Borrowing a turn of Phrase …

Paul Krugman’s Saturday blog post takes a defensive tone with Marc Ambinder who once called Krugman and a group of other liberal thinkers “reflexively anti-Bush”. Krugman expected a better apology from Ambinder after it was confirmed by former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge that the White House did, in fact, play politics with the Code Orange terrorist warnings. Evidently, there was an email between the two and Krugman felt the exchange wanting. Here’s his rationale.

But I’d like to return to one point: even after retracting his statement about people who correctly surmised that terror warnings were political being motivated by “gut hatred” of Bush, he left in the bit about being “reflexively anti-Bush”. I continue to find it really sad that people still say things like this.

Bear in mind that by the time the terror alert controversy arose in 2004, we had already seen two tax cuts sold on massively, easily documented false pretenses; a war launched with constant innuendo about a Saddam-Osama link that was clearly false, and with claims about WMDs that were clearly shaky from the beginning and had proved to be entirely without foundation. We’d also seen vast, well-documented dishonesty and politicization on environmental policy. Oh, and Abu Ghraib was already public knowledge.

Given all that, it made complete sense to distrust anything the Bush administration said. That wasn’t reflexive, it was rational.

I’d like to borrow the example and phrase because some of us around here are perpetually called “reflexively anti-Obama” or, of course, called racist because it’s a much more pejorative and personally damaging label. This is simply because we see similar patterns of behavior in Barrack Obama and his administration. Notice that Krugman has a laundry list right there in that second paragraph of things that made him rationally distrust anything the Bush administration said. I personally have my own laundry list of things that makes me rationally distrust anything the Obama administration says. It starts (but does not end) with the pledge to vote against FISA.

Here’s a reminder of that from WaPo.

“Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program,” Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

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.”

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.

My latest example, of course, is now his pledge just a few months ago to not let any health care reform go through with his signature that does not include a ‘public option’. President Obama now makes speeches that infer a public option is negotiable. I’m going to refer to quotes coming from my own blog thread from here at The Confluence entitled RIP: Public Option.

Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico reminds us what President Barack Obama said about a public option at the beginning of this public policy debacle.

“It was only in June that Obama said in a letter to Senate Democrats that “I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.”

A month ago, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that “any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family.” “

The reality on the ground today was delivered by via CNN.

“A day after President Obama appeared to suggest that his administration might be open to health care reform legislation that does not include a public health insurance option, one of Obama’s top aides on the issue left the door open to accepting nonprofit health insurance co-ops, a proposal that has gained traction in bipartisan negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee.

“I think there will be a competition to private insurers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “that really is the essential part, that you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace [after health care legislation is enacted] to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.”

At a town hall in Grand Junction, Colorado Saturday, Mr. Obama seemed to downplay the necessity of having a public insurance option in the final version of any health care reform legislation presented to him by Congress.

“The public option – whether we have it or we don’t have it – is not the entirety of health care reform,” the President said. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And, by the way, it’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else . . .”

Echoing Mr. Obama’s Saturday comments, Sebelius also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that “what’s important is choice and competition.” A public option “is not an essential element,” the Cabinet secretary said Sunday.”

Chance yes, Change no!

Of course, I can also point to the promise to release the torture photos or the pledge to hold the folks responsible for torture like John Yoo. I’d like to also remind you of the promise of translucency in negotiating all major bills, including health care reform, even to the point of putting them on CSPAN. Remember the promise to ensure every Congress Critter has time to actually read a bill or the pledge to search through each bill to get rid of the pork or to have a translucent government? We barely found out how President Obama was holding behind the scenes, Cheney-like, secret negotiating meetings with the health insurance industry and big Pharma. We’d been sold down the river before we’d even seen the shores.

I’m going to leave the down page section to stand as further evidence of this, because I’m certain the intelligent, insightful, and candid readers of The Confluence will come up with documentation for these examples and many more.

So, paraphrasing Dr. Krugman (above), I would just like to say this: Given all that, it makes complete sense to distrust anything the Obama administration says. That isn’t reflexive or racist, it is rational.

Emails to this site with real apologies are expected and welcome including ones from Marc Ambinder. I have no gut-hatred of Obama. My feelings towards him having nothing to do with his racial mix or some reflex on my part to ‘hate’ any one that isn’t Hillary Clinton. I have a rational distrust of the man and I have had it for some time.

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