Glenn Greenwald discusses how the doctrine that the president is unconstrained by either the Constitution or the Congress is being advanced even more vigorously, that “the Obama administration is arrogating unto the President the unilateral, unrestrained right to start wars in all circumstances, whether or not the U.S. is attacked.” And Obama’s defenders are using the same arguments they criticized when Bush’s defenders used them when he similarly ignored the constitution.

Greenwald adds:

Then there’s the notion that Presidents in the past have started similar wars without Congressional approval. That’s certainly true, but so what? The fact that an act is commonplace isn’t a defense or justification. That “defense” was also a common refrain of Bush followers to justify their leader’s chronic unconstitutional acts and other forms of law-breaking: Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and FDR interned Japanese-Americans, so why are you upset that Bush is acting outside the law? The pervasiveness of this form of thought underscores the dangers of learned acquiescence: once a government engages long enough or pervasively enough in a certain form of criminality or corruption, the citizenry is trained to accept it and collectively ceases to resist it, even learns to embrace it. What Obama is doing in Libya is either lawful or it isn’t on its own terms; whether other Presidents in the past have acted similarly (and they have) is irrelevant.
…
One’s views on the desirability of the Libya war have absolutely nothing to do with whether Obama has acted legally and/or whether his theories of presidential power are valid. This, too, should have been decisively settled during the Bush years, when Bush followers invariably argued that Bush was justified in eavesdropping without warrants or torturing because of the good outcomes it produced (Keeping Us Safe) — as though Presidents have the power to violate laws or transgress Constitutional limits provided they can prove that doing so produces good results. The one and only safeguard against tyranny is that political leaders are subjected to the constraints of the Constitution and law (we’re a nation of laws or a nation of men, said Adams: you must choose). To argue that you’re supportive of or indifferent to lawless acts because of the good results they produce is simply another way of yearning for a benevolent tyrant (and is another way of replicating the mindset of the Bush follower).

Ayn Rand is a current favorite among the oligarchy and its serf-like tea party followers since she saw successful people as achieving things entirely on their own with no help from others or society, opposed all taxes as stealing by the government, called for the elimination of all government redistributive efforts, and attacked as weak those who need governments and others to help them in times of need. She called them ‘looters’ and ‘moochers’. The Randians are at the forefront of cutting government programs that do not benefit the oligarchy.

But a recent report reveals that Rand herself was a hypocrite. When she became ill with lung cancer late in life, she applied for and obtained social security and Medicare benefits under a different name name. It should not be surprising that she was a hypocrite and sought out government help when she needed it. They are all like that. Look at the way Wall Street rushed to the government for assistance when the financial system tanked. They only oppose government helping those who are not part of the oligarchy.

I have read only one of Rand’s books, The Fountainhead. I am aware that her magnum opus is Atlas Shrugged and it forms the basis for the Galtian fantasies of the oligarchy, but The Fountainhead was such an awful book that I have little stomach to read any other work by her, especially since they are so long. It was not only the politics of the book that I found objectionable but mainly her writing style which consists of characters who have no depth and are merely types, existing mainly to take positions and make speeches that advance her philosophy. Subtlety is not her strong suit.

We are witnessing the inevitable mission creep in Libya.

The original stated goal was to create a no-fly zone supposedly to prevent the Libyan government using their air power to attack innocent civilians. That quickly changed into destroying the Libyan air forces even while they were on the ground. Then the US-led NATO air attacks started targeting those Libyan forces that were fighting rebel forces and threatening to push them back. Then the air attacks started hitting those Libyan forces that were away from the fighting, even those in their barracks.

Now the air attacks are supposedly targeting munitions stores. We are also told that CIA operatives have been in Libya for several weeks already meeting with rebel forces and that Obama has authorized covert support for Libyan rebels, which likely means including supplying arms. This escalation in involvement has happened remarkably rapidly.

So what is going on? Obama says that Gaddafi must go but that regime change is not part of the mission. Taken at face value, what we seem to be seeing is the US acting as the de facto air force of the Libyan rebels, and slowly increasing its contribution to the war effort to balance ay success by Gaddafi’s forces. In other words, the goal seems to be to create either a stalemate or marginally tilt the balance in favor of the rebels.

What is the point of this? After all, a protracted civil war causes immense pain for ordinary people and results in the destruction of a country’s infrastructure, causing long term hardships.

And what if Gaddafi stays in power and his forces can withstand the current NATO campaign? The US is far too deep into the conflict now to allow that to happen. So expect to see the next stage of ratcheting up, with bombings of supposedly military targets in cities as a sign to the Libyan people who still support him that his government is incapable of protecting them and thus pressuring them into rising up against him and join the rebel forces. Then we will begin to receive the inevitable reports of a hospital or a school or a mosque or marketplace being hit, resulting in civilian casualties, which will of course be regretted as unfortunate ‘collateral damage’.

So we will end up with civilians killed, the very thing that the US action was supposed to prevent. No doubt the dead and their families will be pleased that they were killed by a ‘humanitarian’ military force rather than by their own government.

And that will set the stage for the final step, sending in US troops or surrogates from other countries or mercenaries.

Russian Television tallies the real cost of America’s many wars.

The Daily Show points out that even paying no taxes at all is not enough for the oligarchy.

Stephen Colbert reports on the attacks on working people by state governments. The state governments want to roll back all the benefits and protections that labor unions have given us, and allow employers to have unfettered power over their employees. Collective bargaining has been the way that individuals who have no economic or political clout could gain some bargaining power.

Michael Moore on The Colbert Report points out that just 400 people in America have more wealth than 150 million. And that is still not enough for them. They want to have as much as 250 million and are aided in their greed by the federal and state governments that they have bought, and the dupes amongst the tea party crowd who have no idea that they are being used as fodder for the further enrichment of the oligarchy and will be tossed aside as soon as they have served their purpose.

The country has long been engaged in a one-sided class war that has been waged by the oligarchy on the rest of us. Now people are beginning to fight back as the nakedness of the greed and power grab becomes apparent.

Paul Krugman is a politically savvy man so it surprises me that even he thinks that the reason that the Republicans and the oligarchy are getting their own way so easily on fiscal issues is because Obama is a lousy negotiator.

As I have said over and over again, the Democrats negotiating strategy is to betray the middle and working classes that support them and give the oligarchy as much as they can while acting as if they were forced into it or were outmaneuvered. Since even people like Krugman and other liberal commentators seem to have bought it, it means that they have succeeded.

The Democrats behavior is perfectly understandable if you bear this simple rule in mind: When it comes to any policy that the Democrats say they espouse but which hurts the interests of the oligarchy, the Democrats do not want a strategy that will win, they seek one that will lose.