Senate Agrees: US People Can't Know Overseas Drone Death Toll | Common Dreams

Senate Agrees: US People Can't Know Overseas Drone Death Toll | Common Dreams

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper urged the Senate Intelligence Committee to drop language about those killed in drone strikes. And they did. (Public domain)The Senate Intelligence Committee and the Obama administration agree on this: the American people should not know the number of people killed by U.S. drone attacks overseas, nor should they hope to understand the circumstances under which such lethal killings are authorized or executed.

This high-level agreement was confirmed on Monday after a "modest" provision designed to add transparency to the US drone assassination program was killed in the Senate committee following objections by the Obama administration's intelligence chief.

I rest my case to the previous post....
The whole system is corrupt, immoral and dysfunctional. And the sheepple still believe we live in a democracy. HA HA HA. 
TICK TOCK
Taodaoman

The Toll Of 5 Years Of Drone Strikes under Obama: 2,400 Dead

"You wont understand my pain sir, the drone cut my son in to 7 different pieces it took me 2 days to find his head"

http://t.co/uPXj287shj

The U.S. drone program under President Barack Obama reached its fifth anniversary on Thursday having tallied up an estimated death toll of at least 2,400 people.

As the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a U.K.-based non-profit, details on its website, five years ago the CIA conducted the first drone strikes of the Obama presidency. Although there were reports of suspected "militants" killed, at least 14 civilians also died that day.

After those initial mistakes, TBIJ notes, Obama rapidly ramped up the drone program in Pakistan and increased its use in Yemen and Somalia, two countries where al Qaeda affiliates expanded their presence during Obama's presidency.

Obama recently told The New Yorker that he "wrestle[s]" with civilian casualties. But, he said, he has "a solemn duty and responsibility to keep the American people safe. That’s my most important obligation as President and Commander-in-Chief. And there are individuals and groups out there that are intent on killing Americans -- killing American civilians, killing American children, blowing up American planes."

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These killings are on obama's soul.

He can not put these murders on W.

The masters of war like to call it collateral damage and keeping America safe.

Bull shit, murder is murder, and they know it. 

They do it for the same reason that the W crew attacked Afghanistan and Iraq.

The one and simple reason. 

Cause they KNEW THEY WOULD GET AWAY WITH IT.

Meanwhile the american sheeple are getting number and dumber by the minute.

War is now peace, and peace is war.

Nothing will ever change unless the people take to the streets. 

And that will not happen as long as they have a boob tube and a bag of chips.

WAKE THE EFF UP PEOPLE.

Before it is too late.

Perhaps it is 11:59 and nobody knows it.

They win no matter which party puppet is in power.

It matters not how or if you vote, for the voting booth is the new opiate of the masses.

The whole EFFING system has to collapse.

You can not vote your way out of this mentality. It can not be ammended or regulated. 

The machine has to be starved to death.

A good start would be Wall St. And K St.

Show some effing rage people.

They have been killing innocent men women and children in our name.

Ah yes, but it feels good to sit on your safe couch with a bag of chips, a cold one and watching CNN talking about MH370 24/7 for three weeks straight.

How many more innocent people will die from drone strikes in Pakistan Yemen and who know where or what else is on O's secret hit list.

Just as the dead bodies rest in O's soul,

So they rest in our souls as well.

DAMN be to the Bastards of War!!!!!!!!!!!!

Taodaoman

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Archives reveal 'comfort women' official actions o...

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Archives reveal 'comfort women' official actions o...

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Americans Support the TPP, Trade With Japan

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Americans Support the TPP, Trade With Japan

Capping Chernobyl

Chernobyl: Capping a Catastrophe - 

 Against the decaying skyline here, a one-of-a-kind engineering project is rising near the remains of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster.An army of workers, shielded from radiation by thick concrete slabs, is constructing a huge arch, sheathed in acres of gleaming stainless steel and vast enough to cover the Statue of Liberty. The structure is so otherworldly it looks like it could have been dropped by aliens onto this Soviet-era industrial landscape.



If all goes as planned, by 2017 the 32,000-ton arch will be delicately pushed on Teflon pads to cover the ramshackle shelter that was built to entomb the radioactive remains of the reactor that exploded and burned here in April 1986. When its ends are closed, it will be able to contain any radioactive dust should the aging shelter collapse.

By all but eliminating the risk of additional atmospheric contamination, the arch will remove the lingering threat of even a limited reprise of those nightmarish days 28 years ago, when radioactive fallout poisoned the flatlands for miles around and turned villages into ghost towns, filled with the echoes of abandoned lives.

The arch will also allow the final stage of the Chernobyl cleanup to begin — an arduous task to remove the heavily contaminated reactor debris for permanent safe storage. That this job will fall from international hands to those of Ukraine presents new worries, especially as Russia threatens the nation’s borders.



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Interlocking Spheres of Influence: US Military Globalization by NORMAN POLLACK

by NORMAN POLLACK

History, at the least, is process, interrelations, multilayered, marked by continuities of social structure, wealth distribution, all in all, embedded in a framework of causation even when serendipitous outcomes pop up, none of which is to suggest a rigid deterministic pattern, but only that in the case of Obama, one can readily credit America’s protofascistic leanings over decades if not also centuries (war, intervention, racism, monopoly capital brought to a convergence), yet, despite prior historical trends, demand that he be held accountable for what occurs on his watch. Therefore, no free pass for overwhelming militarism, massive surveillance, policies favoring deregulation and wealth-concentration, contemptuous disregard for civil liberties and government transparency, and now, a foreign policy of exclusive global hegemony quite possibly surpassing that of his illustrious predecessors. What, in this context, is more criminal, the policies themselves, such as targeted assassination, regime change, a string of interventions–and the counterrevolutionary posture undergirding them, or, a nation and people, sharing complicity in their actuation and implementation, and more particularly, a morally bankrupt liberalism actively promoting them, with presumed radicals standing by in silence? Americans are implicated in deceit and denial, purchasing their comforts and self-righteousness at the expense of the collective human privation their military and paramilitary forces, their CIA operatives and private contractors, their support of repressive regimes and death squads have brought to much of the world’s population.

Obama is at it again, his Asian journey of cementing a Grand Alliance designed to encircle (this only a first approximation to a broader geopolitical strategy) and thereby contain, hem-in, perforce isolating and reducing the power of, China, intentionally builds political-ideological tensions of confrontation and perhaps ultimate war for a vast region, a result America welcomes if, by that, short of nuclear war, China and North Korea can be taught a lesson in good international citizenship according to US guidance, IMF instruction, free-market imperialism (aka liberal humanitarianism). Shockingly (at least to me) it appears that Herman Kahn and Rand Corporation war-games analysts—forerunner of today’s Neo-Cons, some of whom actually came up through that arch-Cold War intellectual culture—have been reborn, their ideas now in vogue, because in fact Obama and his Shadow Cabinet of assorted war hawks/vultures regard Asia as a practical free-fire zone, come what may, for demonstrating the truth of American principles. “Better dead than red,” chanted and believed sixty-odd years ago, should be inscribed on a banner over the Situation Room, itself, right off of where the national-security advisers prepare the “hit lists’ Obama studies as he personally authorizes assassination.

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Neoliberalism's War on Democracy By Henry A Giroux

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The Pan-Asian Anchor: The Renminbi Goes Abroad

The Pan-Asian Anchor: The Renminbi Goes Abroad

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Obama’s “Rebalancing”: A Fig Leaf

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Obama’s “Rebalancing”: A Fig Leaf

Is Communist China Christianity’s Future? New estimates predict China will soon be home to the world’s largest Christian community.

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The Pan-Asian Anchor: The Crisis of Confidence in US Hegemony

The Pan-Asian Anchor: The Crisis of Confidence in US Hegemony

A World to Win: Abolishing Capitalism For A More Just and Sustainable Economic System | Common Dreams

A World to Win: Abolishing Capitalism For A More Just and Sustainable Economic System | Common Dreams

"While the capitalist mode of production has done a great deal to accelerate the development of technology and increase the availability of consumer goods in the last few centuries, it has outlived its usefulness and has in fact become destructive. Inequality, unemployment, financial crises, and environmental devastation all point toward one inevitable conclusion: we must get rid of capitalism, once and for all."

Earth: Game Over? | Common Dreams

Earth: Game Over? | Common Dreams

Declassified Documents Show Henry Kissinger's Major Role in the 1974 Initiative That Created the Nuclear Suppliers Group

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The Pan-Asian Anchor: Obama lands in Tokyo for the first US state visit ...

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Obama lands in Tokyo for the first US state visit ...

26 asteroids with the power of nuclear bombs have hit Earth since the year 2000. This video shows you where

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Pathologic Hegemony Nonpareil: Unstoppable Obama by NORMAN POLLACK

Unstoppable Obama » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

by NORMAN POLLACK

Imperialism ad nauseam: If the new name of the game is liberal humanitarianism, the obfuscation is intentional, here, the militarization of advanced-capitalist expansion in pursuit of traditional objectives, from financial-commercial penetration to industrial outsourcing, raw-materials extraction, investment outlets, and good old-fashioned establishment of spheres of influence in the context of international power politics.

One CP reader wisely cautioned me not to focus solely on Obama, who, in reality is the anthropomorphized tip of the iceberg—yet, for that, hardly blameless or inconsequential. Granted, he is the nominal head of an integrated power structure, there, in the first place, indeed, carefully groomed for the job, because he, in seemingly disarming fashion, serves so well both the needs of financial capital and the wider corporate system on one hand, the military and intelligence communities on the other, Obama therefore, whether as figurehead or puppet, or as decision-maker in his own right, performs a systemic role with objective consequences for all to see.

What Arno Mayer just referred to as “national hubris and arrogance of power,” has met its primary exponent in Obama, who presides over a National Security State and national-security council so enmeshed in the interstices of global conquest that it would be disservice to critical analysis—and perhaps humankind’s survival as well—to downgrade his significance. 

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Oligarchy USA

Oligarchy USA

'Corporate Colonialism': Protesters Slam TPP, US Military 'One-Two Punch' Ahead of Obama visit, Asia-Pacific voices demand 'U.S. out'

As President Barack Obama prepares to embark on his fifth visit to the Asia-Pacific region, grassroots protests against U.S. efforts to ram through the Trans-Pacific trade deal and the U.S. military pivot to Asia are mounting on both sides of the Pacific.

"People are saying we don't want more U.S. militarization in our countries," said Rhonda Ramiro, Vice Chair ofBAYAN-USA—an alliance of Filipino organizations in the U.S.—in an interview with Common Dreams. "This is about U.S. military power and economic domination."

In the coming days, protests against the TPP and U.S. military pivot will sweep U.S. embassies in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, with more actions slated for the "weeks and months to come," said Ramiro. Channel News Asia reports that in Tokyo, where Obama will land Wednesday, protests against the TPP by workers, farmers, and community groups are already heating up. READ MORE

Obama's War: Obama's high-stakes drone war in Yemen By Peter Bergen,

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Earth Day And The Arctic, Where Climate Change Is Up Close And Personal

Earth Day And The Arctic, Where Climate Change Is Up Close And Personal

The Midterm Elections and the Asia Pivot The Republican Party taking the Senate in the 2014 elections could be a boon for the Asia Pivot.

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Happy Easter? Christianity, Guilty as Charged! by ANDRE VLTCHEK

by ANDRE VLTCHEK

Motto: verse from Colossians 3:22: “Slaves, obey your masters.”

It is Easter and I am mourning for all those hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, who were forced to ‘die for Jesus’… They vanished so the Christian dogma of some crucified man from Nazareth, could be lubricated and substantiated with red oceans of human blood, and reinforced with a tremendous mountain of bones. Colossal flames have burnt countless millions of those who have found this entirely psychedelic tale, thoroughly unbelievable, even ridiculous.

Nobody asked Jesus to die for this world, or to wash away all of its ‘sins’ (always, always those ‘sins’!). But hundreds of millions had to vanish to give way for those ‘following him’; who held their crosses while cutting down people with their swords!

“In the name of the cross!” “In the name of Jesus!” Slaughter and torture, burnt flesh, mutilated bodies, beastly rapes. The history of this world, Mr. Fukuyama! It is mainly a history of Christian conquests, the enslavement of the planet, and murder in the name of the cross. Is it over; is it the end of such a history, really?

***

Today I want to remember, to mourn, those centuries of human sacrifice. That pointless, unnecessary, vile human sacrifice!

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The Dulles Brothers, Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, and the Fate of the Private Pre-War International Banking System by Peter Dale Scott

John Foster Dulles, Vice-President Richard Nixon, and the Shah of Iran

The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference

The Bank of International Settlements HQ in Basel

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RIP Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter

see: Former boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter dies at age 76

Too Big to Jail? Why Kidnapping, Torture, Assassination, and Perjury Are No Longer Crimes in Washington By Tom Engelhardt

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Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Imperative

Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. news media is flooding the American people with one-sided propaganda on Ukraine, rewriting the narrative to leave out the key role of neo-Nazis and insisting on a “group think” that exceeds even the misguided consensus on Iraq’s WMD, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

After the Feb. 22 coup in Ukraine – spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias – European and U.S. diplomats pushed for a quick formation of a new government out of fear that otherwise these far-right ultra-nationalists would be left in total control, one of those diplomats told me.

The comment again underscores the inconvenient truth of what happened in Ukraine: neo-Nazis were at the forefront of the Kiev coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, a reality that the U.S. government and news media have been relentlessly trying to cover up.

New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof.

Although real-time reports from the scene in February chronicled armed and organized militias associated with the neo-Nazi Svoboda party and the Right Sektor attacking police with firebombs and light weapons, that information soon became a threat to the Western propaganda theme that Yanukovych fled simply because peaceful protesters occupied the Maidan square.

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Trying Not to Give Peace a Chance

Exclusive: The trust between President Obama and President Putin helped avert a U.S. war on Syria and got Iran to agree to limit its nuclear program, but the neocon-driven crisis in Ukraine has dashed hopes of building on that success for a more peaceful world, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

The unnecessary and regrettable conflict between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine brings to mind sad remembrances of important junctures at which I watched – as a citizen and a CIA analyst – chances for genuine peace with Russia frittered away.

How vividly I recall John Kennedy’s inaugural address when he bid us to ask not what our country could do for us, but rather what we could do for our country. Then and there I decided to put in the service of our government whatever expertise I could offer from my degrees in Russian. So I ended up in Washington more than a half-century ago.

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Advocate for Justice, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter Dies at 76

Wrongly convicted of murder by an all-white, famous ex-boxer became advocate for other prisoners

- Jon Queally, staff writer

Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, pictured here at a gala event in his honor in 2010, has died at the age of 76 after a battle with cancer. (Source: Paul Kane/Getty Images AsiaPac)Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, the famous professional boxer who was wrongly convicted of murder by an all-white jury in 1967 but later exonerated, has died in Toronto at the age of 76.

"If I find a heaven after this life, I’ll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years... To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all." —Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter (1937-2014

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Telling the Truth about Easter By the Rev. Howard Bess

Jesus, a radical preacher who advocated for the poor, was crucified for turning over money tables at the Temple and other insurrectionary acts. His body was likely left to wild animals, but his chroniclers sought to glorify his ending with myths about a resurrection, as Rev. Howard Bess explains.

By the Rev. Howard Bess

On Easter morning, at 6:30 a.m. when sunlight is just beginning to glow over the mountains to the east of Palmer, Alaska, I will, as is my custom, arrive at a sunrise Easter service to celebrate the resurrection of my Lord. I have already checked the lectionary and reread the resurrection story as recorded in Matthew 28:1-10. Millions of my Christian brothers and sisters will be reading the same ten verses.

Millions of sermons will be preached based on the Matthew account of the resurrection, but very few preachers will make mention of the history and background of the passage. A typical minister will not share what he/she learned in theological seminary about the resurrection passages.

Depiction of Jesus’s Crucifixion by 16th Century artist Mathis Gothart-Nithart.

Figuring out what happened to Jesus is not a simple journey. I do not recall when I first started raising questions. I do know that it began when I laid the resurrection accounts down side by side and started comparing the differing stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They cannot be reasonably reconciled.

For instance, in Matthew an angel caused an earthquake and rolled the stone away from the entrance into the tomb. The angel then engaged women in conversation. The other story tellers mention no earthquake and no angels. The Matthew account was beyond my own personal experience with earthquakes and angelic conversations. Believing in the resurrection story as history became more difficult to embrace.

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The Dangerous Neocon-R2P Alliance

Exclusive: After U.S. neocons helped stir up a crisis in Ukraine—with a big assist from the biased American press corps – the Obama administration looked for a diplomatic off-ramp, but this pattern of hyped outrage and belated reconciliation is a risky way to make foreign policy, says Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The American mainstream news media has rarely bought in so thoroughly to a U.S. government propaganda campaign as it has in taking sides in support of the post-coup government in Ukraine and against Russia and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Part of this is explained by the longstanding animus toward Russian President Vladimir Putin for his autocratic style, his shirtless photographs and his government’s opposition to gay rights. Another part is a hangover from the Cold War when the Russkies were the enemy. In Official Washington, there is palpable nostalgia for the days of Ronald Reagan’s anticommunist swagger and “Red Dawn” fantasies.

Secretary of State John Kerry attending a four-way diplomatic conference in Geneva on April 17, 2014, involving the U.S., Russia, Ukraine and the European Union. (State Department photo)

But another reason for the biased coverage from the U.S. press corps is the recent fusion of the still-influential neoconservatives with more liberal “responsibility to protect” (R2P) activists who believe in “humanitarian” military interventions. The modern mainstream U.S. news media is dominated by these two groups: neocons on the right and R2Pers on the center-left.

As one longtime Washington observer told me recently the neocons are motivated by two things, love of Israel and hatred of Russia. Meanwhile, the R2Pers are easily enamored of idealistic young people in street protests.

The two elements of this alliance – the neocons and the R2Pers – also now represent the dominant foreign policy establishment in Official Washington, with the few remaining “realists” largely shoved to the side, including to some degree President Barack Obama who has “realist” tendencies in seeking to limit use of U.S. military power but continues to cede control over his administration’s actions abroad to aggressive neocon-R2P operatives.

During Obama’s first term, he made the fateful decision to create a “team of rivals” of powerful political and bureaucratic figures – the likes of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and General David Petraeus. They skillfully funneled the President into hawkish decisions that they wanted, such as a “surge” of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan and a major confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. (Both positions were pushed by the neocons.)

In 2011, the neocons and the R2Pers teamed up for the war against Libya, which was sold to the United Nations Security Council as simply a limited intervention to protect civilians in the east whom Muammar Gaddafi had labeled “terrorists.” However, once the U.S.-orchestrated military operation got going, it quickly turned into a “regime change” war, eliminating longtime neocon nemesis, Gaddafi, to Hillary Clinton’s hawkish delight. 

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New Clinton-Era Docs Reveal Insider Push for Wall Street Deregulation | Common Dreams

New Clinton-Era Docs Reveal Insider Push for Wall Street Deregulation | Common Dreams

This is what it takes to pack up the US war in Afghanistan

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These are the largest infrastructure projects in the Western Hemisphere

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How the world gets drunk, in 4 surprising charts Sorry Russians. When it comes to bingeing, you’ve got nothing on Vietnam’s women

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I  am shocked, shocked I tell you.
I did not see Scotland on any of the charts. :-)

Why Allende had to die by GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: The writer has died aged 87. Read his classic NS piece on the 1973 Chilean coup.

Forty years have passed since the Chilean president Salvador Allende died in La Moneda Palace in Santiago, attempting to defend himself with an AK-47 he had been given by Fidel Castro. Here, in a piece from the New Statesman published in March 1974, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez explores Allende’s record in Chile, his rivals’ dealings with the United States and the rise of his successor – the army general Augusto Pinochet.
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The Pan-Asian Anchor: Maximilian Voloshin: Crimea’s pacifist poet

The Pan-Asian Anchor: Maximilian Voloshin: Crimea’s pacifist poet

Right after the 1917 Revolution, Voloshin settled in Koktebel, a small place in Crimea. Source: RIA Novosti

During the brutal days of the Russian civil war, the Crimean poet offered shelter in his house to both the “Red” Bolsheviks and members of the “White” Guard.

Yan Shenkman, RIR
April 18, 2014

One day during the Russian Civil War (1918-1921), Bolsheviks gathered at a dacha somewhere in Crimea. Counter intelligence forces discovered the underground meeting but the Bolsheviks fled to the mountains first. One of them showed up at the house of poet Maximilian Voloshin, asking for shelter. Voloshin hid him in the attic. When counterintelligence officers inevitably searched his house, Voloshin treated them to fine wine and dramatic tales of medieval knights. But he did not let them go to the attic. After they left, he let the Bolshevik out. As he departed, Voloshin told the man: “Mind you, when you come to power, I'll do the same to hide your enemies.”

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Jesus Is an Economic Engine: Dismantling the Metaphoric Mechanization of Everything

Jesus Is an Economic Engine: Dismantling the Metaphoric Mechanization of Everything



"We are all toadies to the fashionable metaphor of the hour. Great is he who imposes the metaphor." - Robert Frost (1)

In President Barack Obama's first hundred days in office, as the Great Recession crested, with nearly 600,000 jobs lost in the previous month, foreclosures ripping communities apart throughout the nation and General Motors on the edge of collapse, Obama needed to find a way to buoy the waning tide of euphoria for "hope" and "change" that swept him into power. While his hundred day speechcovered the headlines, it was a little-heardset of remarks on a jobless report the next week that created one of Obama's most enduring linguistic legacies, one to rival "hope," and one that has changed the way we talk about not just the economy, but all aspects of life: the "economic engine."

"Although we have a long way to go before we can put this recession behind us, the gears of our economic engine do appear ... to be slowly turning once again," Obamaannounced, describing his intention to invest in retraining opportunities for displaced workers in community colleges (such as the one where I teach). Not long after this speech, the phrase economic engine - which had been used in no major headlines before this - flooded the US press, according to data from Google Trends. Soon after, it wasn't just the economy that was an engine. Indeed, everything now is a potential economic engine: musical theater, national parks,lakes, polluted mines, families, Hillary Clinton, and even Jesus.

Yes, that's right - "Jesus is an economic engine," wrote one pastor, in jest. And if Jesus can be a machine, who can't be?

Inside the Economic Engine

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