Tag: Barack Obama

Congratulations on your visit to the dark side, Barack ~ as witnessed by your recently staged but increasingly bungled assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Of course, we both know that Bin Laden died in 2001 of a natural death from Kidney failure but who cares about the truth ~ it’s the myth that counts whether he or it is dead or alive ~ think Al Qaeda (chuckle).

There was only one thing more predictable than the Sun was going to rise in the East, and that was the fact that a group of idiots was going to pop up and claim that the Bin Laden killing was a hoax. And sure enough, even though the man was buried at sea, he’s not even wet yet and I've already started getting email from "Bin Laden Hoaxers." So I decided to write a standard response, and here it is:

A decade old U.S. treasonous disgrace, genocides, torture, and illegal wars announced under a shadow of new discovery. An ultimate diversion of U.S. mythology or “Holy Grail” delusional flaws..

While Cornel West often speaks to this issue, we must remember that he has an agenda. His close association with Tavis Smiley gives him the credibility of a man ranting about fascism after just having lunch with Mussolini.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster shows every sign of becoming the most serious industrial accident in history. Thus the failure to properly internationalize the response to this catastrophe is mind boggling. One month after 3/11 a corrupt little company in Japan, TEPCO, is still being left in charge of dealing with an emergency that is quite literally poisoning the planet on a scale that we may not have ever seen before.

I’m an Obama supporter, but I’m not an Obama cheerleader. While I agree that President Obama has done more for this country in the short time he’s been in office than any president since Franklin Roosevelt, presidents are not only assessed based on what they do, but also what they fail to do. So in spite of the fact that he’s saved America from a second Great Depression, his success in that area pales in comparison to what he’s failing to do - aggressively confronting America’s most insidious domestic enemy and the most serious threat to our democracy since the civil War, the current GOP.

It wasn't always this way. Although not required to report to congress in person, George Washington set the precedent by inflicting a speech. Taciturn by nature, John Adams' address was less than 2000 words but Jefferson had the good grace and gentle mercy to deliver his address to the congress in writing. That method was deemed adequate by every subsequent president until Wilson resumed the inhumane practice of formal speechifying with which we are mutually afflicted every January.

I'd also like to take a moment to debunk the myth being widely spread by the corporate media that merely mentioning the Nazis in response to what's currently going on in America is irresponsible and beyond the pale. That's total nonsense and is in direct contradiction to another adage that states that a crazy person is one who does the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. Thus, the corporate media is literally asking us to embrace insanity.

What's the worst case, and the best case, that we can imagine for the next two years? Let's look at the economics first. By Robert Kuttner,...

It is indeed interesting to see how all of a sudden the corporate media and the GOP have come together to praise the president's Arizona speech - even FOX News. After two years of calling him a communist, a friend to terrorists, a fraud, and a liar, the GOP has finally found a reason to praise him. The reason they're praising him, however, is because, yet again, he's allowed GOP criminals off the hook.

From Wonkette By Jack Stuef Despite Republican attempts to stick in a last-minute defense appropriations amendment that failed to kill the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, President Obama...

Landmark civil rights legislation signing this morning is the culmination of a long battle against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and an array of political...

Yeah, I said it. Racism is the driving force behind the GOP's unprecedented anger against this administration. No, not all of them are racist, some are acting on greed, and others are simply dumb, but the greedy are the ones who are pulling the strings, and they're relentlessly stoking the flames of racism within their social conservative stormtroopers to promote their own interests.

This is a reprise of an article that I wrote in August of last year. I'm revisiting it in hope that the "experts" in Washington, D.C. will start to see the light. They are not the political experts in this country - we are. While the so-called political experts are dealing in speculation about what we think, the people don't have to speculate - we KNOW what we think, and the Democratic base has been screaming what we think at the administration for the past two years. But remaining consistent to your beltway arrogance you decided that you knew more about what was on our minds than we did, and this past Tuesday you paid a severe price for that arrogance.

- Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, referred to the "execution" of Obama three separate times during a recent media conference call - From...

- Federal Judge Finds Act Violates First Amendment Rights of U.S. Service Members - By Ernest A. Canning in the BradBlog In her Sept. 9 decision...

Yesterday prior to President Obama's speech on the so-called End of U.S. Combat in Iraq (that remains to be seen when dead American troops...

I've also previously mentioned how much pride I took in supporting your campaign, both in my column, and through my very meager bank account. While the historic nature of your candidacy wasn't lost on me, I didn't support you simply because you were Black, however - Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are also Black, but I didn't support either of them. I supported you because I was inspired by your pledge to usher in a change that I could believe in. Well, frankly, especially in the current matter, I'm not seeing that.

Aristotle, in his Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics sees virtue as an admirable character trait that is the mean between the vices of deficiency...

By Ernest A. Canning at the BradBlog  On Sunday, Brad Friedman posted a "Toon of the moment" in which a hypnotist sits dangling a...

What has been proven, however, is that even though the Iranians were considered an enemy of the United States and had held sixty-six Americans hostage for 444 days, Reagan entered into a secret agreement with the Iranians to have Israel ship them military arms, then resupply Israel in return for payment under the table (treason). Reagan needed the money to fund the Contras in a war in Nicaragua in which congress outlawed funding under the Boland Amendment. Reagan also drummed up funding for the Contras by flooding the nation's inner cities with illegal drugs - an act of treachery that thirty years later, the nation is still feeling the negative effects.

Perhaps most disturbing is that the President's zeal to please his true constituency --- corporate America, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex --- comes from the same Presidential candidate whose soaring and lofty, yet deceptive campaign rhetoric gave rise to hope in so many that Election Day 2008 would mark a return economic fairness, transparency, a restoration of the rule of law, an end to the fear-driven perpetual "war on terror," and a restoration of nature's ecological balance.

- For the 2008 presidential campaign—that flourished on the unprecedented use of new media and fresh engagement with the political system by citizens in their earnest hope for...

 - You can call it left, right, green, red or purple; we were promised change and we don't like what we see - By Cenk...

- It's what happens in war: Civilians get slaughtered; troops get killed, maimed and traumatized; and connected corporations get rich - For weeks, U.S. and allied...

We all know you're a nice guy, Mr. President, but this is a seminal moment in American history. The Republican Party has revealed themselves to be the American Taliban. They're inciting insurrection, protecting corporate corruption, denying unemployed Americans subsistence, and they threaten to cripple the nation as a whole with their irresponsible use of the filibuster. The Republican agenda is to keep America ignorant and miserable at any cost. So at this point we don't need nice, we don't need bipartisanship, and we don't need a diplomat. What we need at this point in our history is a Commander-in-Chief to lead us in the fight against Republican tyranny. So it's time to suck it up and "fix bayonets," sir.

- According to Army Radio, the U.S. has reportedly pledged to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and...

Laboulaye conceived of the Statue of Liberty in 1865. That was a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, but it just happened to be the very year that the Civil War came to an end. And it also turns out that Laboulaye wasn't just any Frenchman--he was not only an abolitionist who had dedicated his entire life to the abolishment of slavery, he was a leader of the French abolitionist movement. In addition, the sculptor who actually created the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was connected with the abolitionist movement as well.

Iran’s Green Movement is one year old this Sunday, the anniversary of its first massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran. Greeted with great hope in much of the world, a year later it’s weaker, the country is more repressive, and its hardliners are in a far stronger position -- and some of their success can be credited to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sanctions hawks in the Obama administration.

Long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas was right to apologize for a stupid remark she made about Israeli Jews leaving Palestine, but another ugly part of this incident was how her “mainstream” colleagues quickly turned on this 89-year-old icon.

Exclusive from Talking Points Memo: By Brian Beutler Nearly two years after the Wall Street meltdown drove the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse, and...

The Tea Party movement has a long, if perhaps not so distinguished pedigree, as fear of socialism has been a tool by powerful economic forces in the US for more than a century used to oppose any policies which might help poor and working people.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home to media derision on Thursday, having failed to resolve a bitter row with Washington over the building of Jewish settlements. One publication even called it a diplomatic "hazing" by President Obama.

A recent example is a Harris poll that asked whether each of 15 statements about Barack Obama is true or false. In every single case, the less schooling people had, the more likely they were to believe that false things are true.

An executive order published without fanfare this month does away with a system for Pentagon succession instituted by former President George W. Bush, which played down the service secretaries and elevated positions held at the time by trusted aides to Donald H. Rumsfeld, who as defense secretary wanted it that way.

The Cheneys are engaged in a preemptive strike against the Obama administration in general, and the Justice Department in particular, in order to stir up public opinion against the prospect that the Obama administration will finally decides to prosecute Dick Cheney for war crimes - as the rule of law demands. They're busily laying the groundwork to incite insurrection across this country to counter the application of the rule of law.

WASHINGTON – President Obama today announced the charities that will receive a portion of the $1.4 million award that comes with the Nobel peace prize. “These organizations do extraordinary work in the United States and abroad helping students, veterans and countless others in need,” said President Obama. “I’m proud to support their work.”

". . . how accountable is it to produce a show called The State of the Black Union then sponsor it with companies that are largely responsible for the very conditions that you're complaining about? One of the sponsors was Allstate Insurance–a company that is alleged to have denied the claims of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims. One victim, Michael Homan, alleges that Allstate denied his claim based on their position that Katrina wasn't windy enough. Another sponsor was Exxon/Mobile–a company that's raking in record profits while many Black people have to flip a coin to decide whether they're going to eat or put enough gas in their car to get to work. Wal-Mart was another sponsor–a company that's committed to blocking collective bargaining, providing their employees fair wages and healthcare, who destroy jobs by running other businesses out of the community and purchasing their merchandise from outside the United States, and who humiliate their customers by searching them before they leave the store."

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE   Urban Comedy: Tavis Smiley - A Crab Determined to Reach Beyond His Grasp * Well, he's at it again, people....

More than five out of six Americans are opposed to cutting 98% of the federal budget. Most don't want to cut the remaining 2%, either. Keep that in mind whenever you hear politicians calling for spending cuts, and polls claiming that voters want spending cuts.

The failure to answer 90 percent of calls says a lot about the VA. As the second-largest bureaucracy in the country, it continues to be a model of how not to run government programs. Forget all of Washington's buzz words: transparency, efficiency, fiscal responsibly. We need the administration to try a new term, "customer service." These veterans aren't calling to order an iPad, they're trying to take advantage of a historic benefit that was promised to them by Congress and this president.

The reason that we're losing so badly is that the corporate interests in this country are keeping us distracted by deluding us into thinking we're still fighting the last war - race. But the fact is, corporations don't give a damn about race. As I've mentioned before, in this new economy of the new world order, where corporate competitors all over the world have people working for pennies a day, corporations can't afford the luxury of being concerned about race. All they care about is making money - and that means doing whatever they have to do to degrade the living standards of an expensive U.S. middle class.