At the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office, there is controversy over the nature and extent of his accomplishments, and even some allies and supporters appear to have forgotten the atmosphere of multidirectional crisis in which Obama took office. What’s more, the steady decline in Obama’s approval ratings appears to follow very closely a shift in media reporting away from reporting facts and back to the hyper-commentary style of the run-up to the Iraq war, an atmosphere in which conservative political propaganda fares better than the facts of deliberative action.

Pres. Obama was accused early-on of making an unprecedented list of promises, and even by the time of his inauguration, there was speculation about a gap in election-year perceptions and aspirations and the realities of governing. It became popular in the mainstream media to propagate this “controversy”, asserting that Obama was “too idealistic” or even “naïve” and that somehow the “hard realities” of governing would, in time, make his Republican opponents’ case for them. 2009 has largely been a year in which media reporting has moved in the direction of promoting false controversies and enforcing self-fulfilling prophecies for their value as marketing tools.

Many of his detractors, and even some of his wavering supporters, will be surprised to learn that in his first year, Barack Obama has already fulfilled at least 79 campaign promises. This is one of the most accomplished records of any first year in office, and it has come with considerable difficulty in working with and around a Congress fraught with obstructionism and distracted by its own mythology regarding specific points of policy, and in the face of the most uniform and inflexible opposition any president in recent decades has faced.

The 79 promises kept, as fact-checked and reported by PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service of the St. Petersburg Times, are as follows:

• No. 6: Create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in peer-reviewed manufacturing processes
• No. 15: Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
• No. 16: Increase minority access to capital
• No. 33: Establish a credit card bill of rights
• No. 36: Expand loan programs for small businesses
• No. 40: Extend and index the 2007 Alternative Minimum Tax patch
• No. 50: Expand the Senior Corps volunteer program
• No. 58: Expand eligibility for State Children’s Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
• No. 76: Expand funding to train primary care providers and public health practitioners
• No. 77: Increase funding to expand community based prevention programs
• No. 88: Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• No. 110: Assure that the Veterans Administration budget is prepared as ‘must-pass’ legislation
• No. 119: Appoint a special adviser to the president on violence against women
• No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq
• No. 132: No permanent bases in Iraq
• No. 134: Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
• No. 154: Strengthen and expand military exchange programs with other countries
• No. 167: Make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on anti-terror efforts
• No. 174: Give a speech at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration
• No. 182: Allocate Homeland Security funding according to risk
• No. 184: Create a real National Infrastructure Protection Plan
• No. 200: Appoint a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security
• No. 208: Improve relations with Turkey, and its relations with Iraqi Kurds
• No. 212: Launch an international Add Value to Agriculture Initiative (AVTA)
• No. 215: Create a rapid response fund for emerging democracies
• No. 222: Grant Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba
• No. 224: Restore funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne/JAG) program
• No. 225: Establish an Energy Partnership for the Americas
• No. 239: Release presidential records
• No. 241: Require new hires to sign a form affirming their hiring was not due to political affiliation or contributions.
• No. 247: Recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession
• No. 266: Encourage water-conservation efforts in the West
• No. 269: Increase funding for national parks and forests
• No. 270: Increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund
• No. 272: Encourage farmers to use more renewable energy and be more energy efficient
• No. 277: Pursue a wildfire prevention and management plan
• No. 278: Remove more brush, small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires
• No. 284: Expand access to places to hunt and fish
• No. 290: Push for enactment of Matthew Shepard Act, which expands hate crime law to include sexual orientation and other factors
• No. 300: Reform mandatory minimum sentences
• No. 307: Create a White House Office on Urban Policy
• No. 325: Create an artist corps for schools
• No. 326: Champion the importance of arts education
• No. 327: Support increased funding for the NEA
• No. 332: Add another Space Shuttle flight
• No. 334: Use the private sector to improve spaceflight
• No. 336: Partner to enhance the potential of the International Space Station
• No. 337: Use the International Space Station for fundamental biological and physical research
• No. 338: Explore whether International Space Station can operate after 2016
• No. 342: Work toward deploying a global climate change research and monitoring system
• No. 345: Enhance earth mapping
• No. 346: Appoint an assistant to the president for science and technology policy
• No. 356: Establish special crime programs for the New Orleans area
• No. 359: Rebuild schools in New Orleans
• No. 371: Fund a major expansion of AmeriCorps
• No. 380: Bolster the military’s ability to speak different languages
• No. 391: Appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer
• No. 394: Provide grants to early-career researchers
• No. 411: Work to overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear
• No. 420: Create a national declassification center
• No. 421: Appoint an American Indian policy adviser
• No. 427: Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees
• No. 435: Create new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud
• No. 452: Weatherize 1 million homes per year
• No. 458: Invest in all types of alternative energy
• No. 459: Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars
• No. 460: Ask people and businesses to conserve electricity
• No. 475: Require states to provide incentives for utilities to reduce energy consumption
• No. 480: Unprecedented expansion of funding for regional high-speed rail
• No. 483: Invest in public transportation
• No. 484: Equalize tax breaks for driving and public transit
• No. 494: Share enviromental technology with other countries
• No. 498: Provide grants to encourage energy-efficient building codes
• No. 500: Increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency
• No. 502: Get his daughters a puppy
• No. 503: Appoint at least one Republican to the cabinet
• No. 506: Raise the small business investment expensing limit to $250,000 through the end of 2009
• No. 507: Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on these benefits
• No. 513: Reverse restrictions on stem cell research

Most of these items are complex campaign pledges that Pres. Obama has been able to follow through on. Some just show he’s a man who follows through on his word, something the media should take more note of. But PolitiFact’s research shows a long list of serious political accomplishments, many of historic import, yet the mainstream media continues to report on the delays seen in enacting the most complex and comprehensive reforms undertaken in a generation, many of which —like healthcare reform, energy policy reform, terror prosecutions and financial regulatory reform— are actually moving forward at a historically meaningful pace, and will likely be achieved in the first half of 2010.

There are a further 226 campaign promises officially listed, after extensive fact-checking, as “in the works”, as of this morning. Many of these will be accomplished in 2010, giving Pres. Obama the most extensive record of success in fulfilling specific campaign promises in US history. We can expect this fact will not be widely reported, as the mainstream news media appear determined to posture “objectivity” by refusing to report successes Obama’s opponents refuse to acknowledge.

The perception that Pres. Obama has failed to aggressively pursue the progressive agenda he ran on is owing largely to the fact that his legislative and governing style is rooted in principled coalition-building. As both state senator in Illinois and as US senator from Illinois, Obama had important legislative successes that required building consensus across the aisle, with often ideologically-opposed allies on specific issues, like predatory lending and ethics reform.

It is likely the legislative schedule of 2010 will demonstrate that no president in recent history has had so many major legislative achievements, and that will be due to Obama’s insisting that principled policy-making move forward, even where compromises need to be made with ideological opponents, all in the interests of progress. Perhaps no president since John F. Kennedy so deliberately sought to move a progressive legislative agenda forward, and Obama is already being compared to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson in terms of the scope and historic import of his legislative agenda.

A piece in the New York Times magazine, for Sunday, 3 January 2010, explains Obama’s deliberative coalition-building and willingness to compromise is what makes him a principled progressive, able to see past the temptations of populist rhetoric:

Obama’s relentless pursuit of health care reform, even at the expense of provisions that liberals held sacred, may well place him alongside F.D.R. and Lyndon Johnson in the pantheon of progressive presidents who were able to substantially amend the nation’s social contract.

This unique talent for governing from the center —which requires the spending of political capital and necessarily calls forth protest from both the liberal and conservative wings of the political spectrum— is actually a meaningful change in the political dynamics of American government, and does in fact bring with it the significant promise voters demanded from the president they chose in 2008. It is this style of negotiation and coalition building that has allowed Pres. Obama to change the course of international negotiations and restore the United States to its leadership role abroad.

In the early days of his administration, he made clear his focus on bold, sustained diplomatic efforts would be a departure from the politics of command and control of the last two presidential terms. As this publication reported on 21 January 2009:

On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. Obama phoned four heads of state across the Middle East —Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan— to discuss his feeling that there is an urgent need to start a practical and viable process of sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He also issued a strict executive order on ethics, barring anyone who had worked as a lobbyist who joins the administration from having any direct authority over or official contact with entities they had represented. That order marked a major turning point in the direction of the modern presidency, which had come to be dominated by the “revolving door” between government and lobbying, with many key officials in the last administration holding positions of direct influence over former clients.

On his second full day in office, Obama signed four historic executive orders, overturning controversial and/or unconstitutional policies from the previous administration:

He signed one order to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camp by 22 January 2010, another to close CIA “black site” prisons across the globe, another would establish a special task force in collaboration with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to determine detention policy going forward, and the fourth would require all US personnel to adhere at all times to the rules for treatment of prisoners as laid out in the Army Field Manual.

The restructuring of US military detention policy was a major first step to restoring the image of the US around the world, once more taking a leadership role on human rights, and building the political capital necessary for orchestrating international consensus on major global issues. By the spring, the international climate had changed substantially, and there were concrete efforts being made to craft global agreement on key issues like nuclear arms reduction and elimination and greenhouse gas emissions policy.

In his landmark Prague speech, looking forward to “a world without nuclear weapons”, Obama explained “the trajectory we need to be on”:

First, the United States will take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons. To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same. Make no mistake: As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies –- including the Czech Republic. But we will begin the work of reducing our arsenal.

To reduce our warheads and stockpiles, we will negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians this year. (Applause.) President Medvedev and I began this process in London, and will seek a new agreement by the end of this year that is legally binding and sufficiently bold. And this will set the stage for further cuts, and we will seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.

Indeed, the latter half of 2009 has seen the US and Russia negotiating intensely in Geneva to reach that agreement. Both Pres. Obama and Pres. Medvedev say the deal is near, though Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has no legal role in the negotiations or the formulation of a treaty, says US plans for a sea-based missile shield could be problematic for Russia’s security, going forward. The treaty would halve the nuclear arsenals of the two most prolific nuclear-armed powers.

Establishing a global nuclear test ban treaty and moving toward a global strategic arms reduction treaty, which would provide the framework for total denuclearization, some time in the future, once strict verification regimes are in place. Incremental denuclearization is, ultimately, a necessity, as evidenced by emerging conflicts within and near nuclear-armed states in the Middle East and Asia. As we reported in late April:

What we are seeing now in Pakistan is a good example: there is no guarantee that selective non-proliferation will not lead to cooperative black-market mechanisms that facilitate the spread of nuclear-weapons technology. Pakistan acquired the technology this way, and some of its black-marketeers may have further spread the technology they purchased. Pakistan is now experiencing severe political destabilization and the Taliban has taken over areas just 100 km from the capital.

Pres. Obama’a security policy, with regard to Pakistan, has done more to focus on safeguarding Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal against Taliban takeover or infiltration than any previous president. And we are now seeing a close integration of nuclear-weapons containment diplomacy with counter-terrorism efforts and pro-democracy development. This is the smartest way forward and a fulfillment of Pres. Obama’s promise of a more collaborative, hands-on foreign policy.

Key among the reform process initiated in Pres. Obama’s first months in office was the process of examining, overhauling and preserving major elements of the banking sector. This was uncomfortable for many in the financial industry, but as promised, Obama got involved, did not nationalize the banks, used government leverage to “stress test” the banks’ books and to implement reforms aimed at preventing their collapse. On 29 April, we reported:

Obama has challenged the entire banking system to reform in the interests of survival, not only aiming to prevent major bank failures and individual home foreclosures, but pressuring banks to lend again, and to cease accounting practices that lead to over-leveraging and phony claims about capital in reserve. With banks reeling from incomprehensible losses, and a credit freeze gripping the nation’s consumer markets, Obama did not relent in applying financial-analysis “stress tests” to banks’ books, to see what they could withstand and what real fiscal stability or resilience they had.

The New Republic is now calling those stress tests the “most underrated move of the year”. The magazine says the stress tests were “Obama’s best economic policy of 2009″ and notes that they “cost us … exactly nothing”. The stress tests allowed the government to understand the true scope of the financial crisis, steer the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) toward viable long-term thinking, and re-orient the markets to understand the nature of the banks’ capital shortfalls and adapt.

The New Republic praises the Obama administration for expanding transparency through the stress-testing process, helping to demonstrate that big banks could not simply bury their problems in dizzying mash-ups of manipulative accounting methods and that transparency itself actually has a market value, a positive influence on public confidence and willingness to invest. All of this was just a beginning, but the major news was: not one single major bank, no matter how troubled, collapsed during 2009, and the majority of projected bank failures were averted, despite over 100 smaller institutions taken over by the FDIC.

A similarly collaborative, pragmatist approach has won Obama favor for concrete, albeit sometimes hard to define, steps toward peacemaking around the world. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley has classed Obama as the United States’ “first global president”. Considering the rapid overhaul of the United States’ security and detention policies, to bring them in line with both domestic and international law, his aggressive outreach to leaders in the Middle East and across Asia, and his determined stance on nuclear disarmament, Pres. Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, much to the chagrin of his critics, who wish to paint him as an idealist who has “done nothing” while governing.

The award was controversial, because many believe his presidency is too near the beginning to speak of contributions to global peace and stability, but the award is often given to political figures whose goals are not yet achieved, some of whom have unsavory pasts, to say the least, and whose actions on the global stage have been less globally influential than Obama’s. His efforts throughout 2009 to establish an international climate of cooperation and dialogue have been vital to creating new opportunities for peace, and the Nobel Committee recognized this as the most important achievement of its kind for 2009.

The false controversy over whether Pres. Obama “deserved” the award obscured very substantial diplomatic achievements, some of which have already been named. On the occasion of the award, we noted:

UN SC Res. 1887 is one of the most important documents ever produced by the UN system, in that it lays the groundwork for a world free of nuclear weapons, however long it may take to achieve that goal. In the entire history of the nuclear arms race, no one has achieved that level of consensus on disarmament. This was done by aggressive, forthright and successful diplomacy, in the span of just 8 months’ worth of work. That is a major accomplishment.

On the question of peace and diplomacy, Barack Obama managed to deal with two “hostage” situations, with enemy “rogue states”, Roxana Saberi in Iran and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea, without escalating tensions in either region, without making threats or being weak; in each case, the art of diplomacy was practiced in such a way that it would lead to both success and non-escalation.

On Iran, the nuclear program is worrying, but for the first time in 30 years, the US has actually met with Iranian diplomats to discuss these issues directly, and the result is that Iran is in theory, agreeing to allow inspectors in, and even to ship uranium out of the country for processing. If this happens, the bomb will not be obtained by Iran.

Again: ambitious, successful nuclear diplomacy, enhanced credibility, peace before war, multilateralism, and just 8 months in office. I think the prize is not premature, because there are in fact real effects to all of this. There is a new climate favoring international cooperation to reduce or eliminate the world’s worst weapons, to raise awareness about and fight against brutalization and repression of women, and to achieve consensus on the most favorable ways to deal with climate-destabilizing emissions.

Pres. Obama’s pragmatic reform politics has revolutionized the way the United States deals with international crises and its prospects for winning support for major diplomatic endeavors, even among onetime rivals. And, in collaboration with Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, part of Obama’s own “team of rivals”, both domestic and international social policy has been shifted toward a broader focus on the status of women and girls.

Pres. Obama established, by executive order, the White House Council on Women and Girls, comprised of the heads of every Cabinet-level agency and led by his close aide Valerie Jarrett. The promotion of women’s rights and standing in society is not merely an issue of civil rights and equal pay in advanced democracies, but can be the single most important vehicle for building peace and prosperity in war-torn, impoverished and failing states.

As we reported on 2 January 2010:

The US Department of Defense has taken direct interest in the status of women’s rights around the world, especially in conflict zones, and is collaborating with the Obama administration’s initiative to promote the rights of women and girls. Pres. Obama has established a panel on which every Cabinet-level department head must report on the status of women and girls as relating to their purview. And women’s rights in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other key nations, is now a focus of Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertive “3D diplomacy”: diplomacy, development, defense.

Promoting the rights and the needs of women and girls will help to create a more educated, more civil and cooperative population, and should help to speed development to remote areas where improvements to basic infrastructure and economic cohesion cannot take root without active, sustained participation, and even leadership, on the part of women. More secure family environments and more advanced educational resources should also mean a reduced risk of armed conflict, factionalism and the collapse of basic services. The rights of women and girls are linked to all efforts to prevent or to combat the proliferation of failed states.

Pres. Bill Clinton used to talk about “building a bridge to the 21st century”, and as we sit back and survey the wide array of accomplishments of Pres. Obama’s first year in office, alongside the withering criticism and the many frustrations, it’s worth noting that one of the key features of this first year has been a refocusing of national resources, political and material, toward building a better future, both domestically and abroad. Many of the initiatives we have cited will be integral to shaping positive outcomes in facing the major challenges of this decade.

Millions of people disagree with Pres. Obama, either for ideological or partisan reasons, or because something about his unique cultural heritage is unsettling to their tastes, or biases. But his leadership has been principled and consistent, he has been true to his word, following through on hundreds of promises, and his has already been, after just 11 months, the most engaged and open presidency in modern times. His Open Government Initiative will take this process further in 2010 and in years to come, giving citizens a voice and creating an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability in American government.

As far as his signature initiatives go: both houses of Congress passed comprehensive healthcare reform legislation for the first time since Medicare, and he will likely sign a bill into law in January. The new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia is said to be nearing agreement. And a solution for how to close down the extra-judicial detention facility at Guantánamo Bay is within reach, with a new prison being established in Illinois and federal criminal trials ready to begin.

Obama has also made important strides toward one of the most daunting challenges of the 21st century: responsible stewardship of the world’s oceans. He is praised by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for “a remarkable number of actions to address a wide variety of environmental challenges” [PDF], including two key moves to restore and sustain the global ocean system. The oceans are under threat from rising mercury levels, rampant infestation from non-biodegradable plastics and numerous toxic pollutants, not to mention increased sea traffic and military exercises.

The scope of the oceanic degradation is only now beginning to be understood, and environmentalists argue it may well be the most complex of all environmental challenges going forward. Greenhouse gases, for instance, can be phased out, but all chemical residues of all kinds eventually wind up in the ocean, threatening marine life, habitat, water quality, human health and climate stability. Obama is praised for naming world-renowned marine ecologist Dr. Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and for beginning the process of crafting a national ocean policy.

The NRDC evaluation also specifically praises Pres. Obama’s efforts to help move the US toward a clean energy economy, citing concrete advances in each of the following:

• Boosting Investment in Clean Energy Jobs
• Upgrading Efficiency Standards
• Prioritizing Sustainability
• Confirming the Threat of Global Warming Pollution
• Adopting Stringent National Vehicle Standards for Carbon Pollution and Fuel Economy
• Curbing Carbon Pollution
• Accelerating Development of High-Speed Intercity Rail
• Improving the Livability of Communities
• Scientifically Assessing Role of Biofuels

While critics on the right and the left claim the Obama presidency has been marked by compromise and a strict partisan divide in the Congress, it has been remarkably productive so far. In an atmosphere of crisis and deep public malaise, with hostile opposition to any substantive innovations in policy or principled, compromise, Pres. Obama has found a way to achieve real breakthroughs that will benefit the nation over the long-term, consistently taking a pragmatic approach to solving intensely complex problems.

Pres. Obama has had the privilege, or perhaps the burden, of being the most inspiring political figure in recent memory in US politics, yet he is also the most frequently threatened. The number of alleged plots to assassinate him has been truly worrying, and some of his adversaries have been willing to speak of armed rebellion in the national media. But that vitriol and hatred should not be allowed to detract from what has been an historic and accomplished first year in office, showing real progress on issues of vital long-term relevance to the well-being of the American people.

Pres. Barack Obama, in office just under 9 months, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The award announcement has sent a ripple through world opinion, as critics and supporters clash over whether the award is premature, or whether Obama’s collaborative diplomatic method has achieved important gains for world peace. The prize could signal an endorsement of Obama’s work on comprehensive nuclear disarmament or on achieving climate consensus this fall, which is not only a correction of American intransigence on carbon limits, but also instrumental to preventing mass migration and resource wars.

The award also affirms the gains made in international cooperation, the key element of consideration for the prize. Nobel’s own criteria for the Peace prize state that it should go to the individual who has done the most to promote “fraternity among nations”. Woodrow Wilson was the last sitting US president to win the prize.

The Nobel committee cited Pres. Obama’s efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and achieve the complex cooperation needed to formulate a global response to climate destabilization, adding that “now is the time for all of us to take responsibility for global solutions to global problems”. The point is not minor: the international system must consistently balance the principle of sovereignty with issues of human rights and sustainable cooperation.

Yet there remains a general tendency to view all international politics through a cynical lens of unsalvable difference and definitive atomization. Predictably, there has been a stolid and unthinking response from pundits of all stripes. The toxic reasoning that says you must be mired in conflict for years, partly responsible for thousands of deaths, and then blessed with an opportunity for specific peace before you can be eligible for recognition as having promoted fraternity among nations, has even affected the judgement of such talented reporters as Nicholas Kristof, at the New York Times.

I deeply respect Mr. Kristof’s long experience and consistently excellent reporting, but he’s wrong about Obama’s achievements in fostering a new climate in international relations. His opinion piece responding to the Nobel award is a very facile analysis and smacks of the critic who’s trying to be hard on the star of the moment in order not to be taken as less of a worthy critic. Here’s why: There’s a dangerous and irresponsible rumor that’s emerging, spread very deliberately by Republican leadership, that in fact “Obama hasn’t done anything”, despite his being one of the busiest presidencies to date, full of hard work, bold initiatives and major achievements.

Do we forget his first days in office? He had to overturn one after another radically dangerous Bush-era policy. For instance:

On his second day in office, he banned torture and called for a review of all cases of terror suspects, to craft the proper means of bringing them to justice within the Constitutional system of government that by law the United States adheres to. He ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, where prisoners were held without legal counsel, without the hearing of evidence and without charge, indefinitely, and the closing of CIA ‘black site’ prisons around the world.

On his fifth day in office Obama held a major energy innovation and fuel efficiency meeting, at which he pledged to raise the CAFE standards for fuel efficiency and devote record amounts of federal funding to the development of renewable energy sources. He warned that America’s devotion to huge spending on oil “bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides in our struggle against terrorism”. He ordered a review of the EPA’s role in regulating carbon emissions, a move that would eventually lead to the EPA officially adopting the policy ordered by a court ruling, that it had authority to cap carbon emissions.

We also noted that:

Perhaps most important, Obama moved by executive order, during his first days in office, to limit presidential powers by requiring that all high-level classification of documents involving presidential decisions be reviewed by a panel of legal experts, in order to prevent his own administration or future administrations from using the classification system to cover up potential wrongdoing.

But he didn’t wait to make it known that his intention was to create a multilateral framework for peace, wherever it might be useful. For instance:

On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. Obama phoned four heads of state across the Middle East —Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan— to discuss his feeling that there is an urgent need to start a practical and viable process of sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

His work on nuclear disarmament is “important” not because it’s about non-proliferation, but because it’s about disarmament. Total, 100%, global nuclear disarmament. And he now has the unanimous support of the world’s major nuclear powers, the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, to move toward that goal.

UN SC Res. 1887 is one of the most important documents ever produced by the UN system, in that it lays the groundwork for a world free of nuclear weapons, however long it may take to achieve that goal. In the entire history of the nuclear arms race, no one has achieved that level of consensus on disarmament. This was done by aggressive, forthright and successful diplomacy, in the span of just 8 months’ worth of work. That is a major accomplishment.

On the question of peace and diplomacy, Barack Obama managed to deal with two “hostage” situations, with enemy “rogue states”, Roxana Saberi in Iran and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea, without escalating tensions in either region, without making threats or being weak; in each case, the art of diplomacy was practiced in such a way that it would lead to both success and non-escalation.

On Iran, the nuclear program is worrying, but for the first time in 30 years, the US has actually met with Iranian diplomats to discuss these issues directly, and the result is that Iran is in theory, agreeing to allow inspectors in, and even to ship uranium out of the country for processing. If this happens, the bomb will not be obtained by Iran.

Again: ambitious, successful nuclear diplomacy, enhanced credibility, peace before war, multilateralism, and just 8 months in office. I think the prize is not premature, because there are in fact real effects to all of this. There is a new climate favoring international cooperation to reduce or eliminate the world’s worst weapons, to raise awareness about and fight against brutalization and repression of women, and to achieve consensus on the most favorable ways to deal with climate-destabilizing emissions.

In the face of such progress, the complaints of critics who say Obama has not yet solved major problems dim. The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to leaders from the Middle East, but there has never really been peace. Was that premature, or was the award given to laud the actions and the methods of the laureates when they turned their attentions toward promoting peace?

There was praise from both Israeli and Palestinian leaders today, suggesting both sides want to have the president’s ear as plans to restart peace negotiations move forward and perhaps signaling one of the key reasons for giving the prize in the first place. The Nobel committee clearly wants Pres. Obama’s “new era of engagement” to gain momentum and to achieve the ideals so many champions of peace have sought for so long.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Obama and congratulated him on the award, writing in an open letter to the US president: “You have given inspiration to people all over the world”, adding that the Nobel award was “an expression of the hope that your presidency will promote a new era of peace”.

Netanyahu also looked ahead “to working closely with you in the years ahead to advance peace and to give hope to the peoples of our region who deserve to live in peace, security and dignity”. Israel’s president Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize himself, congratulated Obama with praise still more lavish than Netanyahu’s, writing:

Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth…

Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction.

Pres. Obama himself he has not yet earned the Nobel Peace Prize, that the award is humbling and took him by surprise. He said he would accept the prize as a “call to action”, and that he understood the responsibility implied by such praise for his vision of a “world without nuclear weapons”, one of the key components of his foreign policy that moved the Nobel committee to a unanimous vote that he should be the award’s recipient for 2009.

A number of Republican politicians were openly disparaging, expressing views similar to those of Iranian leaders, the Taliban, and the Hamas leadership in Gaza, who said they are skeptical of Obama’s ability to foster a climate of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or to end long-running conflicts, and suggesting that Obama has not in fact achieved much diplomatically.

But Republican candidate for the Virginia governorship, Bob McDonnell, says he is “delighted to see the President of the United States bring honor to our country by receiving the Nobel Peace Prize”. McDonnell is either worried about what it will take to win in a state that favored Obama or is a more level-headed, civic-minded politician, able to see the virtues in such an award, not just in terms of benefit to Pres. Obama, but to the nation and to the prospects for international peace and cooperation.

What Pres. Obama has done in terms of fostering international cooperation and peace, in just 8 months, far outweighs anything that was done in the last 8 years —when radical rhetoric, threats and intransigence, were hallmarks of national foreign policy—, and we all know that. The award is intended to acknowledge outstanding efforts to spur fraternity among nations, reduce or eliminate standing armies and achieve peace through open talks.

It’s time to take a cue from the Nobel committee and give credit where credit is due. We need more of this persistent, aggressive, collaborative diplomacy, aimed at restoring dignity to those mired in the world’s forgotten crises and promoting democracy and cooperation in concrete ways. The security of the United States depends on it, the stability of nations requires it, and any consideration for the wellbeing of future generations demands it.

Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, jailed in Tehran on allegations of espionage, has had her sentence reduced from 8 years to 2 years, suspended for 5 years. Iranian officials announced today that she was free to leave Evin prison immediately. Saberi, originally detained for buying a bottle of wine, was subsequently charged with reporting without government credentials, then espionage. Her trial was a 15-minute closed-door hearing in which no defense was permitted.

The case had become a major international diplomatic issue, with the US government calling the charges “baseless” and both Sec. of State Clinton and Pres. Obama repeatedly demanding her immediate release. Today, Sec. of State Clinton announced today that Saberi’s release had been confirmed, adding that she was “heartened” by the news.

According to the Washington Post:

Saberi’s release was confirmed by the semi-official state news agency Mehrnews. She did not immediately appear before the crowd of reporters that had gathered at the gray metal gate of Evin Prison in northwest Tehran. Saberi’s attorney, Abdolsamad Khorramshai, said Saberi apparently had been sent out of the prison through another door.

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Saberi had undertaken a hunger-strike in protest of her detention and has been described in recent days as being gaunt and frail. Her father just yesterday said he was concerned that if her sentence were upheld, she would starve herself to death, in protest or in despair. Iran’s Pres. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, considered a hardline ideologue and fierce opponent of the US, had ordered prosecutors to permit Saberi to present a complete defense.

In a 5-hour hearing yesterday, Saberi’s lawyers presented her defense and argued that the charges were illegitimate and that the process used to convict her violated due process requirements. No specifics about the defense arguments have been released so far, and the courts have not made the proceedings public.

Her attorney told the press that his client was free to leave Iran after her release and that “They explained [to] me that the two years were conditional and would not be carried out if she would not commit any crimes in the coming five years”. Though Saberi’s release may signal a slight thaw in Washington-Tehran relations, there are still at least 7 journalists in jail in Iran, and observers note that Iran may be trying to curry favor with the release.

Prime time press conference with Pres. Obama, 8pm EDT, 29 April 2009

OBAMA: Before we begin tonight, I just want to provide everyone with a few brief updates on some of the challenges we’re dealing with right now.

First, we are continuing to closely monitor the emergency cases of the H1N1 flu virus throughout the United States. As I said this morning, this is obviously a very serious situation, and every American should know that their entire government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations.

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Our public health officials have recommended that schools with confirmed or suspected cases of this flu strongly consider temporarily closing. And if more schools are forced to close, we’ve recommended that both parents and businesses think about contingency plans if their children do have to stay home.

I’ve requested an immediate $1.5 billion in emergency funding from Congress to support our ability to monitor and track this virus and to build our supply of antiviral drugs and other equipment. And we will also ensure that those materials get to where they need to be as quickly as possible.

And, finally, I’ve asked every American to take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu: Keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you’re sick; and keep your children home from school if they’re sick.

We’ll continue to provide regular updates to the American people as we receive more information. And everyone should rest assured that this government is prepared to do whatever it takes to control the impact of this virus.

The second thing I’d like to mention is how gratified I am that the House and the Senate passed a budget resolution today that will serve as an economic blueprint for this nation’s future.

I especially want to thank Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi, all of the members of Congress who worked so quickly and effectively to make this blueprint a reality.

This budget builds on the steps we’ve taken over the last 100 days to move this economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity.

We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs and provided a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families. We passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for 11 million American children whose parents work full time. And we launched a housing plan that has already contributed to a spike in the number of homeowners who are refinancing their mortgages, which is the equivalent of another tax cut.

But even as we clear away the wreckage of this recession, I’ve also said that we can’t go back to an economy that’s built on a pile of sand, on inflated home prices and maxed-out credit cards, on overleveraged banks and outdated regulations that allow recklessness of a few to threaten the prosperity of all.

We have to lay a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and help us compete in the 21st century. And that’s exactly what this budget begins to do.

It contains new investments in education that will equip our workers with the right skills and training, new investments in renewable energy that will create millions of jobs and new industries, new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses, and new savings that will bring down our deficit.

I also campaigned on the promise that I would change the direction of our nation’s foreign policy. And we’ve begun to do that, as well. We’ve begun to end the war in Iraq, and we forged with our NATO allies a new strategy to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and banning torture without exception.

And we’ve renewed our diplomatic efforts to deal with challenges ranging from the global economic crisis to the spread of nuclear weapons.

So I think we’re off to a good start, but it’s just a start. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved, but I’m not content. I’m pleased with our progress, but I’m not satisfied.

Millions of Americans are still without jobs and homes, and more will be lost before this recession is over. Credit is still not flowing nearly as freely as it should. Countless families and communities touched by our auto industry still face tough times ahead. Our projected long-term deficits are still too high, and government is still not as efficient as it needs to be.

We still confront threats ranging from terrorism to nuclear proliferation, as well as pandemic flu. And all this means you can expect an unrelenting, unyielding effort from this administration to strengthen our prosperity and our security in the second hundred days, in the third hundred days and all of the days after that.

You can expect us to work on health care reform that will bring down costs while maintaining quality, as well as energy legislation that will spark a clean-energy revolution. I expect to sign legislation by the end of this year that sets new rules of the road for Wall Street, rules that reward drive and innovation, as opposed to shortcuts and abuse.

And we will also work to pass legislation that protects credit card users from unfair rate hikes and abusive fees and penalties. We’ll continue scouring the federal budget for savings and target more programs for elimination. And we will continue to pursue procurement reform that will greatly reduce the no-bid contracts that have wasted so many taxpayer dollars.

So we have a lot of work left to do. It’s work that will take time, and it will take effort. But the United States of America, I believe, will see a better day.

We will rebuild a stronger nation, and we will endure as a beacon for all of those weary travelers beyond our shores who still dream that there’s a place where all of this is possible.

I want to thank the American people for their support and their patience during these trying times, and I look forward to working with you in the next hundred days, in the hundred days after that, all of the hundreds of days to follow to make sure that this country is what it can be.

And with that, I will start taking some questions.

And I’ll start with you, Jennifer.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. With the flu outbreak spreading and worsening, can you talk about whether you think it’s time to close the border with Mexico and whether —

under what conditions you might consider quarantining, when that might be appropriate?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, as I said, this is a cause for deep concern, but not panic. And I think that we have to make sure that we recognize that how we respond intelligently, systematically, based on science and what public health officials have to say, will determine in large part what happens.

I’ve consulted with our public health officials extensively on a day-to-day basis, in some cases an hour-to-hour basis. At this point they have not recommended a border closing. From their perspective it would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out, because we already have cases here in the United States.

We have ramped up screening efforts, as well as made sure that additional supplies are there on the border, so that we can prepare in the eventuality that we have to do more than we’re doing currently.

But the most important thing right now that public health officials have indicated is that we treat this the same way that we would treat other flu outbreaks, just understanding that, because this is a new strain, we don’t yet know how it will respond.

So we have to take additional precautions, essentially, take out some additional insurance. Now, that’s why I asked for an additional $1.5 billion, so that we can make sure that everything is in place should a worst-case scenario play out.

I do want to compliment Democrats and Republicans who worked diligently back in 2005 when the bird flu came up. I was part of a group of legislators who worked with the Bush administration to make sure that we had beefed up our infrastructure and our stockpiles of antiviral drugs, like Tamiflu.

And I think the Bush administration did a good job of creating the infrastructure so that we can respond. For example, we’ve got 50 million courses of antiviral drugs in the event that they’re needed.

So the government is going to be doing everything that we can. We’re coordinating closely with state and local officials. Secretary Napolitano at the Department of Homeland Security, newly installed Secretary Sebelius of Health and Human Services, our acting CDC director, they are all on the phone on a daily basis with all public health officials across the states to coordinate and make sure that there’s timely reporting, that if —

as new cases come up, that we’re able to track them effectively, that we’re allocating resources so that they’re in place.

The key now I think is to make sure that we’re maintaining great vigilance, that everybody responds appropriately when cases do come up, and individual families start taking very sensible precautions that can make a huge difference.

So wash your hands when you shake hands. Cover your mouth when you cough. I know it sounds trivial, but it makes a huge difference. If you are sick, stay home. If your child is sick, keep them out of school.

To — if you are feeling certain flu symptoms, don’t get on an airplane, don’t get on a —

any system of public transportation where you’re confined and you could potentially spread the virus.

So those are the steps that I think we need to take right now. But understand that because this is a new strain, we have to be cautious. If this was a strain that we were familiar with, then we might have to —

then I think we wouldn’t see the kind of alert levels that we’re seeing, for example, with the World Health Organization. OK?

Deb Price of Detroit News. Where’s Deb?

Good to see you.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. On the domestic auto industry, have you determined that bankruptcy is the only option to restructure Chrysler? And do you believe that the deep cuts in plant closings that were outlined this week by General Motors are sufficient?

OBAMA: Let me speak to Chrysler first because the clock is ticking on Chrysler coming up with a plan. I am actually very hopeful, more hopeful than I was 30 days ago, that we can see a resolution that maintains a viable Chrysler auto company out there.

What we’ve seen is the unions have made enormous sacrifices on top of sacrifices that they had previously made. You’ve now seen the major debt holders come up with a set of potential concessions that they can live with.

All of that promises the possibility that you can get a Fiat-Chrysler merger and that you have an ongoing concern. The details have not yet been finalized, so I don’t want to jump the gun. But I am feeling more optimistic than I was about the possibilities of that getting done.

With respect to GM, we’re going to have another 30 days. They’re still in the process of presenting us with their plans. But I’ve always said that GM has a lot of good product there, and if they can get through these difficult times and engage in some of the very difficult choices that they’ve already made, that they can emerge a strong, competitive, viable company.

And that’s my goal in this whole process. I would love to get the U.S. government out of the auto business as quickly as possible. We have a circumstance in which a bad recession compounded some great weaknesses already in the auto industry.

And it was my obligation and continues to be my obligation to make sure that any taxpayer dollars that are in place to support the auto industry are aimed not at short-term fixes that continue these companies as wards of the state, but rather institutes the kind of restructuring that allows them to be strongly competitive in the future. I think we’re moving in that direction.

Last point, you asked about Chrysler bankruptcy. It was the prudent and appropriate thing for Chrysler to do to engage in the filings that they —

that received some notice a while back because they had to prepare for possible contingencies.

It’s not clear that they’re going to have to use it. The fact that the major debt-holders appear ready to make concessions means that even if they ended up having to go through some sort of bankruptcy, it would be a very quick type of bankruptcy and they could continue operating and emerge on the other side in a much stronger position.

So my goal is to make sure that we’ve got a strong, viable, competitive auto industry. I think some tough choices are being made. There’s no denying that there’s significant hardship involved, particularly for the workers and the families in these communities.

And we’re going to be coming behind whatever plan is in place to make sure that the federal government is providing as much assistance as we have to ensure that people are landing back on their feet, even as we strengthen these core businesses.

Jake? Where’s Jake? There he is.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You’ve said in the past that waterboarding, in your opinion, is torture. Torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?

OBAMA: What I’ve said — and I will repeat —

is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don’t think that’s just my opinion; that’s the opinion of many who’ve examined the topic. And that’s why I put an end to these practices.

I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British —

all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.

And then the reason was that Churchill understood — you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s —

what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

And — and so I strongly believed that the steps that we’ve taken to prevent these kinds of enhanced interrogation techniques will make us stronger over the long term and make us safer over the long term because it will put us in a —

in a position where we can still get information.

In some cases, it may be harder, but part of what makes us, I think, still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.

At the same time, it takes away a critical recruitment tool that al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations have used to try to demonize the United States and justify the killing of civilians.

And it makes us —

it puts us in a much stronger position to work with our allies in the kind of international, coordinated intelligence activity that can shut down these networks.

So this is a decision that I’m very comfortable with. And I think the American people over time will recognize that it is better for us to stick to who we are, even when we’re taking on an unscrupulous enemy.

OK?

Q: (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: I’m sorry?

Q: (OFF-MIKE) sanctioned torture?

OBAMA: I believe that waterboarding was torture. And I think that the —

whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.

Mark Knoller?

Q: Thank you, sir. Let me follow up, if I may, on Jake’s question. Did you read the documents recently referred to by former Vice President Cheney and others saying that the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques not only protected the nation but saved lives?

And if part of the United States were under imminent threat, could you envision yourself ever authorizing the use of those enhanced interrogation techniques?

OBAMA: I have read the documents. Now they have not been officially declassified and released. And so I don’t want to go to the details of them. But here’s what I can tell you, that the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques, which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques, don’t answer the core question.

Which is, could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn’t answer the broader question, are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?

So when I made the decision to release these memos and when I made the decision to bar these practices, this was based on consultation with my entire national security team, and based on my understanding that ultimately I will be judged as commander in chief on how safe I’m keeping the American people.

That’s the responsibility I wake up with and it’s the responsibility I go to sleep with. And so I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe. But I am absolutely convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure that we are not taking short cuts that undermine who we are.

And there have been no circumstances during the course of this first 100 days in which I have seen information that would make me second guess the decision that I have made. OK?

Chuck Todd.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to move to Pakistan. Pakistan appears to be at war with the Taliban inside their own country. Can you reassure the American people that if necessary America could secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and keep it from getting into the Taliban’s hands or, worst case scenario, even al-Qaida’s hands?

OBAMA: I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure. Primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands. We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they’re immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan. I’m more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people.

And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people. So we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis. And I think that there’s a recognition increasingly on the part of both the civilian government there and the army that that is their biggest weakness.

On the military side, you’re starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally. And you’re starting to see the Pakistani military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists.

We want to continue to encourage Pakistan to move in that direction. And we will provide them all of the cooperation that we can. We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.

Q: But in a worst-case scenario…

OBAMA: I’m not going to engage in…

Q: (OFF-MIKE) military could secure this nuclear…

OBAMA: I’m not going to engage in —

in hypotheticals of that sort. I feel confident that that nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands.

OK, Jeff Mason?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. One of the biggest changes you’ve made in the first 100 days regarding foreign policy has had to do with Iraq. But do the large-scale —

there’s large-scale violence there right now. Does that affect the U.S. strategy at all for withdrawal? And could it affect the timetable that you’ve set out for troops?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to note that, although you’ve seen some spectacular bombings in Iraq that are a —

a legitimate cause of concern, civilian deaths, incidents of bombings, etc., remain very low relative to what was going on last year, for example.

And so you haven’t seen the kinds of huge spikes that you were seeing for a time. The political system is holding and functioning in Iraq.

Part of the reason why I called for a gradual withdrawal as opposed to a precipitous one was precisely because more work needs to be done on the political side to further isolate whatever remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq still exist.

And I’m very confident that, with our commander on the ground, Gen. Odierno, with Chris Hill, our new ambassador, having been approved and already getting his team in place, that they are going to be able to work effectively with the Maliki government to create the conditions for an ultimate transfer after the national elections.

But there’s some —

some serious work to do on making sure that how they divvy up oil revenues is ultimately settled, what the provincial powers are and boundaries, the relationship between the Kurds and the central government, the relationship between the Shia and the Kurds. Are they incorporating effectively Sunnis, Sons of Iraq, into the structure of the armed forces in a way that’s equitable and just?

Those are all issues that have not been settled the way they need to be settled. And what we’ve done is, we’ve provided sufficient time for them to get that work done, but we’ve got to keep the pressure up, not just on the military side, but on the diplomatic and development sides, as well.

Chip Reid?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. On Senator Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party, you said you were thrilled; I guess nobody should be surprised about that.

But how big a deal is this, really? Some Republicans say it is huge. They believe it’s a game-changer. They say that, if you get the 60 votes in the Senate, that you will be able to ride roughshod over any opposition, and that we’re on the verge of, as one Republican put it, one-party rule.

Do you see it that way? And, also, what do you think his switch says about the state of the Republican Party?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think very highly of Arlen Specter. I think he’s got a record of legislative accomplishment that is as good as any member of the Senate.

And I think he’s always had a strong independent streak. I think that was true when he was a Republican; I think that will be true when he’s a Democrat.

He was very blunt in saying I couldn’t count on him to march lockstep on every single issue. And so he’s going to still have strong opinions, as many Democrats in the Senate do.

I’ve been there. It turns out, all the senators have very strong opinions. And I don’t think that’s going to change.

I do think that having Arlen Specter in the Democratic caucus will liberate him to cooperate on critical issues, like health care, like infrastructure and job creation, areas where his inclinations were to work with us, but he was feeling pressure not to.

And I think the vote on the Recovery Act was a classic example. Ultimately, he thought that was the right thing to do. And he was fiercely berated within his own party at the time for having taken what I consider to be a very sensible step. So —

so I think it’s, overall, positive.

Now, I am under no illusions that suddenly I’m going to have a rubber-stamp Senate. I’ve got Democrats who don’t agree with me on everything, and that’s how it should be.

Congress is a coequal branch of government. Every senator who’s there, whether I agree with them or disagree with them, I think truly believes that they are doing their absolute best to represent their constituencies.

And we’ve got regional differences, and we’ve got some parts of the country that are affected differently by certain policies. And those have to be respected, and there’s going to have to be compromise and give-and-take on all of these issues.

I do think that, to my Republican friends, I want them to realize that me reaching out to them has been genuine. I can’t sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn’t work and the American people voted to change.

But there are a whole host of areas where we can work together. And I’ve said this to people like Mitch McConnell. I said, look, on health care reform, you may not agree with me that I —

we should have a public plan. That may be philosophically just too much for you to swallow.

On the other hand, there are some areas like reducing the costs of medical malpractice insurance where you do agree with me. If I’m taking some of your ideas and giving you credit for good ideas, the fact that you didn’t get 100 percent can’t be a reason every single time to oppose my position.

And if that is how bipartisanship is defined, a situation in which basically, wherever there are philosophical differences, I have to simply go along with ideas that have been rejected by the American people in a historic election, you know, we’re probably not going to make progress.

If, on the other hand, the definition is that we’re open to each other’s ideas, there are going to be differences, the majority will probably be determinative when it comes to resolving just hard, core differences that we can’t resolve, but there is a whole host of other areas where we can work together, then I think we can make progress.

Q: Is the Republican Party in the desperate straits that Arlen Specter seems to think it is?

OBAMA: You know, politics in America changes very quick. And I’m a big believer that things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem.

You’re talking to a guy who was 30 points down in the polls during a — a primary in Iowa. So — so I never —

I don’t believe in crystal balls.

I do think that our administration has taken some steps that have restored confidence in the American people that we’re moving in the right direction and that simply opposing our approach on every front is probably not a good political strategy.

Ed Henry?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In a couple of weeks, you’re going to be giving the commencement at Notre Dame. And, as you know, this has caused a lot of controversy among Catholics who are opposed to your position on abortion.

As a candidate, you vowed that one of the very things you wanted to do was sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which, as you know, would eliminate federal, state and local restrictions on abortion. And at one point in the campaign when asked about abortion and life, you said that it was above —

quote, above my pay grade.

Now that you’ve been president for 100 days, obviously, your pay grade is a little higher than when you were a senator.

Do you still hope that Congress quickly sends you the Freedom of Choice Act so you can sign it?

OBAMA: You know, the — my view on —

on abortion, I think, has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue.

I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they — if they suggest —

and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with and families and individual women have to wrestle with.

The reason I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think women take that —

that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or a president of the United States, in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their clergy.

So —

so that has been my consistent position. The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.

And so I’ve got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that’s —

that’s where I’m going to focus.

Jeff Zeleny.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President.

During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?

OBAMA: Now let me write this down.

OBAMA: I’ve got …

Q: Surprised, troubled …

OBAMA: I’ve got —

what was the first one?

Q: Surprised.

OBAMA: Surprised.

Q: Troubled.

OBAMA: Troubled.

Q: Enchanted.

OBAMA: Enchanted, nice.

Q: And humbled.

OBAMA: And what was the last one, humbled?

Q: Humbled. Thank you, sir.

OBAMA: All right. OK. Surprised. I am surprised compared to where I started, when we first announced for this race, by the number of critical issues that appear to be coming to a head all at the same time.

You know, when I first started this race, Iraq was a central issue, but the economy appeared on the surface to still be relatively strong. There were underlying problems that I was seeing with health care for families and our education system and college affordability and so forth, but obviously, I didn’t anticipate the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

And so, you know, the typical president, I think, has two or three big problems. We’ve got seven or eight big problems. And so we’ve had to move very quickly and I’m very proud of my team for the fact that we’ve been able to keep our commitments to the American people, to bring about change, while at the same time managing a whole host of issues that had come up that weren’t necessarily envisioned a year-and-a-half ago.

Troubled? I’d say less troubled, but, you know, sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow. That there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we’re in the middle of really big crises.

I would like to think that everybody would say, You know what? Let’s take a time-out on some of the political games, focus our attention for at least this year, and then we can start running for something next year. And that hasn’t happened as much as I would have liked.

Enchanted? Enchanted. I will tell you that when I — when I meet our servicemen and -women, enchanted is probably not the word I would use. But I am so profoundly impressed and grateful to them for what they do. They’re really good at their job. They are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices on our behalf. They do so without complaint. They are fiercely loyal to this country.

And, you know, the more I interact with our servicemen and -women, from the top brass down to the lowliest private, I’m just — I’m grateful to them.

Humbled by the — humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life, and there are a lot of different power centers. And so I can’t just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line.

And so, you know, what you do is to — is to make your best arguments, listen hard to what other people have to say, and coax folks in the right direction.

This metaphor has been used before, but the ship of state is an ocean liner. It’s not a speedboat. And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue, of how to bring about the changes that the American people need, is to — is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, you may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say, that was when we started getting serious about clean energy. That’s when health care started to become more efficient and affordable. That’s when we became serious about raising our standards in education.

And — and so I — I have a much longer time horizon than I think you do when you’re a candidate or if you’re listening, I think, to the media reportage on a day-to-day basis.

And I’m humbled, last, by the American people who have shown extraordinary patience and I think a recognition that we’re not going to solve all of these problems overnight.

OK. Lori Montenegro?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, when you met with the Hispanic Caucus a few weeks ago, reports came out that the White House was planning to have a forum to talk about immigration and bring it to the forefront.

Going forward, my question is, what is your strategy to try to have immigration reform? And are you still on the same timetable to have it accomplished in the first year of your presidency?

And, also, I’d like to know if you’re going to reach out to Sen. John McCain, who is Republican and in the past has favored immigration reform?

OBAMA: Well, we reach out to — to Sen. McCain on a whole host of issues. He has been a leader on immigration reform. I think he has had the right position on immigration reform. And I would love to partner with him and others on what is going to be a critical issue.

We’ve also worked with Sen. McCain on what I think is a terrific piece of legislation that he and Carl Levin have put together around procurement reform. We want that moved, and we’re going to be working hard with them to get that accomplished.

What I told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is exactly what I said the very next day in a town hall meeting and what I will continue to say publicly, and that is we want to move this process.

We can’t continue with a broken immigration system. It’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for American workers. It’s dangerous for Mexican would-be workers who are trying to cross a dangerous border.

It is — it is putting a strain on border communities, who oftentimes have to deal with a host of undocumented workers. And it keeps those undocumented workers in the shadows, which means they can be exploited at the same time as they’re depressing U.S. wages.

So, what I hope to happen is that we’re able to convene a working group, working with key legislators like Luis Gutierrez and Nydia Velazquez and others to start looking at a framework of how this legislation might be shaped.

In the meantime, what we’re trying to do is take some core — some key administrative steps to move the process along to lay the groundwork for legislation. Because the American people need some confidence that if we actually put a package together, we can execute.

So Janet Napolitano, who has great knowledge of this because of having been a border governor, she’s already in the process of reviewing and figuring out how can we strengthen our border security in a much more significant way than we’re doing.

If the American people don’t feel like you can secure the borders, then it’s hard to strike a deal that would get people out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship who are already here, because the attitude of the average American is going to be, well, you’re just going to have hundreds of thousands of more coming in each year.

On the other hand, showing that there is a more thoughtful approach than just raids of a handful of workers as opposed to, for example, taking seriously the violation of companies that sometimes are actively recruiting these workers to come in. That’s again something we can start doing administratively.

So what we want to do is to show that we are competent and getting results around immigration, even on the structures that we already have in place, the laws that we already have in place, so that we’re building confidence among the American people that we can actually follow through on whatever legislative approach emerges. OK?

Q: (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: I see the process moving this first year. And I’m going to be moving it as quickly as I can. I’ve been accused of doing too much. We are moving full-steam ahead on all fronts.

Ultimately, I don’t have control of the legislative calendar, and so we’re going to work with legislative leaders to see what we can do.

Andre Showell? There you go.

Q: Thank you, Mr. President.

As the entire nation tries to climb out of this deep recession, in communities of color, the circumstances are far worse. The black unemployment rate, as you know, is in the double digits. And in New York City, for example, the black unemployment rate for men is near 50 percent.

My question to you tonight is given this unique and desperate circumstance, what specific policies can you point to that will target these communities and what’s the timetable for us to see tangible results?

OBAMA: Well, keep in mind that every step we’re taking is designed to help all people. But folks who are most vulnerable are most likely to be helped because they need the most help.

So when we passed the Recovery Act, for example, and we put in place provisions that would extend unemployment insurance or allow you to keep your health insurance even if you’ve lost your job, that probably disproportionately impacted those communities that had lost their jobs. And unfortunately, the African-American community and the Latino community are probably over represented in those ranks.

When we put in place additional dollars for community health centers to ensure that people are still getting the help that they need, or we expand health insurance to millions more children through the children’s health insurance program, again, those probably disproportionately impact African-American and Latino families simply because they’re the ones who are most vulnerable. They have got higher rates of uninsured in their communities.

So my general approach is that if the economy is strong, that will lift all boats as long as it is also supported by, for example, strategies around college affordability and job training, tax cuts for working families as opposed to the wealthiest that level the playing field and ensure bottom-up economic growth.

And I’m confident that that will help the African-American community live out the American dream at the same time that it’s helping communities all across the country.

Michael Scherer of Time?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. During the campaign, you criticized President Bush’s use of the state secrets privilege, but U.S. attorneys have continued to argue the Bush position in three cases in court. How exactly does your view of state secrets differ from President Bush’s? And do you believe presidents should be able to derail entire lawsuits about warrantless wiretapping or rendition if classified information is involved?

OBAMA: I actually think that the state secret doctrine should be modified. I think right now it’s over broad.

But keep in mind what happens, is we come in to office. We’re in for a week, and suddenly we’ve got a court filing that’s coming up. And so we don’t have the time to effectively think through, what exactly should an overarching reform of that doctrine take? We’ve got to respond to the immediate case in front of us.

There — I think it is appropriate to say that there are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can’t litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety.

But searching for ways to redact, to carve out certain cases, to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it’s not such a blunt instrument.

And we’re interested in pursuing that. I know that Eric Holder and Greg Craig, my White House counsel, and others are working on that as we speak.

STAFF: Last question.

OBAMA: Jonathan Weisman, you get — you get the last word. Where are you? There you are.

Q: Thank you, sir. You are currently the chief shareholder of a couple of very large mortgage giants. You’re about to become the chief shareholder of a car company, probably two.

And I’m wondering, what kind of shareholder are you going to be? What is the government’s role as the keeper of public — public trust and bonds in — in soon-to-be public companies again? Thank you.

OBAMA: Well, I think our — our first role should be shareholders that are looking to get out. You know, I don’t want to run auto companies. I don’t want to run banks. I’ve got two wars I’ve got to run already. I’ve got more than enough to do. So the sooner we can get out of that business, the better off we’re going to be.

We are in unique circumstances. You had the potential collapse of the financial system, which would have decimated our economy, and so we had to step in.

As I’ve said before, I don’t agree with every decision that was made by the previous administration when it came to TARP, but the need for significant intervention was there, and it was appropriate that we moved in.

With respect to the auto companies, I believe that America should have a functioning, competitive auto industry. I don’t think that taxpayers should simply put — attach an umbilical cord between the U.S. Treasury and the auto companies so that they are constantly getting subsidies, but I do think that helping them restructure at this unique period when sales — you know, the market has essentially gone from 14 million down to 9 million — I don’t think that there’s anything inappropriate about that.

My goal on all this is to help these companies make some tough decisions based on realistic assumptions about economic growth, about their market share, about what that market is going to look like, to prevent systemic risk that would affect everybody, and, as soon as their situations are stabilized and the economy is less fragile so that those systemic risks are diminished, to get out, find some private buyers, and …

Q: (OFF-MIKE) products or services (OFF-MIKE)

OBAMA: I don’t think that we should micromanage, but I think that, like any investor, the American taxpayer has the right to scrutinize what’s being proposed and make sure that their money is not just being thrown down the drain.

And so, you know, we’ve got to strike a balance. I don’t want to be —

I’m not an auto engineer. I don’t know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid. But I know that, if the Japanese can design an affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same.

So my job is to ask the auto industry: Why is it you guys can’t do this? And, in some cases, they’re starting to do it, but they’ve got these legacy costs. You know, there are some terrific U.S. cars being made, both by Chrysler and GM.

The question is, you know, give me a plan so that you’re building off your strengths and you’re projecting out to where that market is going to be. I actually think, if you look at the trends, that those auto companies that emerge from this crisis, when you start seeing the pent-up demand for autos coming back, they’re going to be in a position to really do well, globally, not just here in the United States.

So I just want to help them get there. But I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy, you know, meddling in the private sector, if — if you could tell me right now that, when I walked into this office that the banks were humming, that autos were selling, and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting health care passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran, and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal.

And — and that’s why I’m always amused when I hear these, you know, criticisms of, Oh, you know, Obama wants to grow government. No. I would love a nice, lean portfolio to deal with, but that’s not the hand that’s been dealt us.

And, you know, every generation has to rise up to the specific challenges that confront them. We happen to have gotten a big set of challenges, but we’re not the first generation that that’s happened to. And I’m confident that we are going to meet these challenges just like our grandparents and forebears met them before.

All right? Thank you, everybody.

END

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was today confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and sworn in as the latest member of Pres. Barack Obama’s cabinet. This White House photo by Peter Souza shows Sebelius being briefed today on the US response to the 2009 H1N1 flu virus outbreak, reported to have begun in Mexico City.

Sebelius’ swearing in is another positive turn of events for Pres. Obama, on his 100th day in office, as her filling the HHS post, along with passage of the FY2010 budget and Sen. Specter’s switching parties, all converge to make it far more likely Obama will be able to achieve major healthcare reform, starting with initial legislation this year.

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The bulk of Sebelius’ labors will likely be devoted, during her tenure at HHS, to Obama’s bold plans for reform of the US healthcare system, with the aim of making sure every American has access to “quality, affordable healthcare”. But on her first day at the post, she was immediately thrust into the heart of a global health scare, as the first confirmed H1N1 death occurred in the US.

A Mexican citizen visiting her relatives in Texas became the first known fatality in US territory resulting from the swine flu or 2009 H1N1 flu virus. The ‘multi-strain’ virus combines DNA segments from avian species, as well as pig and human. It is thought to spread more easily due to low immune resistance in the human population, which has not previously faced this particular strain of influenza.

Warning that “we need all hands on deck”, Pres. Obama spoke briefly upon Sec. Sebelius’ swearing in, saying:

Here we go. We’re just going to make a brief statement. I am thrilled to have Kathleen Sebelius as my new Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Obviously, we have a lot to do to make sure that health care is affordable for the American people, to deal with critical issues like food safety. But we wanted to swear her in right away because we’ve got a significant public health challenge that requires her immediate attention, and that is the H1N1 flu outbreak that we’ve seen initially in Mexico and we now see over at — got some cases here in the United States.

It is something that we have to monitor very carefully. The officials who have been in charge, including the Acting Director at the CDC, those at Department of Homeland Security, have done an outstanding job, a superb job, in managing the situation up to this point.

Her confirmation held up due to some Republicans’ opposition to her pro-choice stance on abortion and women’s rights, a 60-vote majority was required in order to confirm Sebelius and avert a filibuster. The LA Times reported today:

The 65-31 vote came after Democrats urged quick action so that Sebelius could get to work leading the federal response to the flu outbreak.

“We find ourselves in the midst of a global crisis,” Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said. “What we’ve been missing in all of this is the head of the Health and Human Services Department.”

The former Kansas governor was briefed by Obama’s Homeland Security advisor John Brennan, just hours after being confirmed last night, then sworn in this morning. Pres. Obama said he expects her “to hit the ground running”, part of the president’s no-nonsense attitude about doing the work of public service and a signal the administration is taking the swine flu outbreak as a serious public health issue.

The AP’s Charles Babington observed the administration’s effort to get the message out on responsible flu-prevention and treatment options:

President Barack Obama tries to learn from his predecessors’ mistakes, and some see his fast, wide-ranging response to the swine flu threat as a lesson learned from George W. Bush’s much-maligned handling of Hurricane Katrina.

With one confirmed flu death in the United States, it is unclear how severely the disease will affect the nation. But the White House’s communications team forsook a wait-and-see approach Wednesday, sending Obama and several Cabinet members before cameras and Congress to urge vigilance without panic.

‘Vigilance without panic’ or ‘alert without alarm’ has been the message from the beginning. The administration has urged the public to act with common sense about hygiene and about avoiding contact with too many people or with people who might be ill. But the public has been warned not to flood clinics and hospitals in an effort to get preemptive tests (as there is no such effective test) or swine flu vaccinations (as none yet exist).

Sebelius will likely follow Obama’s lead on public demeanor, urging concern, calm and common sense. But Sebelius, as the top health official in the country, can now begin better implementing an organized federal emergency response to the outbreak, which has spread to Israel, and has for the first time left one patient dead on US soil. Other than the one patient visiting relatives in Texas, no other American cases have led to death, and only 5 hospitalizations have been reported.

• Daily updates from the World Health Organization on the H1N1 flu outbreak
• Daily updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the H1N1 flu outbreak
• Café Sentido’s ongoing coverage of the H1N1 flu outbreak

The Congressional negotiation on the budget for fiscal year 2010 has worked out a $3.44 trillion budget proposal that features many of Pres. Obama’s highest-priority initiatives. Healthcare reform will be included as part of the standard budget, meaning that votes on healthcare reforms can pass the Senate with a simple majority, i.e. 50 votes plus the Democratic VP Joe Biden. The agreed budget resolution would cut the budget deficit even in the first year by more than expected. 

The compromise budget passed the House of Representatives today by a 233-193 vote “largely along party lines”. The budget embraces Obama’s spending priorities, including education and healthcare, as well as energy reform. The budget compromise was shaped in part to reach a maximum deficit limit of $523 billion in fiscal year 2014. Much of the deficit spending required over the next five years is “built in” by the need for financial bailouts and the cost overruns of the Iraq war up to date. 

According to Politico, to reach that $523 billion upper-limit for the FY 2014 deficit:

Democrats would have to cut as much as $173 billion from Obama’s five years requests for non-defense appropriations. Equally sensitive is the question of middle-class tax cuts, where the final budget provides less room than many Senate Democrats had hoped and will demand tough votes next year.

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Pay-as-you-go budgeting is popular in the House, but the Senate is less willing to commit to not permitting vital new spending unless funding is cut elsewhere. This helps to explain why tough votes on social programs and Obama’s middle-class tax cut will be needed just one year from now. The new items inherent in the president’s reform and spending priorities were not made permanent and will need renewal, after it can be judged how costly it will be to fund them. 

According to the AP: 

“It’s a budget that reduces taxes, lowers the deficit and creates jobs,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “It honors the three pillars of the Obama initiatives: energy, health care and education.”

Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) reminded Republicans and the public that Obama cannot be blamed for the massive budget deficit emerging in this first of his budget proposals, saying “We inherited a colossal mess”, in reference to the hundreds of billions in bailouts needed to prop up the banking system and the massive military spending tied to the two ongoing wars, one in its eighth year, the other just entering its sixth. 

As many have reported, the budget is not a binding law requiring specific amounts for specific spending areas, but rather a set of rules that will determine how tax-related and spending-related bills are crafted, debated, passed and funded, over the course of the next year. This budget includes, for example, guidelines that will allow the Democrats to rule out a Republican filibuster over healthcare. Bloomberg reports:

The plan would let Democrats use fast-track reconciliation procedures to approve the health-care and education changes, allowing approval in the Senate with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes otherwise needed. The procedures limit floor debate to 20 hours and restrict what sort of amendments lawmakers may offer.

This provision could be the best explanation for why not one House Republican voted in favor of the measure. Though there has been vocal Republican criticism of the president for what the party’s members view as excessive borrowing and costly spending initiatives, even some Republican lawmakers have acknowledged that Obama is not to blame for the current fiscal mess. The president has been firm in his efforts to find areas where spending can be cut or funds redirected under new priorities. 

The Senate is due to vote on the bill later today, raising the possibility that Pres. Obama will be able to declare a major legislative success in his prime-time news conference this evening. Obama will address the nation and take questions from the press to mark his 100th day in office, to explain what progress has been made and to seek support for his proposed reforms in several areas of policy.

The biggest banks in the United States have been engaging in practices designed to nudge US economic policy and banking regulation toward permitting nearly any sort of interest-rate manipulation and ignoring, or erasing, necessary anti-usury laws. It’s been part of a concerted effort to try to shape policy to make it easier for banks to come into fresh money and claim new levels of profit from what would otherwise be considered escalating risk.

We are often told it is the borrower who is responsible for all choices involved in any lending relationship. Taken dispassionately, this seems an odd analysis, considering the relationship cannot begin if the lender does not voluntarily choose to lend to that particular borrower. Banks argue that they attempt to allow credit to “flow” to as many borrowers as possible, in the interest of the general welfare, but that they must impose strict disincentives on borrowing beyond one’s means, such as penalties and aggressively escalating punitive interest rates for borrowers with poor credit or who fail to pay on time, even once.

Again, this sounds reasonable at first blush, but when we look at the mathematics involved —and the banks claim to have no real role in any of this other than mastery of the mathematics—, we tend to find that the banks’ system of rates, plus fees, plus penalties, is not designed to keep the credit relationship healthy, but rather to keep it as unhealthy as possible for the borrower. The goal is quite visibly to extract the maximum amount of interest over the longest possible period of time, from the borrower, period.

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That maximum amount of interest over the longest possible period of time is then counted by the lending bank as an “asset”, a future amount of profit or concrete wealth it expects to receive. The problem is: there comes a moment at which rates of interest are so high that the legitimacy of related transactions becomes mathematically unsustainable. The loan cannot be paid back by the borrower.

The borrower may have the information necessary to calculate how much a single dollar borrowed on a credit card may cost over time, even to plot out a “worst case scenario”, but the language of credit card contracts is deliberately structured to give the borrower a rosier picture of the service being provided and to downplay the likelihood that the average borrower might fall afoul of the credit contract’s punitive measures.

It is the banks that structure the credit card plans and design them so that the least able to pay will be trapped into paying the highest rates of interest over the longest period of time. This is a gamble, and clearly one in which the banks are running the greatest risk of not achieving their projected return on a given credit investment.

Usury —the charging of unpayable and irrational rates of return on loans— is a crime, because in real terms, such loans cannot be enforced except through violence and extortion. Legalized usury, through the banks, is in part a fraudulent claim of future income, because there is no way to secure the full amount of the return claimed as inevitable, or even probable, repayment by the lending institution.

Adjustable rate mortgages were misused in much the same way: where they have a very legitimate place in the financial and credit markets, ARMs were taken advantage of by banks in order to claim far higher than sustainable rates of return on genuinely risky investments. This sort of exaggerated claim of future wealth is akin to a bank “borrowing too much” or “getting in over its head”. Abuse of lending markets has led to banks becoming deadbeats, but so far, they have refused to take the blame for making not just bad bets, but false bets based on mathematically impossible claims.

In this environment, credit cards became little more than an excuse for major US banks to ignore the mathematics behind their financial projections and justify impossible-to-repay interest assessments against troubled borrowers. That there was some legal justification for such behavior does not mean it was fiscally responsible behavior, or that it should have any place in an ethical banking culture.

Regulators should have been on the heels of every bank with such impossible-to-repay rates on credit cards and mortgages, but they were distracted by the fact that such accounts had been resold and bundled and turned into surprisingly lucrative “investment packages” or “financial instruments”. While regulators understood that certain lending relationships were unsustainable at the profit margins claimed, it appeared to many that financial speculation would more than cover any such risk, and would turn those bad bets into windfall profits.

But repayment is necessary to sustain the notion of profitability from compounded financial investment in high-interest loans —credit cards, mortgages or otherwise—, and when massive numbers of credit defaults started occurring simultaneously, the house of cards, as it were, started to come apart.

The system of legalized usury that had taken root in the US banking system was built on a foundation of good intentions, to make credit available to more people and therefore to expand the buying power of a vast middle class. The problem is that the lending policies used to enable this were not designed to achieve that laudable goal, but rather to force consumers into devoting ever larger percentages of their income to debt repayment.

This had a consequent crippling effect on the real sustainable buying power of the average consumer or household and began impacting, very seriously, the degree to which individuals would be able to make free personal choices about not just their spending habits, but their personal lives. Higher debt obligation means less freedom of choice in employment; one is driven by a need to cover costs.

Higher debt obligation also means that one’s private property is less one’s own. Consumers were encouraged to cover their escalating expenses by borrowing more. By refinancing a home mortgage, for example, or opening a second, third, fourth or fifth credit card account. Aggressive borrowers were seen as lucrative investments by major banks, so they kept sending more pre-approved credit cards by mail.

In hindsight, it’s easier to see how similar this behavior was to a loan-shark spotting a poor desperate soul whom he could subject to chronic indenture. But at the time, the “everybody’s doing it” mentality dampened the alarm bells some analysts, some politicians and some consumer advocates were sounding. The regulators missed the boat, and the evolution of legalized usury got too far along to be reversed simply by force of will or on ethical grounds.

The entire financial system came to be rooted in untenable claims about exorbitant future revenues to be derived from lending and from resale and reinvestment in lending relationships. Yet the banks wanted as little to do with borrowers as possible. Minimal to zero communication with borrowers regarding their needs, regarding emerging signs of difficulty, was sought. Banks treated every human soul that borrowed as a font of unending repayment at escalating rates of return.

The engineering of the system was so radicalized that credit bureaus were encouraged to issue lower credit scores to people who paid off all credit card bills in full every month, accumulating no interest and therefore serving as less profit for banks. The system was no longer about credit worthiness or ability to pay; it was structured entirely around profit-extraction potential.

This is one area regulators will be looking into, should banks fail to take the necessary steps to curb their predatory lending practices and institute reforms that might help avoid another rash of consumer bankruptcies and corresponding home foreclosures this year. This is why Pres. Obama called on the nation’s largest banks to voluntarily institute sweeping reforms to their credit card systems, because the credit card system has come to signify a grave threat to near-term economic recovery and long-term prosperity.

Nearly $1 trillion in outstanding credit card debt may prove to be the next credit default meltdown, causing a vast ripple effect throughout the US and international banking systems. Last fall, Business Week reported that “The consumer debt bomb is already beginning to spread shrapnel through the financial markets,” and that “Credit card companies were unable to collect $41 billion in credit card debt in 2008 and are expected to lose another $96 billion in 2009″.

Should those projections for 2009 become a reality —and they are more likely to become reality due to escalating job losses and the refusal of banks to act to prevent foreclosures and bankruptcies—, the current recession would deepen, as record numbers of consumers file for bankruptcy, lose their homes, and are impacted by wave after wave of further layoffs, spurred by businesses’ inability to borrow from banks trying to prevent further losses by not lending.

Proposals linked to Pres. Obama’s call for a return to reason and to fair treatment in consumer lending include:

1. Strong consumer protections against “any time, any reason” credit card rate hikes.
2. “Plain Jane” credit card statements, especially regarding how fees are structured. The President went out of his way at his White House speech to warn card companies about hiding big fees in the “fine print”.
3. A central, online platform where card customers can compare credit card terms from competing vendors.
4. More regulations and oversight on credit card companies. Somewhat cryptically, Obama allowed that card companies should be able to earn a “reasonable” profit – but no word on what “reasonable” means.

In March, credit card delinquencies reached 8.5%, the highest national rate since 1984, a sign that inaction to reform credit card policies is hurting banks’ own ability to recover the money lent. A column by Jay Hancock, calling for “an end to the credit card madness”, warns in bold terms that:

Here is the less-known, conservative argument: Credit card complexity prevents users from making rational decisions about borrowing and spending, thus hurting the economy; Congress must intervene to make the system understandable.

Unfortunately, Congress might not take either course. Bills in the House and Senate would end the worst abuses but do little to stop stalker lending or cut the fine print.

Credit card practices are so out of control that even legislation that consumer groups see as a huge step (“Great news on the credit card front!” says Consumers Union) would leave plenty of room for trouble.

Pres. Obama’s call for bold credit card policy reform —including rate reductions and strict limits on the freedom of banks to arbitrarily raise rates— has led to Congress moving to debate and vote on legislation for the much needed ‘Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights’. Reuters reports that US lawmakers in the House of Representatives are planning to bring that legislation to a vote as early as this Thursday. Strict new regulations would be imposed, and credit card issuing banks would have until 2010 to implement the reforms.

The US-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a report on the 1st 100 days of Pres. Barack Obama’s first term in office. The report praises Obama for key reforms banning abusive treatment and moving toward a system of due process for detainees, but is critical of some holdover policies from the Bush era, which Obama has yet to reform or plans to keep in place. On the whole, Obama is rated by HRW as having ”got off to a great start when he issued executive orders to close Guantanamo and ban CIA prisons on his second full day in office,” while “failure to reject the substance of the Bush-era ‘war on terror’ framework was a tremendous disappointment.”

On 24 April, HRW reported that:

In his first 100 days in office, President Barack Obama has made significant progress in reforming the Bush administration’s abusive counterterrorism policies, but his administration has also made a few serious missteps, Human Rights Watch said in a background paper released today. 

Those missteps are explained in “Missteps and Missed Opportunities” section of HRW’s ‘Report Card on President Obama’s First 100 days’. They are listed as:

• Maintaining the War Paradigm as a Justification for Holding Suspected Terrorists Indefinitely without Trial;
• Denying Basic Rights to Prisoners at Bagram;
• Adhering to the Bush Administration’s Expansive View of the State Secrets Privilege…

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The Obama administration has been criticized by the president’s own supporters for each of these failures to institute immediate reform. But the HRW report also cites a number of “Key Accomplishments”, namely:

• Closing Secret CIA Prisons;
• Implementing the Ban on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment;
• Repudiating Past Authorizations for Torture;
• Bringing Al-Marri to Justice…

The human rights watchdog also cites a number of vital reforms which Obama has pursued, but which are ongoing or incomplete, to date:

• Closing the Military Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay;
• Suspending the Unfair Military Commissions;
• Accounting for Past Abuses;
• Ensuring that Prisoners Are Not Rendered to Torture…

On this last point, the HRW report card notes that:

In a worrying sign, CIA Director Panetta said during his confirmation hearings that the CIA would continue to rely on diplomatic assurances in carrying out prisoner transfers. Human Rights Watch urges the administration to reconsider this position, and, consistent with US obligations under international law, to mandate that detainees under no circumstances be transferred based on diplomatic assurances to countries where they may face torture.

The Obama administration has faced perhaps the most serious challenge of any recent administration in having to reverse policies that were recently established and which appear to violate basic standards of American and international law. Pressure from his own base will likely go some way toward correcting some of the “missteps” HRW reports. 

On the CIA black site prison network, HRW reports:

On January 22, 2009, his second full day in office, President Obama issued an executive order to close the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret detention program. CIA Director Leon Panetta confirmed that the president’s order had been implemented in an April 9, 2009 memorandum to all CIA staff that stated unequivocally: “The CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites.” The CIA’s prisons, which are thought to have held some 100 detainees since 2002, were the site of some of the Bush administration’s most egregious human rights violations.

On the ban of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners, HRW reports:

The January 22 executive order also prohibited the CIA from using coercive interrogation techniques, requiring it to abide by the same interrogation standards as the US military. However, the order also set up an interagency task force to assess whether the interrogation practices spelled out in the Army Field Manual are adequate to acquire needed intelligence and whether to recommend that the CIA be provided additional guidance. This review is scheduled to be completed by mid-July 2009 (180 days after the issuance of the executive order).

And in his memo of 9 April, CIA director Leon Panetta reported that the agency was fully in compliance with the ban. Specifically, HRW also praised Obama for returning Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari citizen with US resident status who was charged first with credit card fraud, upon his arrest in December 2001. HRW explains “he was just weeks away from trial in 2003 when the Bush administration pulled him out of the criminal justice system and declared him an “enemy combatant.” 

Obama has returned al-Marri to the federal criminal justice system and charged him with “conspiracy and material support of terrorism”. He will now be able to face justice, and the US will have a better chance of knowing that someone allegedly complicit in plotting terrorist attacks has actually been convicted in a legitimate court of law and removed from contact with the network of interests involved in such plots.

Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office have been a flurry of major reforms and of global political and economic strategy. He took the oath of office on 20 January 2009 with the worst recession in 70 years setting in, major banks on the verge of insolvency, record numbers of home foreclosures, two wars in Asia, an increasingly hostile Russia and a predecessor’s policy of using torture to “enhance” interrogations. Not only has he moved forward on the economy, healthcare, security, and energy; he has reformed the entire American diplomatic paradigm, moving toward a “smart power” based on 3d vision: diplomacy, development, defense.

Not one major bank has collapsed, his economic recovery and reinvestment plan was passed on schedule, major efforts have been made at the federal level to slow or halt foreclosures, allowing millions to renegotiate their outstanding debt and payment schedules, and he has devoted record amounts to moving the American economy toward a clean-energy paradigm. Over $30 billion in incentives has been spent this year already to spur innovation in renewable fuel technologies.

On his second day in office, he banned torture and called for a review of all cases of terror suspects, to craft the proper means of bringing them to justice within the Constitutional system of government that by law the United States adheres to. He ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, where prisoners were held without legal counsel, without the hearing of evidence and without charge, indefinitely, and the closing of CIA ‘black site’ prisons around the world.

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On his fifth day in office Obama held a major energy innovation and fuel efficiency meeting, at which he pledged to raise the CAFE standards for fuel efficiency and devote record amounts of federal funding to the development of renewable energy sources. He warned that America’s devotion to huge spending on oil “bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides in our struggle against terrorism”. He ordered a review of the EPA’s role in regulating carbon emissions, a move that would eventually lead to the EPA officially adopting the policy ordered by a court ruling, that it had authority to cap carbon emissions.

Having pledged “the most transparent” administration in US history, Obama swiftly moved to launch Recovery.gov, a website designed to allow the public to track how the massive amounts of money flowing through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act‘s programs and initiatives is being spent. This is part of Obama’s governing philosophy that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” and the people have a right to know what government does in the process of governing.

In line with the president’s reforms designed to improve transparency, the Pentagon lifted its ban on photographing the coffins of American casualties returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Decisions on press access were transferred to the families of the soldiers themselves. Those who preferred privacy could have it, while those who wanted exposure for their loved one’s sacrifice were also entitled to invite the free and independent press guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Documents mandated by court order to be released, but which the previous administration had refused to release, have been released, providing a new window into how the previous administration crafted and justified its policy of physically and psychologically abusive interrogations of terror suspects. The Pentagon has agreed to release some 2,000 photos by the end of May, some of which show previously unseen images from harsh interrogations.

Perhaps most important, Obama moved by executive order, during his first days in office, to limit presidential powers by requiring that all high-level classification of documents involving presidential decisions be reviewed by a panel of legal experts, in order to prevent his own administration or future administrations from using the classification system to cover up potential wrongdoing.

On 21 January 2009, Cafe Sentido reported:

On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. Obama phoned four heads of state across the Middle East —Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan— to discuss his feeling that there is an urgent need to start a practical and viable process of sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He also met with his top economic advisors, and established what will be a new process of a daily economic briefing which he will take in order to stay abreast of the latest indicators of the direction and the troubles of the American economy. He also began issuing executive orders, one of which established the strictest ethics guidelines of any White House to date, and capping White House staff pay at $100,000, in an effort to keep from over-stressing the already disatrously out of balance federal budget.

Obama has been criticized for allowing loopholes to be put into ethics rules for lobbyists, permitting the White House to make exceptions to the strict ban. But there has been no report showing that any of the exceptions used to date actually violated the spirit of the ban on former lobbyists engaging in work that would signify a serious conflict of interest or potential for favors. The White House has defended such loopholes, saying they allow for exceptions to be made where the best public servant available requires such an exception.

Indeed, a group of open democracy organizations has praised Obama’s efforts on sweeping ethics reforms as historic. Democracy 21 reported just yesterday:

In a statement released today, reform groups strongly praised President Obama “for the unprecedented steps he has taken during the first hundred days of his Administration to strengthen ethics, lobbying and transparency rules for the Executive Branch.”

Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen and the US Public Interest Research Groups, found that:

The Ethics Executive Order issued by the President at the outset of his Administration contains precedent-setting revolving door provisions. These provisions are designed to prevent potential conflicts of interest for incoming government officials involving their former employers or clients, and to prevent improper trading on government service for personal gain by outgoing government officials.

The Executive Order contains the first-ever “reverse revolving door” provisions for incoming presidential appointees, which are designed to prevent new appointees from importing the interests of their former employers and clients when they enter government and to help assure citizens that the public interest will come first. The Executive Order requires all appointees to recuse themselves from matters that significantly affect the interests of anyone who was a former employer or client of the incoming official within the two years prior to joining the Administration.

They also praised Obama’s initiatives to ensure greater transparency in government:

The pilot project for the stimulus package opens the door to establishing a government-wide policy for public disclosure of all lobbying contacts by registered lobbyists with Executive Branch officials. This would greatly expand existing lobbying disclosure requirements.

The Administration also has made an important change regarding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by ordering agencies and departments to adopt a presumption of disclosure for information requested under FOIA. This should make it far easier for citizens and the media to obtain information under FOIA.

Obama has challenged the entire banking system to reform in the interests of survival, not only aiming to prevent major bank failures and individual home foreclosures, but pressuring banks to lend again, and to cease accounting practices that lead to over-leveraging and phony claims about capital in reserve. With banks reeling from incomprehensible losses, and a credit freeze gripping the nation’s consumer markets, Obama did not relent in applying financial-analysis “stress tests” to banks’ books, to see what they could withstand and what real fiscal stability or resilience they had.

Even as the banks said they wanted out of the TARP bailout program, Obama insisted the stress tests are designed to make sure that real solvency can be measured, and that the proper precautions can be taken to save the financial system and prevent economic fallout across the economy. He persuaded the other 19 largest economies in the world to devote $1 trillion to international loans to shore up banks and national economies around the world, to lessen the impact of the global financial crisis.

He acted immediately to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP) program, in which states use federal dollars to ensure that all children have some form of payment coverage, should they need healthcare. He held a solution-seeking healthcare summit at the White House, declaring “it’s time” and promising to work for comprehensive reform. And his negotiations with Congressional leaders have led to Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Baucus saying comprehensive healthcare reform legislation will be ready for debate in June of this year.

While orchestrating the globalized economic recovery effort at the G20 summit, he met with Russian pres. Dmitri Medvedev, who joined him in pledging to achieve a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (StART) by the end of this year. In Prague, Obama announced he will direct American strategic planning toward the goal (which he admits may take decades to achieve) of a world without nuclear weapons, lending the most credibility seen to date to the nuclear non-proliferation regime that seeks to prevent any further nations from acquiring the world’s deadliest weapons.

In his Prague speech, Obama intoned on the need to recognize that concerted effort to achieve the improbable is the best and most hopeful way to achieve the good, in international relations:

When I was born, the world was divided, and our nations were faced with very different circumstances. Few people would have predicted that someone like me would one day become the President of the United States. (Applause.) Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague. (Applause.) Few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams.

We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change.

He won rousing applause with his call for global cooperation. He urged the nations of the world to work together to prevent a global economic crisis from worsening, and said “to protect our planet, now is the time to change the way that we use energy”. He pushed for bold environmental and energy reforms across the planet. And, most famously, he called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, by all nations, warning:

The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that existed for centuries, that embodied the beauty and the talent of so much of humanity, would have ceased to exist.

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.

That Russia has already agreed to work toward a new StART pact by the end of this year is a sign that Obama’s nuclear stance is neither naïve nor excessively bold. It is, in fact, a new kind of principled realism. Though Washington generally has been skeptical about such overtures, Iran pledged its assistance in combatting the spread of the opium trade in Afghanistan, which is fueling radical fundamentalism and the Taliban insurgency there and in Pakistan.

Tehran has now been invited to direct talks with 6 major powers, the United States included, on plans to help it achieve the energy independence it seeks without also continuing the alleged parallel development of nuclear weapons technologies. Such talks could mark the most comprehensive and aggressive effort seen to date to address the practical issues at the heart of the Iranian nuclear program and prevent further proliferation.

And after 50 years of mutual intransigence, the US and Cuba are now moving toward talks on “everything” as Cuban pres. Raúl Castro said, shortly before the Summit of the Americas. While progress is tentative, and the retired dictator, Fidel Castro, has said his brother’s pledge was misinterpreted, the prospect of improved US-Cuba relations looks more realistic than ever, and fully two-thirds of Cuban Americans support the president’s move for talks.

Not to be overlooked, Pres. Obama brought the US in line with UN policy on gender rights, establishing for the first time a White House Council on Women and Girls, to ensure that the treatment of women is fair and equitable in American society broadly, and in the areas of economic and professional advancement. The US still has a deep pay gap between the average male and average female compensation for equal work, and economic hard times often impact women, especially where they are forced to care for children while working, disproportionately.

In an impressive show of media savvy, reminiscent of his political campaign, Pres. Obama opened the White House to a global community forum online, in what was called the Open for Questions Online Town Hall. Over 3.5 million people tuned in, with over 100,000 questions being put to the president, through an online ‘open for questions’ form. The Obama White House has pledged to listen to the public and to the rest of the world, in order to shape the best policies for America’s future, and the progress made in moving toward that new paradigm is unprecedented.

One area where Obama has been criticized heavily by his own base has been his unwillingness to do away with all Bush era intelligence measures. For instance, he has maintained the program of warrantless wiretaps and has defended the authority of the executive branch to keep secrets based on national security. Whether his reforms in transparency and limited executive fiat with regard to secrecy balance out these other points remains to be seen.

Pres. Obama’s first term is only a little over 1/16 in the books, and he faces a very rocky road ahead, but public support for his initiatives and his modus operandi has been very high. He still garners near 70% approval in national polls, and the percentage of people who see the nation as headed in the right direction has climbed, in just 100 days, from 18% to 50%. The Republican party is tearing itself apart in squabbles over why it has lost favor so severely, and on Pres. Obama’s 99th day in office, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennyslvania, a Republican senator for 29 years, switched parties, accusing his former party of an ideological purge of moderates.

A point which is perhaps the most subjective of all, and difficult to measure in terms of concrete benefits for the US, but which may be one of the most important achievements Barack Obama will ever have, is the degree to which he has regenerated worldwide admiration and affection for the United States. He has recently been described by historian Douglas Brinkley as the “our first global president”.

His predecessor had been viewed around the world as an autocrat and a bully, creating widespread hostility to the US and its interests, while Obama is seen as a figure of hope around the world. His example has led to calls across Africa and Asia for substantive democratization of electoral politics, and his policy reforms have spread hope that the US will again “light the way” by representing the ideals of its founding.

Earlier this month, Cuban president Raúl Castro made the stunning announcement that Cuba was “ready to discuss everything” with the Obama administration, including political prisoners, economic policy, and democratic electoral processes. Pres. Obama has been firm but cautious in his declarations of a willingness to open a new era of engagement with the Cold War enemy just 90 miles from the Florida coast.

Voice of America reports:

The State Department says U.S. diplomats are holding talks with officials of Cuba’s diplomatic mission in Washington on possible follow-up measures to steps President Barack Obama took earlier this month to ease restrictions on the island nation. The Obama administration says it wants to see an easing of political conditions by the Havana government.

The assistant secretary of State for hemispheric affairs, Thomas Shannon, reportedly met with Jorge Bolaños, chief of Cuba’s Interests Section, stationed in Washington to meet with US officials or watch how US policy affects the island nation. The meeting was an informal lunch and the points discussed have not been announced.

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The White House says the meeting does not represent a push for talks with Cuba as yet, but was just a starting point for dialogue on a number of issues of mutual interest. Robert Wood, a spokesman for the State Dept., told reporters “We have concerns about Cuban policies. We’ll be raising them.” Wood called for “reciprocal steps” from Cuba in order to establish concrete talks. 

He suggested that these early signs of engagement were aimed at moving Cuba’s government toward a relaxing of its constraints on political dissent and individual liberty. “What we’d like to see are some steps to give the Cuban people some of the freedoms that are enjoyed by other peoples in the hemisphere”, Wood remarked. 

67% of Cuban Americans answering a recent poll say they support Pres. Obama’s new diplomatic efforts to engage the Cuban regime in talks. There is mounting support for lifting the trade embargo against the island, and even some Cuban American groups that are strongly anti-Castro profess Robert Kennedy’s view that a ban on American travel there is “unamerican” and infringes on citizens’ rights. 

It is a complex political and diplomatic environment. The Republican party has long sought to distinguish itself from the Democratic party on Cuba policy, pushing for the hardest line possible, despite little evidence of any security risk or economic pitfalls involved in more open relations. Obama was heavily criticized by the right for greeting Venezuelan pres. Hugo Chávez warmly at the Summit of the Americas, but public opinion seemed to side with the White House that it was paranoid to believe shaking hands could endanger America. 

Obama has moved steadily but with caution to reverse many highly controversial policies of the last administration and to re-establish the Constitutional basis for certain values in American domestic and foreign policy. He has cited Pres. Reagan’s legacy of engagement with the Soviet Union as a precedent for the exercise of smart power. Secretary of State Clinton, who has said 5 decades of US Cuba policy have failed, has promoted Obama’s vision of “3d” foreign policy, commitment to diplomacy, development and defense.  

While Raúl Castro has said Cuba is ready for talks, his ailing brother and Cuba’s 49-year dictator, Fidel Castro seemed to attempt to play down Cuba’s solicitude toward the Obama administration, saying Pres. Castro’s comments had been misinterpreted. Such tensions make for slow-going, but the Obama White House and the State Dept. under Hillary Rodham Clinton appear to be planning a steady shift toward engagement and firmly principled dialogue.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), one of the most senior Republicans in the US Senate is switching to the Democratic party. The Democrats will now have an effective majority of 59-40, and can achieve the coveted 60-vote supermajority that can break any Republican filibuster, if Al Franken is seated as the junior senator from Minnesota. Specter was facing a determined challenge from the conservative side of his state Republican party.

There has been a “struggle for the soul of the Republican party” emerging over the last two years, since the Democrats took control of Congress and revelations emerged about corruption and efforts to circumvent the Constitution. Specter, long considered a “staunch moderate”, a lonely defender of the center-right in the Republican party, has been increasingly battered by a rightward shift in the party, which many see as the wrongheaded reaction to historic losses in 2008.

Specter announced his intentions in a personal statement on the PoliticsPA site:

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

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When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.

I deeply regret that I will be disappointing many friends and supporters. I can understand their disappointment. I am also disappointed that so many in the Party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate. It is very painful on both sides. I thank specially Senators McConnell and Cornyn for their forbearance.

I am not making this decision because there are no important and interesting opportunities outside the Senate. I take on this complicated run for re-election because I am deeply concerned about the future of our country and I believe I have a significant contribution to make on many of the key issues of the day, especially medical research. NIH funding has saved or lengthened thousands of lives, including mine, and much more needs to be done. And my seniority is very important to continue to bring important projects vital to Pennsylvania’s economy.

I am taking this action now because there are fewer than thirteen months to the 2010 Pennsylvania Primary and there is much to be done in preparation for that election. Upon request, I will return campaign contributions contributed during this cycle.

While each member of the Senate caucuses with his Party, what each of us hopes to accomplish is distinct from his party affiliation. The American people do not care which Party solves the problems confronting our nation. And no Senator, no matter how loyal he is to his Party, should or would put party loyalty above his duty to the state and nation.

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that sometimes Party asks too much. When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.

It is clear Sen. Specter feels that his party has abandoned him, and that his best hope for principled public service is as a member of the Democratic majority. He pledges he will not be an automatic 60th vote and that he will continue to be an independent thinker in Senate debate and legislative process.

1st UPDATE: The 79-year-old 5-term senator and cancer survivor has been a vocal critic of policies that undermine Constitutional checks and balances or allow vast new powers to accrue to the executive branch. His pro-choice position, stance against executive overreach and centrist economic views have caused some in the more extreme right wing of the Republican party to attack him as against the Republican platform, though Specter has long defended his views as closer to the pragmatic conservatism of Republicans from another age.

Sen. Specter was shown being cheered by Senate staffers and members of the public visiting the Senate office building, as news of his change of party was announced. He is reported to be meeting with “shell-shocked” and angry members of the Republican party Senate caucus to explain his choice and in a sense, say farewell. 

RNC chairman Michael Steele has issued a scathing critique of Specter’s decision, accusing him of doing it not for intellectual or ideological reasons, but for the sake of his own political career, as he faced an uphill battle in the 2010 Republican primary. Other moderate Republicans have said Specter’s defection shows the Republican party has moved too far to the right and no longer listens to its moderate members.

Warning this could be a sign the party has relinquished the broad political center almost entirely to the Democrats, moderate Republican senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins both say they have been approached about switching parties, but have so far refused Democratic overtures. Both have criticized the party’s deliberate shift to the right after suffering dramatic losses at the polls in 2006 and 2008.

RNC Chair Michael Steele may have inadvertently left new evidence of the counter-productive rightward shift in the Republican party, when he claimed that Specter was no longer a true Republican due to his “left wing” tendencies: 

Some in the Republican Party are happy about this. I am not. Let’s be honest-Senator Specter didn’t leave the GOP based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record. Republicans look forward to beating Sen. Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don’t do it first.

Clearly it is possible that Specter would be challenged and possibly defeated in a Democratic primary, depending on how he performs these next two years in the Senate, but it is unlikely he would have made this move if not promised some sort of support, some leadership positions, and some electoral coverage, by the national Democratic party and its various expressions in Pennsylvania. 

2nd UPDATE: Asked in March who was the real leader of the Republican party, and whether policy was being unduly affected by radio-host Rush Limbaugh, Specter said of RNC chair Steele on a Pennsylvania radio show “well he’s said so many contradictory things I wouldn’t pay a whole lot of attention to him”. 

There is a clear indication that Specter was concerned not only about his own political future and his ability to influence legislation from such a distant minority-party position, but that a leaderless party was abandoning the centrist values he had long defended. In the last two years, he has seen party leaders defend alleged corrupt behavior and torture, against which he has taken principled stands.

Sen. Mitch McConnell said of Specter’s defection:

We are not happy that Senator Specter has decided to become a Democrat. He visited with me in my office late yesterday afternoon and told me quite candidly that he’d been informed by his pollster that it would be impossible for him to be reelected in Pennsylvania as a Republican because he could not win the primary; and he was also informed by his pollster that he could not get elected as an independent, and indicated that he had decided to become a Democrat.

He also said “This is not a national story. This is a Pennsylvania story”, a seeming example of denial in the Republican leadership about what flaws there may be in the party’s governing philosophy, electoral strategy and in-party treatment of moderates like Specter. That problem of denial has been criticized by potential up-and-comers like Gov. Tim Pawlenty, of Minnesota, and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, both considered to be angling for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012, via calls for new ideas and fresh faces.

3rd UPDATE: CNN political editor Mark Preston says in a conversation with an unnamed moderate Republican member of Congress, he was told “Specter did not jump; he was pushed”. Concern among moderates that the party is losing its footing ideologically and electorally is spreading. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said “I don’t want to be a member of the Club for Growth. I want to be a member of a vibrant national Republican party that can attract people from all corners of the country — and we can govern the country from a center-right perspective.”

Graham added that “As Republicans, we got a problem”. Graham’s despair at the state of the national party could signal renewed political will among some prominent centrist Republicans to stage a new leadership push for better treatment of moderates. Rush Limbaugh, however, seemed to champion that excessive uniformity of vision so criticized by moderate Republicans, saying Specter should take John and Megan McCain with him, an apparent call to purge the party of any and all moderates.

4th UPDATE: According to the Associated Press: 

Veteran Sen. Arlen Specter says President Barack Obama has promised to campaign for him in next year’s Democratic primary in Pennsylvania.

Specter told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday that he spoke to the president about his party switch.

The White House, however, has said no promises were made and that Sen. Specter’s decision was not conditioned on any promise to support or campaign for him. For his part, Pres. Obama has reportedly told Specter by phone he is “thrilled to have him as a member of the Democratic Party” and that the new Pennsylvania Democrat would have his “full support”.

As the US State Dept. has issued a travel advisory warning Americans to avoid unnecessary travel to Mexico, and the two countries are screening all travelers coming from the other nation, Canada, Spain and New Zealand have reportedly confirmed at least one case each of swine flu. The multi-strain flu virus is expected to meet little immunity in the human population, which it has not previously affected in large numbers.

Mexico is now reporting as many as 100 people having died from the virus. Yesterday morning the total was 61, by evening it was 81 and Monday morning, reports suggested over 100 people had died, and by afternoon, a tentative total was 149 killed in Mexico by the swine flu outbreak. The press whipped up a brief whirlwind of speculation when it was discovered that a man who had given Pres. Obama a museum tour during his visit to Mexico died shortly after.

The press barraged the White House press secretary with questions regarding a possible threat to Pres. Obama’s health and whether or not the Mexican government had endangered him by keeping the swine flu outbreak secret in the early days (the first case was reported just 4 days before Obama’s arrival in the capital, Mexico, D.F.).

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The US had reported a total of 20 cases, zero deaths and only one hospitalization. Reports suggest the 20 US patients all recovered without anti-viral treatment. Mexico City is now reported to be “like a ghost town”. But by Monday afternoon, the total of confirmed cases in the US had risen to 40, and reports from around the world were also spreading. 2 confirmed cases in Scotland were the first known incidence of the outbreak in the UK.

The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, today confirmed that as many as 28 children at one Catholic school in Queens, have contracted the infection. According to the City, all 28 are recovering and are out of danger. There are another 17 “suspected cases” in New York, not yet confirmed to be swine flu. With one additional case reportedly confirmed in Texas, it is expected federal authorities will raise the national total of confirmed cases to 41.

There are reports that Brazil may have one or more cases, as yet unconfirmed, and Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, are said to be “screening travelers for fever”. Hong Kong has raised its security alert regarding swine flu to “serious”. The US Department of Homeland Security yesterday announced a “public health emergency”, but did so “as a precautionary measure”, as the president reminded the public today.

The Obama administration has taken the threat seriously, we are told, but is orchestrating a comprehensive emergency preparedness response aimed at reducing any risk of widespread infection. The president himself has said the government is on alert, but that the swine flu outbreak is a cause for concern, not for alarm. People have been urged to take precautions, but not to panic and not to jam clinics in quest to be tested unless there are flu-like symptoms.

The leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States is healthcare costs. The system, as it is designed is destroying people’s lives as punishment for their seeking means of staying alive or maintaining relative good health. This is a comprehensive failure of the system, at all levels. As of 2008, some 54.5% of personal bankruptcies filed in the US involved unpayable medical expenses or loss of income or insurance due to health-related causes.

With even those “covered” by health insurance providers or “managed care” organizations reporting that debt collectors come looking for payment on unpaid medical bills, and with premiums rising by more than twice the official rate of inflation for several years running, the distance between cost-effective health insurance and the chaotic fact of the US system is dangerously widening.

The “insurance providers”, the makers of costly drug treatments, the business “management” systems that organize hospitals and medical infrastructure, the courts that fail to punish refusal of treatment or undertreatment that ends in death, the political establishment that refuses to tackle the problem or makes only incremental adjustments, are all complicit in the wave of mass bankruptcies stemming from the underinsurance and “managed care” crisis.

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According to the Urban Institute, in 2006, fully 22,000 adults died specifically from lack of insurance coverage, each year, across the US. Some estimates suggest that figure is extremely conservative, with at least 9,900 “working age” New Yorkers and 2,700 “working age” Texans dying in part from lack of insurance, in 2006 alone.

It is also widely thought that ineffective insurance coverage and a punitive system that targets doctors and hospitals for providing care that is too costly grossly expand the risks for medical mistakes. Medical error is estimated to cause between 44,000 and 299,000 preventable deaths per year in the United States (estimates vary widely depending on weather only serious negligence is counted or whether additional cases of obscure human error, and potentially unforseen adverse drug interactions are included).

Many doctors and hospital staff complain that optimum treatment cannot be made available to all patients due to pitfalls in the insurance coverage and payment system. Extremely high malpractice insurance premiums assessed by insurers even for doctors with a perfect record of treatment and zero complaints of error, negligence or wrongdoing, hamper doctors’ trained judgment and cause hospitals to close departments due to out of control costs.

That severe credit problems and/or bankruptcy affect millions of Americans as a result of out-of-control healthcare costs is the clearest evidence that the system is not designed to honor the oath every doctor takes, to “first do no harm” and treat anyone who needs care. That denial of treatment is not only common, but that insurance companies are organized to achieve it and tens of thousands die each year as a result, is evidence that basic human rights are being violated by this system.

The Declaration of Independence calls for recognition of the fundamental right of every individual to “life, libery and the pursuit of happiness”. It is absolutely and undeniably contrary to our democratic system of people’s government for any individual to be deprived of life or to have the structure of their life dismantled due to the unwillingness or inability of the medical insurance system to facilitate immediate and optimum treatment.

As the Congress begins drafting comprehensive healthcare reform legislation, scheduled to be presented for debate this June, curing the rash of personal bankruptcies that are destroying families and systematically lowering Americans’ quality of life must be of primordial consideration. Whether insurers are subjected to mandates that they cease plotting strategies for denial of coverage, or whether they are subjected to mandates for universal coverage, will be of key interest to many involved in the issue, but some new mandate is needed to fix this problem.

Insurers and/or health organizations who drive otherwise solvent individuals to bankruptcy through abusive pricing and conditioned-coverage schemes must be subject to direct legal peril for such actions. And individuals must be given options any time there is a question of coverage deficit or inability to pay. Only by fixing this systemic inefficiency will costs come down across the system and preventable death rates go down.

The Secretary of Homeland Security for Barack Obama’s US administration, Janet Napolitano, today announced that the new strain of influenza commonly called Mexican Swine Flu constitutes an “incident of national interest” to US security. The new strain of flu has been found in at least 20 cases so far in the US, across 5 states, with all known patients so far recovering.

The virus has led to over 60 deaths in Mexico, and the Mexican government has closed schools and warned citizens to avoid crowds and basic human contact like kissing or shaking hands. Travelers entering Mexico from the US are being screened for the virus, while US authorities have announced that only travelers coming from areas of known infection and who exhibit symptoms will be tested and possibly isolated as a precaution, “according to established protocols”.

Napolitano announced that the US has large quantities of flu-response medications, such as Tamiflu and Ralenza, stockpiled to address potential flu outbreaks. In the 1918-1919 outbreak of Spanish flu, between 20 million and 40 million people (the figure is unknown) died around the world, in the worst known outbreak of untreatable flu to date. It is not known whether Tamiflu or Ralenza would be useful in treating swine flu.

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But Roche pharmaceuticals is now in talks with the World Health Organization (WHO) about the potential use of Tamiflu in combatting multi-strain swine flu. The WHO announced yesterday that the swine flu outbreak in Mexico and the US could pose a real global public health threat, as it has “pandemic potential”.

In the US, citizens have been advised to take basic common-sense hygienic measures such as washing hands and avoiding unnecessary social contact if they feel ill or feverish. Parents with children are advised to keep sick children at home and to have them tested for flu virus. But the government response has been measured, urging the public not to seek testing if there are no symptoms to suggest flu.

Commentators have begun to paint the swine flu outbreak as an early test of Pres. Barack Obama’s effectiveness in organizing and overseeing the homeland security and emergency response infrastructure so poorly managed by his predecessor in cases like the Hurricane Katrina calamity that struck New Orleans and neighboring Gulf-coast states.

Good morning. Over the last three months, my Administration has taken aggressive action to confront an historic economic crisis. As we do everything that we can to create jobs and get our economy moving, we’re also building a new foundation for lasting prosperity – a foundation that invests in quality education, lowers health care costs, and develops new sources of energy powered by new jobs and industries.

One of the pillars of that foundation must be fiscal discipline. We came into office facing a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion for this year alone, and the cost of confronting our economic crisis is high. But we cannot settle for a future of rising deficits and debts that our children cannot pay.

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All across America, families are tightening their belts and making hard choices. Now, Washington must show that same sense of responsibility. That is why we have identified two trillion dollars in deficit-reductions over the next decade, while taking on the special interest spending that doesn’t advance the peoples’ interests.

But we must also recognize that we cannot meet the challenges of today with old habits and stale thinking. So much of our government was built to deal with different challenges from a different era. Too often, the result is wasteful spending, bloated programs, and inefficient results.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

Earlier this week, I held my first Cabinet meeting and sent a clear message: cut what doesn’t work. Already, we’ve identified substantial savings. And in the days and weeks ahead, we will continue going through the budget line by line, and we’ll identify more than 100 programs that will be cut or eliminated.

But we can’t stop there. We need to go further, and we need an all-hands-on-deck approach to reforming government. That’s why I’m announcing several steps that my Administration will take in the weeks ahead to restore fiscal discipline while making our government work better.

First, we need to adhere to the basic principle that new tax or entitlement policies should be paid for. This principle – known as PAYGO – helped transform large deficits into surpluses in the 1990s. Now, we must restore that sense of fiscal discipline. That’s why I’m calling on Congress to pass PAYGO legislation like a bill that will be introduced by Congressman Baron Hill, so that government acts the same way any responsible family does in setting its budget.

Second, we’ll create new incentives to reduce wasteful spending and to invest in what works. We don’t want agencies to protect bloated budgets – we want them to promote effective programs. So the idea is simple: agencies that identify savings will get to keep a portion of those savings to invest in programs that work. The result will be a smaller budget, and a more effective government.

Third, we’ll look for ideas from the bottom up. After all, Americans across the country know that the best ideas often come from workers – not just management. That’s why we’ll establish a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better. We’ll put the suggestions that work into practice. And later this year, I will meet with those who come up with the best ideas to hear firsthand about how they would make your government more efficient and effective.

And finally, we will reach beyond the halls of government. Many businesses have innovative ways of using technology to save money, and many experts have new ideas to make government work more efficiently. Government can – and must – learn from them. So later this year, we will host a forum on reforming government for the 21st century, so that we’re also guided by voices that come from outside of Washington.

We cannot sustain deficits that mortgage our children’s future, nor tolerate wasteful inefficiency. Government has a responsibility to spend the peoples’ money wisely, and to serve the people effectively. I will work every single day that I am President to live up to that responsibility, and to transform our government so that is held to a higher standard of performance on behalf of the American people.

Thank you.

Roxana Saberi, jailed for 8 years by Iran for alleged “espionage” (read: reporting without a censor’s license), is now in her 5th day of a hunger strike. She says she will continue her hunger strike until she is freed. Her father, Reza Saberi, says he has spoken to her, she is determined to refuse food until released, and that she “seems weak”. Foreign governments, the US, as well as individuals and rights groups, are calling for her immediate, unconditional release. 

As delivered by Pres. Barack Obama, 24 April 2009, in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room

1:46 P.M. EDT, THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  That was excellent — we might have to run her for something some day.  (Laughter.)  That was terrific.  Thank you, Stephanie.  I want to also introduce Yvonne Thomas, who is Stephanie’s proud mother.  And we appreciate everything that you’ve done.  And Stephanie’s father, Albert, is around here as well.

There are few things as fundamental to the American Dream or as essential for America’s success as a good education.  This has never been more true than it is today.  At a time when our children are competing with kids in China and India, the best job qualification you can have is a college degree or advanced training.  If you do have that kind of education, then you’re well prepared for the future — because half of the fastest growing jobs in America require a Bachelor’s degree or more.  And if you don’t have a college degree, you’re more than twice as likely to be unemployed as somebody who does.  So the stakes could not be higher for young people like Stephanie.

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And yet, in a paradox of American life, at the very moment it’s never been more important to have a quality higher education, the cost of that kind of that kind of education has never been higher.  Over the past few decades, the cost of tuition at private colleges has more than doubled, while costs at public institutions have nearly tripled.  Compounding the problem, tuition has grown ten times faster than a typical family’s income, putting new pressure on families that are already strained and pricing far too many students out of college altogether.  Yet, we have a student loan system where we’re giving lenders billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies that could be used to make college more affordable for all Americans.

This trend — a trend where a quality higher education slips out of reach for ordinary Americans — threatens the dream of opportunity that is America’s promise to all its citizens.  It threatens to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots.  And it threatens to undercut America’s competitiveness — because America cannot lead in the 21st century unless we have the best educated, most competitive workforce in the world.  And that’s the kind of workforce — and the kind of citizenry — to which we should be committed.

And that’s why we have taken and proposed a number of sweeping steps over our first few months in office — steps that amount to the most significant efforts to open the doors of college to middle-class Americans since the GI Bill.  Millions of working families are now eligible for a $2,500 annual tax credit that will help them pay the cost of tuition; a tax credit that will cover the full cost of tuition at most of the two-year community colleges that are some of the great and undervalued assets of our education system.

We’re also bringing much needed reform to the Pell Grants that roughly 30 percent of students rely on to put themselves through college.  Today’s Pell Grants cover less than half as much tuition at a four-year public institution as they did a few decades ago.  And that’s why we are adding $500 to the grants for this academic year, and raising the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550 next year, easing the financial burden on students and families.

And we are also changing the way the value of a Pell Grant is determined.  Today, that value is set by Congress on an annual basis, making it vulnerable to Washington politics.  What we are doing is pegging Pell Grants to a fixed rate above inflation so that these grants don’t cover less and less as families’ costs go up and up.  And this will help prevent a projected shortfall in Pell Grant funding in a few years that could rob many of our poorest students of their dream of attending college.  It will help ensure that Pell Grants are a source of funding that students can count on each and every year.

Now, while our nation has a responsibility to make college more affordable, colleges and universities have a responsibility to control spiraling costs.  And that will require hard choices about where to save and where to spend.  So I challenge state, college and university leaders to put affordability front and center as they chart a path forward.  I challenge them to follow the example of the University of Maryland, where they’re streamlining administrative costs, cutting energy costs, using faculty more effectively, making it possible for them to freeze tuition for students and for families.

At the same time, we’re also working to modernize and expand the Perkins Loan Program by changing a system where colleges are rewarded for raising tuition, and instead, rewarding them for making college more affordable.

Now just as we’ve opened the doors of college to every American, we also have to ensure that more students can walk through them.  And that’s why I’ve challenged every American to commit to at least one year of higher education or advanced training — because by the end of the next decade, I want to see America have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.  We used to have that; we no longer do.  We are going to get that lead back.

And to help us achieve that goal, we are investing $2.5 billion to identify and support innovative initiatives that have a record of success in boosting enrollment and graduation rates — initiatives like the IBEST program in Washington state that combines basic and career skills classes to ensure that students not only complete college, but are competitive in the workforce from the moment they graduate.

And to help cover the cost of all this, we’re going to eliminate waste, reduce inefficiency, and cut what we don’t need to pay for what we do.  And that includes reforming our student loan system so that it better serves the people it’s supposed to serve — our students.

Right now, there are two main kinds of federal loans.  First, there are Direct Loans.  These are loans where tax dollars go directly to help students pay for tuition, not to pad the profits of private lenders.  The other kinds of loans are Federal Family Education Loans.  These loans, known as FFEL loans, make up the majority of all college loans.  Under the FFEL program, lenders get a big government subsidy with every loan they make.  And these loans are then guaranteed with taxpayer money, which means that if a student defaults, a lender can get back almost all of its money from our government.

And there’s only one real difference between Direct Loans and private FFEL loans.  It’s that under the FFEL program, taxpayers are paying banks a premium to act as middlemen — a premium that costs the American people billions of dollars each year.  Well, that’s a premium we cannot afford — not when we could be reinvesting that same money in our students, in our economy, and in our country.

And that’s why I’ve called for ending the FFEL program and shifting entirely over to Direct Loans.  It’s a step that even a conservative estimate predicts will save tens of billions of tax dollars over the next ten years.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the money we could save by cutting out the middleman would pay for 95 percent of our plan to guarantee growing Pell Grants.  This would help ensure that every American, everywhere in this country, can out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world.

In the end, this is not about growing the size of government or relying on the free market — because it’s not a free market when we have a student loan system that’s rigged to reward private lenders without any risk.  It’s about whether we want to give tens of billions of tax dollars to special interests or whether we want to make college more affordable for eight and a half million more students.  I think most of us would agree on what the right answer is.

Now, some of you have probably seen how this proposal was greeted by the special interests.  The banks and the lenders who have reaped a windfall from these subsidies have mobilized an army of lobbyists to try to keep things the way they are.  They are gearing up for battle.  So am I.  They will fight for their special interests.  I will fight for Stephanie, and other American students and their families.  And for those who care about America’s future, this is a battle we can’t afford to lose.

So I am looking forward to having this debate in the days and weeks ahead.  And I am confident that if all of us here in Washington do what’s in the best interests of the people we represent, and reinvest not only in opening the doors of college but making sure students can walk through them, then we will help deliver the change that the American people sent us here to make.  We will help Americans fulfill their promise as individuals.  And we will help America fulfill its promise as a nation.

So thank you very much.  And thank you, Stephanie.  And thank you, Stephanie’s mom.

All right.  Thanks, guys.

END                   
1:56 P.M. EDT

The Pentagon is releasing today as many as 2,000 photos never before seen, some showing prisoner abuse at Guantánamo Bay. The photos were tied up in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, calling for evidence of Defense Department actions at the prison camp to be made public. According to The Washington Post, the release will contain “21 images depicting detainee abuse in facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan other than the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, as well as 23 other detainee abuse photos”.

The photos may dramatically escalate tensions brewing in Washington over what to do regarding allegations that top officials were involved in plotting and ordering the systematic physical and psychological abuse of terror suspects. Justice Dept. memos released one week ago have been consistently described as “chilling” revealed new information about the extent of abuse actually carried out against certain individuals.

A recent report released by the Red Cross (ICRC), published online in full by the New York Review of Books, detailed allegations even more shocking than the Justice Dept. memos. The report found that a cyclical application of techniques was developed, in part by “experimentation”, which included suffocation by water, prolonged stress positions, physical beatings, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food, as well as other threats of extreme force.

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The full list, as enumerated in the ICRC report, is as follows:

• Suffocation by water poured over a cloth placed over the nose and mouth…
• Prolonged stress standing position, naked, held with the arms extended and chained above the head…
• Beatings by use of a collar held around the detainees’ neck and used to forcefully bang the head and body against the wall…
• Beating and kicking, including slapping, punching, kicking to the body and face…
• Confinement in a box to severely restrict movement…
• Prolonged nudity…this enforced nudity lasted for periods ranging from several weeks to several months…
• Sleep deprivation…through use of forced stress positions (standing or sitting), cold water and use of repetitive loud noises or music…
• Exposure to cold temperature…especially via cold cells and interrogation rooms, and…use of cold water poured over the body or…held around the body by means of a plastic sheet to create an immersion bath with just the head out of water.
• Prolonged shackling of hands and/or feet…
• Threats of ill-treatment, to the detainee and/or his family…
• Forced shaving of the head and beard…
• Deprivation/restricted provision of solid food from 3 days to 1 month after arrest…

The Red Cross report was highly critical of the role a skewed worldview played in distorting American laws substantially enough to permit the use of torture:

Cheney’s story is made not of facts but of the myths that replace them when facts remain secret: myths that are fueled by allusions to a dark world of secrets that cannot be revealed. At its heart is the recasting of President George W. Bush, under whose administration more Americans died in terrorist attacks than under all others combined, as the leader who “kept us safe,” and who was able to do so only by recognizing that the US had to engage in “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business.” To keep the country safe “the gloves had to come off.” What precisely were those “gloves” that had to be removed? Laws that forbid torture, that outlaw wiretapping and surveillance without permission of the courts, that limit the president’s power to order secret operations and to wage war exactly as he sees fit.

The ICRC had warned the Bush administration as early as 2003 about abuse going on at Iraqi prisons such as Abu Ghraib, and in 2004 the sudden release of evidence about what had occurred at Abu Ghraib, and the administration’s claims to have no knowledge of the abuse, raised questions about if or why the warnings had been ignored.

While the state of health of top prisoners is not publicly known, one former CIA operative who said he had studied the use of these techniques across the world over many decades said that subjecting an individual to waterboarding 180 times would likely leave the individual “nearly braindead”. Such claims, from former intelligence officials, physicians and military personnel, have been growing more frequent as public outrage seems to spread over the abusive techniques.

He also said his research for the US government demonstrated comprehensively that coercive interrogations do not produce good information. China, North Korea and North Vietnam were three examples where the purpose of using torture was to produce false confessions for propaganda purposes.

The BBC reported Friday that:

The images relate to around 60 criminal investigations of US military personnel suspected of abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2006.

The ACLU says the photos show that the much-publicised abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq amounted to a specific policy.

“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by US personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” said ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed 5 years ago, but was contested by the Bush administration, which had sought to keep the photos secret, on the grounds their release, and their potential involvement in related investigations, could compromise national security. That argument has been made moot by the current administration’s ban on the harsh interrogation techniques, opening the way for release of the images, some of which could enter into evidence in ongoing investigations.

North Korea is proceeding with a trial against two Korean-American journalists from California, despite witnesses claiming they were detained when North Korean border guards entered Chinese territory to seize them while their cameras were rolling. The trial will be held behind closed doors, and foreign governments have expressed concern the process will not allow the journalists a fair hearing or even a defense. 

Ling and Lee were reportedly interviewing women who lived in the border area about their treatment under the Communist regime. At least one witness has said they were filming from Chinese territory when one or more North Korean border guards crossed into Chinese territory and seized them and their equipment at gunpoint. 

The two American journalists have reportedly been allowed consular access, in accord with international law, and a Swedish delegation has visited with them to check on their condition and their needs. The American government is saying their detention is unfounded and requests have been made for China to intervene, on grounds its sovereign territory was violated by the border guards. 

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The two reporters were putting together a segment for Current TV, the cable news network co-founded by Al Gore. The language used by the North Korean government is ominous, calling the reporters’ activities “hostile acts”, suggesting they may apply national security grounds to their prosecution of the two journalists.

The case is seen by some to mirror that of Roxana Saberi, an American journalist jailed in Iran on dubious allegations of ‘espionage’ —a term applied largely because the Iranian system considers unlicensed reporters to be illegally providing information to foreign governments—, because like Iran, North Korea is locked in a diplomatic struggle over its pursuit of nuclear technology. 

Some observers suspect that both are cases of US nationals being used as potential bargaining chips, or as obstacles to talks that might produce a halt in nuclear research. The Obama administration has pushed for expanded talks and direct contacts in both cases, largely for the benefit that may come from applying direct pressure or incentivizing a halt to nuclear production. 

Both Iran and North Korea would like to buy time before such negotiations go forward, and the reaction of hardliners in the US, who may pressure Obama to “punish” the two states by refusing talks and incentives, could help provide that cover. If US conservatives do successfully pressure the president to withdraw from talks or postpone them, they will likely afford Iran and/or North Korea time to further their nuclear research. 

North Korea has provided no public information about what the two American journalists did wrong, other than reporting without a license. In the US, certain members of the Bush administration have broken the rule of deference in transition by accusing Obama of weakness on the international stage; some have alleged this strategy invites aggressive or hostile acts, even though the charge of weakness may be false. 

The case of Ling and Lee may yet turn into a major diplomatic incident, and could have political ramifications at home, but for now, pressure is being applied through diplomatic channels to release the journalists. Pyongyang, for its part, is maintaining its right to go forward with trial, an attitude likely intended as a warning to other journalists.

With an Afghan-Pakistani hybrid Taliban taking hold of significant areas inside Pakistan, the nuclear-armed nation has become a grave security risk to the rest of the region and the world. After signing a deal with Pakistan’s government to take control of the Swat Valley and impose a brutal distortion of shari’a law, the Taliban almost immediately launched attacks deeper into Pakistan, taking control of parts of the Buner district. 

As the Huffington Post reports:

Police and officials appear to have fled as armed militants also broadcast radio sermons and spread fear in Buner district, just 60 miles from Islamabad, officials and witnesses said Wednesday.

Pakistan’s president signed off on the peace pact last week in hopes of calming Swat, where some two years of clashes between the Taliban and security forces have killed hundreds and displaced up to a third of the one-time tourist haven’s 1.5 million residents.

Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a Lahore University professor, has said the Taliban’s activity in Buner jeopardizes the ceasefire agreement for the Swat Valley, and could lead to wider clashes between government forces and the “non-local” militants. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said this week that Pakistan’s deteriorating security situation, exacerbated by its possession of nuclear weapons, “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world“. 

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According to the Reuters news service:

Under pressure from conservatives, Zardari earlier this month signed a regulation imposing Islamic law in Swat, a northwestern valley once one of Pakistan’s most popular tourist destinations.

Asked about the matter, Clinton bluntly replied: “I think that the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists.”

Maulana Fazlullah, the fundamentalist cleric linked to the rise of the Taliban movement in the Swat Valley, and who broadcasts is messages of religious doctrine , advising the population on the strictures of shari’a and the extreme punishments that can ensue from disobedience, reportedly began broadcasting orders for militia to move into Buner and attack government officials and facilities. 

The AP has reported that significant numbers of militant fighters have taken up positions inside the Buner district and are setting up roadblocks. As local politicians and police flee the area, the government is increasingly unable to prevent a takeover, and will be pressured by the insurgents to again capitulate to Taliban rule, as it did in the Swat Valley. 

A spokesman for the Swat Taliban recently said their regime would give shelter to Osama Bin Laden or any other militants aiming to force the US out of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s government condemned the remarks, but has not announced any concrete measures planned to undermine the Taliban’s spreading influence or prevent such safe harbor from being offered. 

It is now increasingly widely believed that the Zardari government does not have adequate control of the military and intelligence services and that his government may fall. With the opposition, led by PPP arch-rival Nawaz Sharif, jockeying for the ouster of Zardari and the party of his deceased wife, Benazir Bhutto, even as the insurgency claims record numbers of civilian lives and inches toward the capital, the stability of the Pakistani state is considered to be in jeopardy. 

Pakistan has, since its independence from India, fashioned itself as a both a muslim nation and a government of secular laws and civil process. It has been prone to military takeovers, usually justified as an attempt to prevent the spread of extremism or to combat corruption (as was the case with Musharraf’s takeover ten years ago). Its lawyers have persistently and vocally defended the rule of law, even at peril to themselves, and the struggle for Pakistan’s soul (secular or fundamentalist, free or authoritarian) presently hangs in the balance. 

As the issue of Pakistan receives increasing attention from world diplomats, and with the US military openly stating “The activities in the Swat do concern us. We’re keeping an eye on it, and are working daily with the Pakistan military” (in the words of Maj. Gen. Michael Tucker), there must be serious intellectual effort devoted to strategic planning for the long-term isolation and security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, for the safety of the Pakistani people and the region. 

This will, however, pose a serious political problem, in that relinquishing effective military control of its most powerful weapons will be seen, by nationalist secular politicians, Taliban insurgents and regional rivals alike, as a sign of the endemic weakness of the Pakistani state. Neither the ruling party, the security establishment nor Pakistan’s western allies can afford such a clear sign of collapse. 

Both Pakistan and the US will likely favor, in the short term, a series of targeted raids, to undermine the reach of the Swat Taliban, and police actions, aimed at criminalizing the insurgents under Pakistani law, thus reinforcing the legitimacy of the state itself. A new wave of combat in the Swat Valley could be in the offing.

Because there’s something in it for everybody. The current global nuclear weapons-control regime operates on a dangerously untenable false premise: that only ‘responsible’ nations can or should be allowed to make and maintain arsenals of nuclear warheads. At first blush, it may seem highly rational: only those who will behave responsibly should have the most dangerous weapons; but, then, upon further examination, who is qualified to make that judgment?

Probably not one nation not specifically seeking to expand the “nuclear club” to include itself would entrust to an autonomous international body the adjudication of who is responsible enough to have the right to add more nuclear weapons to the global stockpile. Certainly, the US tends to oppose allowing any external body to judge its own level of inherent responsibility or sovereign rights. And international law, at present, forbids the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

But, the existence of nuclear weapons, and the special privileges that accrue to any nation that possesses them, mean even a strict global ban with the possibility of harsh sanctions and even military strikes to prevent proliferation, do not serve as adequate deterrent: there is, in effect, a supreme incentive to achieve the status of “nuclear-armed”, and so become a global power.

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Obviously, we are all better off if no further nations obtain nuclear weapons, but the aforementioned false premise on which we base our non-proliferation efforts is not adequate to achieving non-proliferation. It’s most salient problem areas can be nutshelled as follows:

Does the ‘responsibility’ of nations depend on current government ideology, the nation’s nuclear history, evidence of a willingness not to use them under any circumstances (in which case, why possess them?), the individuals in power, the nature of the political system over which they preside, the frequency of peaceful transitions of power, or just the will of those who already possess the weapons?

Don’t nations positioned outside the nuclear club’s population of favorites have a clear motivation, on both security and enhanced-sovereignty grounds, to develop nuclear weapons and join the club? If the use of nuclear weapons is a war crime, on what pretext do any of the nuclear-armed states maintain them? And worse: the US, the only nation to have used them in war and which under the administration of George W. Bush actively pronounced its right to use them in war, even in “pre-emptive” strikes, seeks to forbid their use by others by the Cold War logic of “mutually-assured destruction” (MAD).

Total denuclearization has one important flaw, which must be overcome through comprehensive cooperative negotiation: no nation will be willing to fully dismantle its arsenal and/or disperse its nuclear-weapons know-how, because it will always be assumed the others are keeping a secret stash of weapons. This is, of course, the guiding logic for allowing the extant nuclear arsenals to remain in place and under ‘responsible’ maintenance and secure upkeep.

Trust is the fundamental problem in the nuclear component of global diplomacy. And no seasoned diplomat will allow her nation to forego a necessary and comprehensive defense solely on the basis of giving unreconsidered trust to other nations. National security apparatus are notoriously possessive of their inherent (though arguably not ‘God-given) right to keep secrets, and all counter-proliferation efforts work on this assumption, that the keeping of secrets is so vital to security regimes that even the most law-abiding and upstanding diplomats will lie to protect their nation’s defenses.

So, trust in diplomacy relies not on blind human confidence, but on procedures of strict verification, which allow for credible modes of evaluating and confirming risk. For this reason, Pres. Obama said in an historic speech in Prague that he knows that total denuclearization may not occur “in my lifetime”; noting that it would be naive to think global denuclearization an easy task, he also took the most intelligent realpolitik approach, which is that only with a credible system aimed at total elimination of nuclear weapons, can there be a real scaling back of proliferation risks or the risk of such weapons’ use.

One proposal would be that each of the current nuclear-armed states ascribe to a system of shared guarantees about the security of their weapons:

1. Failsafe Protocols: nuclear-armed states would agree that strict, multi-redundant failsafe protocols be in place so that no one or two or three-person teams could launch nuclear weapons without a multi-party policy review involving truly independent arms of government. This would promote the creation of checks and balances that decentralize power and democratize even authoritarian regimes, and would lessen the risk of efforts to undermine the non-proliferation regime.

2. Transnational Maintenance and Security: the most successful methods of maintaining in secure isolation and protecting against seizure, looting or black-market transfer, would be implemented with the help of those states most advanced in their techniques of upkeep and secure isolation.

3. Commitment Not to Launch: an enforceable commitment not to launch any nuclear-armed missiles or other nuclear devices except in direct response to a proven and catastrophic nuclear attack by a national government is required. This would allow a global “stand down” that would preclude the possibility of nuclear war, but only if the commitment were legally binding, verifiable by inspection-and-report and uniform.

4. StART Roadmap: A Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is needed, first between the United States and the Russian Federation, the two most heavily-armed nuclear powers, with a second round including all subsequently nuclear-armed states. The roadmap to a global StART would require efforts to unmask secret weaponization programs, along with commitments for participating states not to attack one another.

5. Cooperative Incrementalism: The eventual goal of total denuclearization would be reached as participating nations mutually confirm and report serious strides toward the dismantling and safe disposal of their nuclear arsenals and fundamental armament materials. A repository secure enough to contain all weapons-grade nuclear fissile material and spent fuels in 100% isolation for a minimum of 100,000 years would be required, and could be constructed in concert by all participating nations.

6. Incentives to join Global StART: none of the currently nuclear-armed nations or nations suspected of or proven to be in development stages (including all nations using or exploring nuclear power production) would be permitted to forego participation in the Global StART process of universal denuclearization. Incentives and intensive cooperative diplomacy would be necessary to make the plan viable across the globe.

Ultimately, such a strategy is more logically coherent and strategically beneficial than the current paradigm of selective non-proliferation, which only enhances the vast power gap between nations whose influence on the global stages is significantly enhanced by possession of nuclear weapons and those who forego weaponization, either voluntarily or for lack of resources or strategic leeway.

What we are seeing now in Pakistan is a good example: there is no guarantee that selective non-proliferation will not lead to cooperative black-market mechanisms that facilitate the spread of nuclear-weapons technology. Pakistan acquired the technology this way, and some of its black-marketeers may have further spread the technology they purchased. Pakistan is now experiencing severe political destabilization and the Taliban has taken over areas just 100 km from the capital.

Selective non-proliferation makes this sort of situation possible. The flaws in selective non-proliferation have been radically exacerbated by the Bush-era policy of developing new pre-emptive “mini-nukes” and proclaiming the intention to use them agaisnt nations that neither possess nuclear weapons nor have threatened the US directly. This means that without aggressive diplomatic action to counter the influence of those paradigmatic faultlines, the incentive to proliferate will hold.

Only in a global cooperative StART regime can other nuclear club member states reasonably expect Pakistan’s government to let them safely liberate, disperse and secure, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons before they fall into the hands of an amoral fundamentalist militia bent on the destruction of all who disagree with their ideology. We are now facing a global crisis situation in Pakistan, where these issues are no longer theoretical or diplomatic, but an immediate security issue for states where more than half the world’s population resides.

Pres. Obama has arranged for talks with Russian pres. Dmitri Medvedev to effect a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the end of this year. A group of ’6 powers’ —which includes the United States— has invited Tehran to talks to prevent the weaponization of Iran’s nuclear research program. This new focus on global diplomacy to institute a system of denuclearization is a necessary first step to saving ourselves from the unacceptable pitfalls inherent in selective non-proliferation policies.

While clearly showing caution, taking care to repeat his position that prosecutions of former officials could be counterproductive, Pres. Obama today signaled that he does not rule out that some legal avenues may exist by which former Bush officials could face charges in relation to “enhanced interrogation” policy. The president did not, however, endorse any process of prosecution or call for action against any officials, saying instead “I don’t want to prejudge” what the attorney general might find legally necessary.

There has been significant pressure from all sides on this issue, with Obama’s grassroots base calling for prosecutions and jail sentences for officials involved in justifying and promoting acts of torture and conservative Bush allies decrying the release of the memos —revealing new information about the extent of harsh techniques used in some interrogations— as harmful to national security.

One problem for Obama’s moderate approach —aimed more at avoiding a political firestorm and the resulting quagmire than at forgiving or forgetting— is that those opposing the release of the documents seem to have little to argue for other than protecting Bush officials from legal liability. There is clearly a confluence of personal interest in each of the defenses given publicly by figures like former VP Cheney and former CIA director Hayden.

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What’s more, Cheney, who has claimed the memos should never have been released, requested (weeks before the memos were released) the release of top secret CIA interrogation documents that he says would show the success of the harsh techniques, causing worry among current officials, as well as career intelligence and military personnel, that Cheney’s aim is to reveal as much as possible about acts committed in an effort to prove to the world that torture might actually be a useful tool.

And, there’s the ongoing investigation in Spain, in which a court seeks to indict 6 former Bush administration officials, including the former AG Alberto Gonzales, and Cheney’s own former chief of staff, for their role in crafting the interrogation policies that many say amount to illegal torture. 5 Spanish citizens were allegedly subjected to that torture while in the custody of the Bush administration’s network of anti-terror detentions.

That case could yield information that would compel US courts to take action, so as much as Pres. Obama would like to “turn the page”, he can’t be perfectly committed to not prosecuting. There have been drafts of legislation presented to Congress calling for a sort of “truth and reconciliation” commission, in which those who own up would be immune from prosecution, calling for outright prosecution, or calling for Congressional hearings to decide which avenue to take.

It is, of course, those closest to the actual policy itself that have been most adamant about the need to keep it all hush-hush and not seek any responsible party to punish, if indeed American laws were violated. This undermines the credibility of the argument that there should be no investigation, as their reasoning is rich with self interest and the desire to not face prosecution.

For the time being, the new administration may be hoping to tackle the major crisis situations assailing it from all sides, “inherited” from the previous administration and the result of that administration’s policies, without the added problem of a noxious and politicized prosecution of top officials. But Pres. Obama is a Constitutional scholar and a vehement defender of human rights; he banned abusive interrogations on his 2nd day in office, and it would make sense he would not “close the door”, so to speak, on prosecutions altogether.

After just over two weeks of sporadic fighting in the Buner district of Pakistan, between the Swat Valley —now under shari’a law and run by the Taliban— and the nation’s capital, Taliban fighters have reportedly forced the local government to flee. This leaves them within 100 km of the capital, Islamabad, where the insurgents may seek to claim control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

The government of Pres. Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto and interim head of her Pakistan People’s Party —until her son is old enough to assume control—, recently ceded the Swat Valley to Taliban-linked groups, who have imposed shari’a law, in an effort to prevent the further spread of the insurgency. But the insurgents immediately fanned out from Swat, moving into Buner, where they have reportedly seized control of the local government, looted hospitals, international charities and government offices, and from which they may seek to stage further attacks on government forces.

The Times of India reports:

The continued presence of the Taliban has forced the leaders of the Awami National Party, which rules the North West Frontier Province, to leave the region and the intervention of the tribal peace jirga to make them vacate the area has failed, The News daily reported on Tuesday.

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The Taliban from Swat moved into Buner district about two weeks ago. They have occupied a three-storey bungalow owned by a businessman in Sultanwas village and are using it as their headquarters, the newspaper said.

Fateh Muhammad, a Taliban militia commander has been installed as regional political chief, and the Taliban have named Mufti Bashir to act as Qazi, or religious judge who takes the complaints of the people. Militants have reportedly murdered over 130 ANP activists in Swat, along with relatives of the party activists; as the ANP had governed in Buner, many officials have fled their homes, leaving a power vacuum. Some Buner ANP leaders have reportedly renounced their allegiance to the party, while others are calling for a crackdown on militants.

The problem is particularly striking due to the fact that the militia are made up of local and non-local elements, some from Afghanistan, and there is concern the local clerics who seek to overtake the Taliban movement may be naive in their own assumptions about the guerrilla movement. ANP figures have sought to use nationalist sentiment to turn the public against the rise of the Taliban militants, but local clerics have been instrumental in spreading the fundamentalist message.

Women in Swat and in Buner are now being forced to wear the full burqa, not a traditional part of their cultural life prior to the arrival of the Taliban. Caught up in the struggle for these Pakistani territories is the problem of national destabilization and the threat of nuclear proliferation. Pakistan is the only majority muslim country to have built nuclear weapons, and so it is the prize of prizes for the Taliban insurgency, which seeks to spread its radical fundamentalist brand of shari’a law to as many lands as possible.

Recent tensions between Washington and Tehran, specifically relating to the jailing of an American journalist by Iran and Pres. Ahmedinejad’s anti-Israeli tirade at the Geneva anti-racism conference this week, are making real cooperation between the two states less likely, but Iran had pledged its help to the US-led forces in Afghanistan in combatting the spread of the drug trade there. And Iran has a direct interest in Pakistan’s stability.

Nevertheless, there is the possibility that some low-level talks may occur between Washington and Tehran to negotiate an agreed policy for combatting the Taliban, to avoid any opposition from Iran if the US takes military action to combat the threat. Pakistan’s government has been increasingly willing to admit weakness in calling for recognition, both by the Pakistani people and the international community of the grave threat posed to the nation’s political integrity —and by extension the region’s stability— by this insurgency.

ThoughtPossible.com :: Today comes the news that the Taliban have taken more territory in Pakistan’s Buner district, just 100 km from the capital Islamabad. The shockingly weak government of Pres. Zardari has already ceded the Swat Valley to the Taliban, allowing harsh shari’a law to be imposed. The local government has been forced out of Buner, and the area is becoming a stronghold. If the Taliban reach Islamabad, they may be able to seize control of the one of the world’s 9 known arsenals of nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration’s obsessive adventure in Iraq led directly to the Taliban’s ability to destabilize huge swaths of northwestern Pakistan, moving ever closer toward the northern border regions closer to Islamabad. The Iraq war diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in military activity and supplies from potential deployment in Afghanistan to the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein, based on false pretexts.

Meanwhile, billions of dollars in aid were given to Pres. Musharraf, a military dictator opposed by secular society for his actions against constitutional democracy and opposed by conservative muslims for his non-religious government and allegiance to Western powers. Musharraf waffled between fighting militants and combatting fractious tribalism in the northwestern frontier region and buying off those who threatened his reign.

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Ultimately, it is suspected Musharraf not only made deals with Taliban-linked figures, but also funneled hundreds of millions in payoffs to warlords and tribal leaders, potentially to the Taliban themselves, in an effort to buy their support. Essentially, instead of fighting the Taliban head-on, the Bush administration funded a campaign of bribery and appeasement that only empowered the militants and gave them increasing power in Pakistani territory.

That the Bush administration mysteriously gave $150 million to the Taliban themselves in the summer of 2001 has been glossed over by most press accounts of the struggle against Afghan extremism. The money was supposed to help facilitate a gas pipeline project that would transit natural gas from Central Asia through Afghanistan to port cities in Pakistan, where it could then be sent on to other parts of the world.

That appeasement money did not win enough favor with the Taliban for them to cooperate in the capture of Osama Bin Laden in September 2001. Even when faced with the potential annihilation of their regime and much of their nation’s infrastructure, the Taliban were unfazed by Bush administration threats of invasion. So why did the policy toward Pakistan continue the logic of mass funding of bribery and appeasement?

We may never be able to answer that, except to say that massive irresponsibility and disregard for catastrophic risk was instrumental in the Bush administration’s decision-making process, on any number of issues. Iraq invasion would be “a cakewalk”, never a quagmire. It would cost less than $50 billion. Katrina could never destroy a city, and if it did, just put the refugees in concentration camps on the side of the highways, no need to spend real money.

Pakistan could easily be controlled by a friendly military dictator. That was the logic.  What could possibly go wrong? The Taliban, emboldened by American inaction against them, by the dictator’s preference for bribing them, would build an arsenal, train an army, take over the message of the most susceptible fundamentalist congregations, recruit a new generation of Pakistan-based clerics and radicals, stage an insurgency against the 5th most populous nation-state in the world.

Of course they would. They were given the means, the leeway. They were even offered treaties of appeasement over and over, and at every turn they violated their agreement not to continue fighting. Nevertheless, for 5 years, after the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration’s policy was bribery and appeasement. The deliberate funding of a government whose intelligence services are known to be linked to the militants we consider our enemy.

That policy clearly put the Taliban in a position to mount the most credible insurgency against the Pakistani government, and to take aim at its nuclear arsenal. Now, with a government that handed over a massive piece of territory to a foreign guerrilla militia with far fewer resources, the Taliban are just 62 miles from the capital, and as far as we know, until Pres. Obama, with his message of firm opposition to Taliban expansion, took office, there was no plan in the works to prevent nuclear weapons falling into the hands of medieval terrorists.

After one Republican senator committed the extremely dangerous act of openly calling for a run on the banks, something that could literally bankrupt the nation and lead to massive economic collapse, one would expect the national party to ignore, disavow or directly oppose the idea. But the national party is so drunk with the lust to sabotage Barack Obama’s presidency, it has endorsed the idea.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) told constituents that as the economic crisis began to make itself clear last fall:

On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, ‘Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take. And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.’ I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.

Burr’s anecdote, far from being a pithy folktale about a senator with a populist streak, is a resoundingly clear demonstration of a powerful public official who has very likely next to zero understanding of how such actions relate to the integrity of our banking system. A run on the banks, across the population, leads to thousands of bank failures, millions of jobs lost, mass economic chaos, and the unraveling of a financial system.

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We know this, because it happened repeatedly, through the natural course of random human behavior, based on such reflexive economic activity, until spurred by the Great Depression, we established the FDIC to guarantee deposits up to $100,000 and prevent future runs on the banks. In Argentina, such a situation occurred in 2001, when a run on the banks left the entire nation bankrupt, drawing the third largest economy in Latin America into an unrecoverable tailspin.

The British newspaper, The Independent, reported on 3 December 2001:

Argentina edged close to bankruptcy yesterday as people queued at cashpoint machines and bank tellers’ windows to withdraw money after a government decree restricting bank withdrawals and overseas transfers.

Passengers on planes and ships were frisked for illegal dollar stashes before leaving the country. The decree sparked fears of an imminent devaluation of the peso, wiping out savings overnight.

Flight of currency from the banks and the country, created a currency-trading crisis where the value of Argentinian money virtually disappeared. Argentina was a stable, functioning economy, but a banking scare, created by a financial-sector crisis, and not checked by responsible deposit insurance or firm regulations, caused the disappearance of unprecedented amounts of wealth.

It was in fact the run on the banks —the very action Sen. Burr proposed last fall and which he still defends as “common sense”— that caused Argentinians’ bank accounts to dry up overnight. Because banks invest or lend much of the money they take in, their cash-on-hand on any given day is far less than the total value of their customers deposits in sum. This means that while there will always be enough cash for regular patterns of withdrawal, there will not be enough, and should not be —given the nature of the modern banking system— to cover 100% simultaneous withdrawals by all customers.

That a sitting senator would not understand this speaks for itself. It is not necessary to try to qualify or categorize Sen. Burr’s qualifications to vote on any issue related to economics or finance. His experience and fitness are made clear by his repeated protestations. Calling for a run on the banks is like inciting a riot: it is a colossally stupid and irresponsible act, and his own party should call for him to face ethics sanctions for his repeated defense of his own misstep.

The 24th and 25th banks to fail this year in the US, American Sterling Bank of Missouri and Great Basin Bank of Nevada, were closed Friday by the FDIC. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will fund their accounts to solvency and management of their insured deposits will be taken over by other banks.

The news comes even as some major banks have shown signs of recovery, benefiting from government efforts to secure the banking sector and from measures aimed at preventing consumer credit defaults. But the huge infusion of cash at those banks, coupled with close government oversight, has allowed them to take steps to get over the hurdle of breaking with established credit policy and negotiating new business at perhaps lower rates of return.

Smaller banks are crippled still by the standards and practices of lending and credit repayment, in which the entire responsibility for making credit relationships work lies with the borrower, who has come to have less and less power to manage their own accounts. This puts smaller banks, which are also big borrowers, at a competitive disadvantage when faced with the gut-wrenching re-calculation of outstanding investments and projected future returns.

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They also need the help of larger banks, or of the Federal Reserve, to stay afloat, and their margin for error is substantially smaller. In both cases, Friday’s failed banks actually had more assets than deposits, but were still unable to remain afloat. This is in part due to the extremely low capital reserve levels that have become standard and the high debt burden (over-leveraging) that has significantly reduced banks’ ability to set their sights on long-term viability.

It may be that these two banks, American Sterling and Great Basin, were in fact closed in the most cost-effective way possible, allowing their deposits and assets to be transferred to a more solvent institution, before the deposits outpaced the banks’ rates of wealth-holdings and capital investment. In each case, the FDIC is expected to spend a net total of $42 million, a relatively small sum to fix a bank failure, given the size of some of today’s banking conglomerates.

Reuters reported on Friday that:

The Missouri offices of American Sterling will reopen on Saturday, and the offices in California and Arizona will reopen on Monday as branches of Metcalf Bank, which is assuming all the deposits of American Sterling.

And:

Nevada State Bank agreed to assume the insured deposits of Great Basin, whose five branches will reopen on Monday as branches of Nevada State Bank.

For many, the question of bank failures remains a mystery in every case: how can an institution that has taken in cash money not have the money to cover its responsibilities? It’s a question of solvency: much of the money is subsequently loaned out or invested. “Assets” can actually be a burden, if those assets are debt holdings that are not likely to be repaid, in which case the so-called assets are actually bad investments, or rather: losses.

To what extent this is true for Great Basin or American Sterling is not clear from the publicly available information, but the problem of counting unrepaid loans as “assets” has been one of the key areas where accounting techniques have played an outsize role in the ongoing banking crisis.

Adjusting to more factual numbers representing actual wealth and commercial viability has been a painful process and some of the major banks are still resisting the intimate scrutiny that comes with government “stress tests”. Whether they are trying to hide underperformance or worse to hide bad accounting, it is clear that the largest institutions are opposing the sort of comprehensive reforms that will lead to the prevention of mass bankruptcy, the further crumbling of credit and housing markets, and the saving of banks as such.

These recent banks failures, which bring the total for 2009 to 25 —in 2007, only 3 banks were taken over by the FDIC—, are evidence that while recovery is underway, there are still deep faultlines in the financial system, closely linked to misjudged credit positions or inflated wealth claims, that need urgent sorting. The question is: how cooperative will big banks be in making painful adjustments so that the system actually works for everybody?

A court in Iran has jailed Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, to 8 years in prison, alleging that she spied for the US. Saberi had been detained originally on charges she violated Iranian law by reporting without an official press license. The charges were later raised to espionage, and within one week, she was found guilty, after a one-day closed-door trial.

The US has said it is extremely skeptical about the judicial process and knows of no evidence whatsoever that Saberi was engaged in any illegal activities. US officials have already said they will press for her immediate release. Sec. of State Clinton said she is “deeply disappointed” and that “We will continue to vigorously raise our concerns to the Iranian government”. She called the charges baseless.

Both Clinton and Pres. Obama have said they are certain that Saberi engaged in no wrongdoing and have called for a review of the process and her release. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has formally requested that prosecutors review all evidence and procedure to ensure that justice was done. There is an appeals process, in which Saberi’s lawyers will ask for her release, but a verdict will not come for several weeks.

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Saberi’s father says he has communicated with her and that she says she has not been mistreated and the food is fairly decent. It is just the fact of being confined and the injustice of her conviction that cause her suffering. And the conviction does seem an indication of a more hardline stance in this case. As The New York Times reports:

Ms. Saberi’s sentencing appears to set the case apart from other recent detentions of people with dual citizenship. Two Iranian-American scholars, Haleh Esfandiariand Kian Tajbakhsh, were arrested in 2007 on accusations that they tried to overthrow the government, but they were released on bail before their trials began. Ms. Esfandiari was allowed to return to the United States, and Mr. Tajbakhsh is allowed to leave Iran when he wants.

While some fear the conviction may put off the possibility of the Obama administration negotiating Iran’s halting uranium enrichment —and some observers suggest it could be the result of hardliners aiming to sabotage that new engagement, fearing it would force Iran into relinquishing its nuclear ambitions—, it is possible that Iran sees the case as an opportunity to highlight the situation of three officials held in Iraq.

The US detained three Iranian officials Tehran says are diplomats, in Erbil, Iraq, in 2007, and the US has refused to release them, alleging they had “links” to the Revolutionary Guards, the elite military faction linked to the ayatollahs but whom the US has sought to treat —legally speaking— as a “terrorist organization”. It is not clear what those links might be or whether it would be a punishable offense for state officials to have contacts with a branch of the military, however much a foreign government may dislike that military faction.

Another American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, is believed to be in Iranian custody, though his whereabouts are unknown. He disappeared after visiting the island of Kish, in southern Iran, in 2007, on what his family says was a business trip. It has been alleged that Iran sought to hold Levinson and now possibly Saberi as bargaining chips in an effort to win the release of its officials held in Iraq.

Saberi has lived in Iran for six years and worked as a reporter for both National Public Radio (NPR) and the BBC. In 2006, Iranian officials revoked her press license, and the current case stems from government allegations she continued reporting “illegally”. NPR’s president has said “We are deeply distressed by this harsh and unwarranted sentence”. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), along with his fellow North Dakota Democratic senator, Kent Conrad, has expressed outrage.

Dorgan called the sententicng “a shocking miscarriage of justice,” and said “The Iranian government has held a secret trial, will not make public any evidence, and sentenced an American citizen to eight years in prison for a crime she didn’t commit.” Dorgan promised he would not rest until she was freed.

Lead by example. It’s a simple idea, and one that tends to be fully realized only by those who are most able. You lead by demonstrating the best qualities, because you are able to — 1. because you have them; 2. because you are in a position to do so; 3. because you are confident both of your ability to embody these qualities and of the qualities themselves, their virtue and their efficacy.

Soft power works, because one is able to use the social force of virtue —rooted in actual qualities and demonstrable value to those concerned— and because one shows proof of being closer to shared goals than the other party, leading the other party to follow one’s lead.

Obama has demonstrated an incredible ability for a victorious politician: forgiveness. His magnanimity is, whether he intends it to be or not, an exceedingly valuable asset to him, not just in terms of public image, but because he wields power through it, and that leverage is not missed by those he is negotiating with. Imagine the awe his show of mercy to Joe Lieberman must inspire in the vigilant eyes of the fallen leaders of the Republican party’s aspirational one-party government.

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They were terrified of letting one inch slip to their opponents; this man is strong enough to be generous, politically. That means he can win favor with enemies, listen to a bewildering array of intelligent concepts and proposals, and rely on his judgment, not the maneuverings of party minions, to select, adopt and enact the best and most effective. This is the position leaders of all kinds most aspire to be in, and he is reminding them from day one that he is already there.

Is it “soft power” or “3d diplomacy” —diplomacy, development, defense—, is it “smart power”, or “principled pragmatism”? There is really no need to put a label on it, because for the sake of historical argument, we can call it the Obama way: push your friend and rivals alike to adopt bold new ideas that focus on solutions in stead of ideology; be courageous enough to tackle all of the toughest issues at once; use the levers of power to your advantage, but listen to dissent and allow for crafted solutions that broaden support for your strategy.

This is the kind of unrelenting soft power that has allowed Barack Obama to continue winning an historically broad base of support, even as he takes positions that other presidents would have seen as controversial, and battles Congress for leadership in the game of national policy rhetoric.

As in the campaign, Obama’s style of governing owes much to his prowess at framing the debate within a vocabulary rooted in his ideas. Everyone is speaking his language, so inevitably, the final verdict will be rooted in his principles, even if he has to give up some ground to get the most salient projects passed.

Much has been made of his “capitulating” on renewal of the assault weapons ban… the problem is, it wasn’t his ban, it wasn’t a priority to begin with, and Congress (unbelievably) is unwilling to pass it. Despite a severe rash of mass killings and spreading gun violence, despite evidenced that American gun-shop owners have been ferrying high-powered assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels, Congress is afraid of the gun lobby.

It is not for a president with major reforms ahead to pick a fight in which his allies are few and the public’s view of the issue is so severely skewed by relentless propaganda from a commercially-interested lobby. Every time the GOP leadership comes out in support of weapons that kill children, it gets harder for them to sustain any credibility, and the question of a “fight” on gun control seems to dim.

There may come a time, but using power wisely means letting people have their say, and for now, Congress says gun control will be a political bloodbath. Obama has been very adroit, throughout his rise, at letting hostile opponents sabotage themselves, letting John McCain make nitwit pronouncements on economic policy for instance, letting the Republicans propose a pointless tax-cut-for-the-wealthy budget even as they claim they are now suddenly populist.

With each round of renewed idiocy in the sort of attack levied against him, his pragmatist agenda and his personal standing are elevated. His political capital expands as his political enemies squander their own credibility in unfounded or illogical attacks. His “record budget” is adequately explained when the Republicans produce a faux budget with just as large a deficit, but no plans for recovery, and Obama announces a deliberative process to find record spending cuts, pointing out that Bush’s spending was even higher, he just excluded the wars from his budget.

It is hard for the Republican party to grasp how this kind of exercise of authority works: using moral authority to support solution-oriented policies, instead of the bully pulpit to ram ideological concessions down people’s throats; using carefully worded policy-speak to re-frame the entire scope of debate on a given issue, forcing even opponents into a debate within one’s vocabulary, i.e. winning the debate before it begins; listening to one’s opponents, even harvesting workable ideas from their agenda, but using those ideas to bolster one’s own position.

It is incomprehensible to seasoned Washington strategists that Obama is not using his high approval ratings and his bold agenda to bludgeon beleaguered Republicans to death in a campaign of character assassination and scorched-earth attacks. But Obama’s special quality of governing from balance and confidence is rooted in his belief that while the others may waste their energy on such games, actually governing effectively will always beat them. He intends to “lap” the Republicans over and over again, by getting things done, and so far, it has worked to an historic degree.

Know your enemy’s flaws, and avoid exhibiting them yourself. He is well aware of how toxic the Republican party’s vicious blood-and-guts politicking has been; he has seen Gingrich and DeLay go down in infamy; Rove’s name is synonymous with “liar” and Cheney is seen as a man so obsessed with strength that no principle and no ethics can contain his ambition.

You will notice that Obama exhibits none of these qualities, because he understands them to be a waste of time. If one wants to achieve important improvements to the quality of life of real people, the work is hard and the negotiations may be bitter, but open combat with one’s most bitter rivals is not an effective way to get there.

Obama’s way of relentlessly releasing new ideas and making much needed policy changes, always in line with his promises of reform oriented toward expanding transparency and ridding government of entrenched monied interests, has left the Republican party reeling. They keep waiting for something they can attack him for, on an all-day everyday basis, for weeks, and the struggle has left them looking like the party of “zero ideas” as one of their own recently confessed.

If we are to understand the “preternatural calm” or the legendary poise that was so often spoken of during the campaign, we have to take seriously Obama’s frequent admission that the campaign “was never about me”, that he was in it because the people needed someone to work for them. His focus is not on accumulating wealth and power, or is it on serving interests that have built him into an institution over several decades: it’s on doing the work he promised to do, and answering to the many millions who made his power base so genuinely grassroots.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people: Obama is qualified to use his own ideas and his own principles to effect this sort of government, because he was wide open about his policy proposals and his agenda from day one. He announced his bold reform initiatives over two years ago. His ideas were unpacked and deconstructed in the public eye, and he won sweeping support from voters to carry out his agenda. His soft-power strategy is far from weak; it is the manifestation of a deep reserve of political strength and commitment to effective reform.

The UN rapporteur on torture responded to the announcement by US pres. Barack Obama that CIA agents who engaged in practices the Justice Dept. had authorized as legal would not be prosecuted by saying that such an amnesty would violate US treaty obligations under international law. Manfred Nowak told the Austrian newspaper Der Standard that any acts of torture must be investigated and those involved prosecuted.

Amid the furore over revelations about torture authorized by the Bush administration, some human rights advocates have argued that there should be no attempt to “turn the page” and that if administration officials who sanctioned torture or agents who committed the acts have a defense, the courts exist precisely so that legal defense can be tested.

Nowak noted specifically that “The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court”. The memos released this week are considered by many to be evidence of a criminal conspiracy and there is some pressure in the US to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate further.

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The US roundly rejected the “just following orders” argument at the Nuremburg trials, which helped establish, in part, the precedent in international justice that certain war crimes are unlawful no matter what any sovereign state may claim. It has also been noted that one of the techniques used, simulated drowning known as “waterboarding”, was prosecuted by the US against Japanese agents after WWII.

Among the revelations that have emerged from the four Justice Dept. memos released this week is the implication that waterboarding was used far more widely than initially claimed by Pres. Bush, when he first admitted to authorizing it, and that for several years there were no guidelines whatsoever to how it should be applied or to limit the potential traumatic effect (a claim that had been a key part of the Bush administration’s arguments that its actions were not technically torture).

Obama has spoken passionately against the use of torture and moved swiftly to ban any future incidence of its use, signing an executive order banning abusive interrogations on his second day in office. But he has been unwilling to commit to prosecuting officials who “acted on good faith”, having been instructed that specific acts were in fact legal.

As the legal arguments involved in the memos are widely considered by law scholars to be hollow, or to rely on the claim (already rejected by the Supreme Court) that the president has indivisible authority to reject or override any law in times of war, it has been observed that the memos appear to argue that the techniques described are legal because the government will not apply any relevant laws to those situations where they are practiced.

This, of course, is not a legal argument per se, but a circular argument based on and in support of efforts to circumvent the law. Human rights groups have repeatedly argued, as has the ACLU, and various US judges who have heard related cases, that such circular reasoning is evidence of a deliberate effort to circumvent existing laws.

It is on these grounds that the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón was asked by prosecutors to consider an indictment against six former US officials who served under the presidency of George W. Bush and were involved in the shaping of “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Garzón will be removed, because he is also hearing a case against one of the alleged victims of those techniques, but the prosecution is expected to continue.

Nowak, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, also noted that if the US does not pass laws precluding the prosecution of individuals involved in torture, US prosecutors would be within their authority to bring cases and judges would be able to rule on the merits of the cases. Nowak’s comments may win Obama favor among some supporters of Bush’s policies, but their meaning may also give Obama cover, should US prosecutors find their way to a case linked to alleged torture.

En la Cumbre de las Américas, el presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, ha proclamado su intención de llevar a cabo un nuevo programa diplomático en las Américas, buscando colaboración y apertura. Había establecido esta semana en México su apoyo al tratado interamericano contra el tráfico de armas, prometiendo impulsar al Senado a actuar para ratificarlo.

La urgencia de su iniciativa contra el tráfico de armas radica en la conexión que se ha descubierto entre un tráfico ilegal de armas de fuego de comerciantes legales en EEUU que deja que las armas pasen a la mafia narcotraficante del norte de México. Se ha calculado que el 90% de las armas que usan las mafias mexicanas proviene de ese mercado negro. El hecho de que la violencia narcotraficante y del tráfico humano ahora afecta la región fronteriza del sur de EEUU, significa que se ve como asunto de seguridad nacional impedir el tráfico de armas.

También para su visita a México, Obama había nombrado un nuevo “czar” de la frontera, cuyo encargo será asegurarle al presidente que se va mejorando la situación de seguridad para los civiles en ambos lados de la frontera, estableciendo medios para combatir el tráfico ilegal de armas hacia el sur y de drogas y personas hacia el norte.

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Pero el czar de la frontera no tiene explícitamente el encargo de impedir la migración en sí, sino de prevenir el contagio de la violencia. La migración espera una reforma comprensiva de política de inmigrantes, cosa que los tres últimos presidentes han dejado para sus sucesores. Por ahora, la colaboración integrada para ralentizar la expansión de la violencia será lo principal.

El Confidencial informa:

Hasta el momento el tratado interamericano, adoptado el 13 de noviembre de 1997, ha sido ratificado por 27 de los 34 estados miembros de la OEA, entre los que no están Canadá, EEUU, Guayana, Jamaica, República Dominicana, San Vicente y las Granadinas, y Surinam.

El anuncio del presidente se produce tras llamamientos mexicanos para que EEUU restableciera la prohibición de armas de asalto en su territorio, que se dejó expirar durante el mandato del ex presidente George W. Bush.

Tomando una postura fuerte en la seguridad nacional y civil, Obama ha saludado a Hugo Chávez y ha señalado que piensa tener relaciones más abiertas con Cuba. La secretaria de Estado de Estados Unidos, Hillary Rodham Clinton, pronunció ayer el fracaso fundamental de 5 décadas de política anti-Cuba.

El bloqueo y la desconexión diplomática de la Habana no han resultado ni en la caída del régimen comunista ni en la democratización de la isla. La razón de estado de una amenaza existencial, manifiesta en los misiles del ’62 dejó de existir de ninguna forma hace décadas. La nueva política estadounidense busca vías más pragmáticas para las relaciones con países vecinos.

Obama ha presentado un proyecto de reforma seria en la política extranjera de EEUU, y la Secretaria Clinton ha sido su mejor exponente. Entre los dos, han prometido forjar una diplomacia de “poder inteligente”, elaborando políticas paralelas en diplomacia, defensa y desarrollo. Pensando en el desarrollo como trabajo básico de la diplomacia estadounidense, la perspectiva Obama-Clinton ante el resto del mundo será más inclusivo, pero con posibilidad de conllevar más peso moral.

Obama tiene un alto apoyo en toda Latinoamérica, hasta la fecha, lo cual le da un escenario más amplio y una posibilidad de abrir negociaciones importantes tanto con países aliados como con rivales. Buscando prevenir la radicalización del ambiente político en países como Venezuela y Bolivia, queriendo colaborar en las reformas todavía en proceso para la viabilidad estable de la economía argentina, y buscando la democratización en Cuba, Obama necesita el apoyo de líderes de todos los rangos de la política latinoaméricana.