I’m not posting political stuff on LJ anymore.  I’ve moved all my commenting to a new place:

http://www.kodewords.com

RSS: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Kodewords

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAKluP7yIwJY

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

I don't expect to see fewer Obama-Biden Hopey-Changey bumper stickers around Redmond, even though Taxy Taxerbama is directly threatening our livelihood.

Oh well, at least his bullcrap stimulus plan is helping Ballmer build an overpass.

Well this is interesting.  The most powerful woman in the world (D-Eyelift) is less popular than the left's Darth Vader (R-Wyoming).

Obama says the US is one of the largest Muslim countries

The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.”

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

First off, we're not.  Numerically or ideologically, we're anything but Muslim.  We're as Wiccan as we are Muslim, but witches general don't have a significant genocidal streak, so he's not bowing to them this week.  He's pandering to the Saudis today, trying to convince them that we're just like them.

Secondly, why does he feel the need to compulsively criticize the USA whenever he goes to a foreign country?  And why did we hear so much about how Obama is a "committed Christian" with no Muslim roots during the campaign, but now that he's traveling the world on his blame America tours, he's Mister Muslim?

So earlier this week, Obama made his Supreme Court nomination.  Their initial strategy was to play up her personal story.  She’s a Puerto Rican raised by a single mom in a New York housing project, blahblahblah.  She’d be able to augment her legal expertise with “empathy” for the poor and downtrodden, as if that’s relevant at all.  But then details started to emerge, including things she said in a speech in 2001. "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."  Hahahaha!

Newt Gingrich responded to that.  "Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman' Wouldn't they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism.  A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw,” he said.  This is pretty damning, no?  Let’s take it one step further.  What if she said, “my experience as a Latina woman makes me better than a Jew.”  Or a black woman.  Or an Asian man.  Is it not racist because the target of her derision was a white male?  Fuck no.  She’s a fucking bigot.

Sotomayor’s remark was apparently in the context her saying that "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging." In other words, she might decide a case differently if one of the parties is a poor Latina, instead of a white man.  This, in and of itself, should be a disqualification for anybody ever being a judge.  A rich white man and a poor black man need the exact same protection under the law.  No exceptions.  Jurors, for Christ’s sake, are supposed to ignore race, creed, class, etc. when making their decisions.  Sotomayor says it’s a judge’s job and responsibility to consider those things.  Unacceptable.

So predictably, at the first sign of resistance, the Democrats started threatening critics.  White House press secretarty Robert Gibbs said, "I think it is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation."  Senator Schumer from New York said that Republicans would oppose her “at their own peril.”  He said, ”I think the confirmation process will be more of a test of the Republican Party than it is of Judge Sotomayor," Schumer told reporters Tuesday. "It's a test for the Republican Party because she is a mainstream justice. ... Why would they oppose her? There's no really good reason."

As far as Schumer is concerned, there is no good reason to oppose her (ha!) and so anyone who does so must be a racist sexist.  The underlying threat is that if Republicans oppose a Latina, they’re going to lose the hispanic vote.  Because, in the liberal world-view, hispanics are a single hive-mind, unable to come to an intellectual conclusion about any issue without consulting their racial characteristics first.  Just like the blacks.  The amazing part is that you never see minorities stand up after comments like this and tell assholes like Schumer to shove it.

Anyway, apparently the kill-the-messenger defense didn’t work, so the adminstration decided on a new strategy.  On Thursday, Gibbs addressed it this way:

"I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor."  Gibbs, however, said he did not hear that from Sotomayor directly. He said he learned it from people who had talked to her, and he did not identify who those people were.

Then yesterday, Smoove himself emerged to shit out this gem:

President Barack Obama on Friday personally sought to deflect criticism of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who finds herself under intensifying scrutiny for saying in 2001 that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. "I'm sure she would have restated it," Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that.

So they’re in full-on lie mode, putting words in her mouth, reinterpreting what a Supreme Court nominee really said.  But they suck at it.  How would she have restated it?  What “word choice” was bad?  What did she really mean, if she didn’t mean that a female latina is better judge than an white male?  Barack tried to make us all feel better with some hope-a-dope:

"If you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through, that will make her a good judge," Obama said.

At the risk of belaboring a point, here is the Supreme Court oath of office:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."

Therefore, Barack Obama believes that a good judge is one that will directly violate the oath of their office.  He believes Sotomayor will judge cases based on the “struggles and hardships” people are going through, rather than the law.  She will judge people, not laws.  She will not do equal right to the poor and rich.  She will not judge impartially.  Obama is a Marxist class warrior.  His stated desires show this.  His nominations show this.  His actions show this.  He has set out to fundamentally remake the country into a centrally-managed social justice machine with a bureaucracy centered in the Executive branch, insulated from and unaccountable to representative government, and supported by an activist Supreme Court.  He partners with the worst kinds of people and organizations, and uses racism and sexism to threaten his opponents into silence.  We are being led down the road to tyranny and servitude, and he’s being cheered all the way.

So it looks like the Russian “press” has a clearer idea of what’s happening in the states than our own media have.  I mean, if you look past the classic bashing of McDonalds and some of the other Soviet-style cliches and stereotypes about Americans, it’s pretty interesting.  Remember, the Russians have lived under Marxism and socialism.  They know it when they see it.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Alrighty then.  Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court:

Sotomayor readily admits that she applies her feelings and personal politics when deciding cases. In a 2002 speech at Berkeley, she stated that she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their “experiences as women and people of color,” which she believes should “affect our decisions.” She went on to say in that same speech “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” She reiterated her commitment to that lawless judicial philosophy at Duke Law School in 2005 when she stated that the “Court of Appeals is where policy is made.”

Who knows what other bullcrap she's shat out of her racist, sexist cakehole.  And who knows how hard Colin Powell's Republican Party will oppose her.  As I've said before, this says more about Obama than anything else, and it's clear:  he wants a liberal.  He wants someone with "empathy" who will create laws from the court bench.  He wants someone who will pay lip service to the constitution, but will mostly just judge things by their personal sense of "richness of experience" and consider the plight of "people of color."

Hope and change, baby.

WASHINGTON – Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says he's still a Republican, but the party needs to change and be more inclusive.

He endorsed Obama for president.  The most liberal member of the Senate, friend to Marxists, friend to domestic terrorists, member of an America-hating church, and the most unaccomplished person who ever ran for president.  Over his long-time friend John McCain.  And he’s still a Republican.  And he’s still telling Republicans that they need to be more like Democrats to win.  I agree that Republicans need to convince more people that Democrats have it wrong and Republicans have it right.  But I’m not sure that’s what Powell means by being “inclusive.”  By suggesting that Republicans aren’t inclusive and that they need to change, he’s undermining his party and subtly reinforcing the Democrat lie that Republicans are racist, sexist homophobes.

Why would someone vote for Democrat-lite when they can just vote for Democrats?  Republicans need to contrast themselves with Obama if they want to win again, not be more like him.

On his presidential votes, Powell describes himself as having a long, solid record of voting for Republicans. But he says he did vote for Democrats John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

A Republican who voted for Obama, Johnson and Carter.  If we gave him the benefit of the doubt, we’d call him a liberal.  The only other alternative is that he has no fundamental convictions and makes his decision based on whatever his mood is at the time.  Since I’d rather not believe that a 4-star general and Secretary of State is guided as much by whatever he ate last night as he is by his intellect, I assume he’s a liberal and ask him to quit pretending to be something he’s not.

Wha?

WASHINGTON — President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

“He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one participant said. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.”

The other participant said Mr. Obama did not seem to be thinking about preventive detention for terrorism suspects now held at Guantánamo Bay, but rather for those captured in the future, in settings other than a legitimate battlefield like Afghanistan. “The issue is,” the participant said, “What are the options left open to a future president?”

So the guy who wants to close Guantanamo because it's a "recruiting tool" for people who hate us and it's not in line with our "core values" is considering a plan to detain individuals who haven't committed a crime and cannot be tried.  OK, first off, why close Gitmo if you want to expand the program?  Second, how is detaining individuals that we can't try within our core values when he wants to do it for vague national security reasons, but it does not reflect our core values to detain people who actually fight our soldiers on the battlefield and plan and carry out terrorist attacks?  Why evoke constitutionality on behalf of non-citizens who try to kill us when it's politically favorable during a campaign, but then seek to expand and codify the practice?

The answer is that he's not who he says he is.  Or rather, whatever he wants to do is OK because he wants to do it.

My concern is that if he can find some constitutional exception for "preventive detention," will it be applied to American citizens?  Obama's Homeland Security department has already identified the kind of "extremists" his administration is concerned about, including soldiers returning from foreign wars, people who support 2nd Amendment gun rights and 10th Amendment federalism, and who oppose illegal immigration and abortion.  Is it a big leap to reclassify someone you consider an extremist as potential terrorist?

Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’

May 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

The guy who supported TARP, who signed the non-stimulus, and the budget that quadrupled the deficit in ONE YEAR has come out against his own administration and his own party.  He's probably just laying the foundations of an argument for massive tax increases.  But who comes out and says that his own policies are unsustainable and will destroy the economy?

If you make big bucks — or enjoy alcohol, cigarettes and Coke — the government might hit you up to pay for fixing the nation’s health care system.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee peeked into vending machines and liquor stores, company payrolls and health savings accounts, looking for a mix of tax increases and spending cuts as a way to pay for a health overhaul — which could cost more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

The article does not question whether we should have an Obama-style health care overhaul.  It just talks about how the statists propose to pay for it.  Raising taxes on alcohol, tobacco and soda.

Oh, and also by taxing health care benefits provided by employers.

People who like the tax-free status of their company health benefits could be asked to ante up. Money in the pot: more than $700 billion over 10 years.

The added bonus would be that it would weaken the private health care industry, forcing more employers to reduce benefits, and ultimately driving more people into Government ObamaCare.  Also:

Treasure the tax benefits from your health savings account? Some experts say the accounts encourage “excess consumption” of health services — and committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) agreed they’re worth a look. Money in the pot: $60 billion over 10 years.

Weaken another pillar of private health care.  Statists don't like the idea of you using tax-free dollars to "consume" health care services.  The whole point of Government ObamaCare is to ration health care services, and it's impossible to do that when you're out there acting selfishly by spending your own money to get the care you need.

“The proposals that we have discussed,” Baucus said, “will not come easily. The reforms that we are planning are not cheap. ... Finding money that we can all agree on will not be easy.”

Baucus gave one of the clearest signals yet that limiting the tax-free status on employer-based insurance remains a serious option. Obama opposed it during the campaign and repeatedly went after Republican John McCain for making it the centerpiece of his health care plan. Labor unions are also against it.

Yet the idea is attractive because of the money it could generate: $250 billion annually if the deduction was lifted altogether. Baucus insisted a full repeal was not under consideration, but he said lawmakers must look at the deduction.

“I know that there is some controversy around doing so,” Baucus said. “But the current tax exclusion is not perfect. It is regressive. It often leads people to buy more health coverage than they need.”

That's right.  A POLITICIAN (Democrat) just said that the coverage employers are offering their employees is TOO GOOD, and people don't need that much coverage, and the result is that the government isn't taking in as much money as it could.  And it needs more money in order to reform the system into one where a bureaucracy will decide what health care services you get to "consume" and what's a reasonable amount to pay for such services.

If this doesn't scare the shit out of you and fire up alarm bells in every corner of your mind, you must be brain dead.  Our health care system needs some reform, yes, but the proposal is not to make it less expensive or to increase the resources available in system.  The proposal is to expand government control and LIMIT ACCESS to health care.

Less than 6% of stimulus money has been paid out

Nearly three months after President Obama approved a $787 billion economic stimulus package, intended to create or save jobs, the federal government has paid out less than 6 percent of the money, largely in the form of social service payments to states.

The stimulus bill has directly injected around $45.6 billion into the economy, mostly to help states cover the costs of Medicaid and unemployment benefits, one-time $250 checks that were mailed to Social Security recipients last week, and income tax cuts that began to take effect this spring.

I assume those one-time checks include the 10,000 checks sent to dead people who are unlikely to spend it in a stimulating way.  But Vice President Biden, who's in charge of stimulus oversight, says they're right on schedule and doing things right:

“We’re 85 days into a two-year program here — we’re trying to get the money out as quickly as we can, but not too quickly, so we don’t end up really screwing up here,” Mr. Biden said. “Because we’re talking about big dollars here, these are big numbers, this is unprecedented. And in 85 days we’ve gotten tens of billions of dollars out the door, and so far — knock on wood — no real big problems, no real big glitches.”

So if the goal was to stimulate the economy by getting money out for all of these make-work projects in a hurry, so that we could "create or save 4 million jobs," then I think it's probably failed.  We've shed about 1.5 million jobs in the last three months while Joe's been destroying the travel industry with his Swine Flu terror proclamations.

If they actually ARE right on schedule and everything is going according to plan, then it wasn't a goddamned stimulus in the first place.  Again, people who weren't Obama cultists could tell that was the case from the start.

"EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF."

Sweden rules 'gender-based' abortion legal

Swedish health authorities have ruled that gender-based abortion is not illegal according to current law and can not therefore be stopped, according to a report by Sveriges Television.

The Local reported in February that a woman from Eskilstuna in southern Sweden had twice had abortions after finding out the gender of the child.

The woman, who already had two daughters, requested an amniocentesis in order to allay concerns about possible chromosome abnormalities. At the same time, she also asked to know the foetus's gender.

Doctors at Mälaren Hospital expressed concern and asked Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) to draw up guidelines on how to handle requests in the future in which they "feel pressured to examine the foetus’s gender" without having a medically compelling reason to do so.

The board has now responded that such requests and thus abortions can not be refused and that it is not possible to deny a woman an abortion up to the 18th week of pregnancy, even if the foetus's gender is the basis for the request.

Ah yes, the magic 18th week, when male or female non-life becomes male or female life.  OK, let's examine this for a minute.  A woman gets pregnant.  Maybe it's an accident, maybe it's planned.  Doesn't matter.  At some point she decides that if it's a boy she'll keep it and if it's a girl she'll kill it.  By what moral or ethical standard is she allowed to make that choice?  She's already decided that she's willing to carry the child to term.  She's already known that she's pregnant, and continued to carry the child to the point where her doctor can make a determination about the sex.

Abortion fans will say that they don't want any law at any time that might in any way appear to limit a woman's ability to get an abortion at any time she wants for any reason she wants, because if you limit it for any reason then it's a slippery slope that will result in complete and utter enslavement and reprehensible oppression of women in western society.  I understand that, though I disagree.  But can't we all acknowledge that a woman who aborts her baby based on its gender is at best a selfish, murderous beast, even if her actions are technically legal?  Or are not allowed to judge evil behavior when the liberal sacrament of abortion is the act in question?

I'm not saying this is a widespread problem, but the extreme circumstances tend to expose the barbarism and hypocrisy of the idea as a whole.  Planned Parenthood and their like will simply find some other defect or chemical imbalance or something in each case which will make the abortion more palatable than if it were just performed to make sure the mother gets a son.  But covering up evil doesn't make evil go away.

The big news a couple days ago was that Obama was saving the government OMG SO MUCH MONEY because he found $17 billion to cut from his budget.  That’s fantastic, except for two things.

First, his budget his $800 billion more than last year’s budget.  That’s a 2% “cut” of the amount he’s grown the budget.  Snort.

Second, let’s see some of what he’s cutting:

1.  Obama budget nixes aid for jailing illegal immigrants

So he’s “saving” money by making sure states don’t get federal support for putting criminal illegal aliens in prison.  It’s federal policy to leave the border unsecured, and now it’s federal policy to let the states pay for the consequences of federal policy.  What an awesome, awesome man.

2.  Obama Slashes Union Enforcement Budget

Then, he cuts the budget of the federal agency that ensures labor unions aren’t corrupt and aren’t behaving illegally.  In the last 8 years, there have been 929 convictions as a result of this agency’s investigations.  Labor unions are partisan organizations that overwhelmingly favor Democrats.  This is clearly a payback, and clearly a sign that the Obama administration intends to turn a blind eye to whatever underhanded bullcrap unions intend to pull.

During the campaign, Obama said he was going to take a “scalpel” to the budget and trim or eliminate programs that weren’t working.  He’s certainly using his scalpel by cutting the slightest amount of fat from the federal budget as possible.  But I’m not sure this is the kind of “change” a lot of hope-a-dope Obama voters were expecting.  People paying attention and understanding the kind of person Obama was could have seen this kind of thing coming a mile a way.

High-Profile Liberal Suggests that Republicans Stop Being So Conservative

The Republican Party is in big trouble and needs to find a way to move back to the middle of the country, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday.

Powell said the GOP is "getting smaller and smaller" and "that's not good for the nation." He also said he hopes that emerging GOP leaders, such as House Minority Whip Cantor, will not keep repeating mantras of the far right.

"The Republican Party is in deep trouble," Powell told corporate security executives at a conference in Washington sponsored by Fortify Software Inc. The party must realize that the country has changed, he said. "Americans do want to pay taxes for services," he said. "Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less."

Apparently, former inspirational and influential Republican Colin Powell is still carrying the water for Barack Obama.  Maybe he’s right.  Maybe Americans really do want to be little smiley-face pinko dipshits who surrender their freedom and submit to top-down government rule.  But the problem is that he endorsed the most liberal presidential candidate ever to run for office.  I don’t think that qualifies his wishywashy ass to comment on what conservative political strategy should be.  He switched teams.  He doesn’t get to call plays for the old team anymore.

Obama Administration causes NYC to lose its mud

A jumbo jet being chased by a F-16 fighter jets buzzed Lower Manhattan this morning, panicking New Yorkers, many of whom were forced to evacuate their office buildings.

It was not a terrorist attack, however, but a photo opportunity for Air Force One, sources told the Post.

President Obama was in Washington at the time, but the low-flying 747 circling the Statue of Liberty was one of the planes used as Air Force One, sources said.

OK, so a 747 and an F16 are up there this morning taking pictures of themselves next to the Statue of Liberty.  Apparently nobody told the City of New York about this, so people, being understandably sensitive to low-flying planes in downtown Manhattan, panic and flee their buildings.  For a photo-op.  Of Air Force One.

Leaving aside the pointlessness and sloppiness of it all, I would like to humbly request that we disregard any future preaching by Barack Obama, his administration, or the Democrat party about America's carbon footprint.  I don't know exactly how much carbon is generated by an empty 747 and a fighter jet doing low-altitude maneuvers, but I'm pretty sure it's more than I emit in a year.  But regardless, they've made it quite clear that however much they emitted today, it was less important than a publicity photo of the President's airplane.

On his 100th day in office, President Obama will be "crowned" in messianic imagery at New York City's Union Square.

Artist Michael D'Antuono's painting "The Truth" – featuring Obama with his arms outstretched and wearing a crown of thorns upon his head – will be unveiled on April 29 at the Square's South Plaza.

According to a statement released about the portrait, "The 30" x 54" acrylic painting on canvas depicts President Obama appearing much like Jesus Christ on the Cross: atop his head, a crown of thorns; behind him, the dark veil being lifted (or lowered) on the Presidential Seal. But is he revealing or concealing, and is he being crucified or glorified?"

Even the title of the piece, "The Truth," suggests a play on biblical themes, as Jesus said in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

He cannot function without the teleprompter.

The topics of discussion before the House Foreign Affairs committee ranged from the $900 million in aid pledged to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to Dick Cheney's claim that classified documents prove the Bush administration's interrogation methods on suspected terrorists yielded vital intelligence.

"Well, it won't surprise you that I don't consider him a particularly reliable source of information," Clinton said of the former vice president.

What a smug, self-important twit.  She's asked about releasing specific documents that Cheney mentioned would show the effectiveness of interrogations, and she takes the occasion to attack Cheney's character.  Not only is she smug, but doesn't she see the irony in being married to one of the least-reliable, lying jackballs on the planet, who she was more than happy to have out campaigning across America for her wide ass?  She's the most cheated-on woman in American history, and she's lecturing Congress about her judgment of character and representing the country in all things diplomatic?  None of this shit makes sense!

Wasn't Barack Obama's administration going to ring in a new era of bipartisanship and harmony?  Who the hell are these people?