In the name of God?

At a time when some people confuse losing an election with living under tyranny, it’s perhaps no surprise that a day set aside for marking past presidents’ birth has become, for some, a day for praying for the current president’s death.

Praying for President Obama’s death has become a sick cottage industry for some evangelicals on the lunatic fringe. Bumper stickers, T-shirts, and teddy bears are sold with the wholesome-sounding slogan “Pray for Obama” but tagged with the more troublesome “Psalm 109:8”—which reads “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” followed by “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”

“If you have an evil leader above you, you pray that Satan will stand by his side and you ask God to make his children fatherless.”

In Wingnut circles, it’s known as the “Imprecatory Prayer.” Offered not just from select pulpits, but increasingly expressed through tweets and forwarded via email, this decidedly un-Christian Christian subculture has found its most enthusiastic advocates in a few Obama Derangement Syndrome-afflicted preachers—notably Orange County’s Wiley Drake and Arizona’s Steven L. Anderson.

Pastor Wiley Drake kicked off this Presidents’ Day Weekend with an email blast to his supporters saying “Imprecatory Prayer is now our DUTY” and announcing a daily teleconference call to advance the cause. Drake has been an enthusiastic advocate of imprecatory prayer since he announced that God answered his call with the murder of Kansas abortion clinic doctor George Tiller in church last May. “George Tiller was far greater in his atrocities than Adolf Hitler,” Drake said at the time, “so I am happy. I am glad that he is dead.” This emboldened him to add “the usurper that is in the White House … B. Hussein Obama” to the list said in his church on Sundays.

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Praying for Obama’s Death – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.

Take Obama’s original proposals for health-care reform. Child-rearing equivalent? Broccoli. Most effective strategy? Chocolate cookie.

Take Obama’s original proposals for health-care reform. Child-rearing equivalent? Broccoli. Most effective strategy? Chocolate cookie. Now what do you do with this cookie? Mix it in with the broccoli? (i.e. weaken the public option into national exchanges?) No. Put it on the plate alongside the broccoli? (i.e. give each state the choice of rejecting a public option?) No. Offer it to your child as an appetizer after extracting his promise to consume the broccoli afterward? (i.e. commit $30 billion to continue the war in Afghanistan?) Nope. Do you suggest that tonight he have only chocolate cookies for dinner and tell him in no uncertain terms that tomorrow night he must eat all his broccoli? (i.e. abandon the public option, national exchanges, and a Medicare buy-in for people 55 and over?) Absolutely not.

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How to Handle GOP Tantrums – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.

Let 'Dust Settle' On Health Care

from Paul Krugman:

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

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Obama Liquidates Himself – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

David Plouffe, now current and former campaign guru, to ABC’s Jake Tapper on “GMA” Monday: “The health care plan has become a caricature. And if we walk away from it now, everyone who supported it is going to have all of the downside and none of the upside.”
Unless it’s time for the president to pick up the fight: “I want him to issue a call to arms… A lot of us are waiting for him to join the fray and lead the fight,” Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., told Tapper.

Or re-think it all, post health care: “I think he’s allowed the left wing to pull him too much in that direction,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

via Sen. Bill Nelson Attributes Health Reform Failure To Non-Existent Pressure From ‘The Left’.