Obama’s Debt

Right after the State of the Union address, Obama tried to push through a bill to cap the government debt and prevent further spending.  This was supposed to appease the Republicans, who uniformly voted against the Amendment.  Perhaps they thought resisting the President would ensure his failure, even if he was trying to create a bipartisan atmosphere.  Or maybe the Repubs were afraid Obama was stealing the Tea Party’s Thunder.  But this just brings up the question of debt.  The GOP has a particular skill for running up huge bills and blaming Democrats for them.  Reagan tripled the national debt with unsupported spending, and yet we still remember him as the President who cut the size of government.   Only the Democrats (Clinton) can claim they balanced the budget at any point in the last half-century.   The rest is unsupported spending.

And now the Republicans are screaming about the $11 trillion dollars in national debt caused by Obama.  In truth, Bush left office after having increased the debt to five trillion dollars.  And that’s not all.  Since we’re talking about debt, it means money borrowed without any way of paying it back.  So the Bush era spending has another three billion dollars of debts which will come due over the next four years, essentially saddling Obama with the loss.  America has barely paid a single cent for either of our wars in the Middle East, which will keep adding up during the Obama presidency.  So of our $11 trillion of debt, $8 trillion was from from the Bush years and another trillion arose from the necessary functions of government.  So yes, Obama has caused two trillion dollars of the national debt, by continuing several Bush policies.  But despite claims to the contrary, the Health Care Bill would have actually lowered our national debt.  But since when has truth or decency mattered to the radical right?

Obama’s Low Polls

Bill O’Reilly: The conservative media is winning, now. They’re winning. They’re damaging the president of the United States.

What happened to the liberal media, Bill?

I think I’ve figured out why Obama’s poll numbers are so low.  In a recent poll, almost 50% of Americans said they think Fox News is the most reliable and trustworthy source available.  Read it here.  Seeing as every single commentator opposes Obama and his policies, I suppose it makes sense that half of this country thinks our President is a socialist fascist.  Interestingly, 37% of respondents responded that they distrust Fox News, the highest amount of any cable news network.  So 5 in 10 trust Fox, and 4 in 10 actually know the definition of words like journalism, unbiased, and non-partisan.  Apparently the other ten percent gets their news from the Onion and The Daily Show, which is still better than Fox:

Biden to the Rescue

One of the biggest mistakes I thought Obama had made in the first year was failing to criticize Blackwater, TITAN, and the other Private Defense Companies.  Most of the commands to torture prisoners in Abu Ghraib were given by Security Contractors artificially granted military rank by the Bush admin.  But the soldiers who carried out the commands, under threat of court marshall, got twelve years.  Contractors are not governed by US, Iraqi, or international laws, and as such literally cannot be punished for their actions.  Several Blackwater guards were on trial for slaughtering a group of defenseless Arabs in 2007.  Last week, the case was thrown out by an appeals judge.  The entire Arab world was infuriated and no one in America seemed to notice.  Today I saw a small article on the Fox News blog quietly announcing Biden’s best move yet:

Vice President Biden said Saturday during a visit to Iraq that the U.S will appeal a federal court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater security guards involved in a 2007 Baghdad shooting that left 17 dead.

Mr. Biden added that he was disappointed by the judge’s ruling that prosecutors mishandled the case, and that the U.S. would file their appeal next week.

An attorney for one of the Blackwater guards criticized the announcement today in Iraq for being based on politics and not on the law.

I’m sure Fox News is going to put a negative spin on this, but this decision might be the move that puts Obama back on track.  Military contractors are destroying our army from within.  They cost taxpayers billions, provide no benefits over the army, and are not accountable for their actions.  Go on the web and looks for videos made by military contractors in Iraq.  Sometimes they put catchy tunes over the scenes of executing innocent civilians and shooting cars off the road for no reason.  One woman could not sue Blackwater for psychological damages because she had signed what the industry calls a “Rape waiver” in case the men got a little frisky.  Private military contractors need to be held accountable, and I think Obama might be heading in that direction.  At least I hope so.

The Third Seal: A Star Falls

Sarah Palin has agreed to campaign for John McCain in the 2012 elections.  She has returned to the source that created her, and the third seal is broken.  Not even the Spear of Destiny can stop her now.

I originally thought that Sarah Palin would do well at Fox News, since the Network has basically become a support group for failed conservative politicians.  But after a couple days of listening to her talk, I’ve noticed a problem in her plan.  You see, the “Palin” Brand attracted so much attention because she was a political mystery.  The McCampaign shielded her from the media, and America was left to define the candidate on their own.  Consequently, a confusing variety of opinions formed.  The radical right saw a controversy and sided with the person who called herself a Conservative.  Then she abruptly left he post and entered a state of reclusion.  Michael Jackson had not yet died, and the Media needed something to focus on.  America wanted to know why the smallest tweet or facebook quote would attracted national attention.  Her book sold for the same reason as her massive public appearance fees, namely that the public is curious who Sarah Palin really is.  I’ve long suspected she has a personality disorder which prevents her from compositing a rational world-view, but either way Republicans really responded to her message.  Then she interfered with the Scozzafava election in New York and got herself a job as a content analyst with Fox News (Contradiction in terms?).  The problem with all this exposure is that the more she speaks, the more Americans will realize the inherent contradictions in her opinions.  For instance, today Palin called in to Greta Van Sustern’s show to attack Obama for interfering with the Massachusetts elections.  Once more, Palin claimed to know the will of the American people, saying that Brown’s victory represents a microcosm of public opinion.  The voters had spoken, and by rejecting Coakley they were showing that they had lost faith in Liberalism.  In other words, by sending Brown to Washington, Massachusetts was saying that Obama no longer represented America.  Forgetting about the contradiction of a Conservative saying Massachusetts represents the Republican party, Palin is ignoring the fact that the American people rejected her opinions over a year ago.  Fox News is full of this type of cognitive dissonance so the effect won’t be noticed immediately, but by signing this deal the former VP contender has assured her downfall.   I’m just concerned that  Palin will burn out early, and then Obama won’t be elected after she splits the vote in 2012.

American Media

How many times can Fox News say that Obama is “staking his entire presidency” on something?  So far Obama has failed at bringing the Olympics to Chicago, passing a Health Care bill, and protecting America.  He also promised to resign if he failed to bring the troops home or negotiate a Climate Bill home from Copenhagen (No he didn’t). I’m not saying he isn’t trying, I’m just saying that the Media has claimed dozens of times that if X Happens, Obama will lose all credibility. Obama is such an amazing President, he puts his reputation on the line once a week.  Or maybe the media is full of shit.  Either way, let’s retire that phrase in the New Year, shall we?

Fox News

Beck has stopped appearing on his daily “news” show, prompting us to raise the Suicide Warning Level to Red.  But something has been bothering me throughout this whole Health Care argument.  No one is talking about the Insurance Industry.  During Glenn Beck’s giant forum with American doctors, he changed the subject every time someone brought up insurance reform.  Said he was “pro-Free-Market”.  The current bill does not help America, but not for any of the reasons put forth by Fox News Pundits.  Did you know that on the day a public option was removed from the Senate version, the stocks of insurance companies skyrocketed?  The final bill will probably operate entirely within the current private insurance industry, making the whole thing an exercise in futility.  Instead of making the insurance companies to compete, the bill will essentially enforce and embed the structure as it exists now.  Obama needs to stop trying to work with the Republicans.  No matter what he does, whether the Stimulus, Health Care, etc., the conservatives will strip out the most important parts of the Law in order to ensure it’s failure.  Obama needs to ram something through.  I know the Republicans are already using this term, but trying to pass a bill for six months doesn’t really seem to be “ramming” anything.

Has anyone ever noticed the percentage of Fox News advertising devoted to the Medical, Pharmaceutical, or Insurance industries?  Sarah Palin was on Hannity yesterday, and the strangest thing kept happening.   Although it was a “live” show, the news scrawl beneath the screen was introducing topics before she mentioned them.  I know, news shows today maintain at least seven seconds of playback time to eliminate swears or gaffes, but we’re talking a good twenty seconds in one case.  The trailer read “Palin on Reid Comment: Is there a Double Standard?”  She actually looked down to see what Buzzwords she should use.

This Fox News gig might have been what she wanted all along.  Palin had tried to be a sports anchor on an Alaskan news show back when her name was Sarah Heath.  She failed, but maybe all this politics stuff was just a way for her to get back on Camera.  She might say things like “Heaven forbid there be fractions and factions within the Republican Party”, but she really doesn’t care as long as the media keeps paying attention to her.  She ended the interview by basically saying she should be president, “So we can get this War on Terror done, so we can get it over with.”  Barack Obama dislikes using that word because he knows that the War on Terror, as defined by Bush, will never end.  The rise of radical jihadist groups in the Middle East is the direct reaction to US policy during the Cold War era.  A war can only exist if two sides agree they are in conflict; America is not fighting against an idea or a religion, rather the manifested results of our very existence, our dominance, and our way of life.  By meddling in the Middle East to bring down the USSR, we created the problems which Obama is attempting to solve today.

Fawks News Alert: Google Bitchslaps China

Finally, an American business has done what Obama doesn’t have the political capital (or debt ceiling) to do (I still love Obama).  China used their highly sophisticated team of military specialists to hack into the google email accounts of Chinese Human Rights activists. Google posted a response, threatening to shut down their Google.cn domains unless the government allow unfiltered access to their Asian Search Engines.

The Second Seal: Ἀποκάλυψις

A climate change scientist named Latif has released a report to a global summit claiming that the world has just begun a thirty-year cooling cycle, which he calls a “Mini-Ice Age“.  John of Patmos was right.  You read it here first.

The First Seal Opens: A Crown Appears

Sarah Palin has signed a deal to become a Fox News Commentator.  Read the story here.  Sarah Palin said that God chose her to run as VP.  We should have struck her down when we had the chance.  Now she has become more powerful than we could ever imagine.

Liberal Media

Can I just say something about the supposedly Liberal Media?  Where was this Liberal mouthpiece when Bush was claiming Iraq had WMDs and Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was the mastermind of 9/11?  Sure, I’ll admit that MSNBC steers toward the left, and maybe Newspapers traditionally have an anti-Conservative bias, but Newspaper are dying and MSNBC is getting kicked in the ass by Fox News.  The only reason Rupert Murdoch has such a controlling share of the TV News market is that younger, Liberal viewers are fleeing in droves to Internet news and blogs.  We recognize that the media is in bed with the corporations; or rather, owned by them.  Clearchannel, for instance, is singlehandedly responsible for bringing the Radical Right to radio talk shows.  The more news Americans watch, the less we learn.  And I’m not talking about conservatives or liberals, rather the very approaches which corporations use to manipulate consumers.  You have forgotten the role of the News.  It is not a source of entertainment.   The fact is, the big money right now comes from attacking Obama.  More so even than war profiteering; the defense contractor TITAN recently started buying Billboards and other media rights.  Soon we’ll have the O’Reilly Factor, brought to you by Xe Contractors (Formerly Blackwater (Abu-Ghraib, dead children, etc.)) and the Altria Group (Formerly Phillip Morris (Now making Food!)).  There were more conservative non-fiction books on the 2009 NY Times Best Seller List than All Previous Liberal Best Sellers Combined. I’m not making that up.  Glenn Beck alone had three, one in the category of Children’s Fiction.  Spoiler Alert:  The kid’s mom didn’t really die in a car crash.  It was a dream, to teach children a lesson.  Michael Moore never even considered that market.