When will Obama end every day torture??

[truedelphi]

I am pleased as punch that Obama will end torture as perpetuated on those held prisoner as part of the on going war on terrorism.

The actions that he and others in his administration are undertaking in the first 72 hours of his Presidnecy is something I celebrate. I want torture of prisoners ended. I want Gitmo closed.

But what about the rest of the enchilada? The doemstic torture of tens of millions of Americans, some of whom have lived quite well until their recent pink slipping. The stress and untold countles hours of suffering as our economy slips down and down, perhaps to a point worse than the Great Depression.

It is torture to not have a job. It is a torture to live in poverty.

It is also simply torture to see that the thieves and lying liars who turned our economy upside down and are putting so many of us under relentless stress and torture - "Will I lose my house today o rmaybe just maybe can I hold on to next week."

"Will I be able to have grocery money tomorrow?"

"Will I have the gas to make it to the job interview next week?"

President obama's handpicked selection of Geithner, Summers and Rubin does not offer up much hope. These scumbags have a pedigree as onerous as Madoff, but for whatever reason they are being chosen for the Supreme Jobs in the world of our economy.

Just who is Mr Geithner? Timothy Geithner, Obama's tax dodging nominee for Treasury secretary, is the boy wonder president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He comes with none of Summers’s personal baggage, but his sparkling résumé is missing one crucial asset: experience outside academe and government, in the real world of business and finance. His postgraduate finishing school over at Kissinger & Associates doesn’t count.

Summers and Geithner are both protégés of another master of the universe, Robert Rubin.

Who is Rubin and why do I despise so much?

Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities,” reports the Times. “During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.

And Summers? “Rubin, with Mr. Summers,” reports the Times, “helped tear down the regulatory walls between banks, brokerages and insurance companies, and freed them to trade in unregulated and little-understood derivatives worth trillions of dollars.”

What the IMF did to the developping nations of the world is quite possibly on the agenda of this trio in term of their plans for the USA. And why is President Obama so oblivious?

Does Obama not realize that he has only a short window of time in which to act? And he must act correctly.

And does he not understand that once the nation's wealth is totally evaporated into the fiendish schemes of poseurs Geithner, Rubin and Summers, that as a nation we will have runout of the resources with which to grow back the economy. Currently 8.8 trillion dolalrs has been given away - not merely the 700 Billion of the Unconstitutional BailOUt Bill.

[stray cat]

1. Obama wasn't serious when he said he was from another planet sent to save the world

[shintao]

19. Are you sure?

The prophets all tell the same story of one who is coming to save earth from itself. The Mayan calendar is wrapping up time. The final pages of the black book are being carried out in Israel. The time is near for a special person to lead us.

Now drink that fking koolaid like the rest of us!!! :)

[Boomerang Diddle]

2. The economic "torture" we face

is going to take more than Obama signing an executive order to end it. It's going to take time and patience.

[Xenotime]

24. I know people who would say that is unacceptable

time and patience = suffering and death to those without food and shelter.

[JeanGrey]

3. HOW ABOUT MY HEALTHCARE? I am being tortured

every day because I can't afford a lot of stuff for basic healthcare. And I fear that has gone completely away.

[truedelphi]

12. I offer you whatever sympathy I can muster.

We were doing well until early 2005 - medical bankruptcy has seriously impaired this household.

what happens to those needing health care in this country is a travesty. Even those covered by "premium policies" find that there are simply not enough doctors hired by the HMO's to allow for patients to be seen within a four or five week period. And even after waiting, the procedures needed may be denied, etc.

Things really need to change.

[Political Heretic]

4. I don't think the comparison works well at all.

I understand what you are trying to do. And as someone who is bankrupt, living with a friend without a home of my own, and struggling to get by I shouldn't be accused of being out of touch.

But I fear that by equating the American recession and American poverty with torture it runs the risk if trivializing both.

My poverty has been painful and heart wrenching at times. I don't think people realize the scope of the anxiety and heartache that even borderline poverty can create. I remember the first time I was consciously insecure about whether or not someone next to me would think that I smelled bad because I had not had enough money to do laundry or shower with bar soap and as still four days from a bi-monthly paycheck. I also remember what it was like to feel ashamed if you ever did anything with money for any sort of personal joy or relaxation. I remember once when I had gotten some financial assistance from friends when I was in very hard times. And after I had paid my most urgent bills and gotten food I had about five dollars left over. And I was so emotionally worn out from the stress that the thing that sounded so desirable was to just go into a movie store and rent a movie so I could go home and relax for once.

But I remember being so guilty and anxious about going into the video store because what if my friends saw me - would they judge me as lazy or a mooch because I rented a movie? I couldn't think of anything more responsible I should really do with the five dollars I had left over, but I was still so full of stress about how others would judge me. Things like that are all the things that people don't always think about when they think about being poor. And I've been in deeper and more shallow states of poverty over the years. Worse was when I was eating a bottle of bacos for food because it was all I had.....

but having said all that - it was not "torture." And, we also need to be comfortable with the reality that poverty in America is still relative poverty. When we don't appreciate that poverty in America really has to do with social inequality and economic disparity then we tend to kind of trivialize a kind of poverty that many in the world experience that very few (in fact next to none) in America experience. Living on a dollar a month, starving literally to death, these are entirely different experiences. Additionally, torture itself is a unique kind of horror that almost gets trivialized when you equate it with unemployment.

Unemployment is serious and heart wrenching - but I just don't think the particular analogy you are trying to make is very effective.

[blondeatlast]

5. When apples = oranges. I respect the point you are making

but the economy is bad worldwide (my husband is working in the Czech Republic and it's gawdawful there).

It'll take a lot more than the stroke of a pen to fix--and I'm willing to bet he's working on it anyway.

[midnight]

6. What this last gang in the White House engaged in was domestic

economic terrorism...

[leftstreet]

7. Domestic and Global economic terrorism

Sadly

[sandnsea]

8. What will you bitch about when he does

Do you have a prioritized list so that I can check it off as you run out of things to piss and moan about.

[Occam Bandage]

9. Also, my car blew a tire last week. This is clearly torture. Doesn't he understand

the real economic damage that caused working Americans like me?

[Doctor_J]

10. You think he can sign an executive order to end unemployment?

Please place your hopes for change inside a framework of reality. Otherwise you'll be climbing the walls within a week.

[4 t 4]

11. I agree Helen

brought that up today but give him a second this is the start to ending All torture Give him a fucking break it's been just about 48 hours has he not done enough for you- really not enough so far

[truedelphi]

33. He made his decision to have Geithner, Rubin and Summers in places

Of power (with regards to the economy) over six weeks ago. And when he learned this week that Geithner is a total dishonest tax dodger, he should have realized something.

Again, if you took the time to read the whole article, the OP is equally about how awful O's decision is to have the very people that enable the economic ugliness to continue in positions of power than just my expressions about how poverty is torture. But short attention spans being what they are...

[eridani]

17. He could hire economic advisors who did not contrubute to causing our current problems n/t

[sohndrsmith]

13. No. And there is nothing unusual or shocking about that.

There are many forms of injustice and injury that many would consider torture if they had to endure it - or even if they didn't but saw the harm it creates.

To expect anyone to eliminate this is, sadly, I think, unrealistic. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight to do something about these things whenever possible.

I've never been waterboarded, and I hope I never am, but I have experienced things that I could describe in no other way but torturous. Unfortunately, unless there is a specific law that makes something a crime, it doesn't exist for the most part, and the pain it creates, the lives it destroys - have no process to follow to seek recourse or solution, much less a guarantee that it will work (that is never guaranteed).

I wait for the day when certain things are recognized as crimes, because they are... but I'm afraid I may wait a long time. I'm sure there are many people like me who feel this way with a million specific arguments totally different than my own.

I remember when Bush started talking about the War On Terror and I was incredulous... because he was speaking about this undefined, diaphanous thing that has been a problem since the beginning of time and is impossible to eliminate (in my view). I remember getting furious because he seemed to use this label to suit his agenda depending on what objective he happened to have on any particular day.

Torture - if you limit it's definition as what is defined by the UN or Geneva Convention, is illegal and when that is violated, it's a crime. That's my view, anyway.

But there are many, horrific forms of torture that are invisible, and therefore almost impossible to stop.

[truedelphi]

14. My OP doesn't imply that Obama can stop poverty overnight

But rather that he re-consider his placing Geithner, Rubin and Summers in positions of power.

He made these decisions to appoint the trio back around Thanksgiving time. And so he has had over six weeks to reconsider their qualifications.

[BlooInBloo]

15. hahahah! Calling everything that's bad "torture" just so you can call Obama a torturer!

Genius DUers at work again.

[truedelphi]

16. No No No. Please read the whole OP.

What I am saying is pretty much what Krugman is saying in his article here:
http://tinyurl.com/ad5bhw


And it echoes what Scheer said also this week.

I don't expect Obama to end poverty overnight, but if he doesn't avoid the very people who perpetrated this financial crisis - then Lord help us all.

Where in the world is the change? Can Obama speak of change and then offer up the Evil Axis of Economic Undoing - Geithner, Rubin and Summer. You know these are not goo dpeople if the Repugs find them to their liking.

[shintao]

18. I don't see your plight as torture

You maybe a victim of circumstance, but no one is torturing you. Don't leave America for better ground now, because we will make America a better place for all of us.

[truedelphi]

21. It is not my plight I am discussing. It is ours. Please read the WHOLE article.

So do you understand how much 8.8 Trillion dollars is? That although the media relentlessly focuses on the 700 Billion dollar BailOut, that Bailout is only part of the puzzle. Actually 8.8 Trillion has been given over to financial interests to "BailOut" America, since August 2007.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

20. What. The. Fuck?

You are seriously attempting to compare actual torture of human beings by their captors to the current economic problems? Jeeeeeezus. There isn't one damn person in this country who'd trade places with a prisoner at Gitmo.

[truedelphi]

22. There's a book Studs Terkle wrote about the plight of people

During the Great Depresion. read it and weep.

Also "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, Read it and weep.

We are systematically handing over the last few pennies of our nation's wealth. The proverbial spin meisters are not going to examine this in depth. When we have nothing on our store shelves, when every other household has children crying for wont of food, then get back to me.

yes it is apples to oranges - I suppose slowly watching a personal fortune crumble is not as dramatic as being hung over steel bars for hours on end and then being waterboarded, but the experience of facing homelessness, lack of food, medication, utilties cut off, is not much fun. If you have to face it someday, you will not like it.

[NeedleCast]

23. There is no magic wand

laying this on Obama's shoulders is unresaonable and naive.

[truedelphi]

26. Again, are you someone who read through the entire article?

Obama was elected early November.

By Thanksgiving, he already had selected Geithner, Rubin and Summers.

By now, Obama should have reconsidered those choices. Especially after this week when it was revealed that Geithner considers himself above the law, in terms of his paying lawfully owed taxes.

I want a President who understands the economy at least as well as Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibi. And I'd be even happier if his level of understanding approached that of Kucinich, Maxine Waters and Issa.

[ananda]

25. The economic stuff is part of the Shock Doctrine.

The object has been to manipulate the economy
so that workers will accept anything, tolerate
anything, and do anything and .. be grateful for it.

It's working.

[truedelphi]

29. It really truly is. n/t

[treestar]

27. Using the word "torture" as a metaphor does not turn the acts

suffered into real torture.

No POTUS has the power to solve everything with an executive order. The Guantanamo and other torture was real, not just a metaphor.

[truedelphi]

28. Did I say in my post that the torture inflicted on those at Gitmo

Was not real?

I am someone who actually would take a half hour out of my life each and every day for like eighteen months to pray and meditate for those who were in that hellhole. If you want proof of this, go to google, and google my userid. "democracticunderground.com" and Guantanamo to see how many times I posted my horror over the American Gulag.

But I am numb when I pick up the paper and find out that an older couple froze to death in their car because they lost their house and didn't want to trouble their relatives. What were their lives like in the last 72 hours of life? When I visit my local shopping mall to do banking and find yet another three storefronts empty, from just one month previous. Then I reflect on the perilous lives that the storeowners are now facing.

Try to go without food for two days, not just for a few hours, but for a few days, and see how un-torturous it is. Try to think of whom you would call upon for monetary help. If you would be able to face the humiliation of calling on those who might help, if you needed
$ 1,500 to save your butt from eviction. And maybe you would be willing to live in your car, but someone with kids is not going to be able to do that.

The lives of those pushed close to the brink are not pleasant ones.

I am sorry if you and others do not get it.

[treestar]

31. No, but poverty isn't torture

Not be strict definition. Only metaphorically. And the POTUS can't eliminate it by executive order like he can with the actions of the military/CIA, etc.

[truedelphi]

32. POTUS may not be able to eliminate poverty through

one stroke of a fountain pen, but he damn well can ensure that that poverty spreads and spreads by putting crooks in the places of power.

Lately speakers who have come on Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann to talk about the economy have mentioned how maybe with this current economic collapse, one good thing might be that work will again be valued.

That just maybe the notion that big monied capitalism will fall by the wayside, and that finally those who work will be able to see the rewards that they should (When Freida Harrup explains that one CEO for a major HMO has a paycheck equaling the salaries of 3200 employees at one of the HMO's hospitals, you know that our current economic system has really gone bonkers.)

But Geithner, Summers and Rubin will ensure that workers are not given a boost - they will ensure just the opposite.

[bobbolink]

30. Yes, we do seem to ignore poverty, eh? I wish many here could live in my shoes...

live in my car, be sick in the snow, be gossiped about and dealt with suspicion and derision.

I doubt that many here could handle it, but so many are blase'..... it just doesn't register.

How many of these "Priority" lists of what should be done EVER include housing everyone in the USA???