bodhi tree swaying » Barack Obama

Obama is still destroying the US!

bodhipaksa — Sat, 08 May 2010 01:10:55 +0000

Back in September, I posted a graph of job losses covering the final fourteen months of Bush’s presidency and the first seven of Obama’s.

I’d ironically titled the post See how Obama is destroying the US because someone had put a poll on Facebook asking the question, “Is Obama destroying our country?” The answer choices were thoughtfully provided as:

– Yes
– No
– Only a little

If you look at the comments for that post you’ll see I was criticized as “partisan,” “misreading the statistics,” and that I “do not understand what is going on.” I was also told that “Hard times are coming and you will not be prepared.”

Of course I don’t have any advanced skills in analyzing the economy, but it seemed obvious that the trend was in the right direction and that jobs would start being created before too long — probably in just a few months.

Well, a few more months have passed, and the graph has been updated (below). There’s been more than half a million jobs created over the past two months. I wonder what the commenters on the previous post think now?

Journalist calls for military overthrow of Obama administration

bodhipaksa — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:01:46 +0000

Here’s the article, which was published on Newsmax, and then pulled. I got the text from Google’s cache:

Obama Risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention’

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 10:35 AM

By: John L. Perry

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

# Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”

# Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.

# They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.

# They can see that the economy — ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation — is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.

# They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.

# They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America’s troop strength is allowed to sag.

# They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.

# They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.

So, if you are one of those observant military professionals, what do you do?

Wait until this president bungles into losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear bombs falls into the hands of militant Islam?

Wait until Israel is forced to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear-bomb plants, and the Middle East explodes, destabilizing or subjugating the Free World?

What happens if the generals Obama sent to win the Afghan war are told by this president (who now says, “I’m not interested in victory”) that they will be denied troops they must have to win? Do they follow orders they cannot carry out, consistent with their oath of duty? Do they resign en masse?

Or do they soldier on, hoping the 2010 congressional elections will reverse the situation? Do they dare gamble the national survival on such political whims?

Anyone who imagines that those thoughts are not weighing heavily on the intellect and conscience of America’s military leadership is lost in a fool’s fog.

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for Newsmax.com. Read John Perry’s columns here.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

The kind of president we need…

bodhipaksa — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:42:12 +0000

The kind of president we need…

is the kind of president capable of thinking in this way:

“My job is to help the country take the long view — to make sure that not only are we getting out of this immediate fix, but we’re not repeating the same cycle of bubble and bust over and over again; that we’re not having the same energy conversation 30 years from now that we had 30 years ago; that we’re not talking about the state of our schools in the exact same ways we were talking about them in the 1980s; and that at some point we say, ‘You know what? If we’re spending more money per-capita on health care than any nation on earth, then you’d think everybody would have coverage and we would see lower costs for average consumers, and we’d have better outcomes.’ ”

The statement, of course, is by President Obama (cited here). I hope for all our sakes he’s up to the job in the face of the kind of obstructionism shown by America-hater Rush Limbaugh, who said “I want everything [Obama's] doing to fail… I want the stimulus package to fail…. I do not want this to succeed.” Just to get that clear, Limbaugh is saying that he wants the economy to go down the tubes, he wants Americans to lose their jobs, he wants companies to go bankrupt — just so that he can have the satisfaction of saying he was right (although that hasn’t happened much lately). Now it’s one thing to say that you disagree with policies. It’s one thing to say that you don’t think they’ll succeed in, in this case, pulling us out of the economic hole Bush got us into, but it’s entirely another thing to say that you “hope” those policies will fail.

Cheese on Chinese food

bodhipaksa — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:06:18 +0000

Jon Stewart is concerned that Obama’s rhetoric so closely parallels that of George W. Bush, but Jason Jones says, “I guess when Obama says this stuff I don’t think he really means it. And that gives me hope.”

I’d have thought it was the other way around myself, but Jones’ version is funnier.

Jon Stewart on Fox: “Fear and unbalanced”

bodhipaksa — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:30:09 +0000

Brilliant clip from Stewart:

“Fox News: Really scared about what might happen; oblivious to what already has.”

Collective responsibility, and hard choices

bodhipaksa — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:01:50 +0000

I caught up on the inaugural speech almost 24 hours late due to a hospital appointment and a lack of television. I’d heard some of it on the radio but missed a chunk in the middle, and so it was only thanks to Bittorrent that I was able to download the video and see, if not the surrounding events, at least the botched swearing-in and the inaugural speech that followed.

I found the event itself very moving — the visuals definitely added to the sense of this being a momentous occasion — but wasn’t much impressed with Obama’s speech. Paul Krugman hits the spot in today’s NYT in describing one of the things I noticed as I was listening:

…in his speech Mr. Obama attributed the economic crisis in part to “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age” — but I have no idea what he meant.

The other cause pinpointed for our current crisis was “greed and irresponsibility on the part of some.” Perhaps Obama thought he was giving George W. Bush a hard enough time and so decided not to press the point that government collusion with unscrupulous bankers had largely created the problems the entire world now faces. Or perhaps he was including the Bush administration in the ranks of the greedy and irresponsible. That fits. But like Krugman I don’t know what Obama meant by “hard choices.”

Krugman goes on to say:

This is, first and foremost, a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry. And if we failed to rein in that industry, it wasn’t because Americans “collectively” refused to make hard choices; the American public had no idea what was going on, and the people who did know what was going on mostly thought deregulation was a great idea.

With due deference to Krugman, though, I think that it’s certainly true that some of the responsibility — or blame if you prefer — should be spread widely. It’s certainly true that the American people as a whole had little or no understanding of what was happening inside financial institutions, but they chose a government for two terms that consistently showed a disdain for facts and expertise, and that did what it wanted to do based on ideology, and either did not care about the consequences or was woefully naive and indulged in wishful thinking.

So I think there is collective responsibility for the mess we’re in. Collectively, people in the US are far too ready to side with the interests of the rich, and so we end up with the peculiar spectacle of serfdom masquerading as rugged individualism. We’re too easily distracted by media-manufactured news (Britney!). We’re too easily distracted by politically-manufactured pseudo-issues (gay marriage! gun control!) that are designed to divert their attention from what’s really going on. We too often believe what they want to believe and are averse to facts (Obama is a Muslim! He’s not a citizen!). We spend too much and save too little (although of course for many people saving isn’t much of an option).

Anyway, we’re all left guessing as to what Obama, or his speechwriters, meant by a “failure to make hard choices.” If I were to suggest hard choices for the American people to make it would be something like the following:

Do voluntary work so that you empathize more with people less fortunate than yourself.
Cancel your cable subscription and watch less TV.
Read more books — especially educational ones.
Read serious analysis of various political shades.
Turn off the Shock-Jock political programs that aim to make you angry. It’s harder to think straight when you’re irate.
Admit that you might sometimes not know the answer to every problem, especially the big economic ones.
Admit that your political opponents might sometimes have ideas worth listening to.
Decide to honestly look at the facts of the matter before settling on an opinion.
Subject your own opinions to the same kind of analysis you apply to those of people you disagree with.

These are hard choices for many, if not all, of us because it’s easier to be angry than to be rational, it’s easier to be entertained than it is to be genuinely informed, it’s easier to surround ourselves with opinions we agree with than opinions we dissent from and it’s easier to repeat opinions than it is to reflect on them. We’re too much retreating into isolated liberal and conservative enclaves, and it’s not doing us any good, either as individuals or as a nation.

I’d suggest that the personal responsibility that Obama touts has to include factors like these. We can’t rely on government to sort out our problems if we’re not in a position to choose an effective government. And we can’t choose an effective government unless we’re educated, respectful of knowledge, and able to think analytically.

Roberts’ subversion of the oath of office

bodhipaksa — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:44:10 +0000

Marc Randazza, A First Amendment attorney based in Florida, has a pertinent comment about Roberts flubbing the oath of office:

The news outlets are buzzing with criticism of Chief Justice John Roberts for flubbing Obama’s Oath of Office — but the critiques seem to be all about him nervously reversing a few words. These critiques miss the issue.

After he painfully, and tortuously, slogged his way through the Oath of Office, Roberts appeared to add his own little bit to it as he asked the President, “So help you God?”

Article II, Section I of the US Constitution reads, in pertinent part (with “he” referring to the President-elect):

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The words “so help you God,” are not in the Oath. However, since Chester A. Arthur, most (if not all) Presidents-elect have thrown in this little garnish. I previously opined that Mr. Obama could, if he wanted to, throw in a little extra props to his personal deity. In fact, if Obama wanted to end the oath with “The Snozzberries taste like Snozzberries,” he would have had every right to do so.

On the other hand, upon the completion of the Oath as it appears in Article II, Section I, Roberts next line should have been to either shut up or say “congratulations, Mr. President,” — not to ask Obama, “so help you God?”

Funny enough, Obama re-took the Oath of Office due to the fact that the word “faithfully” got moved around a bit, and thus there was some question as to whether Obama actually took the Constitutionally mandated Oath. While most agree that this was unnecessary, it certainly couldn’t hurt given that there are still tinfoil-hat wearing Palinites out there who think that Obama can’t be president because he was born in Hawaii.

It’s well worth checking out the rest of Randazza’s blog.

Jonesing towards enlightenment

bodhipaksa — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:44:54 +0000

Thanks to William Harryman at Integral Options Café I can now finally place myself in one of those hip generational categories. I was born in 1961 (same year as Obama) and while I was definitely influenced by the protests and counter-culture of the hippies I was way too young to actually participate in any of that stuff and never felt I belonged in the baby Boomer generation.

I grew up with the ideas that sex before marriage was OK and that equality was to be striven for, but sex before marriage was by then so common that it wasn’t rebellious but status quo, and equality was already being legislated into existence in the form of sex and racial discrimination legislation. Again, these things were becoming part of the established way of doing things.

I wasn’t in rebellion against the boomers and so didn’t qualify for Generation X. And apparently I’m not alone in feeling that I don’t have a generation, because a whole bunch of other people who are in the same situation are now being called Generation Jones.

Nationwide, those who are exact same age as Obama say they are GenJonesers, not Boomers or Xers

A new poll released today, of a nationally representative sample of 500 U.S. adults born in 1961—the same year Obama was born—shows that today’s 47 year olds clearly feel not like Boomers nor Gen Xers, but instead believe they belong to the heretofore lost generation in-between Boomers and Xers…Generation Jones. ThirdAge, a popular website for mid-lifers, commissioned the poll, in conjunction with Obama’s Aug. 4, 2008 birthday. When respondents were asked which generation they believe they are a part of: 57% chose Generation Jones, while only 22% picked Baby Boomer, and only 21% said Generation X. ThirdAge, a site that is known for prioritizing consumer insight about its audience, has used this insight to build one of the most popular mid-lifer websites, with over 500,000 unique visitors a month. The underlying concept for the poll was that rather than focusing on expert opinion to determine the question of Obama’s generational identity, a very effective way of answering this question is to ask the actual people born in 1961 to self-identify their generation.

Question:

500 U.S. adults born in 1961 were asked:

“Do you consider yourself to be a member of the Baby Boom Generation, Generation X, or a lost generation in-between (usually called Generation Jones)?”

Results:

22% chose: Baby Boom Generation
57% chose: Generation Jones
21% chose: Generation X

ThirdAge commissioned this polling of a nationally representative sample of 500 U.S. adults born in 1961, conducted July 31- August 1, 2008. The polling was conducted by MarketTools, using TrueSample technology, which has recently emerged as a top U.S. polling firm, with a long list of Fortune500 company clients.

Apparently the term Generation Jones derives from the slang term “jonesing,” to indicate that this generation feels “unrequited cravings and unfulfilled expectations.” (Which generation doesn’t?) But that makes the term much cooler than it initially sounded to my ears. I’d assumed it must have something to do with “keeping up with the Joneses” or (worse) Jonestown. Hey, but “jonesing” — that’s pretty cool. In Buddhism “dukkha” could be partly defined as “jonesing” and is a creative force. Even in refined meditative states it’s recommended that you not settle down and get complacent, but keep on looking for that element of existential dissatisfaction that keeps pushing you onwards. So here I am, with my generation, jonesing towards enlightenment.

Conservative lunacy continues unabated

bodhipaksa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:35:14 +0000

Georgia Representative George Broun is apparently worried that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

I guess it’s a sign of progress that Rep. Broun understands that he may sound “a bit crazy and off base.” What is the basis for his paranoia (outside of his own mind, of course)? Obama gave a speech to a group of veterans in Colorado on July 4, 2008, in which he called for Americans to serve their country, and in which he outlined ways in which such service could be to the long-term security benefit of the US.

Just as we must value and encourage military service across our society, we must honor and expand other opportunities to serve. Because the future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson, but it also depends on the teacher in East LA, the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans, the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, and the Foreign Service officer in Indonesia.

And later in the same speech:

“Renewing that spirit starts with service. Make no mistake: our destiny as Americans is tied up with one another. If we are less respected in the world, then you will be less safe.”

So in context it’s clear that what he’s saying is simply that it’s good PR to send Americans overseas (amongst other things) to help the world in non-military ways, and that better PR for the US will result in better security.

In fact, he said the following:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

And that’s the bit the right wing is going nutty over.

In a typical comment, one republican said:

“If we’re going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn’t this rather a big deal? I thought Democrats generally believed the U.S. spent too much on the military. How is it possible their candidate is seeking to create some kind of massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force put together?”

The levels of confusion here are quite astonishing. First, Obama spelled out the nature of the “civilian security force” — which would consist of people working for the Peace Corps, teaching, consulates, etc. It’s all there in the speech. How this turns into a “secret national police force” is anyone’s guess.

Second, the words “civilian security force,” referring as they do to entities such as the Peace Corps, are clearly metaphorical.

Another conservative commented:

“In 2007, the U.S. Defense budget was $439 billion. Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that?”

This seems to be a either an inability to understand the meaning of the words “just as well-funded,” or a willful misunderstanding of them. It hardly seems likely that Obama would be planning to spent over $400 billion and not tell anyone, so “just as well funded” would presumably mean that education, the Peace Corps, etc, would have their needs covered in an adequate way, just as the military has its needs covered in an adequate way. As they say, when was the last time you heard of the military having a bake sale to raise money for a new jet? And yet our school system is perpetually in that state. To fund, say, the Peace Corps, as well as the military doesn’t mean spending the same amount as the military gets, it means making sure that it’s, well, “well-funded.”

“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”

No, he’s not comparing Obama to Hitler, he’s just saying that Obama might be like Hitler. Just as many, many other conservatives, commenting on an extract of Obama’s speech on YouTube, have done:

This could be the equivalent of Hitler’s SS.

The Messiah has spoken….disarm and give your weapons to him, leave yourself with no protection, be patriotic and help spread the (your) wealth, help him put into a militant civilian military (Blaque Panthers) in order to suppress the military from overthrowing him. Submit all white weak people.

This makes no sense at all. We have the worlds mightiest army. Why do we need a civilian force? Where have I heard this before? I know, in Cuba. I can see a pattern here. These guys all follow the same pattern. He wants a civilian force made up of his supporters so he can perpetuate himself in power. Castro, Hitler, Chavez, they have all done it.

obama is a real nazi!!!

This is exactly was Hitler was saying before his civilian army helped him make his fascist police state..Anyone ever heard of the SS? All you who think Obama is some cool black dude who is gonna make America peachy better open your eyes. This is the making of new Hitler.

War on the people

etc, etc, etc.

Once again, I wonder where all this poison is going to go now that Obama has been elected? At a time when a president-elect has to be shielded by several inches of bullet-proof glass and there have been more than 500 threats to and at least two attempts on his life, we’d expect our elected representatives to be a bit less inclined to supply pitchforks and flaming torches to the village mob.

“More than 500 death threats against Obama”

bodhipaksa — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:22:17 +0000

From the Telegraph:

Fears are growing that Mr Obama, who will become America’s first black president following his inauguration next year, will be the subject of an assassination attempt.

The secret service is reported to have already investigated more than 500 death threats against Mr Obama during the presidential election contest. Last month, two neo-Nazi skinheads were arrested for conspiring to assassinate Mr Obama.

He is expected to be protected by a secret service detail with hundreds of close-protection agents. Over the past few weeks, the US government has also begun secretly testing a new ultra-secure presidential limousine able to withstand most bomb blasts and terror attacks. Details of his movements will be a closely guarded secret for all but his most senior aides.

The scale of US presidential security is already on a different scale to that for British Prime Ministers with huge motorcades accompanying US presidents when they leave the White House.

Mr Obama received full secret service protection in May 2007, much earlier than most presidential candidates. His secret service codename is “renegade”.

His wife, Michelle, is said to be particularly concerned about the threats that he now faces. However, Mr Obama previously said: “It’s not something that I’m spending time thinking about day to day. I think anybody who decides to run for president recognises that there are some risks involved.”