Bush/Obama Derangement Sydrome

I've been running into a lot of Obama Derangement Syndrome recently. In fact, it's why I started blogging. The right, who coined the term Bush Derangement Sydrome in response to the Left's irrational paranoia that George W. Bush was going to turn the country into a Nazi State, has had an equally ridiculous reaction to Barack H. Obama, which has been consequently similarily named Obama Derangement Syndrome. Read my last post's comments and you'll see exactly what I mean.

But let's look at Bush Derangement syndrome first. According to Wikipedia's entry on it, Bush Derangement Syndrome was coined by the conservative political columnist and pyschiatrist Charles Krausthhammer in 2003. He defined it as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush". The entry further says that some extreme criticisms of President Bush are of emotional origins rather than based on facts or logic, which is exactly what I'm seeing in many of those that find fault no matter what Obama does. That is irrational and paranoid.

Just as Bush didn't turn this State into a Republican paradise with the government's cameras in everybody's bedrooms, neither will Obama turn us into some socialistic State where the rich aren't anymore and the poor are now the middle class.

People, calm down.

Distrust of the Federal Government

The Distrust of the Federal Government, a cause currently being championed by the right, has begun reaching critical mass. With the tea parties, 9/12 marches, and bloggers blaming all the worlds' ills on the Federal Government in general, and Obama specifically, something was bound to happen.

And happen it did, with the murder of Bill Sparkman, a Federal Census Bureau field worker, who was found strung up in a remote section of the National Forest in Kentucky, with the word "Fed" written on his chest.

Currently, people like Glen Beck are trying to fan the revolutionary flames, with his quoting of obscure provisions of the US Constitution, mis-interpreting what the founding fathers intended in States vs. Federal power, taking portions of our history and lamenting a golden age and laws that were in actuality not about States rights, but about continuing slavery indefinately. The founding fathers disagreed amongst themselves whether power should be centralized in the Federal Government or in the States, and they never specified which. We decided to mix them when we went to war with the South, prohibiting them from secession in order to keep the Union strong, which is why we won World Wars I and II, not to mention the Cold War. We wouldn't have been able to win any of them had we been a fractured nation of State-Countries with nothing more than a Federal Mail service for the president to preside over.

I only forsee more of this in the current political climate. While the anti-government sentiment is currently being sown by the Republican Right, it wasn't too long ago it was the Democratic Left when Bush was in office. Both sides are guilty, and both sides forget their own atrocities when the other is in office. The PATRIOT act, Gtmo, wiretapping, and extraordinary rendition are quickly forgotten by the right, while the left forgets it was Clinton who repealed Glass-Steagall, and it is them that currently is printing trillions of dollars to stop a recession and reinflate the bubble that burst last year.

This has got to stop. The Federal Government, for the most part, does what it is supposed to do. Looks out for the common good. It overreaches at times, and that's why we have checks and balances. But labelling someone as treasonous because they support one party or another is ridiculous, and it needs to stop. Otherwise, more people are going to get strung up on trees.

Obama: What good IS diplomacy?

I was never a fan of Bush's foreign policy ("yeehaw!")...

But Obama is doing nothing about North Korea's test launch, then nuclear test.

We should have blown the test missile out the sky. We wouldn't have to invade, like Bush, but Obama, you should have shown them that we won't allow them to become proficient with long-range weapons.

Waiting on the UN or NATO? Not gonna happen. They've all but abandoned us in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900828,00.html

"The international community struck the usual poses that follow North Korea's periodic outrages. Obama said in a statement that the test would "serve to deepen North Korea's isolation." South Korea called for an "emergency meeting" of the United Nation Security Council (a wish that was granted, with a meeting schedule for later on Monday). The Japanese government said it would "not tolerate" such actions. Russia expressed its "concern." Even the Chinese, North Korea's alleged ally, said they were "firmly opposed" to the test.

None of that offered much hope for change. North Korea is already the world's most isolated country. The only thing that would meaningfully "deepen" that isolation would be for China to shut down trade entirely across its border — something Beijing has never given any indication that it's prepared to do. The idea that Kim Jong Il's regime even cares if its isolation "deepens" is dubious at best. As for the U.N., it met in emergency session just after the long-range missile launch in April, and gently tightened sanctions that were already having no demonstrable effect on North Korea's behavior on key security issues. Will another "emergency session" really produce painful sanctions that could conceivably make a difference? That, after all, is presumably what Tokyo has in mind when it talks about "not tolerating" the North's behavior. 

For a hint as to how effective the U.N. might be, talk to the Russians. Moscow is "concerned" — not outraged — by today's test. Don't expect much, in other words, from the Security Council, even if the test is as direct a violation as possible of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, which calls on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program. The Chinese, like Obama, desperately want the North Koreans to return to the negotiating table in Beijing, where the so-called six party talks were held during the Bush years. But Beijing may be coming to the reluctant conclusion, if they haven't already, that North Korea means what it says: it intends to be a state armed with nuclear weapons, whether the rest of the world likes it or not."

And that is unacceptable. 

Obama, please step it up. You don't have to be a cowboy, but you do need to do more than talk.

1942 = 2003

In 1942, on February 19th, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which declared that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps. Over 110,000 Japanese immigrants and their US Citizen children were put in housing facilities called "War Relocation Camps" in response to Japan attacking the US at Pearl Harbor. 62% were American Citizens.

Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526 and 2527 were issued designating Japanese, German and Italian nationals as enemy aliens.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the internment of Japanese Americans. Refuting General DeWitt's reports of disloyalty on the part of Japanese Americans, Hoover sent a memo to Attorney General Francis Biddle in which he wrote about Japanese American disloyalty, "Every complaint in this regard has been investigated, but in no case has any information been obtained which would substantiate the allegation."

Ignoring this, Roosevelt used "military necessity" as justification, because of the threat that Japanese spies could be present and no one would know because they could blend in with those of Japanese descent.

Those in support of this policy argued that nothing like Pearl Harbor happened again. The Japanese were not able to attack any US targets afterwards, and thus these policies "kept America safe" from the Japanese threat.

Years later, in 1988, Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation stated that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."

In 2003, President George W. Bush, with the help of legal memorandum drafted by John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, assistant attorney general and legal counsel to George W. Bush, authorized the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspects and "enemy combatants." Other memos authorized the President to disregard much of the US Constitution and its amendments in his "war on terror" after terrorists attacked New York City and blew up the World Trade Center. These memos even authorized the suspension of civil liberties, including warrants, search and seizure, wiretaps, free speech, habeas corpus, the right to a trial, cruel and unusual punishment, and others, for US Citizens if suspected of terrorism.

On November 13, 2001, President Bush issued a Presidential Military Order: "Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism."

In 2006, Congress upheld that the President could deny habeas corpus to those held as suspects of terrorism, under the Military Commissions Act.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush, that the Military Commissions Act could not remove the right for Guantanamo captives to access the US Federal Court system.

Supporters of Bush, the John Yoo/Bybee memos, and the policy of waterboarding, argue that military necessity is justification enough to violate the human rights of prisoners accused or suspected of terrorism. They argue that nothing like 9/11 has happened since, and that these policies "kept America safe" from the terrorist threat.

In 2009, President Barack Obama signed an executive order shutting down Guantanamo Bay and granting detainees access to the Justice system. Among other words, this was lauded as progress to reverse government policies based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."