posted July 23, 2013 03:54 PM            

During Obama's campaign, he promised to close Gitmo. But his first year in office, he declared that no CIA agent would be prosecuted for torturing the prisoners there; nor would he go after the Bush officials who ordered those tortures. Military tribunals which deny basic rights still continue to this day. Obama not only retained Bush's policies, but he has expanded them. He has also blocked dozens of lawsuits aimed at closing Gitmo.

When Obama (a Constitutional attorney and professor of Constitutional law) was sworn in, he took an Oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. In September 2011, in Yemen (a country we are not at war with), an American citizen was murdered by drone for supposedly providing "material support" to terrorists. This violates the 4th Amendment of being seized unreasonably, the 5th Amendment of being deprived of life without due process of law, and the sixth Amendment of the right to a public trial and habeas corpus. Two weeks later, another drone killed his 16-year-old US-born son. Even though we have a federal law against murder and an executive order banning asassinations, Obama was judge, jury, and executioner. Since then, Obama has approved of multiple drone killings in as many as six Muslim countries. A member of the drone team, Dennis Blair, objected and was fired. He was the Director of National Intelligence.

Back in 2009, Obama said that: "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency," and he went on to expound how that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) encouraged both. This law came into existance after Watergate. Not surprisingly, President Ford (on the advice of his Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfield, and Rumsfield's Deputy, Dick Cheney--yes, these dinosaurs have been in government that long) vetoed it, but Congress voted to override the veto. But on October 30, 2011 Obama proposed making changes to the FOIA. The changes included the government's right to not only deny any requested documents but to also pretend those documents do not even exist!

Despite being so openly vocal about transparency, Obama has already charged six rather benign whistleblowers with the pre-WWI Espionage Act. That's more than all of the previous Administrations put together! One of them (Thomas Drake) was an advisor to the NSA who was charged with ten felonies for simply informing the media "that government eavesdroppers were wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on misguided and failed projects." A federal judge thought the charges were so ludicrous that he let him plead down to one misdemeanor and let him walk. But this was after his house was ransacked and his family raided at gunpoint and he was fired from his job.

In a Kansas speech in December 2011, Obama said: "Too often, we've seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws, because the penalties are too weak, and there's no price for being a repeat offender." Just five days later on 60 Minutes, Obama said: "Some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn't illegal." What was the cause of the double talk? Well, look at the end results. Five big banks settled for what translated into a mere drop in the bucket amount of $20 billion, which was paid by the shareholders, not the executives or board members, and no criminal charges were filed. These executives were also allowed to then use government money to write down the value of mortgages to subsidize these banks' own meaningless fines. Of course, we also know that Goldman Sachs was a big financial supporter of Obama in 2008.

I'm getting tired of typing, but there is so much more I could post!

One of Obama's main pledges in 2008 was to get rid of the Bush tax cuts for the "rich." Set to first expire in 2010, Obama extended them two years. And then he permanently extended them forever!

Obama publically stated that he would leave weed dispensaries alone in states that legalized it. Yay! Straight from the President who not only inhaled but also snorted. Weed smokers should rejoice, right? Wrong! The Obama Administration has raided over a hundred of them, despite being told by the Justice Department that these raids are "unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources." To top it all off, the Obama Administration has directed the IRS to disallow all tax deductions for these LEGAL businesses, so they can no longer deduct salaries or operating expenses, meaning their tax bills exceed their profits! The biggest such dispensary in the country, the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, recently got a tax bill from the IRS for 2.4 million dollars! Wow, you really are leaving them alone, Mr. President. BTW, Obama has also threatened state government employees (including two governors) with felony charges under the Controlled Substances Act.

We all know about Obama's views on the environment. Why is he taking a stand now as opposed to his first term? Because he can't be reelected! Obama was instructed by Bill Daley in 2011 that tightening up the Clean Air Act would adversely affect the 2012 election states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. Daley (and other organizations) told Obama it would hurt his chances for reelection. Immediately after, Obama approved four new BP exploratory wells off the Louisiana coast.

One word: Monsanto.

So, people voted for change. Is that what they got? Or did they get Bush III? Does anyone really think Obama is not a conniving two-faced politician?

posted July 23, 2013 08:24 PM            

Actually, Obama seems to me to have been a bit more truthful than many politicians, but not by much, and I wonder how much of that is just coincidence rather than intentional.

And I couldn't help but notice that Bush was all about "change" and "sending a message" and "reform" when he first ran as well. And I think that's common as The Simpsons did a parody of Montgomery Burns getting elected on that platform, and then there's this excerpt from a story in from Once Upon a More Enlightened Time by James Finn Garner written back in the 90s (funny, but written before Bush did it so I'd guess there's a long pattern of it which Obama was the latest to follow on, just as his acceptance speech was almost identical to Bush before him, the one part different about volunteers being like the previous Bush Sr. "thousand points of light"):

quote:

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And the reaction was tremendous! Breathless articles and news reports began to appear about the reluctant candidate. Who was he? What did he stand for? What was the significance of the public groundswell that surrounded this strapping figure of youthful vitality? With just the slightest spin doctoring and some wise use of media time, Puss in Boots proceeded to forge the image of his human companion as a man forced into public life by the will of the people, who were disillusioned and were looking for a white knight (colorist though such concepts are) on a tall fiery charger (ditto heightist and speciesist, not to mention quite Eurocentic overall).

Within a few weeks and without uttering a word, the young man with the Redfordesque good looks won the party nomination for the Senate!

"Wow! I can't believe it," said the malleable candidate. "I guess I'd better start figuring out my positions on the issues."

"You do and I'll break your neck," hissed the cat. "Let me worry about your positions, as well as your beliefs and your off-the-cuff remarks and your spontaneity and everything else. You just remember: Don't say a thing unless I tell you to."

Now Puss in Boots began to work in earnest to get his meal ticket elected to the Senate. He issued position papers that were totally pointless yet exquisitely quotable. He had the candidate photographed shaking hands with factory workers, retirees, and customers at luncheonettes. They challenged the incumbent to debate and then backed out at the last minute, declaring such an event would be just an exercise in "politics as usual." Their optimistically simple campaign slogan--"It's Time for a Change!"--seemed to strike a chord with the optimistically simple voters.

Throughout the frenzy of the campaign, no one noticed or commented on Puss in Boot's lack of credentials. In fact, seduced by his easy and apparently candid manner, no one ever noticed that he was of feline descent at all. It just demonstrated the commentator's observation, "In the land of the optically challenged, the monocularly gifted individual is first in line at the trough."

Election day drew near, with all the mudslinging and innuendo you could imagine. Puss in Boot's candidate, however, with his easy confidence and glint in the eye, seemed somehow to rise above the fray. This might have been due to the fact that he was still forbidden to speak his mind (or what there was of it) in any way, shape, or form. Puss in Boots, OTOH, was always available to the media and ready with a charming, folksy anecdote or some evidence that their opponent had undergone electroshock therapy to stop the temporary lapse into dementia that made him want to release all the criminals from prison with a $50 gift certificate and an automatic pistol.

<snip>

As usual, emotion rather than reason carried the day, and as the ballots were counted on election day, Puss in Boots and his ruddy, exuberant human companion had won by a comfortable margin.

At the victory party, Puss pulled the new senator aside and said to him, "You see? I told you I could be useful to you. You may not have the wealth of your brothers yet, but you soon will have, and even more clout, if you play your cards right. There is even some talk--initiated by me, of course--that you're going to run for president in the next election because the country's problems are too urgent and your ideas are too big to be penned up in the senate. What do you think of that?"

"Oh, my skillful, cunning cat," he said. "I can't thank you enough. Please accept my apologies for ever contemplating selling you to perfume researchers."

"Just do as I say," said Puss in Boots, taking a sip of his designer water, "and instead of the stealth candidate, they'll be calling you...Mr. President. Now, you better get up there and give them the victory speech I wrote for you."

---

posted July 28, 2013 04:04 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by PixieJane:
A guy once challenged me to listen to a speech by Newt Gringrich and jot down anything firm he said that couldn't be understood in several ways...after 20 minutes I gave up, he'd spoken almost without pause and said NOTHING, just a bunch of vague rhetoric that sounded good until you diagrammed the sentences to find how devoid of clear meaning they were.

"Their lips are moving" indeed.

---

that is the saddest, and most dangerous too, and because of it, I believe in France the people are going to vote for populists who have the courage (sadly) to take risk in what they say.

I support a man that is from the center. he is Wise and peaceful, but firm and terribly honest, wel, guess what, he is ridiculed by the people and its opponents. Francois Bayrou will never be elected because people want someone who promise them the moon, not tell them the truth. at least in France...

when our current president speaks, for whom I voted on the second turn (system is made of 2 voting rounds, 1st with anyone who wants, and 2nd with only the 2 best results) I give up within seconds. not that I am angry at what he says, but I get bored by people like him who speak just for the purpose of speaking but manage to not say anything with substance, beyond common, expected, onventionnal principles...

I think it is the saddest and dangerous thing in politics in this transitory age, where people have all the means to change things peacefully unlike a century ago let say, and lack the perspective to realise that materially, the population at lagre will not get better living condition, everything else they think they need being superficial to their happiness at best, and at worse detrimental, when it implies maintaining hierarchical (unequal) relations with other parts of the world

posted August 30, 2013 08:26 PM            

Which is exactly what I predicted when O'Bomber was candidate O'Bomber.