Thursday, January 22, 2009

Change I believe in

Let's contrast and compare.

On the Economy:

During President Bush’s second term, the top one percent of Americans received their largest share of national income since 1928.And according to tax data analyzed in 2007, the top 300,000 Americans earned almost as much as the bottom 150 million. Source.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity, on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good. January 20, 2009. Obama Inaugural Speech


On Terrorism:
Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies. March 8, 2008. Source.
President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said. Source.
“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”[Obama's inaugural speech.]
Damn straight.

On a transparent government:

In his FIRST act as POTUS, Obama signed an executive order that effectively reversed a post-9/11 Bush administration policy making it easier for government agencies to deny requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act, and effectively repealed a Bush executive order that allowed former presidents or their heirs to claim executive privilege in an effort to keep records secret.

I believe Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair during the inauguration to prevent us from seeing him crap his pants.

On Religion:
America's foreign policy is more than pre-emptive, it is theologically presumptuous; not only unilateral, but dangerously messianic; not just arrogant, but bordering on the idolatrous and blasphemous. George Bush's personal faith has prompted a profound self-confidence in his "mission" to fight the "axis of evil," his "call" to be commander-in-chief in the war against terrorism, and his definition of America's "responsibility" to "defend the…hopes of all mankind." This is a dangerous mix of bad foreign policy and bad theology. Bill Keller, executive editor of the NY Times.
“We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.” [Obama inaugural speech]
On Science:
The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says. August 8, 2003. Source.
"We will restore science to it's rightful place." January 20, 2009. Obama Inaugural Speech

I am nearly giddy with happiness. This is a paradigm shift. This is a change that, dare I say, will reverberate throughout the century. This...today...is the beginning. I will not believe otherwise. I will not accept otherwise. I will be the change that makes it happen.

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