Obama

It seems like everywhere you look these days, someone’s trying to spread...The Fear.

All around us...in every town...on every corner...a massive Army Of Fear is standing by, according to the Messengers, ready at a moment’s notice to obey the dictates of some unappointed Czar or another.

Just ask Glenn Beck: concentration camps for the white people, jackbooted stormtroopers ready to snatch the guns from your cold dead fingers...Socialist Government-Controlled Healthcare That Threatens Your Not Socialist Medicare...it’s all coming, my friends—and unless we organize, as a community, to return to the values of the Founding Fathers, The Government, meaning that awful Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and George Soros and all the other Evil Community Organizers, will win.

There’s no government, we’re told, like no government.

You know who would find all of this fear of self-government just entirely bizarre?

The Founding Fathers.

In today’s conversation we’ll consider the fundamentals of American patriotism, we’ll ask one of those Founding Fathers how he saw the role of Government—and we’ll toss in a few words from Abraham Lincoln, just for good measure.

Barack Obama is getting down and dirty and I am personally loving it. He is on the campaign trail, not for office but for passing needed health insurance reform legislation. He is going after the insurance companies and, to me, this should have been the strategy all along. His most recent speech is a heavy duty assault.

The polls with regard to how the american people feel about this issue or this bill vary depending on the poll source. But, EVERY poll on the issue of how Americans feel about health insurance companies shows there is obvious disgust and overall ire at these company's dealings.

This strategy by Obama is a good one. We must turn the public opinion tide so that our wavering democratic politicians in D.C. will feel comfortable coming on board to get this thing done.

LANGUAGE WARNING: Today’s story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.

Gentle Reader, you have been officially...warned.

With that in mind, if you take offense when confronted with language strong enough to knock a fuckin’ buzzard off a shitwagon, please stop reading now.

It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against “blue dog” Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.

Now we’re not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we’re finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone’s mind for the past year or so.

Things politically seem to be going downhill fast for the Obama administration and it is being said that his advisors/staff can take responsibility for that. There are articles that say that just as presidents in the past, Obama needs to take a close look at this staff and make some changes or continue to see a deeper dip in his polls.

I am not sure how The Daily Beast leans politically, but the article does make sense on a number of levels.

And is still working.

The stimulus package, flaws and all, deserves a big heaping of credit. “It prevented things from getting much worse than they otherwise would have been,” Nariman Behravesh, Global Insight’s chief economist, says. “I think everyone would have to acknowledge that’s a good thing.”

It doesn't take much digging to see North Carolina's dysfunction in the area of charter school policy. Caught in the crossfire of partisan politics, the kernel of a good idea has languished between free-market extremists who seem eager to dismantle public education altogether, and left-leaning politicians who fear that any crack in the dam will unleash a torrent of angry teachers. Both sides should reset their priorities.

President Obama called for an end to the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy in his State of the Union address. Senator Carl Levin from Michigan has indicated hearings may begin in February.

This is a really pressing issue. The US Military is the largest employer in the US making them the largest employer of LGBT people, too. This is also about jobs, national security, ending discrimination and helping our service members not worry about being discharged because they utter a pronoun that gives themselves away.

Let's end Don't Ask Don't Tell. It is a shameful policy that has no place in the US.

Over at Talking About Politics, Gary Pearce says:

Once you get past the dishing about Sarah Palin, John Edwards, et al in the book Game Change, you learn a few things. Like about President Obama. That he’s like a basketball player who wants the ball when the game is on [the] line.

That pretty much sums of my thinking about the big speech tonight. It's been a hell of a year, with a few important accomplishments, and many missed opportunities. I hope Mr. Obama gets his game back on.

From the humiliation of loosing Ted Kennedy's seat, to the absence of leadership from President and to the spectacle of the Democrats in Congress running around like chickens with their heads cut off, in this past week I have never been so embarrassed to be a Democrat in my life.

Most of us who read BlueNC surf the 'Net and peruse untold numbers of blogposts and a plethora of web content daily.

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Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, where no man had boldly gone before, in a land where the sun never set and the climate never changed, lived a lovely young princess called Airwick.

Wherever she went, gaily tripping around the land, singing her sweet songs, and dancing her pretty little dances, the air was fresh and clean smelling. And the good folk who inhabited the land were happy and abundant.

Then one day, a large and sweaty giant, known as Al Ogre, came and settled right in the middle of Princess Airwick’s kingdom.

Al was a goodly soul. He hurt no-one. But he did talk a lot. I mean, on and on and on and on. It burned your ears. You wanted to take the good folk of the kingdom and smash them into…I’m sorry, medication…now, where was I?

Oh yes. Goodly soul. But Al Ogre had a BIG PROBLEM. He had an Inconvenient Tooth. So, he could only imbibe liquids. And those liquids caused Al to emit the foulest, most toxic whitehouse gases.

Being the most mercenary friendly state in the nation, North Carolina should be especially excited about Obama's unprecedented reliance on private armies to carry out the growth strategies of America, Inc. Gotta love those free markets.

Now that the much despised George W. Bush is out of the way and a more popular figurehead is doing PR for Dick Cheney’s right-hand military leader Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is leading his second AF-Pak surge now, and with long time Bush family confidant Robert Gates still running the Defense Department, the masters of war have never had it so good.

According to new statistics released by the Pentagon, with Barack Obama as commander in chief, there has been a 23% increase in the number of ‘private security contractors’ working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29% increase in Afghanistan.

We strive to be, if anything, a participatory space around here, and I’ve had a question come to my inbox that is very much deserving of our attention.

To make a long story short, our questioner wants to know why, on the one hand, despite the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, also known as the “stimulus”), unemployment in the construction industry continues to increase, and, on the other hand, why there is such a giant disparity, on a state-by-state basis, in the cost of saving a job?

They’re great questions, and, having done a bit of research, I think I have some cogent answers.

Can Obama Raise The Dead?
By: Jack Dawsey

Can President Obama raise the dead? (I speak metaphorically).
I suppose the attempt to raise the dead, (and scam the living), was first tried among religious hucksters dating back to the 19th century. Apparently, their method of operation was adopted by the 21st century political world. Let me explain.
The right-wing of American politics did succeed, in part, in raising the dead. Their policies raised the rich and powerful to a new standard: the “super-rich.” By every measurable economic standard, the policies of the Republican Party worked for @1% of the American people. More recently, the left-wing of American politics is trying to raise the dead. And much like their predecessor, they’re using the blood of the American people for a transfusion.