Some more of "change" in the Obama administration that I’ve been saving up for a few weeks.

"Capturing or killing Osama bin Laden" used to be "a critical aspect of stamping out al Qaeda".  Now he just needs to be "pinned down" or just kept "on the run".  Some of this "change" Obama speaks of apparently means change from his campaign rhetoric.  (H/T Don Sensing.)

Two years ago, Obama called the expansion of coal-fired electricity his "worst nightmare".  Two weeks ago, Obama’s choices for both the EPA and the Energy Department described the industry as "vital" and coal as a "great natural resource".  The environmentalists are not happy at this "change".

In spite of Obama’s promise to severely reduce or eliminate the influence of lobbyists in Washington, Harry Reid said that Obama would be meeting with lobbyists and him, where the president would be doing business with them.  Reid said, "And there’s nothing wrong with that."  I happen to agree with Reid (petitioning the government is a right, though it can, like anything, be misused), but Obama’s promises like this keep falling by the wayside.  (H/T Q & O.)

Hmm, wonder if I should rename this feature "StillTheSameWatch"…

If you’re curious about what Jim Wallis, CEO of the Christian social justice organization Sojouners, thinks about President Obama’s views on abortion, then take a look at the BeliefNet article, Jim Walllis Supports Obama’s Abortion Approach. An excerpt,

In breaking the symbolic cycle, President Obama showed respect for both sides in the historically polarized abortion debate, and called for both a new conversation and a new common ground. I hope that this important gesture signals the beginning of a new approach and a new path toward finding some real solutions to decrease the number of abortions in this country and around the world.

Nonsense.

Let’s take the roof off of this argument by substituting a couple of choice words into the original…

In breaking the symbolic cycle, President Obama showed respect for both sides in the historically polarized slavery debate, and called for both a new conversation and a new common ground. I hope that this important gesture signals the beginning of a new approach and a new path toward finding some real solutions to decrease the number of slaves in this country and around the world.

If you truly care about social justice, Mr. Wallis, then please call a spade a spade; but don’t patronize us with rhetoric which is illogical, at best, and immoral, at worst.

Five days in, and President Obama has made at least two significant moves: One, he signed an executive order which will effectively close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, thereby releasing terror suspects; two, he issued a memorandum which lifts a ban on U.S. funding for international groups that perform abortions.

Score:

Terror suspects – 1, Unborn children – 0

Change? Certainly. Hope? Hardly.

Christians, pray for Obama.

From CNN, Obama may quickly reverse abortion policy,

President-elect Barack Obama is considering issuing an executive order to reverse a controversial Bush administration abortion policy in his first week in office, three Democratic sources said Monday.

Obama’s second full day as president falls on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States.

The sources said Obama may use the occasion to reverse the “Mexico City policy” reinstated in 2001 by Bush that prohibits U.S. money from funding international family planning groups that promote abortion or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion services. It bans any organization receiving family planning funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development from offering abortions or abortion counseling.

Will you begin your term, President-elect Obama, with an act that may begin to help confirm Robert George’s pronouncement of you being our most pro-abortion president ever?

Amidst the incessant proclamations of history being made, what with Obama’s inauguration,  I can’t help but wonder what Dr. King would think of how Obama has already betrayed, and will continue to betray, the most innocent in our land.

Christians: Pray for Barack Obama

With all the promises of change that Barack Obama got his supporters to believe, we’re now finding out that "promises" are more like "goals".  Or perhaps "hopes".

Close Gitmo on the first day in office?  First week?  First 100 days?  Well, technically, he may only issue an order to do it soon, but it’s "a challenge" to even close it within the first 100 days.  The ACLU wants a timetable.  Good luck with that.

"That’s a challenge," Obama said on ABC’s "This Week." "I think it’s going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do."

It’s not as easy as some on the Left expected it would be.  The "Reality-based community" finds that facing reality isn’t what they thought it would be.

Iraq withdrawal within 16 months?  Well, Biden has said that they’re going to follow the Bush plan instead.  Additional take on this and all the Iraq issues at RedState.

Universal Health Care is being back-burnered.  Indeed, the economic crisis should be one of the top priorities, but I thought this whole scheme was supposed to save us all money.  If it’s such a win-win for the economy and health care, why delay?  Hmmm.  (Perhaps it has something to do with how poorly UHC is working in places like Massachusetts?)

No lobbyists serving in policy areas they have worked to influence in the past year.  So then, September 2008 is technically last year.

Interrogation techniques that Obama campaigned against may actually get a new lease on life.  Newsweek tells us:

Dick Cheney, who will step down as vice president on Jan. 20, has been widely portrayed as a creature of the dark side, a monstrous figure who trampled on the Constitution to wage war against all foes, real and imagined. Barack Obama was elected partly to cleanse the temple of the Bush-Cheney stain, and in his campaign speeches he promised to reverse Cheney’s efforts to seize power for the White House in the war on terror.

It may not be so simple

This could be another entry in my "New They Tell Us" category.  This was so simple during the campaign, but now they tell us it’s complex.  Nuance, anyone?

All this added to Obama’s waffling on tax cuts, windfall profits taxes on Big Oil, and FISA.  Now, I have no illusion that Obama has become some sort of bedrock conservative (though he’s been seen in the company of some), and we’re still likely to see many a liberal policy enacted.  However, underneath all this complaining by the Left that the new boss seems the same as the old boss is one thought; maybe the old boss got some things right.

Nancy Pelosi has approved new rules for the House that will keep the old boy (or girl) network firmly in place.  In 1995, when the Contract With America propelled Republicans into Congress, one of the points of the contract was to limit the terms of committee chairs so that you remove the ability of one Representative to rule the roost until they retired or died.  This reduces the opportunity for corruption to build up over time or last for decades. It brings in new blood to bring new eyes to the issues. 

Pelosi will have none of this.  Let’s see how the rest of her party feels when the rules package is voted on.

President-elect Obama has invited Saddleback pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation (i.e. opening prayer) at the inauguration.  While Obama and Warren disagree on some issues, Obama says he wants to "create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable."  In fact, this follows in the footsteps of Bush’s choice in 2004, as the Huffington Post notes.

At his 2005 inaugural, George W. Bush tapped Rev. Dr. Louis Leon to deliver the invocation. Like Obama and Warren, the two shared a commitment to combating AIDS in Africa, as well as a friendship from time spent in each other’s company. But Leon was and is a progressive voice. And his selection in ’04 sparked a lot of interest, though little of the outrage that we see with Warren.

Indeed, the "tolerant" Left side of the blogosphere didn’t seem to get the "disagree without being disagreeable" memo.

Americablog: “Great, then where are the racists, Mr. Obama?"

Markos himself at Daily Kos: “Yeah. Where is David Duke’s invitation? Or as Blue Texan notes, when do Phelps and Hagee get their invitations? Heck, throw up Tom Tancredo up there for good measure, so us Latinos can feel some of the hate!”

Atrios: "Wanker of the Day: Barack Obama."

Firedoglake: "President-elect Obama chose eliminationist hate preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at Obama’s Inaguration. With this choice, Obama sends three destructive messages. Number one: In Obama’s America, equal rights and reproductive freedom aren’t for everyone. Number two: President-elect Obama likes sharing the national stage with hate. Number three: While Obama enjoys his equality before the law, LGBT Americans can go to Hell. Literally. Gee. Is this change we can believe in?"

Andrew Sullivan: "…pandering to Christianists at his inauguration is a depressing omen."

Think Progress:  "…he laughs off accusations of being ‘homophobic’ because he ‘talks to’ gay people and served protesters water."

(A tip of the hat to Don Surber and John Hawkins, from whom I got much of this list, and who have even more examples.)

Once again, we have examples of liberals, who tout their "tolerance" and "acceptance", being wholly unable to handle any sort of deviation from the orthodoxy.  Additionally, as even the Huffington Post notes, the folks they claim are the intolerant ones actually were more accepting when they were in the same situation. 

Tolerance.  You keep using that word.  I do no think it means what you think it means.

Yes YOU, if you opposed the auto maker bailout, want the economy to fail.  YOU are a reckless ideologue.  YOU don’t want to solve problems.  YOU want the US to suck up a Depression.  YOU are extraordinarily irresponsible.

So says Harry Reid and the Left side of the blogosphere.  If you want fiscal responsibility out of our government, you’re irresponsible. 

And in January, this line of thinking will hold even more sway in Washington, DC.  Hold on to your wallets, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

CNN makes an astounding discovery.  Many people are comparing Barack Obama to famous presidents of the past, but the news organization is urging caution.

But will Obama be a great one? Even a good one?

The Americans who are comparing him to those remarkable predecessors are putting a lot of faith in a man they barely know.

In the words of Warner Todd Hudson (to whom the hat tip goes):

And why do we "barely know" Barack Obama, CNN? Is it perhaps because the American media never took the time to vet this man? Is it because all we’ve gotten is hero worship from the media?

The man’s been campaigning for 2 years; the media should have made sure we had more than just bare knowledge of the candidate, but his background, his associates, and even his middle name were considered taboo topics.  But now they tell us we don’t know enough about him.  Thanks.

During my Thanksgiving vacation, I didn’t do any blogging but I did still read the news.  I’ll have long posts about some of the items later on, but just wanted to do a quick hit of some bits I found interesting:

* Tying up some loose ends, the state agency director that pried into Joe "the plumber" Wurzelbacher’s confidential information will be punished, if by "punished"  you mean "one month unpaid leave".  I think that qualifies more for "lightly tapped on the wrist". 

* The singles dating service eHarmony had chosen not to match same-sex couples.  The reason shouldn’t matter, as its a private business, but psychologist Neil Clark Warren, who started the site, had done his personality studies on heterosexual couples and didn’t think that, scientifically, he could extrapolate his findings to homosexual couples.  Disagree if you want, but it was his business and he can run it the way he wants to.

Well, perhaps not.  eHarmony has just caved to a lawsuit by a gay man, and now has a new site for same-sex matches.  Coming next; meat-eaters suing vegetarian restaurants.  So much for "tolerance".

* Archaeologists have found new evidence that they have indeed found King Herod’s tomb. 

* A funny little list that has made the rounds on why public schooling is better than homeshooling.

* Opposition parties gained ground in Venezuela against Chavez. 

* Academia’s assault on Thanksgiving is descending into self-parody, where a pair of public schools decided to stop a long-standing tradition of having kids from one school dress up as pilgrims and the other as American Indians and come together for Thanksgiving.  When opponents of this celebration of a very bright spot in our nation’s history protest it with signs saying "Don’t Celebrate Genocide", you know that either they are just full of anger or are simply products of the public education system.  Or both.

* Academia’s assault on Christmas is descending into self-parody (sensing a trend here?) with one school banning, not just Jesus, but even Santa.  When Jews and Wiccans are standing up for Christmas, you know you are light-years over the line.

* Salvation Army bell-ringers considered noise pollution?  Now, while I rang those bells as a kid growing up, and even in college, I just gotta’ say that this is serious over-sensitivity.  Bell ringers have been at malls for decades; it’s not all that loud.  If the bell-ringer can handle the "noise", the kiosk merchants should be able to.  And let’s not forget that the Christmas song "Silver Bells" was inspired by those bell-ringers.

The trouble with new financial crises is that they provide pretexts for implementing old social agendas. As the president-elect’s new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said recently, “never allow a crisis to go to waste.”

Consider President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which President-elect Barack Obama invokes when he talks of “a defining moment.” Like Obama today, FDR was inaugurated into trouble. He wisely addressed the financial crisis through the steps that we learned about in school. He signed deposit insurance into law, reassuring savers. He created the Securities and Exchange Commission, making the stock market more transparent and consistent. He soothed our grandparents via his radio Fireside Chats. This was the FDR we love.

But FDR also used the crisis mood to push through an unprecedented program of reforms that progressives had been hoping to put in place for years. Sen. George Norris of Nebraska, for example, had for decades argued that utilities should be in the public, not the private, sector. As far back as the early ’20s, Norris wanted to build a big power project on Tennessee River. He wanted the government – and not the Ford Motor Company, which was drawing up such plans – to be in charge. FDR made Norris’ progressive dream a reality by creating the publicly owned Tennessee Valley Authority. Washington won out, but it wasn’t clear its power served the South down the decades.

In what’s sure to be a common theme in the mainstream media in the coming months, the LA Times is just now really investigating Barack Obama’s background.  In this article, it notices that his resume is quite thin.

In his books, speeches and campaign commercials, Sen. Barack Obama has harked back to his days as a civil-rights attorney.

It is fundamental to his autobiography and was displayed on his campaign Web site and woven into his appeals for votes. In one of his television ads leading up to the South Carolina primary, Obama recalled "working as a civil-rights attorney to make sure that everybody’s vote counted."

Senior attorneys at the small firm where he worked say he was a strong writer and researcher, but was involved in relatively few cases before entering politics.

Hat tip: NewsBusters.

Of course, this information was available for the past 2 years, and yet only today does it get reported.  How…interesting.

This web site hosts a poll of Obama voters who were asked questions about the US government and the presidential candidates in particular.  The level of non- or mis-information is truly amazing.  There is an accompanying video of 12 of those respondents showing how little they knew about Obama or Biden, but how much they did know about negative reports on Sarah Palin (or mistook what Tina Fey said as a Palin quote). 

While the general lack of knowledge about who Barney Frank is, or who controls the US Congress, may indeed cross political boundaries, what I found interesting is that, of the Obama voters asked, 86% did know that the RNC paid $150,000 for Sarah Palin’s clothes, 93.8% knew she had a pregnant teenage daughter, but only 43.9% knew in who’s home Obama kicked off his political career.  Only 1 of the 12 highlighted in the video even knew the name Bill Ayers.  And yet we were told that the public had heard the Ayers/Weather Underground connection and, based on the continued Obama advantage in the polls, must have considered it uninteresting.

Well perhaps they never heard the information in the first place.  Watch the video and find out where these folks gets their news, and that’ll go a long way to answering that question.

From Chuck Asay: