“Obama was embracing corporate money,” Stein wrote, speaking in praise of former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, who had also denounced Obama’s decision to accept independent expenditures without protest. Feingold said, “The President is wrong to have embraced the corrupt corporate politics of Citizens United and that’s what you’re doing when you start using and consorting with Super PACs.”

“Whomever Barack Obama may have once been, that man is not occupying the White House today,” Stein said.

A liberal is someone who supports liberal ideals: Peace, human rights, constitutional freedoms, eradication of the corrupt influence of corporations in American politics. That definition sounds obvious.

The problem is that many liberals aren’t liberals any more.

These days, many people who call themselves “liberal” support downright anti-liberal policies. In fact, a large number of people who describe themselves as “liberal” now support some of the most radically right wing policies of George W. Bush.

This sad new political reality is reflected in a new poll by the Washington Post. The poll finds that 53 percent of people who call themselves “liberal Democrats” support keeping the unconstitutional, extralegal prison at Guantanamo Bay open. 55 percent of these self-described “liberal Democrats” support allowing the President to perform long-distance executions of American citizens without criminal trial.

Glenn Greenwald calls this turn of “liberal Democrat” opinion to embrace the policies begun by George W. Bush “repulsive” – and he’s right. Greenwald is also correct in identifying the reason for the great liberal flip flop: Barack Obama has embraced these Bush policies, and many people who like to call themselves “liberal” really don’t have any ideology. They just love Barack Obama, and so they figure that if Barack Obama does something, it must be okay.

These people aren’t liberals. They’re blind partisans. They’re followers. They’re fans. They treat politics as if it’s a football game. They’ve decided that they support the Democratic team, and whatever the leaders of the Democratic team tell them is right, they will believe is right.

This lazy attitude is so low that it isn’t even immoral. It’s absolutely amoral.

Now, before I go too far, I want to make it clear that I do not believe that there is no difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There is a significant difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The biggest difference, however, seems to be that Democrats think whatever Democratic Party leaders tell them to think, while Republicans think whatever Republican Party leaders tell them to think.

Liberals are supposed to be against the corrupt influence of corporate power in elections. Now, though, Barack Obama has openly invited corporate-run Super PACs to make independent expenditures of money that comes from nobody-knows-where on his behalf. So, many liberals are praising Obama’s move, saying that it shows that he’s strong.

Liberals are supposed to be against Presidents ignoring congressional authority and declaring war whenever they want to. Once Barack Obama did it, though, too many liberals rushed to defend Obama’s action, saying that anyone who thins that Presidents couldn’t take the nation off to war on a whim is an idiot.

Liberals are supposed to be environmentalists. But, when Barack Obama announced that he wouldn’t even try to pass legislation to deal with climate change, many liberals clapped loudly, saying, “President Obama sure is good at that long game!” When Barack Obama declared that he would expand offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, even though there are no new regulations from Congress to protect us against the kind of massive disaster that took place when the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded, large numbers of Democrats willingly pretended that they had no idea that the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history had taken place less than two years ago.

What about the rest of us? What about the minority of “liberals” who actually are liberal? We’re frustrated. We’re depressed. A lot of the time, we don’t know what to do. Sometimes, we feel like we just want to throw in the towel, and give up, because there’s no hope, and nobody that we can believe in, and nothing we can do.

But deep in our hearts, we know that’s BULLSHIT.

Here’s What We DO:

We replace our despair with anger, and we grow a backbone.

We rip that Barack Obama bumper sticker off the car. We toss that Barack Obama campaign button in the garbage. We throw that Barack Obama tshirt on a campfire and piss on it while it burns.

Then, we pick someone better. There are two good, really good, liberal choices this year: Their names are Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson. Both are running for President. Pick one to support. Support both, if you like.

Then, the next time you meet one of your “liberal” friends who starts talking about how wonderful Barack Obama is, you do not turn your head away sheepishly and change the subject of the conversation. You say to your friend, “I thought you were liberal, but I don’t understand how any liberal can support the terrible right wing policies that Barack Obama has been promoting. Many of them are the same policies that you told me you were against when George W. Bush promoted them. Why have you changed your values?”

Then, you pull a Rocky Anderson for President button or a Jill Stein for President button out of your pocket and you pin it on your chest.

You put a bumper sticker on your car for Stein or Anderson, too. You wear a tshirt to the protests that the Democrats don’t support anymore.

You hold a house party for Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson, and you invite your liberal friends. You’ll find out which ones are liberal and which ones are “liberal”.

What you do is get active and stay active, because the fact is that being sad and silent about Barack Obama’s terrible embrace of right wing politics is just as bad as being an unthinking Obama loyalist.

For our country and for our world, we need better leadership than what Barack Obama is willing to offer. There’s only one way for us to get better leadership: We have to be better citizens.

If you’re looking for an alternative, a presidential candidate who consistently supports the separation of church and state, consider Rocky Anderson, who is running as the Justice Party candidate for President. In a recent online discussion, Anderson explained his views on the relationship between religion and government as follows:

“Religion and government should be kept as separate as possible. Government interference or involvement in religion demeans faith. There are ample ways for people to exercise their religious beliefs without government involvement. We should all think in terms of the Golden Rule (or the equivalent in non-Christian denominations or humanitarian traditions) when Church-State issues arise. Let us ask ourselves if we didn’t believe in the religion being promoted by government, how would we feel? We should all value the diversity in religious (and non-religious) traditions and be tolerant and compassionate toward each other.”

Well, think again.

According to federal law, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC) is supposed to report on the uses of the Patriot Act power for the government to engage in “sneak and peek” searches of Americans’ homes, offices, and other personal property without letting the subject of the search know about it.

Did you think that under President Barack Obama these searches would decline?
Did you think that this Patriot Act power was being used in order to stop terrorism?

Thanks to WTAE of Pittsburgh for digging up these annual reports (FY 2007 | FY 2008 | FY 2009 | FY 2010), which show very clearly that under Barack Obama’s administration the use of sneak-and-peek powers have accelerated, not declined, and which also show very clearly that the overwhelming majority of the time, sneak-and-peek Patriot Act powers are used for the Drug War. Less than 1% of Patriot Act sneak-and-peeks are actually used to try and find terrorists.

No thanks are due to the administration of President Barack Obama, who promised the nation he’d be a leader in transparency but which has not published these reports for public view, not even on the web page of the very Administrative Office of the United States Courts that produces the report. No thanks are due to the House of Representatives, which receives the report every year but does not publish it. No thanks are due to the U.S. Senate, which receives the report every year but does not publish it. They’d rather you didn’t know the truth these reports tell.

O’Neal was quoting Psalm 109 from the Christian Bible, which is a prayer for divine revenge, including death and destruction for an enemy. Psalm 109 reads, “Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise, for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me. They have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause. For my love they are my adversaries, but I give myself unto prayer, and they have rewarded me evil for good, hatred for my love. Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg. Let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: Neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. Because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart. As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him. As he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones. Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually. Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and of them that speak evil against my soul.”

It goes on, and on, with dreary verses of self-pity and vengefulness, in which the author moans in self pity that nobody loves him, and everybody hates him, and that he should be exalted, while the people he hates should be cursed. Anyone who says that the message of the Bible is a consistent message of love should remember this part of the text. In citing Psalm 109, Mike O’Neal is not just hoping that Barack Obama dies soon. O’Neal is praying that Obama’s daughters never have any children, and that wander the country homeless, without receiving pity from anyone of whom they ask help.

In an odd part of the protest against Mike O’Neal’s cursing prayer against Barack Obama, two Christian ministers from Kansas, Tobias Schlingensiepen and Jim McCollough, are saying that they condemn O’Neal’s prayer because they are Christians. They write in an open letter, “As people of faith, we believe that Scripture should never be used to justify praying for the death of anyone. Speaker O’Neal’s hateful abuse of Scripture is unacceptable and a disgrace to his office, and he should immediately resign.”

The thing is that Psalm 109 clearly does justify praying for the death of other people. The cursing prayer is right there in the Bible, so it’s difficult to see how being “people of faith” has anything to do with rejection of violent prayer. Right there in the Psalms, a person of faith prays for death and destruction with pity. Schlingensiepen and McCollough say that O’Neal is abusing the Bible, but actually, O’Neal was soft-pedalling the Bible by not citing Psalm 109′s most nasty bits.

Furthermore, Schlingensiepen and McCollough are themselves pursuing a nasty path of Christian theocracy as they state that it is unacceptable for anyone in public office to “abuse” the Bible, to cite their holy text in a way that they don’t approve of. That’s establishing a religious test for public office, which is specifically prohibited by the Constitution of the United States of America. Schlingensiepen and McCollough are preaching their own version of religion in government to condemn O’Neal’s version of religion in government. That’s a maneuver as morally inconsistent as that of the writer of the 109th Psalm, who curses his enemy for cursing.

As for O’Neal, he has made his prayer, and in doing so, he has offered a simple public test of the power of prayer. O’Neal has prayed to his god that Barack Obama should have few days left in office. If prayer really works, then Obama should indeed have few days remaining as President of the United States.

How many is a few? Three? Seven? Twenty?

Few is a vague term, but I think that most people would agree that few definitely refers to a number less than one hundred.

So, that’s a pretty fair standard for evaluating Mike O’Neal’s prayer, I think. If Barack Obama is no longer President 100 days from now, we won’t be able to know whether the prayer was responsible. However, if Obama is still President of the United States 100 days from now, O’Neal’s prayer will have proved to be ineffective. If Obama’s days as President are not few, O’Neal will have significant cause to question the validity of his religion.

Jill Stein: 1210 votes
Roseanne Barr: 438 votes
Kent Mesplay: 33 votes
Harley Mikkelson: 8 votes

At approximately 6 AM on January 31 2012, the Americans Elect corporation opened its system to draft presidential candidates through clicks of support. 60 hours later at 6 PM on February 2 2012 (the same time that the Green Party straw poll was scheduled to close), Americans Elect had attracted 935 total clicks of support. Unlike the Green Party straw poll, the Americans Elect straw poll allowed one person to vote up more than one candidate, meaning that Americans Elect likely had far fewer than 935 participants over two and a half days. As of 6 pm, the top ten presidential candidates in terms of support were:

Ron Paul: 197 votes
Jon Huntsman: 135 votes
Buddy Roemer: 78 votes
Bernie Sanders: 67 votes
Barack Obama: 53 votes
Michael Bloomberg: 45 votes
Stephen Colbert: 37 votes
Gary Johnson: 28 votes
Jon Stewart: 20 votes
Lawrence Lessig: 18 votes

Of the top five Americans Elect vote-getters, Jon Huntsman has firmly ruled out an Americans Elect run and instead called for Republican Party “unity” behind Mitt Romney, while Barack Obama is the heavy favorite to walk away with the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Meanwhile, somewhere in the bowels of the Comedy Channel studios, the writing staff is chuckling.

For all the network and cable news shows that have treated Americans Elect staffers to repeated interviews over the past year and a half, wouldn’t a comparison of these results indicate it might be time to invite a Green Party candidate in for a visit?

Finally, on December 15 2011, nearly three years into his presidency, Barack Obama got around to nominating members to sit on the Board. This means a new count begins, as the Senate Judiciary Committee takes on the responsibility of holding hearings and voting on the confirmation of those members.

It’s been 1 month and 18 days since Obama’s nominations went to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee — controlled by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy — hasn’t taken any action at all on the nominations. No confirmation vote, no hearings, no hearings scheduled.

Will we go an entire presidential term without the board’s oversight of the privacy and civil liberty record of the Obama administration?

Still, Barack Obama refused to keep his promise. There still are no solar panels on the White House, even though global warming continues, with a record-breaking winter of unusual warmth setting the stage for drought and wildfires across the southern half of the United States.

Why won’t President Obama keep this simple promise to install solar panels? It could have something to do with the position he’s in, wedged in the pocket of the oil industry. Obama just opened up more of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling, though no new safety protections to prevent another oil spill disaster have been enacted by Congress.

Now, 350.org points out that while Barack Obama has stonewalled against solar power on the White House, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, a country that makes most of its money from oil, has installed solar panels on the roof of his court.

If a crown prince can do it, why can’t we install solar panels on our national buildings here in the USA?

When I say that the threat of Saul Alinsky is “looming”, I’m not being quite accurate. It’s closer to the truth to say that the threat of Saul Alinsky is loaming.

That’s because Saul Alinsky has been dead for over an entire generation.

Of course, what Newt Gingrich is warning us about when he talks about Saul Alinsky is the remaining cadre of Alinskyites, trained in the art of dangerous Socialist politics by Saul Alinsky himself. Prime among that new Socialist cadre is Barack Obama himself.

Just think of it: Barack Obama was ten years old when Saul Alinsky died. Ten years old. Get it? Obama was just at the right age to have been taught to ride a bicycle by Alinsky.

Bicycle. Do I need to say anything else? The very word causes shivers to run down the spine of every red blooded American capitalist. The bicycle suggests a lazy self-sufficiency that is a virus in the nucleus of prosperity.

Socialist Europeans love to ride their bicycles down quaint little streets to get long, phallic-shaped loaves of bread that were made with flour grown by farmers’ cooperatives. Yes, by cooperatives, comrade.

Every bicycle ride that an American takes is five dollars of profit stolen from the oil industry. It’s a car that isn’t manufactured, leaving our factories idle so that we can’t fight back when Red Ivan decides to invade, and you know what happens next, don’t you? Yes, your children will be saying “vodka”, and they’ll never learn about how Jesus wrote the Bill of Rights.

I’m not ashamed to say that Saul Alinsky makes me quiver in my boots, because the truth is, he wanted to “enfranchise” low income workers. Now, think about this: Why would anyone want to encourage losers, who can’t even figure out how to earn a million dollars for themselves, to vote? It’s like publishing an advertisement in the newspaper asking for unemployed men to come and date your daughter! Why poison the gene pool?

The truth that the Maoist media doesn’t want you to know about is that enfranchising poor people is tantamount to disenfranchising the successful job creators. After all, every voter who refuses to be bought is a hundred Super PAC dollars that have been wasted, and that’s bad for the economy.

Yes, you should beware Saul Alinsky. His liberal zombie fingers are pulling the vitality out of the American dream, one Spanish-speaking ghetto at a time!

Post Script Of Terror!: It turns out that Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, was palling around with Saul Alinsky! That means Mitt must be a Manchurian Candidate… there’s no other possible interpretation! Run for the hills!

No safety protections have been passed into law since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and the largest oil spill in American history that resulted.

Yet, without any new protections, Barack Obama announced last night that he is opening up yet more of America’s coastlines to offshore drilling. With every new offshore drilling platform, Obama is increasing the likelihood that we will see another Deepwater Horizon disaster – or something even worse.

Sure, Obama said that he would push for regulations to ensure the safety of the new offshore drilling, but that’s the same thing he promised back in 2010 – with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. Obama didn’t get anything passed then. In fact, he hardly even tried.

True to form, Barack Obama is giving Big Oil what it wants without receiving any compromise in the bargain. It’s the equivalent of a judge telling a man just convicted of robbing a bank that he can go free, and can have a special new platinum account at the bank in which to deposit all the money the man stole, but that he’s hoping that the city legislature passes some tough new laws against bank robbery somewhere in the future.

Barack Obama knows that the Republican House of Representatives has been passing legislation to loosen, rather than strengthen, offshore drilling regulations. He knows that he’s not going to get any new protections created, that the same conditions in the oil industry that caused the Deepwater Horizon disaster two years ago exist today. Still, he’s giving oil companies the gift of setting up even more platforms like the Deepwater Horizon, up and down America’s shores.

It’s as if Barack Obama has forgotten that the Deepwater Horizon disaster ever happened. In fact, President Obama didn’t even mention the Deepwater Horizon in the State of the Union Address last night – not even when he talked about expanding offshore drilling.

That should come as no surprise. Obama didn’t mention the Deepwater Horizon last year either. Just months after the disaster, Obama was already willing to pretend it never took place.

The oil is still washing up on Gulf Coast shores. Barack Obama won’t do anything to protect us from the danger. There are good alternative candidates out there, like Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson, who are willing to work hard for environmental protections that Obama surrenders without a fight. It’s time for Environmentalists against Obama to kick into gear, because Obama certainly never will.