OBAMA: OUR OWN HUGO CHAVEZ?

I'm very troubled with the news tonight that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner resigned under pressure from the White House and Pres. Obama. While the U.S. Government might try to have a say how the bailout of GM and the other automakers goes, it troubles me that Pres. Obama goes around making pronouncements of this type. That is being a DICTATOR. Here he is loading up the American taxpayers with a frightful debt so that he can pursue his social/leadership agenda and now he is playing King.

As a Republican who after the fact has come to support Pres. Obama, I'm not sure how much longer I can support him. On one level he is doing the cheezy press junkets (Jay Leno, etc.), yet he is on the other leading us into uncharted waters with his agenda. What is he going to do next, order the slaughter of anyone who opposes him?

Pres. Obama has 1.5 years to get things right, just as the fickle American people supported him by bringing in more Democrats to support his agenda, if he messes up, there is no telling that his Democratic majorities can be sustained.

Only time will tell.

Simply brilliant.


Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo.

This is evidence that I'm right on my point about the Mormon Church and their positions on legislating how other people should live. They are no different than the Muslims who come to the United States (for reasons beyond me), and try to change the fabric and attitudes of our country.

To be "diverse" we don't have to accept every language and culture which someone thinks we should embrace without question.

WHAT HYPOCRITES!

Tonight was the much vaunted (you don't know how long I've wanted a reason to use that word) episode of the HBO Mini-series "Big Love" about a fundamentalist polygamist Mormon family, where a hereto sacred secret rite of the Mormon Church was depicted featuring the show's main female star, Jeanne Tripplehorn. According to the show's producers, the scenes were written with great attention to accuracy down to the white veils worn by the women.

During the past week, the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Voiceover here: "The Mormons") wrangled in the media how they felt it was "offensive" to Mormons to have this rite being shown on television...although the depictions of the rite are readily found on the good ol' Internet. HBO did the corporate thing by "apologizing" (read: "appeasing") the Mormons although they continued with their plans to show it. On the other hand, the official position of the LDS church was not to ask for an official boycott of HBO and its corporate daddy, Time Warner. It was the same kind of PR mud wrestling that the Catholics blustered over with the release of "The Da Vinci Code" -- which I found to be a VERY boring and wandering movie. (Of course, the other little untold story that "Big Love"'s executive producers, Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, are a gay couple, and I wouldn't put it past them that this was their way of retribution against the Mormons for their less-than-Godly conduct in California politics.)

Notwithstanding, my suggestion to the Mormons at this point would be for them to FUCKING SHUT UP. The official image of the Mormons would be for them to be a God-fearing goody-two shoed Shirley Temple/Mrs. Brady-like religious faith. But in actuality, as someone who almost joined the sect, the Mormons are a faith/belief system bred in a dark mythology wrought with politics and very strange rites.

I find it very interesting on one hand the Mormons are screaming and yelling about how the sanctity and privacy of one of their religious rites. Yet, the Mormons think nothing about prying and legislating themselves into the sanctity of private bedrooms of gay Californians by spending tens of millions of dollars to bring to victory a California state proposition which effectively bans homosexual marriages.

Mmmmmmmmm....somehow the old wise saw, "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks," comes to mind...especially apropos for a religious sect who loves to build big glass temples....and delights with the concept of stoning a group of people which it deems as not worthy to breath air, much less, love as their hearts leads them to love.

Just as she was accused of "driving without a license" diplomatically many years ago when she allowed Suha Arafat to speak at a women's conference in the middle east where she accused Israel of actively engaging in Palestinian infanticide, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is once again showing she should be home watching over Bill rather than trying to make her mark as U.S. Secretary of State.

On her first trip abroad, she "gets in bed" with the Palestinians much to the chagrin of Israel by supporting the Hamas-led infitada, and then makes a gaffe at the European parliament by stating that American democracy has a longer history than European democracy. I guess the Greeks don't count.

The article doesn't mention her gaffe with the Russian Foreign Minister when she gave him a gift of a red "reset" button with a Russian printed on it which means "overcharge" or "overload."

I'm tending to believe these days that Pres. Barack Obama brought on Hillary Clinton not because of her White House and Democratic party ties, but rather to keep his sworn enemies closer.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state when she mispronounced her EU counterparts' names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe's.

Clinton has set herself a grueling pace on visits to Egypt, Israel and Brussels soon after touring the Far East, attending dozens of meetings and giving speech after speech, with little time worked into her schedule for sleep.

Tiredness appeared to show Friday when she answered questions in front of 500 young Europeans at the European Parliament, where she was the highest-ranking U.S. visitor since the late President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

A veteran politician, Clinton compared the complex European political environment to that of the two-party U.S. system, before adding:

"I have never understood multiparty democracy.

"It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy."

The remark provoked much headshaking in the parliament of a bloc that likes to trace back its democratic tradition thousands of years to the days of classical Greece.

One working lunch later with EU leaders, Clinton raised more eyebrows when she referred to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who stood beside her, as "High Representative Solano."

She also dubbed European Commission External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner as "Benito."

Still, Clinton has been well received in Brussels, where the Obama administration has been viewed as a breath of fresh air after the unpopular leadership of George W. Bush. His secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, often drew protests on her travels.

Fellow foreign ministers stood and applauded Clinton's presentation at a meeting with NATO counterparts Thursday and extra space had to be set aside for a spillover audience of 800 at the European Parliament.

Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering was effusive in his praise, saying that with the new administration, the United States and Europe once again "share the same values."

"What you said mostly could have been said by a European," he told Clinton after she fielded questions ranging from climate change to energy security and aid to Africa and one on gay rights from a participant wearing an "I love Hillary" t-shirt.

So many things lately, watching the turmoil amongst the Democrats, the turmoil amongst the Republicans, the turmoil amongs the American people which reminded me of one of the BEST openings of a novel, specifically, Charles Dickens' "The Tale of Two Cities" :

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

"Tolerance is a noble virtue. Consideration is a better one."