Why won't the Obama say that polar bears are endangered and thus make it possible to use the Endangered Species Act to deal with global warming?

"U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan sent the [Bush administration's] controversial listing decision back to the Obama administration in October, asking officials to clarify the language the agency used when it determined that polar bears aren’t 'endangered' under federal law. Environmentalists ... had hoped that Obama administration officials would ... protections to the species."

I'm guessing that wasn't changed because polar bears aren't endangered and because using the Endangered Species Act to fight global warming is a bad idea.

Why is Obama's plan to close Guantanamo "in shambles"?

David Remes, lawyer for 14 detainees, says:

“From the outside it appears to be in shambles because he was never sufficiently committed to the success of his own plan and, as a result, Republicans were able to mobilize to turn the issue against him and he provided the Congressional Democrats no leadership.”

I'm guessing it's in shambles because Obama faced the reality that closing Guantanamo is a bad idea.

“Obama Twists Own Arm, Says ‘Uncle’ to Extending Bush Tax Cuts.”

A lefty blogger response.

A lawprof puts it more haughtily...

"Obama caving on the high income tax-cut issue guarantees that he will attract an intra-party opponent from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party... The White House misreads the mood of the country. Tea partiers do not reflect that mood. Independents and Democrats disenchanted with Obama’s lack of conviction do."

... and more delusionally.

Bush: "I had to endorse [McCain]. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me."

I get it.

I totally get it.

Drudge juxtaposes the Presidents.

What feelings are stirred?

Obama is like Bush.

Lets his dog walk him.

The Obama-Hope-End-War sign is already tattered...

... and yet still the wars go on.

Obama, what have you done to the hope of the hopeful folk who sewed banners with your face inside a heart? I am not one of them. In fact, I'm making a list of Things I Like About Obama:

1. By continuing to fight the wars that George Bush started, he has crushed the hope of the people who bought into the campaign abstraction "hope."

2. By putting his name on many of the policies that George Bush was condemned for adopting, he has rehabilitated the reputation of George Bush .

3. ...

Is President Obama the victim of "the stubborn complexity of his national security inheritance"?

That's Scott Shane's angle in the NYT:

For much of President Obama’s first year in office, his national security team worked to devise a secure plan to send dozens of Yemeni detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the largest single group at the prison camp — home to Yemen, perhaps to a rehabilitation program....

Since November, the administration had been preparing to move the highest-profile Guantánamo prisoners — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four accomplices accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — to Manhattan for a federal criminal trial.

It seems to me that the President is the victim of his own ideas about how to do things differently. If he had graciously accepted the inheritance left by George Bush, he wouldn't have had either of these problems. He squandered an inheritance that he failed to value!

Bush — despite his reputation for simplicity — did understand the complexity of the problem, and he had a solution. There was stability. After posturing about "change" in his political campaign, Barack Obama seemed to think that he could apply the immense power he had won to changing things in the real world. And there is no blaming Bush for failing to know the difference between what sounds good and what works well.

George Bush — the extreme contrast to Barack Obama — knew that he was doing a lot of things that didn't sound good and left him open to harsh criticism, but he made a decision early on to accept that and to do what he thought was right. He didn't get enough credit for that. Maybe he will some day. But he also avoided the torrent of justified criticism that would have fallen on him if there had been further terrorist attacks.

Fortunately, there is a limit to how far Obama will go in his dream world of "hope and change." I voted for Obama, but the Obama I voted for was Obama the Pragmatist. I'm glad to see OTP finally emerging, even if part of his pragmatism is blaming Bush. But he will throw that aside if it doesn't work, which it shouldn't. For now, I'm glad he's making some better decisions... even as those freed detainees roam around Yemen.

ADDED: Click and scroll here for all my "Obama the Pragmatist" posts. Like, remember in August 2008 when Joe Biden assured us that Obama "is a clear-eyed pragmatist who will get the job done"? And then there was the time I said:

Forced to choose between Clinton and Obama [in the Wisconsin primary], I voted for Obama — even though he stated positions that were farther from what I want than Clinton's — because I thought he had more mental flexibility and pragmatism, that he was more likely absorb and process evidence and advice and exercise sound judgment.

"[P]eople ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president..."

What Howard Zinn wrote, just before he died, when asked by The Nation to cite the "high point" and the "sharpest moment of disappointment" in the first year of Barack Obama's presidency:

I've been searching hard for a highlight. The only thing that comes close is some of Obama's rhetoric; I don't see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies.

As far as disappointments, I wasn't terribly disappointed because I didn't expect that much. I expected him to be a traditional Democratic president. On foreign policy, that's hardly any different from a Republican--as nationalist, expansionist, imperial and warlike. So in that sense, there's no expectation and no disappointment. On domestic policy, traditionally Democratic presidents are more reformist, closer to the labor movement, more willing to pass legislation on behalf of ordinary people--and that's been true of Obama. But Democratic reforms have also been limited, cautious. Obama's no exception. On healthcare, for example, he starts out with a compromise, and when you start out with a compromise, you end with a compromise of a compromise, which is where we are now.

I thought that in the area of constitutional rights he would be better than he has been. That's the greatest disappointment, because Obama went to Harvard Law School and is presumably dedicated to constitutional rights. But he becomes president, and he's not making any significant step away from Bush policies. Sure, he keeps talking about closing Guantánamo, but he still treats the prisoners there as "suspected terrorists." They have not been tried and have not been found guilty. So when Obama proposes taking people out of Guantánamo and putting them into other prisons, he's not advancing the cause of constitutional rights very far. And then he's gone into court arguing for preventive detention, and he's continued the policy of sending suspects to countries where they very well may be tortured.

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president--unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

I agree that a mediocre President is dangerous. But if a non-mediocre Obama would go in the direction Howard Zinn wanted to push, I prefer a mediocre Obama.

"The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba..."

"... because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday."

Ha.

IN THE COMMENTS: Kent said:

Quick! Somebody help me construct a giant papier-mache Obama head, STAT!

"Obama... is having a Harriet Miers moment. Or, rather, he's having a George W. Bush moment."

"When Bush nominated the in-over-her-head Miers to the Supreme Court, his fan base turned on him. As one ardent Bush supporter told me at the time: 'It was in that moment that I realized he really might not know what he's doing.' And so things seem to have turned for Obama. Left-leaning Democrats suddenly are wondering: Who is this guy? What happened to the liberal dream-maker... ?"

The tragic narrative arc of Barack Obama: The world built him up, and the world is tearing him back down.

44% of Americans would prefer to have George Bush back as President.

Bush's numbers were low, but compared to what? Putting Obama next to Bush, 44% of us pick Bush. You miss him now that he's gone, huh, America? You kicked him when you had him, and now...

I got that link via Meade. Remember Meade, talking to Texans?

When we got up to leave, Meade leaned over to the man and said: "When you go back home, say hi to my favorite Texan."

"Who?"

"George W.!"

You should have seen the man's reaction. It was as if someone had suddenly sprayed water in his face.

These days they long for that cooling spray of water to the face.

Obama would like you to see government as religion.

He addresses a group of religious leaders:

“I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness,” Mr. Obama told a multidenominational group of pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders who support his goal to remake the nation’s health care system.

Bearing false witness? Breaking the 9th Commandment? So his opponents are sinners. I'm trying to imagine the separation-of-church-and-state freakout if George Bush had taken this approach to arguing for one of his policies.
According to the lede paragraph in the linked NYT article:

President Obama sought Wednesday to reframe the health care debate as “a core ethical and moral obligation,” imploring a coalition of religious leaders to help promote the plan to lower costs and expand insurance coverage for all Americans.

Strangely, the context of that quote — "a core ethical and moral obligation" — is missing from the body of the article. Was something cut? Was it too embarrassing? Too Bush-y? I have to go elsewhere:

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: OK, for some, that public option has gone over like a lead balloon. So how about plan B, morality? Is that the secret weapon strategy to get health care reform? President Obama went on a conference call today with thousands of religious people, arguing health care reform is a moral issue. The president also argued against what he calls "ludicrous lies" made up about his health plan.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation. That is that we look out for one other, that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper. And in the wealthiest nation on earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.

Now, we know that Barack Obama doesn't "keep" his actual brother — we remember George Hussein Onyango Obama, the brother who lives a hut — and it's clear that what he means is that government has the moral obligation to regard all citizens as brothers and sisters — I'm coining the word sibizens — and to care for them.

I'd really like to find the full text of what was — if I'm to believe Van Susteren — a big telephone call. It's not on the White House website. There's a bit more here (at ABC):

Mr. Obama called on the religious leaders to help him share the good word about health care reform and set the record straight.

“I need you to knock on doors, talk to your neighbors. I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth,” he said.

Sharing the "good word"? Good Lord! Is this the Gospel? Mark 16:

Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.

He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

Obama says believe. Believe or be condemned as sinners. And go forth into the world. Preach the good news. Speak the truth.

"And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

Talk about the blue pill! Just wait until the government lays its hands on you. In Barack's name, you will get well.

Government as religion — it's a poisonous notion! But drink it, drink it. Believe! It will not hurt you at all!

ADDED:

"We are God's partners in matters of life and death," Obama said, according to [Rabbi Jack] Moline (paging Sarah Palin...), quoting from the Rosh Hashanah prayer that says that in the holiday period, it is decided "who shall live and who shall die."

"Remember how Bush was supposed to be the idiot who went into Iraq without a plan, while Obama was supposed to be the cool methodical one?"

"But Reich is admitting that despite all the Administration hoopla, there’s still no plan. Or, possibly, that the White House has a plan, but won’t tell us what it is. And yet the people who don’t want to see a bill — some bill, doing who-knows-what — rammed through in the dead of night are somehow the ones who are ignorant and being manipulated. Right."

***

So I've got to use my "Obama is like Bush tag" again. And since it's a secret plan, I'm going to whip out the less-used "Obama is like Nixon."

Mickey Kaus thinks Obama is "not cynical enough... doesn't know enough... [and is] too much like Bush."

The quotes are Jac's paraphrase of Mickey. And, also per Jac, Kaus makes "a soul-baring confession."

About that poster of Obama as the Joker.

A lot of folks are outraged and there's the predictable crying of racism.

But — as Drudge points out — Vanity Fair did exactly the same thing to the image of George Bush a year ago.

"4 out of 5 of the people who disapprove of Obama, strongly disapprove. Did even GWB ever have such skewed disapproval numbers?"

Incredible that Obama's "strongly disapprove" number has hit 40%.

I'd say this is the phenomenon usually identified by the phrase you either love him or you hate him. So Obama is becoming one of those characters that people don't feel lukewarm about. Another way of putting that is: He's polarizing.

And yet Obama was going to bring us together.

Hey, remember Vicki Lynn Cole?

"They’re saying, 'We just don’t trust you guys.' It's the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president."

Somehow Obama can't create agreement in the fight against "climate change" (formerly known as "global warming").

"Barack Obama forgot how he met Michelle, his wife, his guiding star! You’ve only been married to the woman since 1992, Barack. Jesus Lord."

"And last year he forgot to get her a wedding anniversary present, so he swung by Radio Shack after work and picked up a lousy DVD box set. Ugh, the DVD box set is for the twentieth anniversary!"

Wonkette, under the heading "At Least Mark Sanford Doesn’t Pretend To Love His Wife" and linking to Swampland, which says:

... Obama took the microphone in Moscow, and... made the following joke. "To the entire Class of 2009, congratulations to you. I don't know if anybody else will meet their future wife or husband in class like I did, but I'm sure that you're all going to have wonderful careers," Obama said. It's one thing for a Russian host to get the facts wrong. It was a bit more jarring when the president got them wrong, with Michelle sitting in the audience no less. The couple did not meet in class.

In Obama's defense, sleep is a scant commodity on these foreign trips, increasing the risk of verbal slip ups. And at several points in the Moscow speech, Obama seemed a bit off his game, repeatedly misspeaking words off the teleprompter. Last night, according to the pool report, Obama got back to his hotel at 12:15 p.m. local time, ending a long day with a long dinner at the home of Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and his wife. Earlier on Monday, Obama had taken an unexplained 40 minute break from his schedule to visit his hotel, delaying the start of the afternoon press conference.

Aw, a President needs sleep too. And a good afternoon nap can help prepare for a possible 3 a.m. phone call. As for misspeaking, perhaps he has a strategery.

"Agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees cannot be charged or released."

After promising to close Guantanamo, Obama is facing reality:

On the day Obama took office, 242 men were imprisoned at Guantanamo. In his May speech, the president outlined five strategies the administration would use to deal with them: criminal trials, revamped military tribunals, transfers to other countries, releases and continued detention.

Since the inauguration, 11 detainees have been released or transferred, one prisoner committed suicide, and one was moved to New York to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Administration officials said the cases of about half of the remaining 229 detainees have been reviewed for prosecution or release. Two officials involved in a Justice Department review of possible prosecutions said the administration is strongly considering criminal charges in federal court for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and three other detainees accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The other half of the cases, the officials said, present the greatest difficulty because these detainees cannot be prosecuted in federal court or military commissions. In many cases the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services or has been tainted by the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Be like Bush. But blame Bush. The magic formula.

Or is it necessary to add the showy fillip of closing Guantanamo?

Under one White House draft that was being discussed this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system....

But some senior Democrats see long-term detention as tantamount to reestablishing the Guantanamo system on U.S. soil. "I think this could be a very big mistake, because of how such a system could be perceived throughout the world," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) told Holder.

See? It's not even different enough to count for anything. And — presto — the foundation is laid for keeping Guantanamo open.

(Remember, I made a bet with Emily Bazelon, and I'm going to win.)