{"id":10346,"date":"2013-05-24T03:18:39","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T10:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10346"},"modified":"2013-05-24T03:18:39","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T10:18:39","slug":"a-breath-of-fresh-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/24\/a-breath-of-fresh-air\/","title":{"rendered":"A Breath of Fresh Air"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: auto; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"24OSpeech\" border=\"0\" alt=\"24OSpeech\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/24OSpeech.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"391\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Photo credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/what-obamas-speech-means-for-guantanamo-20130523\" target=\"_blank\">Rolling Stone<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">My expectations for Barack Obama\u2019s speech yesterday were guarded at best, given the deficits in his transparency to date.&#160; I was pleasantly surprised.&#160; To begin, here is the complete video of the speech, or, if you prefer, <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.com\/html\/politics\/2021041809_apusobamatext.html\" target=\"_blank\">the complete text of the speech is here<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fEnUbwXAof0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">On the use of drones, I mostly agree with him.&#160; While innocent people have been killed in drone strikes, the odds are very high that more innocent people would be killed in a strike with conventional bombs or a ground attack by infantry.&#160; I support requiring a court to authorize drone strikes.&#160; I also support transferring control of drone operations from the CIA to the military.&#160; Frankly, the CIA spends far too much effort in field operations.&#160; The more of their resources they spend on operations, the less effective they have become at their main purpose, intelligence gathering.&#160; That puts us all at greater risk.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">On Guantanamo Bay, I think these steps are all he can do without Congress.&#160; The prison there would have been closed years ago, had Congress not intervened to prevent it.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Chris Hayes discussed the speech with Keith Ellison (D-MN).<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><object width=\"592\" height=\"346\" id=\"msnbc94f153\" classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" target=\"_blank\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=10,0,0,0\"><param name=\"movie\" target=\"_blank\" value=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" \/><param name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"launch=51985144^0^720254&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><embed name=\"msnbc94f153\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" width=\"592\" height=\"346\" FlashVars=\"launch=51985144^0^720254&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" wmode=\"transparent\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" pluginspage=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/shockwave\/download\/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\"><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; margin-top: 5px; width: 592px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; color: #999; font-size: 11px\">Visit NBCNews.com for <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\" target=\"_blank\">breaking news<\/a>, <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032507\" target=\"_blank\">world news<\/a>, and <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032072\" target=\"_blank\">news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I particularly liked Obama&#8217;s willingness to give back power. I do not remember seeing any other President do so.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I found Medea Benjamin from Code Pink both rude and offensive.&#160; Her tactics were worthy of the Republican Party.&#160; She used a technique called <em>piling on<\/em> or <em>dump trucking<\/em>.&#160; It involves evading honest communication with a barrage of so many different complaints and accusations that the other person cab not reasonably answer all at once.&#160; I am very familiar with it, because it is one of the \u2018criminal thinking errors\u2019 that I teach prisoners to recognize and avoid using.&#160; I have never seen a President stop to give a protester an opportunity to have an honest dialogue in the middle of a major speech.&#160;&#160; She blew it! She was not interested in that, and that is a shame.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">All things considered, I thought it was one of Obama\u2019s most effective speeches ever.&#160; How those ideas are transformed to action remains to be seen.&#160; Of one thing we can be sure.&#160; The Republican Party will do everything possible to sabotage his efforts.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo credit: Rolling Stone My expectations for Barack Obama\u2019s speech yesterday were guarded at best, given the deficits in his transparency to date.&#160; I was pleasantly surprised.&#160; To begin, here is the complete video of the speech, or, if you prefer, the complete text of the speech is here. On the use of drones, I <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/24\/a-breath-of-fresh-air\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-politics","category-19-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}