Tuesday was a surreal day in the USA, in two parts

The Prez was at his best in his farewell address, reprising his aspirational vision of this mixed bag of a country and polity.

... Our youth, our drive, our diversity and openness, our boundless capacity for risk and reinvention means that the future should be ours. But that potential will only be realized if our democracy works. ...

... Democracy can buckle when it gives in to fear. ... If the scope of freedom and respect for the rule of law shrinks around the world, the likelihood of war within and between nations increases, and our own freedoms will eventually be threatened. So let’s be vigilant, but not afraid. ...

... It falls to each of us to be ... "anxious, jealous" guardians of our democracy. Embrace the joyous task we have been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours because, for all our outward differences, we in fact all share the same proud type, the most important office in a democracy, citizen. ...If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing.

If you missed the speech, it's worth an hour of your time. ***Meanwhile unconfirmed opposition research dribbled into view which makes this cartoon seem more than metaphorical.

Quite apart from the possibility that the PEOTUS was filmed by the Russians in compromising sexual bullying, a new Quinnipiac University poll finds him with record low approval numbers for a new chief exec. And those numbers have only declined since November.

American voters give President-elect Trump a negative 37 - 51 percent favorability rating, compared to a divided 44 - 46 percent favorability rating November 22. ...

Donald Trump will take the nation in the right direction, 45 percent of American voters say, while 49 percent say he will take the nation in the wrong direction. ...

A total of 44 percent of voters are "very confident" or "somewhat confident" that Trump will make things better for them and their family, while 53 percent are "not very confident" or "not confident at all."

American voters disapprove 40 - 30 percent of the individuals Trump has nominated for his cabinet, with 28 percent who say they haven't heard enough about them.

Trump's election makes them feel "less safe," 45 percent of voters say, while 27 percent say they feel "more safe" and 27 percent say they feel "just as safe."

Voters support 72 - 22 percent, including 52 - 42 percent among Republicans, a review of Trump's finances to identify possible conflicts of interest.

It's not like he's sailing to office on a wave of popular enthusiasm.

This creates room for resistance. As Republicans in Congress try to use his elevation as an opportunity to enact their long time agenda of bonanzas for the One Percent at the expense of everyone else, they need to be reminded his tweets may not be enough to save them from furious constituents. He just doesn't have enough juice to cover for them. Let's keep calling ...

Unfinished business

A couple of updates on crimes past before we lurch into a new year and new crimes:

That torture report
For the moment, a 6700 page report prepared by a Senate committee on the torture crimes of operatives under the direction of the GWBush administration still exists somewhere, though we the people are not allowed to see it. Will the Trump regime seek to do away with the report, to erase this memory? For fear of this, President Obama is squirreling the document away among his Presidential papers. Thinking the Presidential Records Act will prevent the Trump regime from seizing and deep-sixing the report may be wishful thinking. After all, torture enthusiasts like Trump, Bannon, or even pols passing for "mainstream" Republicans have no respect for either law or decency.

A federal judge has also ordered preservation of the report as potential evidence in one of the ongoing criminal cases brought against alleged perps acting for Al-Qaida. If the Trump team bothers, they might go judge shopping to overturn that one.

Our gulag at Guantanamo
President Obama has failed in his inauguration day promise to close this legal and human sinkhole. It looks like he'll get the population down to about 40 inmates before the Donald can "load it up with some bad dudes."

After all, a near majority of voters enjoys posturing as big, mean, and butch, all the while quaking with fear of a few dark terrorists and other phantoms. Irrational fear is a social infection which serves the interests of a strongman. This country was not always populated by such a bunch of nervous handwringers. But now it is. And the people in charge like it that way.

Summing up Obama: that Niebuhr question

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne asks: In today’s troubling times, where are our faith leaders? The essay mourns the absence of public religious thought deeper than the cartoon facsimile of religion and morals on offer from the likes of Franklin Graham or Rafael Cruz. Dionne quotes Alan Jacobs: writing at Harpers:

The usual mourning over the “lack of prominent, intellectually serious Christian political commentators,” Jacobs notes, is “familiarly known as the ‘Where Is Our Reinhold Niebuhr?’ problem,” after the great 20th-century theologian — and one of my own heroes. He graced the cover of Time magazine in 1948, a real marker then of more than modest fame.

I found Dionne's lament shocking. We do have a Niebuhr-like figure in our midst -- he just happens to be Black and President of these United States. In the fashion of Niebuhr, Barack Obama seems to believe both in the inescapable presence of evil in the world and in the hope that something better is possible.

Coming out of the moral horror that was World War II, Niebuhr is credited with authorship the Serenity Prayer.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," he began, "the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

A 2010 article from CNN recalled Niebuhr for contemporary citizens through Obama's affinities with his thought.

Niebuhr is getting attention again because he has a fan in the Oval Office.

In a widely cited New York Times column, President Obama called Niebuhr his "favorite philosopher." But how precisely has Niebuhr's philosophy influenced Obama and his handling of everything from health care reform to fighting terrorists?

... People are capable of doing good, but groups are driven by "predatory self-interest," Niebuhr wrote.

"As individuals, men believe that they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other," Niebuhr wrote. "As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command."

Obama is both praised and criticized for attempting from the pinnacle of human power to strike a balance between justice and greed, persuasion and naked overwhelming force. He has failed much and succeeded a little. He satisfies few. We've had a president for the last for eight years -- compromised as he is -- whose moral universe is broad and deep. This is not something we expect, or perhaps even value much, in a politician, but we've seen what such a one can and cannot do with power.

Other occasional "Summing up Obama" musings: Revisiting Rev. Wright and Ta-Nehisi Coastes on the Prez.

Summing up Obama: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Prez and much more

I have to admit I was gobsmacked when I encountered this in a Playboy interview with the Atlantic author. (Side note: who knew there were still Playboy interviews? Didn't the internet kill that mag? Shows what I know.)

In my circles, expressing qualified approval for the President is rare; it feels as if progressive credibility requires disavowing the promise of hope that Obama's election embodied in 2008. Thinking well of Obama is for suckers. Coates is not towing that line, in either the black or white version.

Bomani Jones tossed questions at Coates:

How would you describe the eight years of Obama’s presidency?
I think he did a tremendous job, and I say that with all my criticism of how he talks about black folks and how he talks to black folks. I say that with all my criticism of the morality or the lack of morality in terms of drone warfare. You’re not voting for a civil rights leader; you’re voting for a president of the United States within the boundaries of what presidents do. And within the boundaries of what presidents do, he’s easily the greatest president in my lifetime.

I don’t think people understand what he had to navigate. It’s a hard job already. You’ve got people on TV—and this is just the small end of it—on the internet, everywhere, sending out pictures of you and your wife looking like apes. You’ve got officials in the opposing party e-mailing pictures of watermelon patches in front of the White House. You have an opposition party where somewhere on the order of 50 or 60 percent don’t think you are legally president. You’re giving the State of the Union address and some white dude from South Carolina stands up and yells, “You lie.” Just open, blatant disrespect. You say the most sensible things in the world and people lose their mind, almost scuttling your top agenda in terms of legislation.

You’ve got to be a certain motherfucker to be able to manage all that in your head. Their leading presidential candidate right now is the person who claimed our president was born somewhere else and asked to see his grades. You’re dealing with a party where racism is a significant undercurrent. I mean, whew.

Were you surprised by the level of obstruction?
I was surprised by how much his very presence drew out the racism in the country. I didn’t know these folks were basically going to double down. There’s stuff we don’t even remember. In the 2012 Republican primary, Newt Gingrich just comes out and calls this dude a food-stamp president. I mean, just says it. This is a respectable figure in American politics right now. Five years from now, people will be looking back on this presidency and talking about how great the times were. Ten years from now, Republicans will be talking about how whoever is the Democratic nominee at that point is not like Obama and how magisterial Obama was.

Twenty-five, 30 years from now, they’re going to put his face on the money, if we still have money. And 50 years from now—it might not even take that long—he will be considered one of the greatest presidents in American history.

I agree; we're going to miss Obama and we are beginning to feel it. While we've got him, let's criticize, but also appreciate.***

Coates just won the National Book Award for Between the World and Me. Though I'd been reading his blog and articles in the Atlantic for years, I didn't rush to acquire the book. I listened to some author interviews and this seemed like a book not written for an old white woman. It's a letter to his black son about their black bodies in the world. While any author wants to be read, I felt this was mostly written for men and secondarily for black people of all genders. Reading it would be eavesdropping on somebody else's conversation.

But a cheap used copy came to hand and I picked it up. I'm not going to try to describe the book. It's a short, approachable, meditative soliloquy on Coates' unfolding black male life. Toni Morrison calls the writing "visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive." The book consists of Coates striving, in public, for the benefit of a son he adores, to speak truthfully. The result can seem harsh, but Coates believes that truth requires such rigor.

Here's a snippet about what he learned about survival growing up in a broken Baltimore neighborhood in the crack era.

There was also wisdom in those streets. I think now of the old rule that should a boy be set upon in someone else's chancy hood, his friends must stand with him, and they all must take their beating together. I now know that within this edict lay the key to all living.

None of us were promised to end the fight on our feet, fists raised to the sky. We could not control our enemies' number, strength, nor weaponry. Sometimes you just caught a bad one. But whether you fought or ran, you did it together, because that was in our control. ...

In the Playboy interview, Coates responds to the notion that he is "pessimistic." In the book, he simply tries to tell the truth as he understands it about the condition of black Americans:

It is truly horrible to understand yourself as the essential below of your country. It breaks too much what we would like to think about ourselves, our lives, the world we move through and the people who surround us. The struggle to understand is our only advantage over this madness. ... The struggle is really all I have for you [his son Samori] because it is the only portion of this world under your control.

I am sorry I cannot make it okay. I am sorry that I cannot save you -- but not that sorry. Part of me thinks that your very vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for others, the quest to believe themselves white divides them from it. ... When their own vulnerability becomes real ... they are shocked in a way that those of us where were born and bred to understand cause and effect can never be. And I would not have you live like them.

You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always in your face and hounds are always at your heels. And in varying degrees this is true of all life. The difference is that you do not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this essential fact. ...

Coates is at pains to distance himself from any of the available spiritual traditions to which many around him have recourse. But he bravely confronts the Sisyphus-like reality that he believes is his. And no, it's not just pretentious. The guy is too down home for that.

Obama's broken promise

Political scientists tell us we should listen up, because politicians usually do keep their promises.

But sometimes they don't. Reuters is reporting that the Obama administration is giving up on the President's promise to close the Guantanamo prison before he leaves office.

The Obama administration is not pursuing the use of an executive order to shutter the Guantanamo Bay military prison after officials concluded that it would not be a viable strategy, sources familiar with the deliberations said.

The conclusion, reached by administration officials, narrows the already slim chances that President Barack Obama can fulfill his pledge to close the notorious offshore prison before leaving office in January.

Obama is eager to fulfill his 2008 campaign pledge to close the prison and could still choose to use his commander-in-chief powers, but the option is not being actively pursued, the sources said. ... "It was just deemed too difficult to get through all of the hurdles that they would need to get through, and the level of support they were likely to receive on it was thought to be too low to generate such controversy, particularly at a sensitive (time) in an election cycle," the source said.

Sign observed in a San Francisco window.

Sometimes, as in a speech responding to Donald Trump's bullshit after the Orlando massacre, the Prez sounds like the last person remaining who truly believes this country stands for pluralism, liberty, justice and the rule of law rather than ignorance and violence. Watching him, you can believe that.

But when it comes to closing this symbol of imperial overreach, the last true believer is apparently giving up.

The best the administration can do, sources say, will be to reduce the numbers still locked up in our Cuban gulag.

Will the next President fill the place up again?

Summing up Obama: revisiting Rev. Wright and the race speech

Since we're enduring an election, I'm giving a lot of attention to 538 Politics, the site where Nate Silver has landed his "data journalism" under ESPN auspices. Silver's choice of conglomerate overlord is appropriate; much of 538's coverage reads like ephemeral sports trivia. But occasionally they produce fascinating insights bringing to bear the sort of stats mojo in which they specialize.

In this vein, I want to recommend a podcast and documentary video looking back to the 2008 campaign, Inside The Five-Day Stretch When Obama Found His Voice On Race. This tells the story of the moment in that campaign when major media spotlighted some of Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright's sermons which were not complimentary about U.S. national pretensions to global moral preeminence. Obama responded with his More Perfect Union speech in Philadelphia and commentators declared that he'd managed to push the racial camel through eye of the public's needle about his potential presidency.

The 538 gang, assisted by senior writer Farai Chideya, have produced a fascinating look back at whether, in fact, that moment in the campaign really deserves to have been seen as the turning point many of us thought it was at the time. On simple data grounds, they suspect not.

Harry Enten: This is the funny thing about studying events in real time — it’s difficult to disentangle one thing from another. For instance, John McCain had his largest lead of the campaign against Obama right around the time of the controversy, but was that because of Wright or because McCain clinched the nomination around the same time? I honestly don’t know.

farai: I also think we in the media sometimes think we’re more influential than we are. Not everyone watches wall-to-wall politics coverage. And network news ratings have been declining for years. So although this was a huge firestorm in the media, I also wonder how deeply it saturated the electorate. ...

harry: To Farai’s point, a CBS News poll taken during the controversy found that 28 percent had heard a lot about the Rev. Wright’s statements. That compares to 23 percent who had heard nothing at all about it. Most had heard some, not much or nothing at all.

So, outside the media, most people had either already formed their opinions of Obama, for good or ill, or weren't listening. Yet, they still find much to be learned from this episode:

natesilver: It showed us a little bit about how Obama stayed cool under pressure instead of wetting the bed. ...

Micah Cohen: … the response to Wright was an early sign that there would be a not insignificant group of Americans who would traffic in these race-freighted “controversies” regarding Obama, right?

farai: First off, there has never been a moment in American history when race didn’t matter … just more and less contentious moments. ...nonetheless, once Obama was elected, there was a period of racial detente, followed by a backlash. A 2010 Gallup poll found 13 percent of Americans said they were greatly worried about race relations; today that figure is 35 percent. ...

Mike Fletcher: And let’s face it, the clips of Rev. Wright’s most inflammatory sermons played into a fear narrative. If the question of whether or not Obama wore a flag pin was news, this was certainly going to be a running story. In a perfect world, it would have been presented in the context of black church traditions, but …

harry: What’s interesting here that gets lost now and may get lost to a younger generation is that this election was a pretty big freaking deal. ...Obama ... was not only likely to be the first non-white major party nominee, but he also had a very good shot at the presidency. And then here comes a story that plays in to the worst fears of a certain segment of white voters, who saw Wright as radical on race and thought maybe he could be offering advice to the next president. The fact that voters saw through that and trusted Obama was a turning point that I’m not sure would have been accomplished 15 years earlier, when a majority of Americans still didn’t believe in interracial marriage.

My strictly anecdotal memories of these events are naturally very different; having long been exposed to the Black theology of liberation via Dr. James Cone, Wright's views were unsurprising. But I certainly was anxious -- would white people freak out? The smooth competence Obama displayed in defusing this moment convinced me of his political gifts -- and left me bemused and frustrated when he couldn't seem to summon such capacity at many later moments in his presidency.

This podcast is an early entry in a "Summing Up" genre that we're going to see a lot of as Barack Obama leaves office. What did the rise and incumbency of this extraordinary figure mean, if anything enduring? I expect to write many entries about these items here, some less approving than this one.

A slightly longer view on the election circus

When the horrors of this election cycle get me down -- and even if you're delighted to see your friends shut down the Donald, horror is appropriate -- I check in at Sam Wang's Princeton Election Consortium. PEC is the opposite of click bait: serious, modulated and thoughtful. And every day it automatically updates a number that probably gives as good an idea as any indicator whether we'll come out of this with some Democrat (either Democrat) as the next president.

There's considerable data to suggest that presidential elections can be predicted on the basis of what people think of the previous incumbent in the year leading up to the vote. Here's a slightly dated Nate Cohn discussion of this from last year.

The balance of evidence suggests that the break-even point for the presidential party’s odds of victory is at or nearly 50 percent approval.

And here's the PEC's current chart of the history of the ratio between President Obama's approval and disapproval:

Something's happening here. Obama is clearly on the rise, entering heights of approval he hasn't seen in a year.

Gallup's daily job approval numbers show a similar trend. The Prez is climbing.

Why is hard to know. The economy isn't making most of us feel safe and prosperous, but objectively it is as good as at any time in this presidency.

And the guy is stepping out on a lot of fronts in his last year, from trying to curb greenhouse gases by executive action, to protecting natural areas by declaring National Monuments, to trolling Donald Trump while having a drink with the Canadian Prime Minister.

This may seem a low bar to jump, but we don't have to be ashamed of how Obama represents the country to the rest of the world. Even those of us who think he's been complicit in the war crimes initiated by his predecessors can't deny that he's been a relatively restrained captain of the imperial colossus. (Do take the time to read The Obama Doctrine at the Atlantic.) We're not going to see his like again.

And our relative satisfaction suggests we'll elect a Democrat in November. We can't be complacent; state by state, there will be much work to do. But we can live in rational hope through the next nine moments of noise, anxiety, and general bullshit.

Confirm the Librarian!

I do not often look at videos from the White House. There's a limit, for goodness sake!

But because I love libraries, I looked at this one:
Unfortunately, the appointment of Dr. Carla Hayden requires Senate confirmation. I wonder if Republicans will do their job on this -- or insist the appointment of a librarian should wait for a new President. They don't seem to want to want to do anything but complain and campaign.

The State of the Union in fraidy cat nation

The Prez should go for the truth shot tonight, but we are told that he won't.

In the Times, Peter Baker lays it out:

Here is what he probably will not say, at least not this bluntly: Americans are more likely to die in a car crash, drown in a bathtub or be struck by lightning than be killed by a terrorist. The news media is complicit in inflating the sense of danger. The Islamic State does not pose an existential threat to the United States.

He will presumably not say this, either: Given how hard it is for intelligence and law enforcement agencies to detect people who have become radicalized, like those who opened fire at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., a certain number of relatively low-level terrorist attacks may be inevitable, and Americans may have to learn to adapt the way Israel has.

By all accounts, Mr. Obama is sympathetic to this view, which is shared by a number of counterterrorism veterans who contend that anxiety has warped the American public’s perspective. But it is also a politically untenable argument at a time when polls show greater fears about terrorism than at any point since the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001.

It's bad if he fails to go there. This country will continue to be mired in roiling racial anxiety and the enthusiastic embrace of authoritarianism so long as we refuse to learn this essential fact. He loses nothing, personally, if he warns us away from our panic. While we remain panicked, all our demons run wild.***I've decided, reluctantly, that I'll watch the show tonight. Usually I abstain. But not this time. For all his myriad faults -- deportations, failure to prosecute both banksters and torturers, persecution of whistleblowers and allegiance to self-serving government secrecy -- this man has been the president most sympathetic to what I hold dear that I expect ever to see. Strange but true. I, no less than my panicked fellow citizens, need to learn to live with political ambiguity and uncertainty.***UPDATE: The Prez said as much as he could in the home of the fearful:

... as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. That’s the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call them what they are — killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.

Better than nothing. Let's do what we can to discourage the inevitable "collateral damage."

Obama talking sense

This post may disturb some of my leftish friends, but I'm thanking my stars in the aftermath of Paris that we have a President who is seven years in office. He never has to face a misinformed, xenophobic, and easily frightened electorate again. He has learned that U.S. power has many limits. And he still shows some instinct to avoid "dumb" wars. Obama was goaded into telling the press a lot of truths Monday at the G20 summit in Turkey.

“What I do not do is take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America look tough or make me look tough.”

... he said large numbers of American troops on the ground would repeat what he sees as the mistake of the Iraq invasion of 2003 and would not help solve the terrorism problem around the globe.

“That would be a mistake, not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out ISIL, but because we would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before,” Mr. Obama said. Victory over terrorist groups, he said, requires local populations to push back “unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.”

... he said he would not be pressured into “posing” as a tough president by doing things that will not make the situation better to satisfy his critics.

“Some of them seem to think that if I was just more bellicose in expressing what we’re doing, that that would make a difference,” he said. “Because that seems to be the only thing that they’re doing, is talking as if they’re tough.”

... “The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism; they are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “We do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”

Without naming him, Mr. Obama singled out a comment by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, one of the Republicans seeking to succeed him, for suggesting the United States focus special attention on Christian refugees. “That’s shameful,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not American. It’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”

New York Times

Now we've seen him back off a lot of other relatively sane things he said before. Maybe he'll crumble and plunge us into more ground war this time too. He did that in Afghanistan. Not only will the Republican clown show howl for his head, but the C.I.A. is already trying to use Daesh atrocities to justify more and better spying. Will he give them their latest wish list? Can he keep his grip on reality?

In truth, the U.S. practice, as opposed to promises, of providing refuge to escapees from Syria stinks -- less than 2000 admitted since the civil war broke out.

And the Syria policy -- a preposterous attempt to defeat two sides of a civil war at once -- is not likely to succeed.

But people in the United States who know better than to respond to Daesh crimes with more atrocities need to be making our voices heard. For the moment, that means having this deeply flawed President's back. He certainly can't stay his course if left out on a limb among the hostile mob.

Fifteen years of U.S. war in Afghanistan

We can call it fifteen years as of today, if we don't count arming Afghans and various foreign mujahadin against the Russians starting in 1979. Perhaps we do need to include that phase, since it produced Bin Laden and 9/11 ...


So this week we marked the war's anniversary with an apparent war crime. The medical aid folks, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), who saw their staff and patients incinerated have been wonderfully clear:

"Today the US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff. Their description of the attack keeps changing—from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government.

The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical."

C. Stokes, MSF, October 5, 2015

Accounts in U.S. media have been weaselly. Maybe there were Taliban in the building (though U.S. forces had every reason to know there were not.) Maybe this atrocity was a mistake ... The New York Times even tried to suggest that maybe the hospital bombing wasn't so bad because Russia commits similar crimes. What's this irrelevant snippet doing in a story on President Obama's apology to MSF?

On Wednesday, Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group, said it had confirmed that Russian airstrikes had damaged three medical facilities in Syria.
“With these actions, Russia is damaging hospitals, putting patients and medical staff at risk, and depriving civilians of lifesaving access to health care,” the group said in a statement.

Pathetic special pleading that tack: so American exceptionalism means someone else is always worse? Apparently.

The Afghanistan adventure has long shown the brutality and futility of our imperial project. Amy Davidson got to the crux:

Do we understand our own motives and priorities in Afghanistan? If not, fourteen years after invading, when will we?

No hope for that, that I can see. Bring 'em home, Obama!

Names matter

Oddly, I was raised to feel a tinge of affection toward President William McKinley. His assassination, which took place at a World's Fair a few blocks from where I grew up in Buffalo, sometimes seemed to Buffalonians like the last time the nation attended to our home for a reason aside from blizzards. Not that, on mature reflection, I find much to admire about the man, an aggressive imperialist who launched a war to pick off Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from the decayed Spanish colonial empire. My regard is not enhanced by the fact that Karl Rove has written a book about our 25th president.

Republicans are flipping out because the Prez changed the official name of the country's highest mountain from McKinley to its native name, Denali. The freak out seems just another silly manifestation of Obama-hate. Alaska has been asking for the change for over 40 years. And for most people who have any awareness of the peak -- climbers, adventure travelers, National Park visitors -- it has long been "Denali." But if Obama changed, it, it must be evidence of his dictatorial aspirations.

Professor Ben Railton has described the long history of erasure and struggle over preserving indigenous Native names for geographical features. From his essay, I've learned that the state of South Dakota is considering renaming its high point, "Harney Peak" -- which we hiked last summer -- for 19th century native wise man Black Elk. The mountain overlooks Oglala Lakota territory, so that seems appropriate.

Railton concludes about such naming controversies:

The Native names, like the peoples who bestowed them, have never vanished and remain with us today—it’s long past time we remembered and honored them.

The torture regime endures

If Jeb Bush's flirtation with torture upsets you, blame Barack Obama. The Prez is a very careful guy; he picks his fights. Sometimes that serves him and the rest of us well: Obamacare and the Iran nuke development moratorium are big wins.

But very obviously, from his first days in office, Obama discovered that restoring the rule of law in relation to a national security agenda would cost him big time. If the CIA's backing, filling, stalling and obstructing of Congressional oversight means anything, it means that the agency knew full well that John Yoo's phony-baloney torture memos wouldn't protect its agents. Torture is a crime under both U.S. and international law. So they've fought disclosure every step of the way. So have all the other spook agencies, even larger institutions than the CIA, operating out of the War (Defense) Department and other secret hideaways.

These agencies not only want to conceal what they did (do? -- how can we know if they are allowed to hide behind "security"?). They want to keep us focused on whether torture "worked." That's a non-question. Torture is a crime and crimes should be prosecuted. Period.

But Obama ducked that fight. He needed the spooks to try to prevent a terror attack that could undermine his tenure. So he caved. If Jeb were elected President, all he'd have to do is give a nod to the spooks -- Barack Obama's administration has made the laws in this area meaningless.

And having ducked the fight, Guantanamo remains still open. Obama's Justice Department recently has gone to court to prevent compassionate release of an inmate on hunger strike who is down to 75 pounds and has been cleared for over half a decade. The National Religious Coalition against Torture has a letter writing campaign. If we don't like being a torture state, we have to keep protesting these things.

Yes, Erudite Partner has just written a book about these issues. She expects a spring release.

A reminder: the Iran nuke deal matters

It would be possible to think all these gabbing candidates (of both parties) are what's important. That would be a mistake.

What's more important is the push by the incumbent president is to do all he can to lower the danger of civilization-destroying war and increase the chances of peace. This species can kill ourselves (and most everything else) off much more quickly with our weapons than we can by allowing carbon pollution to increase.

(There may come a moment when that balance of danger tips. Certainly moving now to mitigate climate change is the stuff of survival. But if we allow unchecked warming to continue, we're not likely to be able to do much about a climate that won't support our kind of life.)

That venerable interpreter of political doings, reporter Elizabeth Drew, tries to fix our attention on what's vital:

We’re now so close to the fray and the din that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is a historical moment. It’s on a scale of a decision to enter a war or make peace.

It’s about the efficacy of negotiations versus military action. If the deal’s opponents succeed in canceling it, they will have to answer to history. At a minimum, if the deal works, it postpones the day that Iran might have a nuclear weapon.

Those who insist that the deal should have been more punitive toward Iran overlook the fact that it’s the result of a negotiation. Simple logic suggests that a man as obsessed with his place in history as Barack Obama wouldn’t consciously allow his negotiators to reach a deal that’s easily breached. He has said that he expects to be around when the deal has expired and he wants to be able to hold his head up. ...

The signing of this agreement is a concrete step toward choosing life over death. The chances seem good that the naysayers will not be able to block it. Now that's "one small step ..."

An overdue break in a wall of denial

Don't expect me to be upset about this.

That the debate over the Iran nuclear deal is clarifying that the sycophants of Israel's right-wing government want the U.S. to be embroiled in permanent war on the Middle East strikes me as a good tangential benefit of a sound diplomatic process.

Let's get real here. It is not in the U.S. interest to carry water for Benjamin Netanyahu.

Don't take my word for this. Listen to M.J. Rosenberg who used to work for AIPAC (the coordinating force in the Israel Lobby).

Obama is fighting a lobby that has been the bane of every president since Eisenhower ... Will Obama succeed in getting the lobby to back off? Will he do it serious damage? One can only hope so. The lobby is a malignant force in this country.

But it is only a powerful force because politicians allow it to be. ... The lobby is really the Wizard Of Oz. It is back there madly manipulating and issuing pronouncements in a loud voice. ... all it will take is a president willing to take them on. And then beating them badly as must happen with the Iran agreement.

President Obama is doing a great thing, not only for himself and the country, but for everyone of his successors. ... As for 90% of American Jews, if not more, we want and need to be rid of this curse. It doesn’t speak for us and never has. It speaks for the Israeli Right. And it jeopardizes our standing as Americans by making us all look like expatriate Israelis when all we are is Americans. And good ones.

AIPAC is not us. Not even close. Obama, who received 70-80% of our votes in two elections, is. Beat them, Mr. President.

More on this from James Fallows at the Atlantic.

It's the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima

At sunrise members of the Martha's Vineyard Peace Council and friends gathered near Gay Head Lighthouse to reflect, mourn, pray and stoke their collective determination to work to ensure that nuclear weapons are never again used.

This country does have a chance at this time to affirm a diplomatic deal to keep Iran out of the nuclear bomb business for at least 10 years. There may be enough Republican Congresscritters and Senators who want to kick President Obama one more time to field a majority against this sensible measure. But if marginally more civilized members stick together, they can uphold a veto. That's what keeping the deal will probably take. It's time again to batter your Congresscritters for peace!

My Senators, Feinstein and Boxer, have lined up for the deal. Have yours? Here's a current tally of Senators.

A agreement among "morally dubious" people and states

At Vox Max Fisher has an interview with Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. That is, he's found someone to talk with who is capable of making a substantive evaluation of the Iran nuclear deal, not just indulging in political posturing.

Lewis is pleasantly surprised at what the negotiations have produced. He gives it an "A" for moving concretely in the direction of preventing nuclear proliferation.

... there was always a deal to be had here if reasonable people could make reasonable compromises. I never really count on that, but it seems like they did it.

... I was talking to a colleague who is unhappy [with the deal], and it's kind of fascinating. He's unhappy because, he said, "We spent eight years, and the deal we got is not better than the deal we could have gotten eight years ago." And it's like, oh, no kidding. That's not an indictment of the deal, my friend, it's an indictment of eight years of fucking around.

... If you are interested in the nonproliferation piece — how to say this. As a deal, this is what deals look like. Actually, they usually don't look this good. So if you don't know that...

... When I read people saying, you know, "I can't believe we're making a deal with these morally dubious people," I understand why a regional security specialist might feel that way.

But when you work in the arms control field, they're all morally dubious people! These are people who are building nuclear weapons — there are no not-morally-dubious people involved.

I don't know whether Lewis really means the implication of what he seems to be saying. The conversation is ambiguous, possibly intentionally. Perhaps delving into what nuclear weapons really mean for human beings while working on nonproliferation breaks down comfortable imperial illusions that there any good nuclear powers.

No one should have nuclear weapons. No state should be getting its way by threatening another with annihilation. Any deal that chips away at the nuclear threat is a move in the right direction. As I pointed out above, Lewis gives this one an A.

The whole Lewis interview is absolute worth reading.

Credit where credit is due

Congratulations to all the diplomats who achieved what looks like reasonable give-and-take between adversaries. I wish the Republicans in Congress could learn from this, but I'm not holding my breath.

And congratulations to all the peace advocacy groups that were ready when the news came through to work on mobilizing their constituencies to defend the deal. Miracle of miracles, they managed to combine on a joint petition to begin assembling their forces. That probably took some major diplomacy in itself. If you haven't signed yet, now is the time. Click the link.

An insurrection?

If this insurrection is driven by something other than a blend of ideological extremism and personal animosity, it is not clear what that might be.

That odd sentence jumped out from New York Times editorial this morning. What can they be talking about?

Let's see -- this could be about the current civil war complicated by multiple foreign interventions that is underway in Yemen. Or perhaps the editorial is part of the paper's concluding coverage of the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War?

But no -- "the insurrection" to which the paper is referring is the "rage of the Republican establishment" against President Obama. They climb repeatedly to new levels of abuse against him, seeking to undermine his every small step toward policy goals that the majority of us expect from our government: ensuring equal treatment of all of us; seeking an fair and sane immigration policy; orienting our foreign policy away from imperial delusions of national omnipotence and toward peaceful relations with other peoples.

The Times won't say it, but we can. They hate him because he is Black and he is a fully realized citizen of this country. African Americans aren't supposed to be real citizens; they are supposed to be miserable and compliant, examples of pain and disempowerment that remind everyone else to stay in line.

And more, they hate Obama because he represents a better U.S. future. They have hitched themselves to protecting interests and constituencies that fear the evolution of this country and our interconnected world in a more peaceful and equitable direction. He must be the Anti-Christ. They feel justified in making war on him -- after all, an insurrection is a war.

I'm as disappointed by Obama as the next progressive. But let's not allow our urgent need for more change and more justice to obscure that his presidency announces a direction for the country more in tune with our hopes than we can expect from any likely successor.

The current insurrection aims to disempower the majority of the people. Like that last rebellion, it would rather tear down the whole edifice of government rather than give an inch. We can't just watch from the sidelines. Politics is a tiresome, nasty bloodsport but from our neighborhoods, to the states, to the national level, we can't afford not to play.

Obama afterthoughts

Obama Regrets Not Closing Gitmo On 'First Day'

Watching the Prez approach the end of his administration, you get the sense that he entered office as the last true believer in the myth of a predominantly benevolent, democratic (small "d"), nation ruled more by considered law than by avaricious interests and irrational passions. He's had quite an education.