Obama gives Medal of Freedom to Bush Sr...or why any 'hope' of 'change' has now been terminated..

In what for many will be the final insult to those that supported him, Barack 'Bipartisan' Obama has decided that George H.W. Bush, the architect of the 'October Surprise', the lynch pin in Iran-Contra and the architect behind the first gulf war, should be awarded the highest civilian honour in the land, the Medal of Freedom.

Look, I know that this comes at a bad time attention-span-wise for the average Yank, after all there is all sorts of outrage over the fact that ThunderThighs Palin is through to the final on Dancing with the (Z-list) Stars because the slavish, Teahadists followers of her mother have figured out how to game ABC's voting system. Plus everyone is all a-twitter over a couple of rich twenty-something Brits finally planning to say 'I do' next year in a bloody great big church, but when Barack Obama, a man widely thought to not only possess a brain, but also know how to use it, says that it's a good idea to honour someone like this, I have to say that for me, it is time to get off the 'Hope and Change' Express.

I knew from the start that Obama was only going to be a 'liberal' when viewed from the angle of where we had just come from. He always was a centrist, a mediator not an idealist, but I had hoped that, if for no other reason than his upbringing, we would have had at least the semblance of an effort to right the wrongs of the previous administration. The first indication that things weren't going to go that way was his choice of Rick Warren, a known gay-basher, to lead the inaugural invocation. Whilst the gathered crowd cheered, along with tens of millions of others at homes across the nation, as Bush the Lessor was escorted out of national governance and back to the pig farm from whence he came, the wheels of capitulation had already started to turn.

Hopes for a quick end to the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were quickly dashed when troop numbers actually increased in the 'Stan. When knowledge of yet more torture and abuse by the previous administration came to light, the President and his Attorney General refused to even consider investigations, never mind prosecutions of the offenders. As the news that the FBI had knowingly violated the privacy of thousands and thousands of American citizens during the bush years via illegal wire-taps came to the fore, the constitutional law-scholar from Harvard didn't raise a finger to bring those responsible to account, or even bother to gather assurances that the practice had ceased. Even now, when you have to subject yourself to being publicly groped by a stranger in order to get on an airplane, a blatant violation of civil rights, the President won't so much as raise an eyebrow.

I knew he wasn't a liberal, but come on, enough is enough. Maybe Bill Hicks was right, but all I know is this: this ain't the "Change" I asked for.