It Can’t Happen Here
Thursday, August 25th, 2011
It can’t happen here…. Right?
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Posts Tagged ‘president’
Why Newt Gingrich Will Never Be President
Thursday, December 8th, 2011
Newt Gingrich will never be president of the United States.
My reasoning is simple:
1 Newt Gingrich is too intelligent to be president.
Republicans voters don’t trust Presidents that talk down to them or who come off as acting smarter than they are. Evidence? George W. Bush. In order to get elected he had to drop his rich elitist cloak and don the mantle of the “good ole boy” Texan. As a University professor who loves peppering his speeches with adverbs, Newt simply can’t dumb down his rhetoric enough to appeal to dumb and intellectually insecure voters.
2 Newt Gingrich is too unlikeable to be president.
The last time Newt got close to being president (as Speaker of the house) he pissed off so many people that even his own caucus voted to remove him. Again, republican voters seem to favor candidates like “W” who look like a guy they’d like to sit down and have a beer with. If you went out drinking with Newt he could probably quote you chapter and verse about how the bar should fire the janitor and hire some poor black kid so he could learn the “value of hard work.” But ask him about baseball or NASCAR and you’ll probably get a blank stare. The sad fact is, nobody likes Newt.
3 Newt Gingrich has too much baggage.
Two divorces – the second one while he was having an affair with his current wife – house censure for ethics violations, tax evasion charges. After a while even the most dyed-in-the-wool fiscal hawk has to admit, Newt has an image problem when it comes to honesty and trustworthiness. And while he may not admit to a drinking problem – like W did – he also doesn’t have enough money or media connections to make his baggage go away. Again, for the “values voters” things like marital fidelity matter.
4 Newt Gingrich is short.
It is an axiom among presidential campaigns that the taller of the two candidates usually wins. This is not always true but in this day and age of media blitzes and presidential photo ops, it’s harder and harder to make up for one’s, shall we say, shortcomings? Newt’s website lists him at 6′-0″. I don’t believe it. Compared with either Barrack Obama or Mitt Romney, he looks like a short, pudgy white guy who could really use some of John Boehner’s Quick Tanning Lotion. I think the only way Newt can overcome being height challenged is if he saws about six inches off of Romney’s legs.
5 Newt Gingrich doesn’t want to be president.
From the early fiasco of taking a cruise while the other contenders were out knocking on doors, to his continuing reliance on book signings to keep him in the public eye, Newt appears as a man who would rather continue giving lectures at 80,000$ a pop and raking in money as a high paid lobbyist and corporate shill than be President. I mean really, can you conceive of a Commander in Chief who puts meetings with Putin and Merkel on hold because he’s got a date at Barnes and Nobel? What’s he going to do when there’s rioting in the streets because people can’t even find work as school janitors… give a lecture at Watsa-Motta-U.?
Conclusion:
I can hear some of you out there whining: “If he’s not serious about running, why is are republicans giving him so much credence?” I have a theory about this. When it comes to defeating Barrack Obama republicans know they have an image problem. They are running against an established incumbent who was swept into office on a tide of popularity. While that popularity has waned some, in close elections, the incumbent almost always gets the nod. Thus the only thing they can do is present a bunch of wacko candidates who say wacko things, keep the republican meme of “don’t tax the for job creators” and position themselves so that when the “reasonable” one in the field emerges on top – Mitt Romney – all the republicans can breathe a sigh of relief and say “at least we didn’t get [fill in the blank]. So all Newt really is, is the latest Cain/Bachmann/Santorum/Perry: a stalking horse who will say outrageous things to keep people tune in to the “debates.”
It’s classic slight of hand. Listen to Newt try to reason that child labor laws are actually bad for poor kids. All the while, the corporatists in the House and Senate pass bill after bill designed to rip off the tax payer by reducing corporate taxes and regulations and passing the cost off onto you and me.
Trust me on this one. Come the election next year, Newt will be a distant memory.
Palin for President? Seriously?
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011
Be honest now. Can you really see yourself voting for this woman President of the United States?
Much Ado About Nothing
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
The recent court case surrounding the Government’s targeted Assassination program is likely to wind up being “Much Ado About Nothing.”
In my last post: “Down The Rabbit Hole,”
I commented on the recent suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) against the government and their efforts to maintain a secret “kill lists” of terrorists, a list that can include American citizens.
In the piece I put forth my opinion that I thought the ACLU and the CCR had a good case. I still think their arguments are valid. I am not so sanguine today, however, on their chances of winning their case.
The case revolves around the Obama Administration’s attempts to target and kill Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the American born cleric the government accuses of being involved in recent attempted terrorist actions against the United States. On Aug. 30, the ACLU and the CCR filed suit in Federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Aulaqi’s father, Nasser al-Aulaqi. According to the conservative site the Investigative Project:
Awlaki’s father has claimed that his son has been added to CIA and Pentagon targeting lists using secret criteria and evidence for determining whether a U.S. citizen can be targeted for lethal action. Based on this, the lawsuit is asking a federal judge to prevent the government from intentionally killing Anwar Awlaki without showing that he presents a concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety. It also asks that the government show that there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threat.
Interestingly, the government’s response doesn’t address the issues the ACLU and CCR want addressed – namely whether the Obama Administration should be allowed to maintain secret lists of enemies slated for assassination without any oversight. Instead, the government is focusing first and foremost on the narrow procedural question of whether Nasser Al-Aulaqi has legal “standing” in the case. As he is only a relative and not the party who is actually being targeted, the government’s contention is that he cannot challenge the government’s action in the name of his son.
Even more bizarrely, the government insists that even if Nasser has standing, the case should be dismissed because the court lacks the authority to rule on the matter because the “…requested injunction would necessarily and improperly inject the courts into decisions of the President and his advisors about how to protect the American people from the threat of armed attacks.”
In its response to the government’s claim the ACLU and the CCR presented an impassioned argument raising the specter of unchecked Presidential power. Again from the investigative Project:
…this is “a case concerning the Executive’s authority to carry out the killing of an American whom it has named an enemy of the state,” Jaffer argued. He called the policy “extreme” and “terrifying.” If the court accepts the government’s argument “then the President will have unchecked authority to assassinate any US citizen, and it will be unreviewable by a court,” he said.
This argument, which commentator Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com sums up concisely as: “…if the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can’t he do?” is akin to the concept in debate known as “the slippery slope.” Instead of addressing the charges, however, the government’s lawyers responded in true high school debate tradition, calling the charges “ridiculous” and “absurd.”
The challengers also sought to display the government’s desire to have the case thrown out because the courts have no authority to rule on an executive’s decisions on how to protect the American people as an extreme position:
Speaking broadly about the government’s claims of supremacy in this area, Jaffer explained, “this is a bigger case than the government is suggesting. It’s not just arguing that the court has no role to play now. They are saying that the court has no role to play period.”
As I said, I think the ACLU and the CCR have a strong argument to make. Regardless of how one feels about Al-Aulaqi and what he may or may not have done, regardless of whether Nassar Al-Aulaqi has “standing,” granting the executive – any executive – unreviewable authority to target and kill American citizens using secret criteria and classified evidence is a terrible precedent to set.
Any decision that gives the president the power to unilaterally decide this or that American is a danger to the country and to then target and kill them extra-judicially is a power that is ripe for abuse.
The government’s argument that the courts have no place reviewing the president’s powers is specious. The very function of the judiciary as laid out in the constitution is to watch over both the executive and the legislative branches of government. Are the government’s lawyers contending that the executive should be allowed to do anything anytime, anywhere? It seems to me that is no longer the definition of a president, but rather that of an autocrat.
Unfortunately, however, I think the entire case is moot. Not only has the judge in the case, US District Judge John D. Bates, decided not to examine the merits or implications of the targeted killing program, he has limited the case to the procedural question of whether Anwar al-Awlaki is willing and able to bring the suit himself, and whether the judiciary should insert itself into the issue.
In my opinion, the argument that, “…Awlaki must show that his son is willing yet unable to bring the suit himself,” is laughable in the extreme. The man is under constant threat of assassination. Would you turn yourself in to a government who is actively trying to kill you? Would you throw yourself upon the mercy of a court that hasn’t even ruled on whether it has jurisdiction in the case?
However, Judge Bates has seemed skeptical of such arguments. “Why shouldn’t I look at the public statements of al-Awlaki and conclude that he does not desire to bring this case?” he asked. “He doesn’t respect the U.S. court system. He doesn’t believe it has any jurisdiction over a Muslim?”
Curiously, virtually all the “public statements” the government used to make their case that Aulaqi is a notorious terrorist come from MEMRI and SITE, two “independent” internet sites devoted to releasing video of terrorist organizations. Although the government and now Judge Bates seem convinced by these videos, MEMRI and SITE are notorious at producing their videos without ever sourcing where they came from. This is not to state I think Al-Aulaki is an innocent bystander. However, if a major source of the government’s “evidence” about a given terrorist are videos whose source is unknown, that does little to reassure me that the government’s decisions about who is to be assassinated should be unreviewable.
The case had the promise of being one that could frame a necessary debate about executive power. Sadly, however,it has devolved from a major policy debate to a rather boring procedural decision. And given Judge Bates history, – (he was the judge responsible for dismissing two suits brought by Valerie Plame and her husband as well as dismissing the GAO’s attempt to learn with whom Vice President Cheney met in his secret energy conference. ) – the question of whether the Judge is likely to rule in favor of anyone challenging the powers of the executive branch is….
Certainly Doubtful.
