What's The Strategy Here?

Remember when Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Ironic, that:

Resarch by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reported just 4 percent of US drone strikes in Pakistan have killed people identified as members of al-Qaeda.

Research by the London-based bureau found that only 111 out of the total 2,379 drone victims killed in Pakistan since 2004 was "a senior commander of any armed group". Just 84 victims were identified as al-Qaeda militants.

Following the 400th drone strike on 11 October, the report provides a damning assessment of the CIA drone program in Pakistan.

"More than a third of them were not designated a rank, and almost 30 percent are not even linked to a specific group. Only 84 are identified as members of al-Qaeda – less than 4 percent of the total number of people killed," the report said.

The investigative bureau's Naming The Dead project has been monitoring and collating research on the identities and backgrounds of US drone victims in Pakistan since June 2004.

Indiscriminately dropping drone bombs, taking the fight to the "terrorists" - and creating many more terrorists in the bargain:

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met in the Oval Office Friday with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakastani girl who was shot in the head on her school bus by Taliban gunmen for criticizing their rule, including banning education for girls.

The White House says the first couple invited Malala -- the youngest ever nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize -- to the White House "to thank her for her inspiring and passionate work on behalf of girls education in Pakistan."

In a statement, the White House says the United States "joins with the Pakistani people and so many around the world to celebrate Malala’s courage and her determination to promote the right of all girls to attend school and realize their dreams."

In a statement released after the meeting, Malala said she was honored to meet with Obama, but that she told him she's worried about the effect of U.S. drone strikes. (The White House statement didn't mention that part.)

"I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees," she said in the statement. "I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact."

In other circumstances, were Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan in the wrong place at the wrong time, Obama might have her killed in a drone strike.

Not purposely, of course, but intent is not the point here.

The point is what actually happens as a result of Obama's drone war.

The goal of the drone policy is ostensibly to stop terrorists from targeting the U.S. and it's allies.

The actual outcome of that policy is to fuel more terrorism against the U.S. and it's allies.

The cynic in me wonders if running an Endless War, with more "terrorists" being created every year as the U.S. indiscriminately drops drones on people, not particularly caring who they hit, isn't the actual goal.

Nothing keeps a government and the elite that supports it in power like Endless War.

And surely things are not getting better.

The more drones we drop, the more "terrorists" we seem to create.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/11/205176/obama-and-first-lady-meet-with.html#storylink=cpy

Obama: I Could Be My Own Drone Bombing Victim

Barack Obama kills an awful lot of people via his drone bomb program.

Since 2009, Obama has ordered drone bomb strikes that have killed 2,304 people in Pakistan.

That's right - 2,304.

Today Barack Obama made an appearance before the press to weep about how, given his background, he could have been Trayvon Martin:

 “I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away,” Mr. Obama said in the briefing room. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.”

The president is right, of course.

As a man of color, he has been profiled because of his race, his skin color, and his appearance.

Given different circumstances, he quite literally could have been Trayvon Martin.

But if he could have been Trayvon Martin, he also could have been one of those 2,304 people he has ordered killed with drone bomb strikes since he has been president.

These are also people of color who are targeted simply because of how they look, where they live, where they worship, and who they associate with or live next door to,

He could have been Trayvon Martin.

He also could be his own drone bomb victim.

Too bad he doesn't see that for himself.

A Racist Police State

A wall of blue shirts, with the white shirts behind them to enforce discipline, greeted people protesting the Trayvon Martin verdict trying to march from Union Square to Times Square yesterday.

Just in case anybody out there is still under the impression they have constitutional rights or enjoy living in the "land of the free," these pictures ought to disabuse them of those erroneous beliefs.

We live in a police state, we have no rights and we are not free.

Meanwhile, in other news today, the U.S. killed nineteen brown people, er "militants," with a drone strike and military operation in Pakistan.

There are prisoners in California and prisoners in Guantanamo on hunger strike.

A whistleblower who has exposed the nexus between private enterprise and the Obama administration in the surveillance state cannot go to Venezuela for asylum because he fears the U.S. will force down his plane in international airspace, arrest him and take him into military detention where he will be tortured.

And the government is quite literally spying on everything we do - not to keep us safe but to keep us down.

If you want to express you're outrage at any of these crimes, from the Zimmerman verdict to the drone bomb crimes to the police state to the surveillance state, you'll be met by a wall of blue shirts with white shirts behind them to enforce discipline.

That's the United States these days.

If you're not pissed at the people in both parties running this show, you're not paying attention.

Bloomberg Threatens Congress

Herr Mayor wants his gun control bill passed into law - or else:

Vice President Biden and three Newtown families teamed up with Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday to demand that Congress do the right thing about getting guns off the streets.

“What Congress has to decide is if it’s politically popular, or is in in their hearts the right thing to do,” the mayor said at City Hall.

“Congress just has to get some courage,” Bloomberg said, “and it’s up to us to sort of give them that courage.”

You can read that as "Give Me What I Want Or I Target Some Of You In Your Next Campaigns".

Since he's already bagged at least one Dem for not supporting his gun control policies, and since he's made it clear that he plans to drop millions into campaigns to promote his pet policies on gun control, health issues and education reform, you can bet some in Congress will listen.

You know, I used to be a big supporter of gun control over the years.

But the older I get and the more I see the police outfitted as paramilitary armies, the more I hear Bloomberg call the NYPD his own "private army," the more I hear NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly brag about having missiles to take down aircraft and spies to take out terrorists, the more I see our rights to assembly and speech eroded in this post-9/11 world, the more I wonder why it is that an oligarch says that the only groups who should have guns are the police and the military.

It's frankly a little worrisome.

I've never owned a gun, don't want to own one, don't want to go hunting or shoot anything ever.

I find all of these shootings across the country horrific.

But I also worry about an oligarch like Bloomberg using his billions to promote his political agenda, to scare politician into doing what he wants, to push through these policies in a very anti-democratic way.

On top of that, I worry about a policy that looks to take all the guns away from people and ensure that only the cops and military have them.

After watching Occupy Wall Street when the cops ran rampant, I no longer like that idea so much.

Seriously, these guys are armed to teeth and they're dying to use that military-style equipment.

Isn't it time we question why local police forces have so much military equipment at their disposal and just who they think they're going to use that stuff against?

Bloomberg and Biden want to get guns off the street - great, I'm all for it.

Let's take the unpiloted drones away from the NYPD and the armored assault vehicles away from the cops in Tupelo, Mississippi while we're at it.

One final thing - Biden used "those twenty dead babies" as the emotional blackmail to get the gun control bill passed.

The deaths of those 20 children in Newtown was a tragedy.

But Joe Biden and his boss Barack Obama have killed way more than 20 children with their drone bombing campaigns.

Seriously, you can look that up and see.

I even blogged about it and put up some pictures of the children slaughtered by the U.S. government drones.

If Biden is so concerned about dead children, he ought to get Barack Obama to stop killing them in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

Those children deserve as much concern as the children in Newtown who were killed in that awful, awful event.

Barack Obama And Martin Luther King

Glenn Greenwald looks at Martin Luther King's April 4, 1967 speech in Riverside Church on American imperialism and militancy and compares King's words with President Obama's policies:

King called the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today", as well as the leading exponent of "the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long" (is there any surprise this has been whitewashed from his legacy?). He emphasized that his condemnations extended far beyond the conflict in Southeast Asia: "the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit." He insisted that no significant social problem - wealth inequality, gun violence, racial strife - could be resolved while the US remains "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift" - a recipe, he said, for certain "spiritual death". For that reason, he argued, "it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war." That's because:

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

Working against US imperialism was, he said, "the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions." For King, opposing US violence in the world was not optional but obligatory: "We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy . . . ." The entire speech is indescribably compelling and its applicability to contemporary US behavior obvious. I urge everyone who hasn't already done so to take the time to read it.

Barack Obama's grand inaugural ceremony will take place today on the holiday memorializing King's birthday. Obama will always be linked in history to King because his election (and re-election) as America's first African-American president is, standing alone, an inspiring by-product of King's work on racial justice. But this symbolic link has another, less inspiring symbolic meaning: Obama's policies are a manifestation of exactly the militaristic mindset which King so eloquently denounced. Obama has always been fond of invoking King's phrase "fierce urgency of now", yet ironically, that is lifted from this anti-war speech, one that stands as a stinging repudiation of the continuous killing and violence Obama has spent the last four years unleashing on many countries around the world (Max Blumenthal suggested that Obama's second inaugural speech be entitled "I have a drone").

And just so that the consequences of Barack Obama's drone bombings aren't theoretical, here's a couple of photos of victims of Obama's drone strikes:

 On November 15, 2012, Dennis Kucinch addressed the Congress on these policies:

“American drones in Pakistan have killed as many as 3,378 people. Drones in Yemen have killed as many as 1,952 people. Drones in Somalia have killed as many as 170 people. We've not declared war on any of these nations, but our weapons have killed innocent civilians in all of them. Highly reputable research shows that the number of high-level targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is estimated at about 2 percent.”

“According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration is working on efforts to institutionalize the practice of targeted killings by unmanned drones abroad. The volume of these killings challenges the morality and the legality of the attacks. We are creating a precedent for other nations that are developing the same technology. China has just unveiled a new drone”, he said.

 “The drone program has thus far been conducted with no oversight from Congress or any judicial body. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ensure that programs that are being conducted in the name of our Nation are legal, transparent, and accountable.

On the day that Barack Obama takes his second oath of office with his murderous hand on a Bible once owned by Martin Luther King, I think it's important to point out that Barack Obama has more in common with Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush than Martin Luther King.

Obama Continues Bush Illegal Rendition Practice

I am so glad we re-elected Barack Obama rather than the "unthinkable" Mitt Romney:

The three European men with Somali roots were arrested on a murky pretext in August as they passed through the small African country of Djibouti. But the reason soon became clear when they were visited in their jail cells by a succession of American interrogators.

U.S. agents accused the men — two of them Swedes, the other a longtime resident of Britain — of supporting al-Shabab, an Islamist militia in Somalia that Washington considers a terrorist group. Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.
The secret arrests and detentions came to light Dec. 21 when the suspects made a brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom.

The men are the latest example of how the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Renditions are taking on renewed significance because the administration and Congress have not reached agreement on a consistent legal pathway for apprehending terrorism suspects overseas and bringing them to justice.
 
Congress has thwarted President Obama’s pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has created barriers against trying al-Qaeda suspects in civilian courts, including new restrictions in a defense authorization bill passed last month. The White House, meanwhile, has resisted lawmakers’ efforts to hold suspects in military custody and try them before military commissions.

The impasse and lack of detention options, critics say, have led to a de facto policy under which the administration finds it easier to kill terrorism suspects, a key reason for the surge of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Renditions, though controversial and complex, represent one of the few alternatives.

“In a way, rendition has become even more important than before,” said Clara Gutteridge, director of the London-based Equal Justice Forum, a human rights group that investigates national security cases and that opposes the practice.

Drone bomb strikes, a kill list, illegal renditions and warrantlesss wiretapping - I'm so glad a Democrat is in office so that I don't have to worry my head about any of those things.

Of course if this were Mitt Romney, John McCain or George Bush doing it, I would be screaming about war crimes.

But Barack Obama is my guy, and he's a good guy, so I just let this stuff go by and talk about how crazy those Republicans are instead.

When Barack Obama spoke of the murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary, he said the following:

"I think anybody who was up in Newtown, who talked to the parents, who talked to the families understands that something fundamental in America has to change," Obama told David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And all of us have to do some soul searching, including me as president, that we allow a situation in which 20 precious small children are getting gunned down in a classroom. 

A noble sentiment from our Nobel Peace Prize winning president.

How about a fundamental change to American foreign policy that uses drone bomb strikes against terrorism suspects and kills children in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere?

Children like the ones described here.https://twitter.com/dronestream/status/279258960916271105/photo/1

Or here.https://twitter.com/dronestream/status/278727931818278913/photo/1

Or here. https://twitter.com/i/#!/dronestream/media/slideshow?url=pic.twitter.com%2F1jKbpuIz

Adam Lanza murdered 20 children at Sandy Hook in a horrific event.

We don't know how many children Barack Obama has had murdered through U.S. drone policy strikes, because the U.S. government is very secretive about casualties.

But it's more than 20, we know that.

We know that the Obama administration specializes in targeting funerals of drone bomb victims with another drone bomb strike, that they also target first responders to drone bomb strikes who attempt to help the victims with another drone bomb strike.

We know the policy causes and is meant to cause terror all across the globe - don't screw with us or this will happen to you.

Now is rendering and detaining suspects without charges, interrogating them without informing them of their rights or giving them legal counsel, and trying them on evidence obtained illegally better than the drone bomb campaign the Obama administration has engaged in?

Absolutely not.

But the Obama administration says that because Congress will not act the way they want on WoT issues, they have no choice but to do one of these two things.

If this were George Bush or Mitt Romney or John McCain doing the rendering, the murders from the sky, the slaughtering of innocent children like the ones pictured and detailed in the above links, liberals and progressives would be screaming holy hell over it.

But because this is Barack Obama engaged in the rendition and drone bomb murder and the slaughtering of innocent children like the ones pictured and detailed in the above links, there is relative silence from those same liberals and progressives.

Barack Obama is a war criminal and a murderer, he belongs in a prison cell block along with Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, John Yoo and Richard Nixon's corpse.

Where is the outrage from the left?

Obama Weeps Crocodile Tears

From the news today:

Barack Obama wiped away tears at the White House as he expressed grief over the children killed in the Connecticut massacre and promised "meaningful action" to prevent similar shooting rampages in the future.

...

Obama, speaking in the White House press room, said the loss of innocent lives had broken hearts. "As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it's an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago – these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children.

...

Just minutes earlier, he broke down while delivering the statement. He said: "The majority of those who died today were children – beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old." Choking up, tears welling in his eyes, he paused for what seemed like an interminable time, though it was only 10 seconds.

He went on: "They had their entire lives ahead of them – birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own." He then had to pause again.

From 2011:

Based on international and Pakistani news reports and research on the ground, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has issued a new study on civilians killed by American drones, concluding that at least 385 civilians have been killed in the past seven years, including at least 168 children.

Here’s a taste of the report, which can be read in full here (warning: graphic images):

Pakistani father Din Mohammad had the misfortune to live next door to militants in Danda Darpakhel, North Waziristan. His neighbours were reportedly part of the Haqqani Network, a group fighting US forces in nearby Afghanistan.

On September 8 2010, the CIA’s Reaper drones paid a visit. Hellfire missiles tore into the compound killing six alleged militants.

One of the Hellfires missed its target, and Din Mohammad’s house was hit. He survived. But his son, his two daughters and his nephew all died. His eldest boy had been a student at a Waziristan military cadet college. The other three children were all below school age.

An Obama administration official told ABC that these numbers are “way off the mark” — but, tellingly, did so on the condition of anonymity, meaning he or she will be protected from any accountability.

20 children were killed today in a horrific event in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. 

Barack Obama wept for those children in his address to the nation today.

How many children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia has Barack Obama killed as a result of drone strikes he's ordered?

What happened in Sandy Hook today is unspeakable.

So is U.S. drone policy.

Obama can spare us all the crocodile tears - he's got torrents of blood on his own hands.

Children's blood.

NY Times: Obama Looked To Codify "Kill List" Before The Election In Case Romney Won

Believing few things are more important than institutionalizing his drone bomb campaign that slaughters innocents the world over in order to keep us "safe" from terrorism, President Obama and his advisers worked very hard to codify the rules of the program pre-election:

 A report in the New York Times on Sunday describes how, leading up to the recent US election, the Obama administration made a determined push to codify guidelines for its targeted assassination (aka 'Kill List') program and clarify rules for the use of US predator drones strikes overseas.

 Critics of the US drone program have long made the argument that Demoractic supporters of the President would perhaps lose their enthusiasm (or passive acceptance) for the "kill list" program if it was placed in the hands of a Republican president like the party's most recent hopeful, Mitt Romney.
The Times reporting on Sunday seems to indicate that the fear of handing over an amiguous and secretive assassination program to a Republican administration was also shared by some top officials in the Obama administration.

Reported by the paper's Scott Shane, the article says that the "attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes."

Though the Obama administration has continually sought to protect the secrecy of certain details of its program, it has simultaneously defended its usefulness in combating international terrorism. This contradiction has been seized by international human rights groups, US civil libertarians, journalists, and the United Nations, calling on the US government to come clean on how it justifies the extrajudicial killing of individuals--both foreign citizens and American nationals--in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and others.

Shane reports that "the president and top aides believe [the programs] should be institutionalized," and that efforts to do "seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency."

The hypocrisy of liberals and progressives on this issue astounds me.

Change one word in the Times article - switch "Obama" for "Bush" - and you can bet that liberals and progressives would be up in arms over this program.

But because it's their guy in charge, it's a good program, a necessary program, one that is used judiciously by a judicious president.

Bullshit.

Read this Glenn Greenwald column from late September on a Stanford/NYU study of the consequences of the drone bomb campaign on civilians, on the propaganda the Obama administration uses to justify this slaughter of innocents, on their targeting of funerals and even emergency responders to initial drone attacks, on the complicity of the media in this propaganda campaign and then tell me this program is less harmful and murderous because a Democrat is heading it as opposed to a Republican.

Here is a taste:

Significantly, the report says the prime culprit of these evils is what it calls the "dramatic escalation" of the drone campaign by the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate - escalated not just in sheer numbers (in less than four years, Obama "has reportedly carried out more than five times" the number ordered by Bush in eight years), but more so, the indiscriminate nature of the strikes. As Tuesday's Guardian article on this report states: it "blames the US president, Barack Obama, for the escalation of 'signature strikes' in which groups are selected merely through remote 'pattern of life' analysis."

 The report is equally damning when documenting the attempts of the Obama administration to suppress information about its drone victims, and worse, to actively mislead when they deign selectively to release information. Recognizing the difficulty of determining the number of civilian deaths with exactitude - due to "the opaqueness of the US government about its targeted killing program" as well as the inaccessibility of the region - it nonetheless documents that "the numbers of civilians killed are undoubtedly far higher than the few claimed by US officials." In other words, the administration's public statements are false: "undoubtedly" so. As the LA Times summarizes the study's findings today: "Far more civilians have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas than U.S. counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged."

Before the election, I attempted to ask a few people who claimed they were voting for Obama over Romney despite his education policies because on other issues, he was the clear moral choice about the immorality of the drone bomb campaign.

I didn't get much response from anybody.

I suspect it's because they either live in denial that this is happening or know it but do not wish to acknowledge it publicly.

The hypocrisy Obama supporters, liberals and progressives on this issue is just infuriating.

As Greenwald notes, not only do these people ignore the crimes and murders perpetrated by the Obama administration under the guise of the War on Terror, but they actively cheer them (as at the DNC.)

And again, it's with this moral superiority complex - we're more reflective and thoughtful about this stuff then the Bushies, Obama reads Aquinas before ordering the strikes, so somehow this has a moral justification that Bush's policies didn't.

I don't see anything moral about this drone bomb campaign or the man in charge of it.

Rather I see a war criminal who is murdering lots of innocent people on a weekly basis who belongs in a jail cell next to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley, Yoo, et al.

Why Do Liberals Let Obama Get Away With This Bush League Stuff?

We have a president who has institutionalized the slaughter of thousands of innocents in the name of national security and the War on Terror.

We have a president with a personal "kill list" who orders the murder of at least one person on that list every week - again, in the name of national security and the War on Terror.

This president has declared that he has the right to assassinate any American at any time in any place for any reason - so long as the president believes this person is guilty of acts of terrorism and cannot be taken alive into custody. This declaration of extraordinary and unconstitutional powers is also made in the name of national security and the War on Terror.

This president even ordered the assassination of a 16 year old boy, an American citizen - the son of an American man who was never indicted, let alone brought to trial or convicted on any crimes, but was nonetheless killed by the American government because he was believed to be a "terrorist".

This man's son, a 16 year old boy, was later targeted by this president and killed by a drone bomb strike in Yemen.  His 17 year old cousin was killed along with him.

This president's administration first lied about the ages of these boys to make the murders seem less horrific, but once caught in their lies by the Washington Post and the L.A. Times, they admitted they had killed two teenagers.

They nonetheless continue to defend these killings as justified, saying that's it too bad this kid had to die but he should've "had a more responsible father."  

This kind of thing makes this president's statements on the senseless killing of another American teenager, Trayvon Martin, seem as disingenuous as they no doubt were.

In case you haven't figured out the timeline by now, this president who has engaged in the systematic slaughter of innocents, who is busy institutionalizing that slaughter so that those who come after him can continue it with legal justification in place, who seems to relish his "tough guy" role as judge, jury and executioner in the so-called War on Terror, is Barack Obama.

You know, the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago.

Had George W. Bush engaged in this kind of murderous behavior, liberals would have been up in arms calling for his impeachment and imprisonment.

But because the president engaging in this murderous activity is a Democrat, they remain silent, making believe they do not know what is happening.

Or worse, they justify it as practical and necessary.

I keep seeing people I respect, thoughtful people with progressive values, endorsing this murderous president as the better alternative to his opponent, Mitt Romney.

Obama is, as the cliche goes, the lesser of two evils and many people are deciding to hold their noses and vote for him under that rationale.

I cannot do that.

Barack Obama is a murderer and a war criminal.

If there were justice in the world, he would be in a jail cell in Guantanamo Bay alongside Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley, Rumsfeld, Yoo, et al. having Rage Against The Machine albums blasted at him 24/7 for the rest of his life.

But there is no justice, and so, instead many Americans are faced with the choice of voting for him because he is the lesser of the two evils available to us on election day.

Well, I cannot choose the lesser evil.

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: The lesser of two evils is still evil.

And make no mistake, Barack Obama is evil.

Just ask the relatives of the dead drone bomb victims Obama had slaughtered in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the name of national security and the War on Terror.

Is Obama Losing?

I see that quite a few national polls have swung in Mitt Romney's favor since he trounced Barack Obama in a political debate last week.

I see that some swing state polls have begin to swing in Romney's direction too.

Of course I know that just two weeks ago, the media and the political establishment had all but written the election off as a win for Obama, so I have a difficult time seeing how one bad performance in a debate could swing the polls that much.

But I do know one thing.

The arrogant, out-of-touch elitist who showed up at the debate - I'm talking about the one with the "D" after his name, not the "R" - needed a wake-up call and maybe the swing in polls is just that.

I am a Democrat who has only voted for Democrats going back to 1988 (1986 if you count local elections.)

I am NOT voting for Barack Obama this year.

First of all, I don't consider him a Democrat.

Anybody who wants to gut Social Security and Medicare, hand out billions of dollars to the Too Big To Fail Banks while creating a mortgage relief program that screws middle and working class homeowners, renominates Ben Bernanke at the Fed, nominates Timmeh Geithner at Treasury (Goldman's man on the job!), promotes the privatization of the public education system through his Race to the Top program, jails Bradley Manning for years without any charges  wages war against whistleblowers with a tenacity the Bushies couldn't even muster, declares he has the right to assassinate any American any time anywhere if he declares them a "terrorist," puts together a "kill list" of "terrorists" he wants assassinated, and drops drone bombs on innocent men, women and children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere is not a Democrat to my mind.

That kind of guy is a Republican and I won't be voting for him, no matter who is running against him.

Secondly, Obama is one of the most arrogant pricks on the planet (if you don't think so, take a look again at the debate and read the accounts of how he had refused preparation for it and told his aides afterwards that he thought he had won.)  He truly is a narcissist who is convinced of his own righteousness and awesomeness and just can't understand why everybody else doesn't agree with him.

As a teacher who has watched Obama vilify my profession, I know that many teachers have tried to tell this man about the damage Race to the Top is doing to education and students.  Obama is pushing unproven, unpiloted measures like teacher evaluations tied to test scores onto the whole nation and is unwilling to listen to anybody, even an expert like Diane Ravitch, who tries to tell him he is wrong to do this.

Sometimes Obama just seems completely out-of-touch about the consequences his policies are having.  For example, he said during the State of the Union this past year that teachers need to stop teaching to the tests, that children deserve an education that is not limited by this kind of rote learning, and yet, Obama's own RttT policy ensures that this kind of teaching will happen because it promotes standardized tests in every grade, K-12, in every subject, and ties teacher evaluations to the scores.

Is Obama unaware that this is the consequence of his policy when he says that teachers should stop teaching to the test?  Is he actually aware of this and dissembling when he says this?

Dunno the answer to these questions, but I do know that there are two possibilities:

Either Obama has no idea the damage that is being done by his education policies and pursues them anyway or he does know and he lies about them.

Either possibility disturbs me and is pretty much emblematic of his whole presidency and indeed himself as an individual.

That was on display at the debate where he looked bored, pissed off to be there, and frankly mad that the rest of the country didn't already see the brilliance of his policies and call the debate off before it started.

So it's hard to know if the poll swing in recent days means much or if it's just the media making a horse race out of what seemed to be a rout in the making, but I do know one thing.

If the poll swing and the drubbing Obama is taking from the media, Dems and Democratic supporters alike serves to wake this arrogant, elitist, out-of-touch man from his "awesomeness fantasies" about himself and his policies, that's a good thing.

That still won't make me vote for him.

I don't vote for pro-privatization, anti-labor war criminals who murder innocent men, women and children on a "kill list."

But maybe a wake-up call will mean Obama will stop listening to only himself and start listening to some of the people who supported him in '08 who he know seems to disdain.

And if that happens, maybe, just maybe, a second Obama term won't be as damaging as the first one was.

Death From The Skies: U.S. Kills 13 In Pakistan In Three Separate Drone Attacks

To celebrate the end of Ramadan, President Barack Obama ordered some drone attacks on Pakistan:

A flurry of US drone attacks pounded northern Pakistan over the weekend, killing 13 people in three separate attacks, officials and witnesses said on Sunday.

The attacks came as Pakistanis celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan with the festival of Eid al-Fitr.

A drone killed five people and injured two in North Waziristan early on Sunday morning, an intelligence official said.

He said the death toll was based on intercepted conversations between the militants.

Later on Sunday, another drone attack killed two people and injured two others near the site of the previous attack, said two intelligence officials.

On Saturday, a drone attack killed six people and injured two.

The dead were local Taliban and fighters from the southern province of Punjab, said security officials and a tribal source.

Sure they were local Taliban fighters.

I believe everything my government tells me.

Except when they, you know, lie and cover things up.

Notice how they pick celebratory times so they can maximize the killing?

Or better yet, how they pick funerals of drone bomb victims as perfect opportunities for another drone bomb strike?

Or best yet, how they target the rescuers who flood the scene of a drone attack to help the victims?

What great American efficiency! Kill the people who show up at the scene of a drone attack with another drone attack!

Remind me again how the murderous fucker in the White House won a Nobel Peace Prize?

Actually I guess he fits in with another murderous fucker who won the Nobel Peace Prize - Henry Kissinger.