There are some current events, politics and/or news I could report on right now. Death panels, really? But, I decided to give a little look back and give President Obama a much needed critique from me. I will do this in a “top 5″ fashion. The following will be the top 5 things that really bug the hell out of me about our president.

5) Obama ran on campaign rhetoric about equality, togetherness and uniting people of all colors, creed and sexuality. Unfortunately, he has not lived up to the hype … yet.

Obama has not done much for a minority group here in the States. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people have been the one group of people that were basically shafted (no pun intended) in that deal. One problem that Obama faces is the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the US military. Here is The Daily Beast writing about Obama and the two prominent officers being dismissed from duty because of being “outed” as gay.

“Gay soliders are being dismissed not because the president of the United States feels they should be discriminated against, which would be bad enough. Instead, they’re being dismissed because the president doesn’t feel like doing anything about it.”

I tend to agree with the context of this statement. There is a process by which politics work, and I understand that a president can’t do everything in the first 6 months of office, but this is really shady. Then, you take a look at other actions of the current president concerning LGBT concerns, and the concerns start mounting (no pun intended). Here on Who Runs Gov a journalist writes about two top level lawyers representing the LGBT movement being denied access to the White House administrative lawyers.

Two prominent gay rights lawyers litigating high-profile cases against the Obama administration tell me that their requests to meet with administration lawyers to discuss the cases were rebuffed — something that will further anger gay rights activists who feel badly stiff-armed by Obama on gay rights issues.
In both cases, the lawyers are representing Federal employees whose spouses are being denied protections or benefits under the Defense of Marriage Act. The Obama administration, which is officially opposed to DOMA, is defending the act in court and claiming it precludes the granting of some benefits (like health care) to same-sex spouses of Federal employees — the topic of so much controversy this week surrounding a case in California.

This sounds mighty familiar to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell debacle above.

4) A year ago, Barack Obama was strongly against the secretive measures used by the Bush administration concerning oil, but is Obama doing the very same thing? Yes, it seems he is.

Newsweek reports that President Obama is being secretive with the Secret Service logs concerning coal executives in the very same manner that Bush II did.

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding “secret energy meetings” with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama’s “clean coal” policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged “presidential communications.” The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig’s office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a “new era” of openness, “nothing has changed,” says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. “For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies.”

Citizens for Ethics, a non-partisan group, tried to get this information out of the White House claiming Freedom of Information Act, but was denied. The president said that the logs are presidential logs, not Secret Service logs, making them not applicable to the Freedom of Information Act.

Great, more secretive BS from our president about big business. Enough said.

3) Obama, the so-called constitutional expert, has done nothing to stop the warrant-less wiretapping and email message surveillance Bush II started long ago. On top of that, Obama claims all kinds of immunity.

Wired.com has a great article explaining the back and forth between the courts and the White House.

In court filings, the administration says the suit (.pdf) “would require or risk the disclosure of information that is properly subject to the state secrets privilege and related statutory privileges.” The administration claims it’s shielded by sovereign immunity, in addition to citing the controversial state secrets privilege.

All the while, the EFF maintains the dragnet surveillance (.pdf) continues unabated under Obama.

“Using this shadow network of surveillance devices, defendants have acquired and continue to acquire the content of a significant portion of the phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages, web communications and other communications, both international and domestic, of practically every American who uses the phone system or the internet,” the EFF wrote in its lawsuit.

The civil liberties group told Judge Walker the spying is as an “unprecedented, suspicionless general search through the nation’s communications.”

Back in June 16th of this year, a former NSA analyst was asked by a NY Times’ journalist how he felt about the continuation of these unconstitutional acts by the White House.

a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.

Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions about the spy agency.

Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, has been investigating the incidents and said he had become increasingly troubled by the agency’s handling of domestic communications.

In an interview, Mr. Holt disputed assertions by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was inadvertent.

“Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Mr. Holt said.

Well that is refreshing. Great, another thumbs down for Hope.

2) President Obama speaks as though he is a religious man, but is he really? I don’t think so, but that is just me.

Now don’t get me wrong. I would love it if he came out of the closet as an atheist; I am partial to the rationalists. Unfortunately, I think he talks about religion just to just to keep the religious zealots off his nuts, but it still bugs me. He was quoted saying he prays all the time for guidance.

President Barack Obama says he’s gone from praying nightly before going to bed to praying all the time because he has a “lot of stuff” on his plate and needs “guidance all the time.”

Jesus Christ, the guidance comes from intellectual discovery, rational debate and a good use of logic, not some old judgmental, misogynistic Zeus character in the sky!

1) Bipartisanship! What the f*ck is that? It’s some pie in the sky dream that is watering down every single thing one may try to do. Get shit done. Who cares about the Republicans?

The Republicans hate Obama, they want him to fail. They want their old job back, and they will do anything to accomplish it. That means they don’t care about the country, the government or the people. Obama, ram your policies down their throat! Oh, I forget, you have to have a spine to ram anything down something, and Democrats are a mass of gelatinous crap.

I thought Obama would be the leader that would surgically implant a spine in the democratic house and senate, but it seems he is so worried about bipartisanship, getting re-elected that he himself has lost some rigidity in his own vertebral column.

Conclusion: Obama is not all that different than Bush II in action. He speaks more intelligently, acts more respectfully and can really woo, but much of it stops there. He has not made any real change in the Middle East, gays in the military, warrant-less wiretapping, secretiveness, big government and now healthcare is going to be a big flop once it becomes a bipartisan bill. Hope anyone?