U.S. President Barack Obama smiles after making remarks on regulatory reform in the East Room at the White House in Washington October 9, 2009. Earlier in the day, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES POLITICS)
Apparently, SNL’s skit was premature. Maybe President Obama hasn’t actually accomplished the following:
1. Closing Gitmo (same as Bush)
2 Outlawing torture by revoking Bush’s EO that said much the same thing
3. Withdrawal from Iraq (thanks to Bush)
4. De-escalation of war in Afghanistan (campaigned that it was the necessary war and now dithers as more American soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan this year, than in the previous 7 years)
5. peace between Israel and Palestine
6. Olympics in Chicago
7. Supporting democratic movement in Iran
8. Supporting democracy in Honduras
9. nuclear disarmament
But, hey, so what?! At least he’s now won the Nobel Peace Prize for non-accomplishment; and delivered a presidential promise to use this award as a rallying “call to action”. It’s the thought and rhetoric that counts, right? Basically, he’s being awarded for what he may accomplish in the future (Even supporters are questioning, “Why?”). If his pretty words actually inspires us to achieve peace, enhances international relations, then some day in the future, maybe the award will have been earned. Here’s a novel idea: Why not award the prize to him THEN?!
Adiba, 17, of Kabul, showed her support for Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai at the bidding of her teacher as he met with women from the Malal group at his home in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 12, 2009. Although she planned to vote on Aug. 20, she had not decided which candidate would get her vote.
Nikki Kahn-THE WASHINGTON POST
This is indeed the dawning of the Age of Barack Hussein Obama….mmm…mmm….mm:
The anti-war group Code Pink, which rose to prominence with high-profile protests against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the past seven years, is softening its stance against the war in Afghanistan over concerns that a troop withdrawal could harm women’s rights in the country.
“We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline,” Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin told the Christian Science Monitor. “That’s where we have opened ourselves … to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, ‘If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We’d go into civil war.’ A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that.”
The apparent shift in policy comes in the wake of a week-long trip to Afghanistan by Code Pink members, where activists were surprised to find a lot of support among women’s rights activists for maintaining the US and NATO presence in the country.
They are just now awakening to this fact? Where were their brains at for the previous 8 years? Angelina Jolie “got it“, in regards to safeguarding Iraq on humanitarian grounds. Why couldn’t they?
Was opposition to the war all about political opposition to President Bush and not about promotion of peace and human rights (let alone democracy)? Read the rest of this entry »
It seemed like such a practical and good arrangement, the kind that moms have been making with each other since the beginning of time: One woman would watch her friends’ kids while they waited for the school bus so the other women could go to their jobs.
And then the Michigan Department of Human Services stepped in to tell the Good Samaritan mother that she was facing fines and possible jail time for running an illegal day care center.
“To me, this is just a friend helping a friend, plain and simple,” Lisa Snyder said during an interview with TODAY’s Matt Lauer from her Middleville, Mich., home Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the “Star Wars” film saga, fans gather for Star Wars Celebration IV at the L.A. Convention Center downtown. Jasper Manning, 2, assumes the character of Yoda in the company of his father, Chad Manning.
(Mel Melcon / LAT)
Tesco has been accused of religious discrimination after the company ordered the founder of a Jedi religion to remove his hood or leave a branch of the supermarket in north Wales.
Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the Star Wars films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following the incident at a Tesco store in Bangor. Read the rest of this entry »
President Barack Obama talks with Judge Sonia Sotomayor after announcing her as his choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, May 26, 2009. Obama nominated Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, selecting a woman who would be the court’s first Latino. Obama’s choice of the liberal Sotomayor, a 54-year-old judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, was unlikely to change the ideological balance of the high court because Souter, 69, was part of the panel’s liberal wing.
REUTERS/Larry Downing
President Obama speaks to Judge Sonia Sotomayor after announcing her as his choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter in the East Room of the White House, May 26, 2009. REUTERS/Larry Downing
Is there no end to the revision of history by journalists? AP bimbos, PAMELA HESS and ANNE GEARAN tout troop withdrawal as fulfillment of the Delegator in Chief’s campaign promise. Pretty damn safe bet since that was already agreed upon prior to his assumption of office, and was always in the cards as part of “victory”.
President Barack Obama plans to order that all U.S. combat troops be withdrawn from Iraq by August 2010, administration officials said Tuesday, ending the war that defined his upstart presidential campaign three months later than he had promised.
Obama’s plan would pull out all combat troops 19 months after his inauguration, although he had promised repeatedly during the 2008 campaign that he would withdraw them 16 months after taking office. That schedule, based on removing roughly one brigade a month, was predicated on commanders determining that it would not endanger U.S. troops left behind or Iraq’s fragile security.
Pledging to end the war in 16 months helped to build enormous grass-roots support for Obama’s White House bid.
The withdrawal plan — an announcement could come as early as this week — calls for leaving a large contingent of troops behind, between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, to advise and train Iraqi security forces and to protect U.S. interests.
“What the nay-sayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you”
- Senator Barack Obama, accepting the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, August 28, 2008.
Cleopatra Nelson cries as she listens to Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama during a campaign rally in Harrisonburg, Virginia, October 28, 2008.
REUTERS/Jason Reed
Images like the one above make me sad. Sad not only because I do not share in the happiness, the revelry that she and so many other of my fellow Americans are feeling when they look upon and listen to Senator Obama speak of “change” and “hope”; but sad also because I believe the adulation they give him is so richly undeserved. Read the rest of this entry »
And while we should ask not for whom the bell tolls, this is a particularly tragic crime knowing that this man went to his death – abandoning his familial responsibilities – with the “hope” that Barack Obama would provide care and comfort for those left behind.
I wonder if he remembered to send in an absentee before he took the back exit from this woeful world we weave? Not that it would stop Democrats from casting his vote on his behalf, Tuesday.
Yes, this was a heartless post. We right-wingers are mean, cold, and compassionless, don’t you folks know.
Gotta tell ya, the Simpsons doing this kind of episode on Veterans Day just makes me sick. While I love South Park, and to a lesser extent The Simpsons, for the very reason that they will poke fun at every side but there is a time and a place. Something the Simpsons never learned I suppose.
The day that we honor all the soldiers who have died for this country is not the day to air an episode in which they degenerate our heroes: (h/t Hot Air
While laughing at ones self is good for a persons character I just do not find anything remotely funny about Hollywood trying to prove John Kerry’s beliefs. To top it off we have Lisa giving the Democratic talking points:
Do you see now that an invading force can never defeat a motivated local population.
Yes, yes….we will never win so lets just “redeploy” to Okinawa and leave them Iraqi’s to fend for themselves. We were the bad guys to begin with anyways.
Geez.
It doesn’t matter how one feels about Iraq and Bush. These young men and women serving our country deserve better then this.
