Audacity To HopeChange We Can Believe In
Rule of Law
Accountability
Freedom From Lobbyists and Special Interests
Privacy
Harm From Illegal Surveillance
Constitutional Scholar
Transparency
Predatory Business Practices
Closing Guantanamo
Withdrawing From Iraq and Afghanistan
These are but some of the major buzzwords, issues and concepts Barack Obama based his candidacy and campaign on to convince the American electorate to sweep him in to office. Mr. Obama, however, has gone significantly in the opposite direction on each and every one since taking office. As Frank Rich noted, there is a growing "suspicion that Obama's brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger's public image — a marketing scam…".
President Obama delivered on his promise that there would be a dramatic increase in escalation of the aerial bombardment of Pakistan. In fact, we launched 44 distinct drone strikes in Pakistan in 2009, and killed around 700 according to one estimate, have been innocent civilians! For example:
On June 22, the US struck at a house officials called a "suspected militant hideout," burying a few locals inside. When others rushed to the scene to rescue them, they launched another missile, killing 13 apparently innocent Pakistanis. When they held a funeral procession on June 23, the US hit that too, ostensibly on the belief that Baitullah Mehsud might be among the mourners. He wasn't, but the attack killed at least 80 more people.
Go USA! Thank you, Hopey. I'm sure this will win even more hearts and minds than we've already won in the other parts of the world we're murdering people.
And thanks also for blocking any independent investigation and prosecution of torture under the Bushies, because it just reinforces the idea that torture isn't a freaking crime. Case in point:
A new Rasmussen poll reveals that 58% of people polled would like to see Flight 253 bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tortured for information. It is not just an indictment of our values but another byproduct of President Obama's blocking of any independent investigation and prosecution of torture under the Bush Administration. By protecting Bush officials, Obama is reinforcing their argument that such measures are merely controversial and not crimes.
What is astonishing is that this poll occurred virtually as people were leaving for churches and synagogues to celebrate the holidays. I guess that walking on water thing was just a prelude to waterboarding the Pharisees.
For the full story, click here.
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More strange and bizarre animals.
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A Colorado Department of Transportation employee is under investigation for e-mailing this image of President Obama polishing former lawmaker Sarah Palin's shoes.
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"You must pay first, please."
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The Bush economy
The Bush Administration culminated the Chicago School/Reaganomics era. How well did it work?
The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers. The decade began in a moment of triumphalism -- there was a current of thought among economists in 1999 that recessions were a thing of the past. By the end, there were two, bookends to a debt-driven expansion that was neither robust nor sustainable.
There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.
Adjusted for inflation, middle-income households made less at the end of the decade than at the beginning. Median incomes fell for the first time since records began to be kept, in the 1960s. Adjusted for inflation, the net worth of American households fell for the first time since records began to be kept in the 1950s.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/014668.php
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A God delusion video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klpjjFf9fL8&feature=player_embedded
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Mark Morford: Dear 2010; be not like 2009
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Was Preznit McCain not available? The first Sunday of the new year is upon us, and the bobblehead lineup is pretty heavy with pants-pissing republican fearmongers following the failed attempt by the Underpants Bomber. Hoekstra will be on This Week. He has been shrieking that we may as well surrender to the terrorists since the President doesn't scream "War on Terra!!1!!!" enough. We wonder if anyone will remind him that in May of 2008 he said "the phrase 'war on terror' was the 'dumbest term...you could use'"? Likewise, Jim DeMint will be on State of the Union. Will guest host Gloria Borger grill him about his votes against funding for homeland security measures and his hold on the nominee to head the TSA. (Don't answer that. We know that the cocktail-weenie-waggers would never dream of making their guests uncomfortable by asking impertinent questions about their actual voting records and public pronouncements. Christ, it isn't as if they're Democrats, you know.
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Yglesias: Why the budget will never be balanced
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We have in this country one political party that doesn't care at all about the budget deficit. And we have another political party that gets crapped on by the establishment every time it attempts to deal with deficits. Under the circumstances, how long can it possibly be until we have two parties that evince Bush/Reagan-esque levels of concern for the deficit?
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/01/why-the-budget-will-never-be-balanced.php
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Jim DeMint Wins GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award For Putting Union-Hating Ahead of National Security: http://blog.buzzflash.com/honors/267
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Icelanders standing up to bank bailout plan. "Almost a quarter of voters in Iceland have signed a petition against a bill to repay money lost by foreigners when an Icelandic online bank collapsed. The petition urged the president to veto the legislation and called for a referendum on the issue. Parliament this week approved the bill to reimburse 3.8bn euros (£3.4bn) lost by Dutch and British savers when the Icesave scheme failed in 2008. Many taxpayers say they are being made to pay for the bank's mistakes. The compensation amounts to some 12,000 euros for each citizen on the island nation of 320,000."
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4,372 soldiers killed in Iraq; 949 in Afghanistan.
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Sen. John Ensign goes on CNN to demagogue the terrorism issue and gets ambushed with a series of questions he's never answered about his affair and the ethics investigation surrounding his and his parents efforts to cover it up with lobbying infractions and pay-offs.
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Rick Warren's "miracle" gives insight into church funding
Rick Warren's impassioned plea for $900,000 produced results. According to Pastor Rick's latest letters, church members drove up to Saddleback Church and dropped off envelopes of money, and the shortfall was met. Pastor Rick says it's The Miracle. And the good pastor explains:
The cause of our financial shortfall was NOT a management issue but simply by the way Christmas occurred in this year's calendar. After 10 packed Christmas services, and with Christmas Day on Friday, many people were out of town or too tired to come back for weekend services, so the unusually low attendance created an unusually low offering. That is understandable.
So an unusually low turnout offering caused a loss of $900,000? Wow.That means they anticipate taking that in. Every week.
Note the use of the word "offering." Yes, they do a count by cash and not by people in the pews.
The Orange County Register reports:
Warren's chief-of-staff David Chrzan said that more than 46,000 faithful attended Christmas services but since the holiday fell close to the weekend, many left town or did not come back to church two days later because it seemed like they had just been there.
In his letter, Rick wants us to know that the media is "typically clueless" about how churches are run. Gosh I though there was a budget, and a prudent reserve, and that things like when holidays fall and that some parishioners might be on vacation gets taken into account…Silly me!
In spite of a media culture that thrives on bad news and is typically clueless about how churches actually work, and in spite of hatefulness and insults by some who immediately jumped to wrong conclusion – the church of God marches on, and once again God surprises all of us!
