Tag: Barack Obama

Virginia’s Attorney General is a birther

Republican Ken Cuccinelli is the Virginia Attorney General and he is also a birther. He believes President Barack Obama was born somewhere other than the United States of America. The popular myth among birthers is that Obama was born in Kenya because, well, I don’t know.

Birthers reject the Obama presidency because they believe that he is not a natural born citizen. They don’t dispute the national election that put Barack Obama in the White House. No, they just don’t think he should have been allowed to run against Republican John McCain in the first place. The ironic thing is that it’s a known, confirmed fact that John McCain was not born in the United States of America. He was born in Panama.

Now that health care reform is taken care of, Obama wants to tackle immigration reform

Now that President Obama has licked health care reform, he wants to next focus on immigration reform. He must be a gluten for punishment. He wanted to ensure that every American had access to affordable, quality health care and he got compared to Adolf Hitler and called a Marxist. What will he be compared to because of immigration reform? Whatever it is, it won’t be good.

Obama is crazy for getting involved with this. With unemployment already over ten percent, does he really want to make it easier for businesses and corporations to bring more unskilled workers into the country? Workers willing to accept wages far lower than the prevailing wage?

After all, that is what immigration reform is all about.

Obama needs to let the Republicans deal with immigration reform when they are back in charge. It’s a Republican issue, not an issue for the Democrats. If Obama keeps on not doing what he said he was going to do before he was elected, that day will be a lot sooner than he thinks.

Guy who thought we would be greeted in Iraq as liberators thinks Barack Obama will be a one-term president

Former vice-president Dick Cheney speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) told attendees that he thinks President Obama will be a one-term president. Those in attendance responded to the statement by leaping to their feet and cheering loudly. At least some of them did.

I think that if I was at CPAC, I’d ask Dick Cheney when was the last time he was ever right about something. Remember, this is the same predictor that proclaimed that we would be greeted in Iraq as liberators. Not only did he get that one wrong, he got it wrong by a mile. Just ask any of the 4,376 American liberators that have been killed in Iraq by Iraqis. Oh, that’s right. You cannot ask any of them because they are dead.

Sorry, but when Dick Cheney says something, I have a hard time believing it.

Why is Obama meeting someone in the White House who pretends to have magical powers?

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and if he had his way, the dictator of Tibet, is traveling to Washington D.C. to meet President Obama in the White House.

Why is the president meeting him?

It’s bad enough that the Dalai Lama is able to dupe so many naive Tibetans and others such as Richard Gere in to believing that he is a reincarnated deity. He’s not a deity. He’s just an old man that has spent his entire life pretending to be something he’s not.

What’s next, a Jedi Knight? President Obama should not be meeting him.

Talking about health care reform is a trap!


The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
The Apparent Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Asking Republicans to attend a televised meeting, giving them ample time to prepare so they can publicly state their beliefs on health care so the President can then respond is somehow a trap?

I don’t get it.

$3.83 trillion budget includes $1.56 trillion we don’t have

The Obama administration unveiled it’s massive spending plan for 2011 and it will include a whopping $1.56 trillion deficit.  In other words, we will have $2.27 trillion in revenue to spend in 2011, but will spend $3.83 trillion.

Most states in this country have to balance their budgets every year.  The federal government does not.  This allows the federal government to rack up large budget deficits every year.  These deficits go on to add to our national debit.

President Obama versus 178 Republican congressmen

If you haven’t seen the Q&A session between President Barack Obama and Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives, you really ought to give it a look. It reminded me exactly why I was proud to vote for Obama for president.

President Obama was invited to speak at House Republican retreat in Baltimore on Friday and it was a doozy. The prepared speech that proceeded the Q&A session was good, but it’s the Q&A session that I believe, will be remembered for years to come.

Though the questions very well may have been prepared in advance, the answers were obviously not. President Obama came off extremely knowledgeable with everything that was asked. If any of the Republicans thought that that they were going to be able to catch the President unprepared with one of their questions, they were gravely mistaken. It was so bad for the Republicans that Fox News broke away from the Q&A session long before it was over and went on with their own commentary on what was said.

I’m sure Fox News was just chomping at the bit to get on with being “Fair and Balanced”, something they couldn’t do if they allowed their viewers to actually see the entire exchange.

Roger Hedgecock claims Obama failed to say what the state of our union was

I was listening to the The Roger Hedgecock Show for a few minutes last night while driving home from work.  If you’ve never heard of Roger Hedgecock before, he’s your typical right-wing radio talk show host that spends his show railing against liberals and other similar minded enemies of our great country.

Wikipedia states that Roger Hedgecock got out of serving in Vietnam because of severe acne.  In his defense, it’s kind of hard traipsing through the jungle hunting charlie when you have a face full of zits.  At least that’s what I’m told.  It also mentions that he used to be the mayor of San Diego until he was forced out of office due to criminal charges involving perjury and conspiracy.

I really shouldn’t listen to The Roger Hedgecock Show.  In my defense, the drive home is only a couple of minutes and this show is about the only thing I can pick up on the AM radio at 10:00 pm.

Last night he was going off on what an awful job President Obama did with the State of the Union.  He talked about it being one of the worst State of the Union speeches he had ever heard.  He then put on one conservative caller after another that coincidentally, agreed with everything he had just said.   One of the callers mentioned that it shouldn’t even count as a State of the Union speech because at no time did “Barack Hussein Obama” say what the state of our union was.

Hedgecock agreed with him.  He not only agreed with the claim that President Obama never spoke about what state our union was, he claimed that Obama was the first president in the history of our country not to do so.

Really?

Last night when I got home I went to the transcript of the State of the Union speech over at  The Huffington Post.  I pressed Control+F and did a quick search for the word “union”.  In the twelfth paragraph, President Obama says, “Despite our hardships, our union is strong.”

So there you have it.  Let the record show that President Barack Hussein Obama did indeed inform Congress and the American people just what the state of the union is.  It’s strong.

Obama campagined against a spending freeze, now he’s all for it

When candidate Barack Obama was running against John McCain, he said that spending freezes were “unfair burden sharing” and that it was using “a hatchet to cut the federal budget”. Now he’s all for them. More specifically, he’s now all for the same exact spending freeze that John McCain was advocating for during the campaign. President Obama wants to freeze spending on everything except defense, veterans affairs, and homeland security. In other words, Obama wants to freeze spending on everything except the most expensive and bloated government programs.

I’m sure this will do wonders for the recession. Nothing stimulates an economy like spending less money.

House Democrats don’t trust the White House?

Over at Talking Points Memo, there is an article detailing the problems with getting a health care reform bill passed into law. One of the biggest problems, according to unnamed House Democratic leadership aides, is that Democrats in the House just don’t trust the Obama White House.

Why should they?

In my opinion, health care reform would already be a done deal if President Barack Obama had done the things that candidate Barack Obama said he would. We were told that health care reform negotiations would be done in public and would be televised on C-Span. That did not happen. Obama also said that any bill he passed into law would have a public option. Obama then later tried to argue that he never said that. Granted, he may have never said the words “public option” during the campaign, but as the prior link demonstrates, he said it as President of the United States. Shouldn’t that count for something?

If House Democrats have a problem in believing what Barack Obama says, I for one cannot blame them. In fact, I find myself agreeing with them.

Guy running to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate thinks Barack Obama was born out of wedlock


Scott Brown, the Republican running in the state of Massachusetts to replace the late great Ted Kennedy, seems to be talking one of the talking points of the Tea Bag party to heart. He seems to think that Barack Obama’s mother and father were not married at the time of his birth. Why he believes this I do know know. Why this fact even cares to people like Scott Brown is a mystery to me. Even if this claim were true, which it’s not, why would it matter? It’s not like Barack Obama had any control on the marital status on parents.

The special election in Massachusetts is important because if Brown were to go on and actually win the election, he would give the Republicans enough votes to block the crappy health care reform bill in the Senate. How that would be a bad thing is a mystery to me. If I had to choose between a really crappy health care reform bill and no health care reform bill, I’d take no health care reform. If you are not willing to do something right, you shouldn’t do it at all.

The Democrats don’t seem to be willing or able to truly reform health care in this country.

The problem with taxing health care benefits

It looks as though the White House, Congressional leaders and labor unions have reached some sort of deal on taxing costly, “Cadillac” health care benefits.

Oh joy.

The problem I have with this is that President Barack Obama promised over and over and over again during the campaign that if you made less than $250,000 a year, you would not have your taxes increased. This latest development seems to me to fly in the face of that promise. Call me naive, but when someone tells me something, my default response is to believe that person unless I have a reason not to. When Obama said that people who made less then $250,000 would not have their taxes increased, he didn’t say anything about that not being true if they had great health insurance provided to them by their employer. I took him at his word.

It now appears that was a mistake. I now have a reason not to believe Obama when he says something.

On the other hand, I don’t have much sympathy for those that will now have their health care benefits taxed as income. After all, many of these people were saying that taxing their health care benefits was not fair because many of them bargained for better health care insurance instead of higher pay. Well, if they had instead received higher pay, they would have been paying taxes on that pay.

Harry Reid referred to Barack Obama as ‘light skinned’ and used the word ‘Negro’ to describe his way of speaking

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is evidently in a boat-load of trouble because of something he said in private about Barack Obama during the run up to the 2008 Presidential elections. Evidently he said that Obama was “light skinned” and that Obama didn’t speak with a “Negro dialect” unless he wanted to.  Whatever that means.

He must have really said it because he is wasting no time apologizing for making the statement, a statement he said in private.

What’s worse, the part about Obama having a light skin color or that he doesn’t sound very Negro? In Reid’s defense, Obama does have light colored skin, not that it matters very much to me. Unlike a lot of people in this country, both on the left and on the right, I’ve never really put more importance on Obama’s skin color.

Is the word Negro offensive?  There is a famous charity with the word in it’s title.  Is that offensive too?  I realize to The Herald-Mail, it’s just as offensive as that other N-word.  To me, it just makes Harry Reid sound like an old man, using an out-dated word to describe someone.  Last time I checked, Harry Reid is indeed an old man.  Wikipedia says he was born in 1939.  For most of Harry Reid’s life, the word Negro was perfectly acceptable.  Not only was the word acceptable, it was a lot better than many of the words white people had in their vocabulary to use when referring to person who was black.

People need to just calm down.

Rudy Giuliani: ‘We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we’ve had one under Obama’

Who would have ever thought the day would come where the former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, would forget about the terror attacks of September 11? Not me, that’s for sure. I would have been willing to bet that the so-called “America’s Mayor” would have continued to ride the 9-11 terror attacks gravy train for the rest of his life, not only making money by speaking about 9-11, but by using the terror attacks to garner political power in the Republican party.

From The Huffington Post:

On “Good Morning America” Friday, the former New York mayor declared, “We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we’ve had one under Obama.”

Rudy Giuliani was on “Good Morning America” to talk about the Nigerian Muslim underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and how President Obama is making us all unsafe because he’s insisting on adhering to the U.S. Constitution and trying Abdulmutallab in a civilian court. Evidently Mayor Rudy wants to try Abdulmutallab in a military court, even though Abdulmutallab wasn’t a combatant captured on a battlefield by the military.

How ironic that Rudy Giuliani, a former Federal prosecutor, would have such ill regard for the Federal courts. As a U.S. Attorney, Rudy Giuliani prosecuted members of the Mafia, sending them to spend the the rest of their lives locked away in Federal prison. He did this in civilian Federal court, not military tribunals.

If military tribunals are so wonderful, why not try all criminal defendants in them?  If the American criminal justice system cannot be trusted to properly try a 23 year old Nigerian Muslim who tried to blow up a civilian airliner with his tighty whities, can it be trusted to properly try anyone?

Obama wants to tax people on their health insurance plans?

It looks as though Barack Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year will be getting a re-do. The Associated Press is reporting that while House Democrats want to raise income taxes on high-income individuals to help pay for health insurance for the poor, President Obama wants to instead place a tax on so called “Cadillac” health care plans.

What exactly constitutes a Cadillac health care plan?

This means that if you elect to have no health insurance, you will be fined a percentage of your income, while if your health insurance is deemed too good, you will be taxed on what your health insurance plan is worth.

Things would be so much easy if President Obama simply kept his word. He campaigned on not raising taxes for those making less than $250,000 a year. I for one believed him when he said it. I’m tired of having Presidents that lie to the American people. I thought Barack Obama was different. I thought he represented a change from what we have had before.

I guess I was wrong.

2009 deadliest year yet for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan

If you would have guessed eight years ago when the United States invaded Afghanistan that the year 2009 would have been the deadliest for our service members, you must be some kind of military genius or something.

From ABC News:

More than 312 American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year — nearly twice as many as in 2008. In Iraq, only 150 Americans lost their lives, half as many as the year before. Military officials and analysts predict the trend will continue into 2010 as the U.S. continues to draw down forces in Iraq and build up troop levels in Afghanistan as part of President Obama’s new military strategy there.

Thanks to the fact that the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama is pulling the troops out of Iraq so that they can now go die in Afghanistan, I expect this number to only go up.  It stands to reason that the more troops he sends to Afghanistan, the more that will die.

Who knew that sending service members to go die needlessly in Afghanistan instead of Iraq was the “Change” that we were voting for?

I sure didn’t.

Who knew Obama was going to be as incompetent as Bush?

You’d think that since Barack Obama was raised in the radical Islamic jungles of Hawaii, he might know a thing or two about the people that hate us for our freedoms. Evidently he’s just as incompetent as his predecessor, George W. Bush. When al Qaeda was taking out the World Trade Center and putting a huge dent in the Pentagon, Bush was sitting in a classroom reading My Pet Goat to school kids. When al Qaeda was trying to attack us on Christmas Day with a Nigerian’s tighty-whities, Obama was vacationing in Hawaii.

That’s OK though, because Obama has a team in place that can handle crisis with or without him. For instance, the person in charge of TSA is none other than… wait… oh, that’s right. We don’t have someone in charge of TSA. Though Obama chose Errol Southers to head the Transportation Security Agency, a lone Republican Senator from South Carolina is blocking the appointment. Everyone knows that a Republican Senator is more powerful than the President of the United States, right? What’s Obama supposed to do, put pressure on this lone Republican Senator to stop blocking the appointment?

That sounds like too much work, plus that Hawaiian vacation isn’t going to take itself.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who’s only qualification for the job seems to be that she dresses like a man, spoke to CNN’s Candy Crowley two days after the Christmas Day attack and said that the one thing she wanted to point out was that the “system worked.”

Really?

The system did not work. The system failed and failed big. A Nigerian national who’s father told the U.S. State Department that his son has ties to Islamic radicals was allowed to board an airplane destined for the United States. He purchased his one-way ticket with cash. He had no luggage. He requested a seat which happened to be directly over the wings and the fuel tanks.

The only reason the attack did not take place is because Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab was evidently too stupid to light his jockey shorts correctly.

So either Secretary Janet Napolitano was lying when she said the system worked or she is just too stupid to realize that the system failed. Either reason is grounds for her immediate firing.

Maybe when Obama returns from his vacation, he will go ahead and fire her. And maybe the Baltimore Orioles will win the World Series this year.

To say I’m disappointed with Barack Obama is a huge understatement. Whether it’s health care reform or the military escalation in Afghanistan, he comes off looking like a rank amateur.

Homeland security is no different.

Obama promised

This is the best they can do?

It looks as though health care reform will pass, but that’s only if you choose to label the bill coming out of the Senate as health care reform.  The key points:

  • No public option.
  • No Medicare buy in.
  • Penalize those that do not have health insurance.
  • No tax on cosmetic procedures.
  • A 10% tax on tanning.

What a joke.  This makes me feel embarrassment to be a Democrat.  Seriously, this is what you get when the House, the Senate, and the White House are all under Democratic control?  We get 30,000 more combat troops in Afghanistan and a piece of crap bill pretending to be health care reform.

Is this what Change looks like?

The fact that people will be penalized if they don’t buy health insurance, coupled with the fact that there is no public option, means that the health insurance cartel is getting a heck of a Christmas present this year.  I wish I sold a product that the government forced people to buy.

Joe Lieberman wins

It looks like the man Al Gore tapped to be his Vice-President is getting his way on health care reform again.  Not only did the “independent” senator from Connecticut, a state where 72 insurance companies base their headquarters out of, threaten to filibuster with Republicans if the health care reform bill contained a public option, he has done the same when it comes to a Medicare buy-in for those who are 55-years of age or older.

What’s astonishing about this newest filibuster threat from Joe Lieberman is that only three months ago he was proposing that the Medicare age be lowered to 55 years of age.

Hopefully this will finally make Harry Reid and the Obama administration realize that they cannot work with Joe Lieberman.  His interests and their interests are clearly not the same.

Teabaggers are still confusing

newsboys

Someone from a local Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party wrote a letter to the editor of  my local newspaper, The Herald Mail, and it was published in today’s edition.   This person wrote:

TEA partiers consider themselves educated and responsible enough to make their own decisions regarding all aspects of their lives. Leftists who embrace big government, including Obamacare, feel they are neither well-enough educated nor responsible enough to make decisions regarding their lives. There is no argument here. Both sides are absolutely correct.

If this person ever bothered to read up on our nation’s history, he might discover that our system of government is based on a constitutional republic. We elect people to represent us and to make educated, informed decisions on our behalf. It’s not the best system of government, but I guess it’s better than everything else.

Does this person even know any “big government” embracing leftists? And what exactly constitutes big government? Is it spending billions of dollars on a massive professional military? Is it spending billions of dollars on weapon systems that may or may not work against enemies that may or may not even exist?

I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to spending our money, I’d rather spend it on health care then on the industrial military complex. Mostly that’s because sickness and disease is a far greater risk to America’s well being than any foreign army is. Since April of this year, 10,000 Americans have died due to the H1N1 virus. Thousands of others have died from other medical problems. How many of those deaths could have been avoided if we had universal health care?

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand people in the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party. They sat by and just watched President Bush spend billions of their children’s money invading two countries while cutting taxes to the rich.

They didn’t say a word.

President Obama then came into office and actually cut taxes to people making less than $250,000 a year and the teabaggers protest against him by holding up signs comparing him to Hitler.

I don’t get that.

The Mexican pig flu has already killed 10,000 Americans

Federal health officials are now saying that 10,000 Americans have succumbed to the H1N1 flu. And that’s only since this past April.

That’s more Americans than Islamic terrorists have been able to kill in the last 20 years.

It’s almost unreal to think that this many people have died from the swine flu. That just goes to show you that the flu isn’t something to take lightly. To me, it’s just one more reason that we as a nation should be investing our resources into a national, universal health care system. The chances that you will die from a virus are much higher than the chances that you will be killed by an angry Muslim terrorist, yet we are more than happy to spend billions of dollars on fighting terrorism. When President Obama wants all Americans to have access to affordable, quality health care, some people say it proves he’s just like Adolf Hitler.

Karl Rove cheers Barack Obama’s decision on Afghanistan

Karl Rove has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal where he praises President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

From the Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday night deserves to be cheered. Over the objections of his vice president and despite opposition from his political base, the president is sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to fight terrorists.

Why wouldn’t Rove approve of a troop escalation in Afghanistan? It’s a continuation of the Bush administration’s failed foreign policy.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan is what I would have expected John McCain to do if he was elected president. In fact, McCain supports Obama’s surge in Afghanistan. The only thing he disagrees with Obama on is putting a timetable on Afghanistan. Obama announced that he plans on bringing troops home from Afghanistan in July 2011. If that’s McCain’s only objection, I don’t think he has anything to worry about. I remember Barack Obama stating that if he was elected president, he would begin bringing back one to two combat brigades a month back from Iraq. So far, that has not happened.

Doing what Karl Rove thinks is correct is not the type of Change I was looking for.

Update
Newt Gingrich is also chiming in praising Obama’s decision on Afghanistan.

Paying for Obama’s war

When President Obama announced last night that his surge of 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan would cost $30 billion, I wondered what that would mean if we had to actually pay that amount. I know that the cost of this military escalation will simply be tacked on to the national debt. With that said, I was curious what it would cost if we were paying for this surge right now.

In 2006, 99,880,223 people paid Federal income taxes for the year of 2005. This is the most recent information that I could find, so I will use this number. Not that it really matters. Using these numbers, that means if we wanted to pay for Obama’s surge with an across the board, flat-tax, every taxpayer would need to cough up an extra $300.36 when they file their taxes.

I wonder how many Americans, Republicans or Democrats, would be willing to support Obama and his Afghanistan surge if we were actually paying for it?

I wish Barack Obama was an anti-war activist in the 60’s

obamaswarI went out today to run a few errands and I forgot to grab my XM radio from the computer room. This meant I had to listen to old fashioned terrestrial radio. One of the shows I listened to today was the king of AM talk radio, Rush Limbaugh.

As luck would have it, Rush was railing again liberals, communists, socialists, progressives, and President Barack Obama. While talking to a caller, the subject turned to an organization called the SDS. I had never heard of the organization before. Rush said that it stood for the “Students for a Democrat Society”. He said it was an anti-war organization. He said that Abbie Hoffman, the Chicago Seven, Tom Hayden, and Barack Obama were all former members.

Barack Obama?

When I got home, I looked up SDS on Wikipedia. It stands for “Students for a Democratic Society”, not “Democrat” as Rush said. Also, I highly doubt Barack Obama was ever a member. Wikipedia states that the SDS broke up in 1969. In 1969, Barack Obama was 8-years old and lived in Indonesia with his mother and her husband.

How does an 8-year old boy living on the other side of the world participate in an anti-war organization for college students? Remember, this was long before Al Gore ever invented the World Wide Internet Web.

I wish Rush Limbaugh was right. I wish Barack Obama was involved in the anti-war movement in the 1960’s. If he was, maybe he wouldn’t be going on national TV tonight announcing that he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. As if that is going to fix anything.

He could send six million more troops to Afghanistan and it wouldn’t fix anything. At the end of the day, it’s still going to be Afghanistan.

Washington Times runs ad claiming Obama is a British subject

obama-british-350

The Washington Times ran an ad in the November 30 issue stating that President Barack Obama is not a “natural born” citizen and is instead a British subject. The people that created this ad used the images of chimpanzees to make their point. Click here or on the image to see a much larger version.

What I don’t understand about these Birthers, people that believe that Obama cannot be President because he was either born in Kenya or some other foreign place, is that they don’t seem to know that the man Obama ran against for President was in fact not born in the United States. Sen. John McCain was born in Panama.

I wonder if the Washington Times would run this ad if it was directed towards Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon. I’m guessing they wouldn’t.

What is the Secret Service doing?

50758823

Here’s the photo of President Barack Obama meeting wannabe reality TV stars Michaele Salahi and Tareq Salahi. The couple crashed the White House State dinner for India’s prime minister.

What’s the Secret Service doing? Do they want Obama to be killed?

If this is the level of security they are giving the President and his family, I wouldn’t put much faith in the idea of Obama finishing his first term. Seriously, when you factor in how many people want Obama to die, coupled with the Secret Service not doing their duty, things don’t look good.

Obama to announce Afghanistan troop buildup in televised speech at West Point

nobel-logoPresident Obama will be announcing his Afghanistan policy at a prime time televised speech from West Point on Tuesday. He is expected to announce a buildup that will bring U.S. forces to around 100,000, from today’s 68,000.

As if that’s going to change things in Afghanistan.

The first thing you need to do when you realize you are in a hole is to stop digging. Afghanistan is a hole. A really big hole. It’s a hole the British Empire found themselves in. It’s a hole the Soviets found themselves in. It’s a hole we’ve been in now for eight years and adding more shovels isn’t going to fix things.

Not only is sending more troops to Afghanistan not going to fix things, it’s going to cost a lot of money and more importantly, it’s going to cost a lot of lives.

It’s a shame that our flavor of democracy requires such a large and expensive military to sustain it. Other democracies in the world spend a fraction of what we do on their military. It allows them to spend their treasure on more important things. Things such as universal health care and high-speed bullet trains.

Think of what we could do in this country if we didn’t spend so much on our military.

So President Obama is going to announce more troops to Afghanistan. Good for him. I wonder if he is going to wear his Nobel Peace Prize around his neck when he makes the announcement. Probably not.

Happy Thanksgiving

I think I speak for all Americans when I say that just for once, I’d like a President not “pardon” one of these birds, but instead whip out a broadsword and cut the turkey’s head off for all to see. He could then hoist the dead bird up in the air by it’s feet to allow the blood to properly drain on the White House grounds.

Wouldn’t that be special?

Of course I’m pretty sure President Obama doesn’t walk around the White House with a broadsword at his side. I’m sure I would have read something about that. Maybe instead of a broadsword, he could use a hand weapon that is more in league with his radical Islamic Hawaiian heritage. Maybe a scimitar with a decorative pineapple carved onto the hilt.

That would indeed make for a special Thanksgiving.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. For me, there are lots of things to be thankful for this year. At the top of my list is the fact that I will once again be working in a few weeks doing a job I envision myself actually enjoying very much.

Sheri and I are going over to her oldest brother’s house for our Thanksgiving meal. Sheri is making green bean casserole. Instead of making it with cream of mushroom soup, she makes it with cream of chicken soup. I think that’s cheating, but what do I know?

Everything I learned about fighting the next Revolutionary War I learned from a Republican billboard

war!This sign can be seen in Missouri while driving on I-70. It’s paid for by the Lafayette County Republicans. I guess by “corrupt government” they mean we have a black man with a funny sounding name as our duly elected president.

Connecting Obama to Jihadists

e5977dbf-8283-4a5f-ac4c-5893dba38ece.hmedium

A used car dealership outside Denver, Colorado has put up a billboard connecting President Obama to a turban wearing jihadist. It also calls into question Obama’s birth certificate and it instructs sleepy Americans to remember the Fort Hood massacre.

You’ve got to admit that President Barack Obama and Major Nidal Malik Hasan are so much alike.

Barack Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas and his father was a black man for Kenya. Hasan’s parents are Palestinians who immigrated from the West Bank to Virginia. Obama was born in Hawaii. Hasan was born in Virginia.

The similarities just don’t end there. Obama is a Christian, and has accepted Jesus Christ as his personal lord and savor.  Hasan is a devout Muslim. Obama is married and has two children. Hasan is a confirmed bachelor with no children.

In his off-time, Obama wears old lady jeans, while Hasan wears traditional white Arab garb.

The similarities between the two men, President Barack Obama and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, are really quite remarkable.  I for one am glad that this used car dealership had the courage to erect this sign.

Praying for Obama to die

psalm109-8It appears some conservative Christians have found a new low when it comes to demonstrating their displeasure in our elected president, Barack Obama. They are now turning to a little known Bible verse to vocalize just how much they don’t want Obama to be the President.

They are praying that he will die.

At least that is the implication of inciting Psalm 109:8 in relation to President Obama. The verse reads, “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.” In case you don’t see the implication of this verse, the following verse, Psalm 109:9, reads, “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

To get better context, read the entire chapter.

It’s a shame that a perverse few can take a verse from Psalm and use it to sell hateful t-shirts, bumper stickers, and hats that imply that they want President Obama to die.  Psalm is a wonderful book of the Bible with many beautiful passages.  For generations, people have turned to Psalm during times of trouble or great loss and have been comforted from the words found within.

I truly hope I never see anyone wearing one of these hateful t-shirts.

Will someone please tell Obama to stop bowing?

bow

What is it about President Obama that prompts him to bow to foreign dignitaries?  First he bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia, now he has bowed to the Japanese Emperor Akihito.  Does he just go around bowing to everyone he meets and we don’t see it because there isn’t a photographer around?

I don’t get it.

I bow to no one.  I never have and I never will.  Is it too much to ask that the guy living in the White House do the same?

He needs to knock it off and start practicing better posture.  It’s embarrassing enough that he’s a Chicago White Sox fan.  Is he trying to give TEA Baggers a photo to put on their protest signs?

911 terrorists will finally stand trial

TERROR CHIEF PAKISTAN

After eight long years, some of the terrorists involved in the terror attacks of 911 will face a trial in a civilian courtroom.  From the AP (via MSNBC):

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision Friday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse.

I don’t understand why it took this long.  Granted, I didn’t expect Bush to do something like this, but we elected Obama over a year ago, and he was sworn into office in January.

This should have been done his first week in office.

I’ve long believed that we will never defeat terrorism militarily.  Terrorism is a technique, not a nation or a group of people.  How do you wage war against a technique?  The goal should be to hunt down and bring to justice those that engage in this awful, disgusting technique.

Ideally it should be done a lot sooner then eight years after the fact.

For the past eight years, we have fought terrorism by spending billions of dollars in invading and occupying two Muslim countries.  We’ve lost well over 5,000 service members and thousands more have been injured in this futile military pursuit.  It’s hard to say exactly if these costly military excursions and occupations have contributed to the fact that the United States has not suffered a terrorist attack since September 11, 2001, but what is quite clear is that there are more Islamic terrorists in the world today then there was on September 12.

I believe the military occupation of two Muslim countries has greatly contributed to this problem.  I believe that if you want to create more Islamic terrorists, occupy a Muslim country.

I don’t know if we will ever defeat terrorism.  It’s hard to defeat someone who engages in a technique that often results in their own death.  I do know this: terrorism will never be defeated in an epic tank battle.

Responding to terrorism with our massive military makes about as much sense as responding to North Korea invading South Korea by sending the FBI to the Korean Peninsula.  If terrorism will ever be defeated, it will be in the courtroom, not the battlefield. It will be defeated with our laws and our judicial system, not our smart bombs and our main battle tanks.

Obama to send ‘about’ 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan

amazon_B00269QLI8Look like President Obama is going to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.  Maybe.

From CBS News:

Tonight, after months of conferences with top advisors, President Obama has settled on a new strategy for Afghanistan. CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that the president will send a lot more troops and plans to keep a large force there, long term.

The president still has more meetings scheduled on Afghanistan, but informed sources tell CBS News he intends to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal most, if not all, the additional troops he is asking for.

McChrystal wanted 40,000 and the president has tentatively decided to send four combat brigades plus thousands more support troops. A senior officer says “that’s close to what [McChrystal] asked for.” All the president’s military advisers have recommended sending more troops.

So when does Obama become more of a “war president” than George W.  Bush?  Bush enjoyed refering to himself as the war president, but Obama already has more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush did, even during the Iraq surge.

I’m not sure what the point in this is. More troops to Afghanistan isn’t going to fix anything. At the end of the day, Afghanistan will always be Afghanistan. It’s an awful place filled with awful people. Invading Afghanistan may have made sense ten years ago, back when al Qaeda used it as a training base and before the terror attacks on 9-11. Now, al Qaeda is in neighboring Pakistan.

I just don’t see the point. Military force should only be used when there is a clear, obtainable military objective to be archived. Is that possible when it comes to Afghanistan?

I think not.

Shepard Fairey is a liar

139030_campart_JLC_

Shepard Fairey, the artist that created the iconic poster of then Senator Barack Obama with the word “Hope”, has admitted that he lied when he said he didn’t base the poster on an Associated Press photo.  A photo taken by photographer Mannie Garcia and owned by the AP.

Last February, the AP claimed that Fairey based the poster on one of their copyrighted photos.  Fairey responded to this by suing the AP.  He said that his poster was protected under fair use and besides, he used a different photo.  A photo not owned by the AP.

Fairey posted the following statement on his website:

In an effort to keep everyone up to date on my legal battle to uphold the principle of fair use in copyright laws, I wanted to notify you of a recent development in my case against The Associated Press (AP).

On October 9, 2009, my lawyers sent a letter to the AP and to the photographer Mannie Garcia, through their lawyers, notifying them that I intend to amend my court pleadings. Throughout the case, there has been a question as to which Mannie Garcia photo I used as a reference to design the HOPE image. The AP claimed it was one photo, and I claimed it was another.

The new filings state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used as a reference and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong.

In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images. I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment and I take full responsibility for my actions which were mine alone. I am taking every step to correct the information and I regret I did not come forward sooner.

I am very sorry to have hurt and disappointed colleagues, friends, and family who have supported me in this difficult case and trying time in my life.

I am also sorry because my actions may distract from what should be the real focus of my case – the right to fair use so that all artists can create freely. Regardless of which of the two images was used, the fair use issue should be the same.

- Shepard

Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan than he said he would

It seems President Obama is celebrating his recent win of the Nobel Peace Prize by secretly sending more troops to Afghanistan than he said he would. From the Washington Post:

President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized — and the Pentagon is deploying — at least 13,000 troops beyond that number, according to defense officials.

I’m not sure I understand the benefit of a never ending, military occupation of Afghanistan. How many years (or even decades) must pass before we realize that our blood and treasure might be better spent elsewhere?

Or maybe not spend at all?

No matter what we do, no matter how many troops we send, at the end of the day, Afghanistan will be Afghanistan. There is nothing we can do militarily or otherwise that will change that.

President Barack Obama wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

President Barack Obama wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Hardcore teabagging Republicans already believe that President Barack Obama is just like Adolf Hitler because he wants every American to have access to quality health care. How on earth are they going to take the news that President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?

They are probably drawing little Hitler mustaches on his face at this very minute.

I’ll admit that I like the man and that I voted for him to be president. In fact, we still have an Obama-Biden bumper sticker on both our cars. I think he’s doing a somewhat good job as president. Granted, he hasn’t started pulling combat troops out of Iraq like he said he would, but I have faith that he will get around to doing what he said he would do about Iraq.

I’m just not seeing what he’s done to warrant winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Read the full article »

Obama is going to Denmark?

President Obama is planning on schlepping over to Europe to meet with the International Olympic Committee to plead with them to choose Chicago as the home for the 2016 Olympics. When the idea was first proposed that he should go and meet with the IOC, it was ruled out because he needed to work on health care reform.

What’s changed?

Either he knows that health care reform doesn’t stand a chance of getting passed or he somehow has it all locked up and in the bag. Of these two possibilities, only one seems likely, and it ain’t’ the one about it being in the bag.

This is dumb for many reasons. Obama recently had a lengthy vacation at Martha’s Vineyard. Now is the time for him to work, not screw around with the Olympics.

World leader asks Obama why he insists on being just like Hitler

While speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner Saturday night, President Obama told a story about one of the world leaders at the G20 asking him about the national health care reform debate.

From the ABC News blog, Political Punch:

“I was up at the G20 — just a little aside — I was up at the G20, and some of you saw those big flags and all the world leaders come in and Michelle and I are shaking hands with them,” the president said. “One of the leaders — I won’t mention who it was — he comes up to me. We take the picture, we go behind.

“He says, ‘Barack, explain to me this health care debate.’

“He says, ‘We don’t understand it. You’re trying to make sure everybody has health care and they’re putting a Hitler mustache on you — I don’t — that doesn’t make sense to me. Explain that to me.’”

I too don’t understand the connection to Hitler. Granted, there’s a lot I just don’t know about Adolf Hitler, but I don’t think the man was a real big believer in universal health care.

Spanish Prime Minister introduces the world to his goth daughters

obamagoths-600

The State Department uploaded this photo of Barack and Michelle Obama with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his family to it’s Flickr page.

Yes, the State Department has a Flickr page.

The photo is somewhat remarkable in that it marks the first time the Spanish Prime Minister’s children have appeared in a public photo.  Spanish law allows him to ban the Spanish media from publishing the photos of 16-year-old Laura or 13-year old Alba.  Because of this fact, nobody in Spain knew that his daughters are into the goth lifestyle.

Evidently the Spanish Prime Minister didn’t appreciate the fact that the State Department let the world in on the fact that his daughters shop at Hot Topic and enjoy listening to The Cure.  That might be, but his oldest daughter wears knee-high leather combat boots.

How long did he think he could keep that a secret?

Obama open to newspaper bailout

newspapers-600

President Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade in an interview that he would be open to the idea of assisting struggling newspapers by awarding them tax breaks if they were willing to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

From Michael O’Brien’s blog at The Hill:

Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election.

I agree with Obama on this. Good journalism is critical to the health of our democracy. The problem I have is that of all the words I could use to describe the current state of journalism in this country, “good” is not one of them.

Journalism in this country is bad and is only getting worse.

One has to look no further than to the build up leading to the Iraq invasion to see just how bad journalism is in this country.  If we had a competent Forth Estate in this country, perhaps the American people would have questioned why we were going to invade a country that posed us no harm, a country that was in no way involved in the terror attacks of 911.

So yes, good journalism is critical to the health of a democracy, but at no time should bad journalism be accepted as good journalism’s replacement.

Teabaggers are confusing

090912_obamcaresign_blogPeople associated with the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) crowd held a rally yesterday morning in Washington D.C. to protest against health care reform and people were seen passing out these printed signs that referred to the recent passing of Senator Ted Kennedy.

Why do these people hate President Barack Obama so much? I just don’t get it. Is it because he raised their taxes? Unless they earn more than $250,000 a year, Obama actually lowered their taxes. In fact, nobody, even the richest of the rich, have not had their taxes raised under President Obama.

I just don’t understand these people. One minute they whine and cry about the Federal government being incapable of doing anything well, the next they are waiving the flag and demanding that everyone join them in singing God Bless America.

It gets confusing.

(Photo: Politico)

UpdateThe Huffington Post has even more photos of some of the signs from yesterday’s event. I’m still not sure why so many TEA baggers evidently believe that wanting to make sure all Americans have access to quality health care somehow makes them just like Hitler.
Update #2Flickr user MeetTheCrazies created a set of pics showing just some of the signs he saw yesterday. Some are a real hoot.

Republican congressman calls President Obama a liar during joint session of Congress

capt.photo_1252549803649-2-0Was it a town hall meeting or was it presidential address to a joint session of Congress?

I thought it was the later, but Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican form South Carolina, shouted at the president from his fifth-row seat: “You lie!”

So what did Rep. Wilson think President Obama was lying about? That the proposed government health care plan would include coverage for illegal immigrants.

It of course would not, but a good many Republicans have been saying that it would because they know how much their constituents hate illegal immigrants. Except of course their constituents that employ illegal immigrants because they are willing to work for far less than the prevailing wage that people who are in this country legally expect to be paid.

Representative Joe Wilson later apologized for his outburst.

I think this incident only illustrates why we wont be getting health care reform anytime soon from our elected leaders in Washington. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. If the Republicans believe or feel that health care reform would provide coverage to illegal immigrants or that it would create special death panels that would dictate who gets health care and who doesn’t, there is nothing that can be said that will make them believe or feel otherwise. That fact that Wilson would shout that the President of the United States was lying while he was speaking to a joint session of Congress says quite a lot.

Facts don’t trump feelings or beliefs.

Health care reform without the ‘public option’ is a waste of time

NurseJackieIt looks like the Obama administration is ready to abandon the idea of the public option, the creation of government-run, non-profit health care insurance that would give all Americans access to quality health care. People wouldn’t have to rely on their employers to provide access to health care insurance.

We are the only country in the modern industrialized world that does not have some form of government health care. Every other modern country in the world guarantees essential health care to it’s people. The United States does not, but neither does Mongolia.

It’s not like we are alone.

Some people like to say that we have the best health care in the world. I think when most people say this, they actually believe what they are saying is true. The World Health Organization (WHO) ranked the world’s health care systems and the United States came in at 37th, right below Costa Rica.

The reality is that most Americans only have health care insurance if their employer offers it as a benefit. If you lose your job, even if it is of no fault of your own, you lose your health care insurance.

In no other modern industrialized country does this happen.

To reform health care without creating a public option is worse than no reform at all. It would be a complete waste of time.

The private health insurance companies don’t want a public option because it would eat away at their massive profits. They want things to remain essentially the way they are now. They don’t want to compete against something that puts the health of the insured above everything else. Creating government-run, non-profit health care insurance would force private insurance companies to put their patients first, not their profits. Not only is it the most efficient way to enact reform, it’s the only way.

President Obama couldn’t pick a worse thing to flip-flop on.

Stay classy Mexico

The United States men’s national soccer team went down to Mexico to play their national team in a World Cup qualifier and ended up losing 2-1.  I’m not surprised.   Though the U.S. team is better then they’ve been in years, Mexico is good.  Plus, they have a huge home field advantage.  The pollution of Mexico City along with the high attitude (7,400 feet) make it hard for any visiting team to compete. Scheduling the game in the heat of the afternoon doesn’t help either.

But it wasn’t the high altitude, the smog, or the heat that made things bad for the Americans. It was the Mexican fans.

From Martin Rogers at Yahoo! Sports:

The man with the tri-colored mohawk took a swig of beer, stuck his fingers down his throat and vomited the mixture back into his cup. In the next seat another man, who was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon drawing of the decapitated heads of Barack Obama and Landon Donovan, poured out what remained of the Corona beer he had been chugging and urinated into his cardboard drinks container.

Then, according to a neutral bystander who witnessed these disgusting acts, the pair stood on their seats, high-fived and hurled their vile concoctions in the direction of Donovan, the United States men’s national team star who was preparing to take a corner kick 15 yards away.

Welcome to the Estadio Azteca, where allegedly projecting bodily fluids at another human being is acceptable in the name of soccer fanaticism.

For the record, I’m not even sure there’s a difference between Corona beer and urine, but that’s not the point. You shouldn’t be throwing your bodily fluids on other people, especially for the sake of sport.

Landon Donovan is a national treasure.  Is it asking too much for Mexican fans not to throw their bodily fluids on him?

Getting death threats over health care reform

North Carolina Democratic congressman Rep. Brad Miller supports president Obama’s goal in overhauling the nation’s health care system and has had his life threatened as a result.  Ain’t America great?  From the Associated Press:

Democratic Rep. Brad Miller received the death threat in a phone call Monday, one of hundreds the congressman’s office has fielded demanding town hall meetings on the health care proposal, said his spokeswoman, LuAnn Canipe.

She said the callers were “trying to instigate town halls so they can show up and disrupt.”

I think it’s sad that some people want their elected representatives to hold town hall meetings just so that they can disrupt them, but I fully believe this is true. I would have thought that they’ve seen how stupid the anti-Obama people have looked on YouTube and elsewhere and come to the conclusion that they didn’t want to look as ignorant. That’s not happening. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.

I have to believe that the people who are against the idea of health care reform have never really experienced the frustration involved with health care in this country. The hoops I’ve had to jump through over my psoriasis, put in place by my insurance companies, has been mind numbing. When the dermatologist wants to start a new treatment, they cannot simply start me on the treatment. They must first contact my insurance company and seek authorization. Sometimes this authorization takes weeks or even months. Who is giving this authorization, another board certified dermatologist? No, someone who works for the insurance company, someone who most likely makes less money then I do.

Sarah Palin steps down

Alaska governor Sarah Palin officially stepped down as governor and as luck would have it, she took the time to say a few words.   From the Associated Press (via MSNBC):

She also took aim at the media, saying her replacement, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, “has a very nice family too, so leave his kids alone!”

And she told television cameras: “How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin’ things up?”

Hopefully Governor Parnell wont use his children as props the way Sarah Palin did. It wasn’t the media that exposed Palin’s children to the public, it was Palin. It wasn’t the media that dragged her children around with her so that she could claim a per diem for their travel, it was Palin. She even brought Levi Johnston, the high school drop-out that knocked up one of her daughters, to the 2008 National Republican Convention and injected him into the public consciousness.  Something I’m guessing at this point even she wishes she had not done.

And as far as “makin’ things up” is concerned, she’s the one that enjoyed making up lies on the campaign trail, including that Barack Obama enjoyed “palling around with terrorists”.

I don’t understand what so many Republicans see in Sarah Palin.  I just don’t undertand the appeal.

Democrats do not want to reform healthcare

This from today’s The Washington Post:

Senate Democrats alone cannot pass President Barack Obama’s ambitious overhaul of how Americans receive health care, a top lawmaker acknowledged on Sunday. Republicans said they will continue their opposition to a plan they say is simply a government takeover of private decisions.

Both sides said they want to improve the system and provide care for almost 50 million Americans who lack health insurance coverage, but they remain deeply divided over how to reach that goal. Republicans said the longer the delay, the more the public understands the stakes of a policy that has vexed lawmakers for decades.

The Democrats control the congress and the White House. They have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. If the Democrats wanted to reform healthcare, they could do it. The problem is, they don’t really want to do it.

The Democrats in congress don’t want to reform healthcare anymore then the Republicans want to. In 2008, Democrats received more campaign contributions from the healthcare industry than the Republicans, $89.9 million to $76.3 million. That number will only go up for the 2010 election.

Truth be told, we probably wont ever have healthcare reform until we have campaign finance reform.  Until politicians are prohibited from taking handouts from the very industries they should be reforming, there will be no real change.

It will simply be business as usual.

The government may force people to purchase health insurance

One of the ways the Obama administration may reform the healthcare is to require each and every American to purchase health insurance. From The Washington Post:

The requirement, known as an individual mandate, is among the most far-reaching changes envisioned this year by those pushing for health-care reform. And it is one of the few common threads running through all three bills being considered in Congress, greatly increasing the likelihood it will survive the legislative process. Obama continued Tuesday to push lawmakers struggling with the large costs and scope of health legislation to move forward, pronouncing reform to be “closer than ever.”

I think this would actually be a step backwards. The problem with healthcare in this country is not that people don’t have health insurance, the problem is that our health care is too expensive. We pay far more for our healthcare then the rest of the industrialized world. That’s the real problem.

Private health insurance companies are in it to make money. Forcing Americans to go to these companies and pay whatever cost these insurance companies dictate isn’t going to make anyone more healthy. It isn’t going to increase anyone’s level of care. People with health insurance who experience a catastrophic health emergency still end up going into bankruptcy far too often.

From the same article:

Just as drivers must purchase auto insurance, the medical system of the future would put responsibility for health coverage first and foremost on every adult.

Except there is no federal requirement to purchase auto insurance. That’s up to each and every state. Not all states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Fifteen years ago when I moved from New York to Tennessee. I remember calling up Geico to switch my policy. I could not believe how much cheaper my premiums were going to be in Tennessee. When I asked the person from Geico why my rates were so much cheaper, she informed me that Tennessee didn’t require drivers to have any auto insurance. It was strictly voluntary.

It put a whole new meaning to Tennessee being the “Volunteer State”.

I went ahead and continued paying for auto insurance like a regular person. My point is that if the state of Tennessee required drivers to purchase auto insurance like most other states, it would probably be much more expensive. That’s the way things normally work. While living in New York, my premiums went up every six months even though I never so much as got a parking ticket.

Requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance will only make the insurance companies richer. If that’s the goal of the Obama administration and the congress, maybe they should just come out and say so.