, scorn-the-base playbook Democratic politicians had used for decades.

Right Glenn, because the 90′s where so horrible under the Clinton’s when the gap between the rich and poor continued to widen just like under Reagan/Bush… oh wait, no it didn’t, it actually reversed. And there was a surplus. And more jobs. Yea, that was really horrible for the working class. We wouldn’t want any more of that. See, this is where even Glenn continues to fall short. He can’t come to grips with the fact that something really horrible happened in 2008, and that horrible thing was fully funded and backed by the sample people that brought us Reagan/Bush I/ Bush II, and the wars and many other things. If you can’t see a better, viable alternative right in front of your face, you will never get there. It’s the usual liberal purist thinking I guess. Glenn continues:

What amazes me most is the brazen claims of presidential impotence necessary to excuse all of this. Atrios has written for weeks about the “can’t do” spirit that has overtaken the country generally, but that mindset pervades how the President’s supporters depict both him and the powers of his office: no bad outcomes are ever his fault because he’s just powerless in the face of circumstance. That claim is being made now by pointing to a GOP Congress, but the same claim was made when there was a Democratic Congress as well: recall the disagreements I had with his most loyal supporters in 2009 and 2010 over their claims that he was basically powerless even to influence his own party’s policy-making in Congress.

Nicely said. Glenn does a nice bit of shredding of some of our least favorite bloggers and their silliness. He seems to think Digby is in the right side though. Another blindside for him I think. All in all a good read.

So there you have it. Glenn mostly gets it. And in fairness mostly has along the way. But how does that help? I know we’ve all been down in the dumps because it seems pretty hopeless out there with a Reagan/Bush president destroying what little is left of the Dem brand, and mindless creative class types cheering all the way. Maybe someone with some guts will challenge him in ’12. I’m not holding my breath though.

This is an open thread.

Odyssey Dawn (War in Libya) – Open Thread

You say you want a revolution… It looks like we’ve got a coalition and some extra missiles laying around, so we’re off:

The UK, US and France have attacked Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in the first action to enforce a UN-mandated no-fly zone.

Pentagon officials say the US and the UK have fired more than 110 missiles, while French planes struck pro-Gaddafi forces attacking rebel-held Benghazi.

Col Gaddafi has vowed retaliation and said he will open arms depots to the people to defend Libya.

Missiles struck air defence sites in the capital, Tripoli, and Misrata.

A French plane fired the first shots against Libyan government targets at 1645 GMT, destroying a number of military vehicles, according to a military spokesman.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed that British planes are in action over Libya.

And with similar coverage:

The United States and United Kingdom attacks on Libya’s integrated air-defense systems began a planned multiphase assault to reduce the risks for subsequent overflights by allies’ fighter and surveillance aircraft.

The opening rounds of “Operation Odyssey Dawn” followed the script of major operations since 1991 with the launch of Raytheon Co. (RTN) Tomahawk cruise missiles to clear a path for manned aircraft. Yesterday’s strike involved 110 missiles against 20 targets; in contrast 288 Tomahawks were fired in the opening hours of the 1991 Gulf War.

A major target was Muammar Qaddafi’s SA-5 missiles, which at their longest range of 300 kilometers provide “significant standoff capability,” said a Pentagon statement. Libya also has about 50 SA-6 missiles, the type Bosnian Serbs used to shoot down U.S. Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady’s F-16 in 1995.

Libya’s integrated air defense system, similar to Iraq’s, had about 30 surface-to-air missile sites, linked by 15 early warning radar installations along the Mediterranean coastline. They posed a “significant threat” to foreign warplanes over or near Libyan airspace, according to declassified Pentagon data.

“ Any time you go against an installed air defense system, you have to take it seriously,” Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughhead said in a recent interview.

Yes, a lovely name even. Operation Odyssey Dawn. How catchy. Wikipedia has a good entry on the Libyan uprising this year so far.

This is an open thread.

Obama Formalizes Indefinite Detention at Gitmo

It’s official, Obama has formalized indefinite detention at Gitmo:

President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security. The administration also said it will start new military commission trials for detainees there.

So there you have it. Obama has broken what he called, and what Obot followers called, his most important promise. And there’s more:

The announcements, coming more than two years after Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements Guantanamo Bay’s continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Administration officials said the president is still committed to closing the prison, although he made no mention of that goal in a short statement Monday. The administration’s original plans to create a detention center in the United States and prosecute some detainees in federal court have all but collapsed in the face of bipartisan congressional opposition.

The executive order recognizes the reality that some Guantanamo Bay detainees will remain in U.S. custody for many years, if not for life. The new system allows them the prospect of successfully arguing in the future that they should be released because they do not pose a threat.

This rather guarantees that Guantanamo stays open as a US military prison for the rest of Obama’s presidency. Here’s one reaction:

But activists on either end of the debate over closing the prison cast the announcement as a reversal.

“It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantanamo in light of this executive order,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “In a little over two years, the Obama administration has done a complete about-face.”

It’s hard to believe anyone is surprised by the Republican in New Dem clothing, the Bush lookalike, the Reagan wantabe. We’ll have to watch how the Obots justify and rationalize this.

This is an open thread.

A Little News and Talk

It’s been a busy few weeks down here with the moose heard. Let’s see what’s been happening since I’ve been so busy. Um, so the middle east has completely changed. Did anyone see that happening.

The UN seeks access to the Libyan injured and dying:

The United Nations is calling on Libya to allow it immediate access to the rebel-held western city of Misrata, following reports of fighting and deaths in the area.

U.N. emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos said Sunday that people “are injured and dying and need help immediately.”  She also called on all sides of the conflict to “ensure that civilians are protected from harm.”

The U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the Red Crescent Society in Benghazi reported that Misrata, 200 kilometers east of Tripoli, is under attack by government forces, and that the Libyan Red Crescent is trying to get ambulances from Tripoli in to collect the dead and injured.

That’s a pretty bad sitiuation. Unlike the other middle eastern countries that have had changes and protests and the like, the Libyan government and military has met theirs with violence and apparently a goal of killing all of their citizens.

Apparently things aren’t really resolved in Egypt either. First the supposed interim government and really military don’t seem much different than before. And now there appears to be more attacking of protesters by “armed civilians” (read military or police out of uniform):

On Sunday, men in plain clothes armed with swords and petrol bombs confronted the pro-democracy activists after soldiers dispersed a Cairo rally they were holding to demand reform of the security services, eyewitnesses say.

“The army started firing in the air to disperse us,” Mohammed Fahmy told Reuters news agency.

“We tried to run away but we were met by 200 thugs in plain clothes carrying sharp weapons.”

Mr Fahmy put the number of protesters at 2,000.

Dismantling the security apparatus has been one of the key demands of the protest movement, the BBC’s Magdi Abdelhadi in Cairo says.

The events of the weekend have been described as the Egyptian storming of the Bastille, he says.

Let’s hope the military and the old politicians behind the scenes don’t do anything rash and let changes happen as they’ve promised. It’s not over and the Egyptians are not out of the woods by any means.

And allegedly because of all this unrest, gas prices are skyrocketing and will soon top $4/gal in the US:

For the first time since fighting in the Middle East sent gasoline prices skyrocketing, President Obama is thinking about tapping the country’s oil reserves.

“We’re looking at the options. The issue of the reserve is one we are considering,” Obama’s Chief of Staff Bill Daley said today on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But he added: “It is something that only is done and has been done on very rare occasions.”

He is talking about the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s along the Gulf coast and is America’s oil piggy bank. In underground salt domes, 727 million barrels of oil are stored. The oil is there to protect against a sudden cut off of supply.

“It should be tapped when, physically, the market is lacking oil. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near that,” Roger Diwan of PFC Energy told ABC News.

I’m sure that will help the economy is the US loads. Meanwhile the remaining Democrats are standing firm and drawing a line in the sand about the budget. And they really mean it this time. Yea, right:

Assistant Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin drew a line in the sand on Sunday in his party’s budget battle with Republicans, who are pushing deep spending cuts to trim the federal deficit.

Durbin, one of President Barack Obama’s top allies in Congress, said he opposed going beyond the $10.5 billion in domestic, non-defense discretionary spending cuts that Democrats have backed.

Republicans want $61 billion in spending reductions.

“I think we’ve pushed this to the limit,” Durbin told the “Fox News Sunday” television program as Congress and the White House prepared for another week of showdowns that threaten a government shutdown.

“To go any further is to push more kids out of school,” Durbin said. “It stops the investment of infrastructure, which kills good-paying jobs right here in the United States.’

“I’m willing to see more deficit reduction, but not out of domestic discretionary spending,” Durbin said.

Any bets as to how long they pretend to be defending the budget. What theater. They want the same as the Republicans, for the moneybags behind them to be happy and to continue to keep them in office. Either way, neither party has our interests at heart.

And finally, Charlie Sheen is running his own internet talk show. Or soon will be. Yea, that’s what I said. If there ever were a sign that the entire US had jumped the shark, that would be it.

This is an open thread. Talk it up. No fighting. Or at least, not without proper boxing gloves.

Egyptian Protests Continue

It worked. I traded some swamp land for posting with crawdad. He has no idea what sort of trouble a moose can get into. Watch this space for more moose droppings.

We’ve all been mesmerized by what’s going on in Egypt and spilling over elsewhere. Newsweek has an account of the scramble and difficulty in dealing with this from the administration:

Throughout the week, as the crisis gathered storm in Egypt, the administration had otherwise been slow to react, seemingly always one step behind events. This was partly because neither the U.S. intelligence community nor diplomats on the ground foresaw how swiftly the protests in Egypt would gather momentum—even if everyone realized that virtually the entire Arab world is a tinder box of pent-up frustration, with despotic regimes unable to meet the needs of, especially, their youth. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself put it last month, in a speech in Doha that now seems uncannily prescient, Arab leaders would face growing unrest, extremism, and even rebellion unless they reformed “corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order.” It was the starkest warning ever delivered by a senior American official, and a message brought home a few days later when Tunisia erupted in revolt.

Yet, when it came to Egypt, the tone was different, and as the protests in Cairo gathered momentum, Clinton’s initial public comments were a mixture of fact and hopeful fiction. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people,” she said, an assessment that didn’t take long to be overtaken by events.

Whether Mubarak indeed was committed to responding to “the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people” remained an open question. Clinton’s statement, however, had been carefully calibrated, coming after the first round of what proved to be an exhausting week of discussions by President Obama and his top officials.

They then go on, after sipping some kool-aid, to go into realms of fantasy about Obama’s role and influence:

At a meeting on Friday afternoon, Obama and his top officials, including Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon among them, concluded that the time had come for Obama to talk directly to Mubarak. And Mubarak’s address to the Egyptian people had given Obama the opening he wanted. The White House organized the call.

It was an intervention that dramatically—and publicly—escalated the American involvement in the Egyptian crisis. In an address from the White House, Obama outlined what he had told Mubarak, putting the administration unequivocally behind the demonstrators’ demands. “The people of Egypt have rights that are universal,” Obama said in his speech. “And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” The president also warned both sides against violence but his message was clear: “When President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight, he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity. I just spoke to him after his speech, and I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” And, said Obama, “we are committed to working with the Egyptian government and the Egyptian people—all quarters—to achieve” those goals.

Well, it is Newsweek after all. Most of what we hear from all quarters tends to be unhappy with Obama’s reaction, and instead demand that Obama push hard for Mubarak to step down immediately, if not sooner.

The Guardian has a great article:

Days of rage in Egypt signify the end of days for Hosni Mubarak’s repressive and bankrupt regime. For 30 years, the president has held his country down through fear, secret police, emergency laws, American cash subsidies and a lamentable absence of vision and imagination. His crude, Gaullist message: without me, chaos. Now the chaos has come anyway. And Mubarak must go.

Five days of rage on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and dozens of other cities have transformed the way Egypt sees itself. For years, they said it was impossible. The regime was too powerful, the masses too apathetic, the security apparatus too ubiquitous. Like eastern Europeans trapped in the Soviet Union’s cold, pre-1991 embrace, they struggled in the dark, without help, without hope. Movements for change, such as Kefaya (Enough!), were brutally suppressed. Courageous dissidents such as Ayman Nour were harassed, beaten and imprisoned.

Yet all the time, pressure for reform was rising. Every day, higher prices, economic stagnation, poverty and unemployment, political stasis, official corruption and a stifled, censored public space became less and less tolerable. Every day, impatience with the regime’s insulting insouciance bred more enemies. Hatred seeped like poison through the veins of the people. Until, at last, in five days of rage, as if as one, they cried: “Enough!” And now, Mubarak must go.

The full article is worth the read. I would say the consensus throughout the world is that Mubarak must go.

Al Jazeera has been having consistently good coverage of the days events. This includes Mubarak’s appointment of a new VP and PM:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has appointed the country’s head of intelligence to the post of vice-president, in a move said to be a reaction to days of anti-government protests in cities across the country.

Omar Soleiman was sworn in on Saturday, the first time Mubarak appointed a vice-president during his 30-year rule. Ahmad Shafiq, a former chief of air staff, was appointed prime minister.

But Al Jazeera’s correspondents in Egypt have said that many of those taking to the streets demand a total change of guard, as opposed to a reshuffling of figures in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

Tens of thousands of people in the capital Cairo gathered on Saturday, demanding an end to Hosni Mubarak’s presidency.

Al Jazeera talks to Mohamed Elbaradei about the oncoming anti-government protests across Egypt

The demonstrations continued in defiance of an extended curfew, which state television reported will be in place from 4pm to 8am local time.

A military presence also remains, and the army warned the crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo that if they defy the curfew, they would be in danger.

Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Cairo, said that soldiers deployed to central Cairo are not intervening in the protests.

“Some of the soldiers here have said that the only way for peace to come to the streets of Cairo is for Mubarak to step down,” he said.

Similar crowds were gathering in the cities of Alexandria and Suez, Al Jazeera’s correspondents reported.

As you have no doubt seen, there is coverage everywhere. Here are a few more highlights:

WaPo’s coverage of the test of US-Egyption relations.

Foreign Policy’s what this does to relations in Egypt as well as the middle east in general.

Some coverage of the looting

And then part of the news has been tools of social media and how they’ve influence events. Here are a few related articles:

LATimes article on small coverage, 8%, but some workarounds

A more in depth analysis of Egyptian internet usage over the last week

And finally, here’s a BBC article regarding tough issues if a revolution does succeed:

In the past year activists have suggested that the former head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, could make a suitable, secular transitional leader for Egypt, as he is respected on the world stage.

His sharp criticisms of the Mubarak government since he returned to his home country last year roused many Egyptians who had previously given up on politics.

He has declared that the Muslim Brotherhood should be a political party and worked with them as part of his umbrella group, the National Association for Change, to collect a million signatures for a petition demanding constitutional reforms.

Now watching developments unfold, Mr ElBaradei predicts that the president and his associates will not succeed in hanging on to power.

“The only solution is to listen to the people. The solution is a political solution. The regime has failed and they need to go,” he commented.

Events throughout the day should be telling with respect to how the military reacts and handles the continued protests.