The following gluttons want their pensions to go from $183,750 to $300,000.

First let me give you their names. 

Satish Ananthaswamy, CFA senior portfolio manager, Office of the Chief Information Officer

Marie Berggren, chief investment officer

William Coaker Jr., senior managing director of equity investments, Office of the Treasurer

Lynda Choi, managing director, absolute return, regents' Office of the Treasurer

Linda Fried, senior portfolio manager

Gloria Gil, managing director of real assets, Office of the Treasurer

Jesse Phillips, senior managing director, investment risk management, regents' Office of the Treasurer

Tim Recker, CFA managing director of private equity, regents' Office of the Treasurer

Dr. Jack Stobo, senior vice president, health services and affairs

Randolph Wedding, senior managing director, fixed income, Office of the Treasurer

UCSF
Dr. Sam Hawgood, vice chancellor and dean, School of Medicine

Ken Jones, chief operating officer, medical center

Mark Laret, CEO, medical center

Larry Lotenero chief information officer, medical center

John Plotts, senior vice chancellor

UC Berkeley
Christopher Edley Jr., dean, School of Law

Richard Lyons, dean, Haas School of Business

UC Davis
Steven Currall, dean, Graduate School of Management

William McGowan, CFO, health system

Dr. Claire Pomeroy, CEO health system, vice chancellor/dean, School of Medicine

Ann Madden Rice, CEO Medical Center

UCLA
Roger Farmer, chair, Department of Economics

Dr. David Feinberg, CEO of the hospital system; associate vice chancellor

Franklin Gilliam Jr. dean, school of Public Affairs

Dr. Gerald Levey, dean emeritus

Virginia McFerran, chief information officer of the health system

Judy Olian, dean and John E. Anderson chair, Anderson School of Management

Amir Dan Rubin, chief operating officer of the hospital system

Dr. J. Thomas Rosenthal, chief medical officer of the hospital system; associate vice chancellor

Paul Staton, chief financial officer of the hospital system

UC San Diego
Dr. David Brenner, vice chancellor for health sciences; dean of the School of Medicine

Tom Jackiewicz, CEO, associate vice chancellor of the health system

Gary Matthews, vice chancellor, resource management & planning

Dr. Thomas McAfee, dean for clinical affairs

Robert Sullivan, dean, Rady School of Management

UC Irvine
Terry Belmont, CEO, Medical Center

Here's a link to the story:

Three dozen of the University of California's highest-paid executives are threatening to sue unless UC agrees to spend tens of millions of dollars to dramatically increase retirement benefits for employees earning more than $245,000.

"We believe it is the University's legal, moral and ethical obligation" ....

Here's the UC website. You can find ways of contacting these greedy bastards directly.

Forget about nuking the Norks, let's aim one at UC.

Labels: Academia, Economy

Glenn Reynolds expected to be doing better in Andrew Sullivan’s Malkin Award poll.  Referring to references to his comment as link trolling. 

Let's see if it works.

Labels: blogging, Instapundit

Iowahawk give some pointers to Washington's dispossessed. 

Congratulations! You're almost there in your new non-Washington job. You've gotten a callback from a prospective employer who wants to interview you for an opening. This can be daunting, but it's important to remain calm, relaxed, and prepared. Before the big interview, make sure you are neat and clean, and wearing appropriate business attire. In many ways your job interview will be like an important televised Congressional debate, and your main goal is to sell yourself. But remember -- always think of your interviewer as an undecided voter, not your opponent. It's a common mistake, as recently experienced by one ex-Capitol Hill layoff victim:

Job Interviewer: so, Mr. Grayson, I see here you would like to join the cast here at Disney World. Tell me about yourself. What is it about Alan Grayson that qualifies him to wear the Donald Duck costume?

Alan Grayson: You're in no position to question my fitness for this position. The people of the Magic Kingdom already know why you want the Donald Duck constume.

Job Interviewer: I... uh...

Alan Grayson: You want to wear the Donald Duck costume because it gives you the cover you need to kill people. That's right - you want to kill people! Face it, beneath those feathers and behind that bill, you are no different than the Taliban.

Job Interviewer: now just a minute, I...

Alan Grayson: You be quiet, you murderous webfooted terrorist! I have the floor.

Job Interviewer: Is that a gavel?

Alan Grayson: You are out of order! [bang] Out of order!

Job Interviewer: Security!

Read the whole thing.

Labels: congress, Democrats, humor

Why isn't the MSM asking what Obama is going to do about this? 

Or is this part of the plan?

Like bankrupting utilities that use coal?

To save us from Global Warming ... uh ... Climate Change ... err ... Global Climate Disruption.  It's nothing that $5 gas and skyrocketing utility bills won't solve. 

At least it's a plan.

Labels: energy, media, Obama, The Press

Labels: global warming

Christmas Day is the coldest ever with mercury plummeting to MINUS 18 as UK heads towards the biggest December freeze since 1890

Traditional family walks to help the turkey go down could be off the cards today as December 25 is the coldest Christmas ever.

The mercury plummeted to -5.9C at Glenlivet in 1996, but that record was smashed last night when temperatures dropped to -17C at Worcester and -18C at Altnaharra in northern Scotland.

Some areas enjoyed a traditional white Christmas, with snow falling in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and north east England.

Most parts of England, Wales and Northern Ireland were sunny and dry but daytime temperatures are set to remain below freezing.

As some Parisians frolicked in the blanket of snow covering their city, air passengers stranded at Charles de Gaulle airport were having a less joyful time after being evacuated from one of its terminals amid fears for their safety because of an accumulation of snow on the roof.

Bernard Cathelain, deputy director of the Paris airport authority ADP, said the terminal was still operating but passengers had been asked to move.

Le Monde newspaper reported about 60 centimetres of snow had built up on the roof of the terminal and about 2000 people had been evacuated. Firefighters have been sent in to clear the snow.

It added to the woes at Charles de Gaulle, where freezing conditions and a strike at the main French factory producing de-icing fluid forced the cancellation of half - about 400 - of scheduled flights. A supply of glycol was flown in from the US but many passengers already faced missing traditional Christmas Eve dinner.

Fresh snow falls and cold weather have caused travel chaos elsewhere in France and across Europe, shutting airports and causing big delays to trains and aircraft. Dusseldorf airport in Germany shut for several hours, causing the cancellation of about 65 flights.

The corridor from Salisbury, Md. to Philadelphia to New York City to Boston to Portland will be faced with roughly 18 hours of heavy, wind-whipped snow.

Total snow accumulations within this zone will exceed a half foot. More than a foot will bury places from the New York City area to Bangor, Maine.

Strong winds will significantly blow and drift the snow around, leading to an all-out blizzard from Philadelphia northward.

Labels: global warming

Labels: Christianity, music

... four federal air marshals and two sheriff's deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10.

Labels: Democrats, Dissent, Fascism, Liberalism

On this day (+2) in 1931, America was spiraling into the depths of the Depression. Thousands of banks had closed and there was a national panic that more closings might be imminent. And large corporations announced huge layoff programs, stunning many who thought they were safe. Those who had a job were grateful just to be employed.

Among those were a group of construction workers in New York City. As they stood amidst the rubble of demolished buildings in midtown Manhattan, they talked of how lucky they were that some rich guy had hired them for a new but risky development.

And since it was near Christmas, they decided to celebrate the fact that they had a job. They got a Christmas tree from a guy in a lot on the corner who apparently had discovered that folks with apartments suitable for 18 foot trees were not too free with the green pictures of dead presidents in 1931. So the workers stood the big tree up in the rubble and decorated it with tin cans and other items in the lot. A photographer saw it as a perfect symbol of 1931. It caught on immediately and each Christmas as the project proceeded a new tree was put up. And even after the project (Rockefeller Center) was completed, management put up a new (and much bigger) tree each year.

Thanks to Art Cashin for his yearly reminder of how much we have to be grateful for.  We are again in the middle of tough times for a lot of people.  Let's light up a Christmas tree in our homes & in our hearts, and let us be grateful if we have a job.  And let us extend our hands to those who do not.

A lesson for those who hate the rich, in 1931 the name Rockefeller was synonymous with wealth.  He was the one who gave those construction men their jobs, and they were glad to have them.

Labels: Christianity, Culture, Economy

Megan Fox has the roundup: all the way from books with pee on them in the Harvard library to fake anti-Muslim flyers.Click HERE to read.

Or .... you can just pick up a copy of the Virginian Pilot.

Labels: biased reporting, media, The Press, Virginian Pilot

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. ...

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

Labels: England, global warming

Labels: Afghanistan, Soldiers, War

Labels: Academia, global warming, health care, Obama, Science, TimesLies

Labels: Christianity, music

AND YET APOLOGISTS IN AMERICA WERE COMPARING HIM TO THE EARLY CHRISTIANS: Mao’s Great Leap To Famine: “The worst catastrophe in China’s history, and one of the worst anywhere, was the Great Famine of 1958 to 1962, and to this day the ruling Communist Party has not fully acknowledged the degree to which it was a direct result of the forcible herding of villagers into communes under the ‘Great Leap Forward’ that Mao Zedong launched in 1958. To this day, the party attempts to cover up the disaster, usually by blaming the weather. Yet detailed records of the horror exist in the party’s own national and local archives. . . . Starvation was the punishment of first resort. As report after report shows, food was distributed by the spoonful according to merit and used to force people to obey the party. One inspector in Sichuan wrote that “commune members too sick to work are deprived of food. It hastens their death.”


Socialism starves. Capitalism enriches. It’s been proven over and over again. But remember: Communism is about “human dignity.” See:

In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths.


Between 2 and 3 million of these victims were tortured to death or summarily executed, often for the slightest infraction. People accused of not working hard enough were hung and beaten; sometimes they were bound and thrown into ponds. Punishments for the least violations included mutilation and forcing people to eat excrement.

Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.


UPDATE: A reader emails:

I’m a long time reader, but I must strongly object to this:


“Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.”


As someone who works in academia, I run into my fair share of Marxists. While I disagree with their politics, many of them are decent non-evil people most certainly deserving of respect. There is, to my mind, a big difference between communism and Nazism: it is possible to be a communist with the “good will,” i.e. to sincerely wish the best most prosperous future for everyone. I think it’s pretty obvious that communism is not the way towards that goal, but intelligent people can disagree. Nazism, on the other hand, is fundamentally impossible to commit one’s self to with a good will. It is inherently racist, hateful, and concerned with elevating particular groups of people on the basis of the subjugation and dehumanization of others.


Put another way: communism, like it or not, is an Enlightenment project and an Enlightenment ideology. The evils of communism my be intrinsic, but they are not built into the ideology itself. I.e. Marx never advocated for any society like the Soviet Union or for gulags, etc. The same cannot be said of Nazism.


This is not to give communism a “pass,” but rather to separate the ideology and intentions of the believer, from, say, crimes like the Great Leap Forward. One does not convince communists to give up their creed by calling them Nazis and refusing to show them a modicum of respect. One convinces them (and I speak from personal experience) but engaging them as people who want the good, but don’t realize that their politics cannot and will never be able to effect the society they seek.

I’d like to agree with this, but I don’t. As Cathy Young noted a few years ago, the “good intentions” argument has long been an excuse for mass murder:

Why the double standard? Unlike Nazism, Communism claimed to champion the noble ideals of equality, fairness, and brotherhood. To many well-meaning liberals and progressives, it was an expression of the enduring human hope for a good and just society; a nostalgic fondness for that hope, Amis argues, endures to this day. That’s why, he says, Hitchens can still profess admiration for Lenin and Trotsky, who laid the foundations for Stalin’s brutal police state. (In his essay, Hitchens evades Amis’s blunt question: “Do you admire terror?”)


Today, the issues raised in Koba the Dread could be seen as purely academic; but they are not. The left’s reluctance to acknowledge that Communism wasn’t just a failure but an evil is due to more than stubbornness. Such an acknowledgment would amount to (1) validating a view of the West, Communism’s Cold War adversary, as good (albeit imperfect), and (2) admitting that the left spent much of the 20th century cozying up to mass murderers and therefore has precious little moral authority to criticize the West today. And that’s very relevant to present-day global conflicts.

Indeed. Communism’s mass murders have gotten less condemnation precisely because academic Marxists and sympathetic journalists continue to cover for them. Meanwhile, Kate McMillan has a more even-handed perspective:

A few years ago a handful of Aryan Guard marched in Calgary, and were confronted by a larger group of “anti-racist” communist protesters. The media ate it up, of course.


As I reminded my conservative blogger friends who were applauding the latter – “When the communists show up to protest the nazis, you’re supposed to pray for an asteroid, not pick a favourite.”

Evil vs. evil, no more.


ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader T.J. Linzy writes:

I work in academia, but formerly in commerce, and the “good will” remark is one that I hear regularly. However, it is wrong. What the Communists want to do is far worse than racism. Communism feels the need to control someone, because they have legally built up wealth, or want to through their own endeavours (and want to keep it). That wealth makes that person “deserving” of being plundered. “Workers of the world unite!” is OK, but for what? The unspoken goal is to plunder those who have. It is not a call for brotherly love. It is a mobilisation call for a lynch mob.


The Nazis had good will to other Nazis too. You were only in trouble if you weren’t a Nazi. Communism encourages tyranny of the mass over the few. If that is not evil, I don’t know what is.

It’s not even tyranny of the mass over the few. That’s the slogan, but it always ends up in the hands of the nomenklatura. In fact, the more any group talks about equality, the more certain it is to end up with an entirely different set of rules for the few at the top.


Plus, from Moe Lane: Not buying the “goodwill” bit:

Yes, of course: when I get a bullet in the back of the head from somebody for the ‘crime’ of believing in property rights I so totally will feel better about it because the shooter and I ‘merely’ disagree on the best route to Utopia.

I’ll repeat: The difference between Communists and Nazis is mostly PR, and the PR is better because more journalists and academics were communists than Nazis.


And reader Michael Ravine notes what Robert Heinlein said about communism: “I regard it as Red fascism, distinguishable from black and brown fascism by differences of no importance to me nor to its victims.”


Reader Tom Scott, meanwhile, writes:




A long time reader responded:

The evils of communism my be intrinsic, but they are not built into the ideology itself.


Not being an academician I am struggling to understand the distinction he is attempting to make. In reading the “Black Book of Communism” it seems that wherever communism is adopted-USSR, PRC, Cambodia, Cuba, etc- it has inevitably led to a similar result.


By its fruit, the tree is known.

FINALLY: This quote from Moe Lane is worth breaking out:

Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people; it tends to attract the sort who can’t understand that an economic system that cannot feed its own population reliably has failed at the game of Life. Literally.

Yes.

Labels: Academia, Communism, Fascism, Instapundit

Labels: Economy, inflation, Palin

One report dated Nov. 30, 1960, and circulated to the top leadership — most likely including Mao — tells how a man named Wang Ziyou had one of his ears chopped off, his legs tied up with iron wire and a 10-kilo stone dropped on his back before he was branded with a sizzling tool. His crime: digging up a potato.

When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, the local boss, Xiong Dechang, forced his father to bury his son alive on the spot. The report of the investigative team sent by the provincial leadership in 1969 to interview survivors of the famine records that the man died of grief three weeks later.

Starvation was the punishment of first resort. As report after report shows, food was distributed by the spoonful according to merit and used to force people to obey the party. One inspector in Sichuan wrote that “commune members too sick to work are deprived of food. It hastens their death.”

Mao was sent many reports about what was happening in the countryside, some of them scribbled in longhand. He knew about the horror, but pushed for even greater extractions of food.

At a secret meeting in Shanghai on March 25, 1959, he ordered the party to procure up to one-third of all the available grain — much more than ever before. The minutes of the meeting reveal a chairman insensitive to human loss: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”

Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.

Amen.

Labels: China, Communism, Liberalism, TimesLies

Here's the score for Virginia's Warner and Webb.

Warner	(D-VA)	60
Webb	(D-VA)	58

Labels: congress, corruption

Labels: Limbaugh, Race

The blizzard that pummeled the Upper Midwest over the weekend was one for the record books, burying some communities with nearly 2 feet of snow and breaking 100-year-old records in others.

Even all the way to the South, new records have been set as snow and brutally cold air blasted in behind the storm.

Another Dose of Frigid Air

20-Degree Temps Invade Central Florida


Chill Map:

Labels: global warming

From Powerline:

In some respects, one could say that American politics from 2003 until 2008 were dominated by Congress's decision to go to war in Iraq and the Left's hysterical response to that decision. Sensible commentary on Iraq is always in short supply, but Condoleezza Rice's interview with left-winger Katie Couric provides a refreshingly adult take on the subject:

Labels: Iraq, Liberalism, media, The Press

"Mike" McConnell is the Senator from the 57th state.

They told me that if I voted for McCain we could have a President who was too dumb to know the name of the minority leader in the Senate. And they were right!

Labels: Obama

Labels: Economy, health care, Obama

What’s more important: cutting spending or cutting the deficit? Wait, aren’t they connected?

The story from the Washington Examiner polls the public and the political class and shows that where you sit is hwere you stand.

The survey found "that 57% of likely U.S. voters think reducing federal government spending is more important than reducing the deficit. Thirty-four percent (34%) put reducing the deficit first," according to Rasmussen.


But when the same issue was put before members of the two groups, the results were profoundly different:


"It’s telling to note that while 65% of mainstream voters believe cutting spending is more important, 72% of the Political Class say the primary emphasis should be on deficit reduction," Rasmussen said.

Here’s the reason why most voters believe that cutting spending is more important. If you cut spending, you accomplish two things: you reduce the deficit AND you reduce the impact that the government has on the individual. The Tea Party is about the gargantuan government as much as it is about the humongous deficit.

When the political class puts deficit reduction first what people hear is: tax increases. The ruling class continues to believe that the people will be willing to pay more of their money to the government if they can see the deficit reduced; and this has the added benefit – to the government – of being able to continue to give money to their favored constituencies.

The focus should be laser-like on spending reductions; cutting the size and scope of government. If we do that, the deficit will take care of itself.

Labels: Economy, finance, Government waste, Money, Politics, Polls, ruling class, wealth

Iowahawk does it again: 

"I am gratified that the President-Elect has entrusted me with this important responsibility," said Clinton. "I'm looking forward to getting back behind, and under, the Oval Office desk again. As I have told the President-Elect, I pledge to do whatever I can to serve his historic administration by making sure that none of that bullshit he talked about during the campaign will ever see the light of day. Americans can rest assured that he will be safely confined to the East Wing, as far away as possible from any potentially dangerous office equipment or nuclear buttons."

...

"Let's face it, it's obvious I'm in way over my head here," explained Obama. "Anyone paying attention knows I am a disaster waiting to happen, and who can blame them? I mean, just look at the stock market. That's why I think it's in the best interest of the country that I hand over the reins to people who, whatever their ethical shortcomings, at least have a faint clue about what they're doing. Come on, man. I've got a 401-k, too."

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Clinton, humor, Obama

Labels: Military, Weapons

Labels: Liberalism, Libertarian, sexual politics

Labels: Economy

Labels: Democrats, Liberalism, Obama, Palin, Politics, Republicans, Tea Party

"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God." - Evan Thomas, Newsweek

"Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway...Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist wh*res, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul." - Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle

"I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often." - Chris Matthews

"I've been following politics since I was about 5. I've never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising." - Chris Matthews

"It was the best speech I've ever heard. ... And I'm tearing up, and I'm writing down notes, and I'm trying to keep track of this thing. ... His heart must've been broken last night." - Chris Matthews

Historian Michael Beschloss: Yeah. Even aside from the fact of electing the first African American President and whatever one’s partisan views this is a guy whose IQ is off the charts — I mean you cannot say that he is anything but a very serious and capable leader and — you know — You and I have talked about this for years …

Imus: Well. What is his IQ?

Historian Michael Beschloss: … our system doesn’t allow those people to become President, those people meaning people THAT smart and THAT capable

Imus: What is his IQ?

Historian Michael Beschloss: Pardon?

Imus: What is his IQ?

Historian Michael Beschloss: Uh. I would say it’s probably – he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.

Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus."  -- Politiken (Danish newspaper)

"No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don't expect, like Jesus being born in a manger."  --Lawrence Carter

"Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama."  -- Dinesh Sharma

"We just like to say his name. We are considering taking it as a mantra."  -- Chicago Sun-Times

"What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history"  -- Jesse Jackson, Jr.

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."  -- Barack Obama

"Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?"--Daily Kos

"He communicates God-like energy..."  -- Steve Davis (Charleston, SC)

"Not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul"

-- Commentator @ Chicago Sun Times

"I'll do whatever he says to do. I'll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear."  -- Halle Berry

"A quantum leap in American consciousness"  -- Deepak Chopra

"He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century."  -- Gary Hart

"In many ways, he's sent from God, because the world's a mess." 

-- Sting

"Obama is my homeboy. And I'm not saying that because he's black – I'm saying that in reference to those Urban Outfitters T-shirts from a couple years ago that said, 'Jesus is my homeboy.' Yes, I just said it. Obama is my Jesus."  -- Maggie Mertens, the associate editor at the campus paper at Massachusetts' Smith College

"Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence."  -- Eve Konstantine

"[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time."  -- Toni Morrison

"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves."  -- Ezra Klein

"Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind."   -- Gerald Campbell

"We're here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth."  -- Oprah Winfrey

“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan."  -- Bill Rush

Rabbi David Saperstein, reading from Psalms in English and Hebrew, noticed from the altar that the good men and women of the congregation that day, including the Bidens and other dignitaries, had not yet stood. Finally Bishop Vashti McKenzie of the African Methodist Church asked that everyone rise. At that moment Saperstein saw something from his angle of vision: "If I had seen it in a movie I would have groaned and said, 'Give me a break. That's so trite.'" A beam of morning light shown [sic] through the stained-glass windows and illuminated the president-elect's face. Several of the clergy and choir on the altar who also saw it marveled afterward about the presence of the Divine. 

The Promise: President Obama, Year One, by Jonathan Alter.

(Simon & Schuster, May 2010 - p. 102)

http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/

OBAMA BE THY NAME

THY CHANGE WILL COME

THY WILL BE DONE ...

-- Dartmouth College Democrats

Labels: Christianity, Culture, Democrats, Liberalism, Obama

Labels: global warming, Virginian Pilot

Labels: Academia, anti-semitism, Obama

A US government report on a pressing environmental issue is edited to falsely imply that scientists had peer-reviewed and supported the central policy recommendation. Almost 1 in 4 government scientists working on food safety say they have been asked by their bosses to exclude or alter technical information in scientific documents during the past year.

These incidents sound as if they come from the dark days of George W. Bush's presidency, when complaints about political interference in government science reached a crescendo. But in fact, both refer to the behaviour of the current US administration, led by a president who famously promised to "restore science to its rightful place" in his inauguration speech of January 2009.

Francesca Grifo, who heads the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), says that her phone is no longer ringing off the hook like it did during the worst excesses of the Bush administration.

The survey offers little evidence that things have improved much under Obama.

Labels: Academia, Obama, Science

Global warming blamed.

Labels: global warming

Every war brings its own deformations, but consider this disturbing fact about America’s war against al-Qaeda: It has become easier, politically and legally, for the United States to kill suspected terrorists than to capture and interrogate them. …

This isn’t a deformation of war; it’s a deformation of politics. And it really isn’t directly related to the enhanced interrogation techniques at all, but to the insistence of political leadership and the federal courts to insist on a jurisdiction that flies in the face of two centuries of American military and legal tradition. Pushing terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ahmed Ghailani through federal courts perverts the normal operation of war, especially by imposing the same kind of legal liabilities used to restrict law enforcement in regard to American citizens and residents.

We have made it more costly and more difficult to capture terrorists, a task with plenty of difficulty already. Once we capture them, the courts and this administration have made it clear that they have to be treated like a suspect in a criminal investigation rather than a foreign enemy of war....

We’re not killing terrorists rather than capturing them because we’re restricting interrogation to the Army Field Manual, which has nothing to do with later adjudication; we’re killing them because we have no real rational place to put them. That’s due entirely to Obama’s detention policies and the judiciary’s arrogation of jurisdiction. Thanks to the mess created by the Holder DoJ, we have no way to process them even if we did.

Labels: Law, media, Supreme court, The Press, War