The Yin and the Yang of Barack Obama

The president is just like George Bush:

The “revelations” from the report poured out to a stunned nation.  There were the CIA’s own figures on the hundreds of children in the backlands of Pakistan and Yemen killed by drone strikes against “terrorists” and “militants.”  There were the “double-tap strikes” in which drones returned after initial attacks to go after rescuers of those buried in rubble or to take out the funerals of those previously slain.  There were the CIA’s own statistics on the stunning numbers of unknown villagers killed for every significant and known figure targeted and finally taken out (1,147 dead in Pakistan for 41 men specifically targeted).  There were the unexpected internal Agency discussions of the imprecision of the robotic weapons always publicly hailed as “surgically precise” (and also of the weakness of much of the intelligence that led them to their targets).  There was the joking and commonplace use of dehumanizing language (“bug splat” for those killed) by the teams directing the drones.  There were the “signature strikes,” or the targeting of groups of young men of military age about whom nothing specifically was known, and of course there was the raging argument that ensued in the media over the “effectiveness” of it all (including various emails from CIA officials admitting that drone campaigns in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen had proven to be mechanisms not so much for destroying terrorists as for creating new ones).

That should finish off the last of the holiday spirit! It's from a report to be published in December 2019 according to the prophet Tom Engelhardt. I feel a ton of guilt just from stupid shit I did as a kid. How people who cause death and destruction to others on the level done by these fucks live with themselves, I'd love to know.

On this level, Obama equals Cheney. Read the rest. It doesn't get better.

Then there's the FDR, Lincoln, LBJ (the non-genocide in Vietnam LBJ); Obama:

However there are a few things that transpired this year that warm the very depths of my cold black heart. I’ve said before that before I shuffle off into oblivion/The Big Empty/infinity-XXL/Bloomington, Indiana, there were a few injustices that I would like to see corrected.

The right of gay-Americans to get same-sex hitched, marijuana to be legalized, and fer-Christ-sakes, accept that the embargo with Cuba was a stupid idea and lets get over ourselves and open up relations and travel with the warm and beckoning tropical nation.

For all intents and purposes, all three happened this year.

As a fellow late-middle-aged, middle-class white male living in America, I join Tbogg in celebrating these 3 bitchin' things America got for Christmas this year.

And some more good stuff from this year from The Nation; including Democrats that are not the same as Republicans. These would be Liz Warren, Zephyr Teachout, Pat Leahy, Barbara Lee, Maura Healey and many more.

There is hope. Yet.