Obama Back To School Speech: FULL TEXT

These are the prepared remarks for President Obama’s back to school speech, as released on the White House website. Just thought we should all pause and read what all the fighting is about.

Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

ARMY STRONG

FOR SALE: TEA PARTY PATRIOTS-

As Congress prepares to get back into session and the health care debate continues to broil, one enterprising Craigs lister has posted an unusual ad- and placed the TEA PARTY PATRIOTS up for sale on Craigslist.

The Craigslist post reads (you can re- post this on Craigslist if you wish)
FOR SALE:
TEA PARTY PATRIOTS- a group of American Citizens of unknown number filled with bile, Ron Paul talking points, and a static reading of a document written by quill on parchment by of and for slave owners seeks a buyer. Group is unaware that they are to be sold; Buyer should be a foreign country, underground international slave trader or other sovereign entity that acts above the commonly held laws of human decency. Do with them what you will. Shipping included. AS IS NO RETURNS. Buyer should be prepared to take delivery on or before September 12th.

THIS DAY in the USA on YouTUBE • THE HERMIT on YouTUBE • Davis Fleetwood facebook fan page • twitter

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Open letter to the Town Hall Health Care Terrorists

Polite discussion time is over. You are either working towards a single payer system or you are a terrorist. This is Political Action Entertainment- Your Co-Pay for today’s visit is 25 dollazzzzz. For Really. Drop a Co Pay once a month here- https://operationitch.wordpress.com/about/donate

EXPANDED TEXT:
The health care debate sure has Americans talking. Seems like each administration has its own mason Dixon line diving the Regressives from the Progressives- and health care reform is that issue.

Former Presidential hopeful, proud denier of the theory of evolution, and radio blowhard Mike Huckabee joined the fray recently when he said recently honored the death of Ted Kennedy by saying

“that, under President Obama’s health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” during his last year of life.
“[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don’t have as long to live might want to consider just taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them,” said Huckabee. “Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. “

But let us not even argue any of Mike Huckabee points. I will grant you all of them- let us shift the hypothetical argument by accepting the fairy tale world that Huckabee dwells in.
Then let me ask you this: What country would you rather live in?

COUNTRY A
The country where most of us would choose what Senator Kennedy did- an expensive operation to prolong life another year- while 1 in 6 American have NO INSURANCE- And without insurance, could they very well Mike FUCKABEE, choose like Kennedy to live out their final days in a similar manner? In country A some people much younger than Teddy die quietly because they have no insurance.

Or COUNTRY B
Or would you rather live in a country where everyone is covered- even if it meant that we would have to spend wiser, die more gracefully- and yes- I’ll say it again, more cost effectively- even if that meant that when one – when diagnosed with a terminal illness- at the advanced age of 70 something would have to make a cost efficient choice so that all of the 50 million without health care would have it, could have it?

I don’t want to brush over this lightly- I know this is hard to swallow. But people are dying for this. Something on the average of 20 thousand people a year. Dead because they had no health insurance.

That is more than 6x the number of people who died in 9/11.
So listen, if you knew that some foreign country would kill 20 000 American Citizens next year, you would most certainly tell me to support the troops and turn a blind eye to the billions spend by our department of defense- to avoid such a catastrophe.
And yet we see the culprit right here- our own greed- our own aversion to anything that resembles socialism- you – all of you mindless Mike Huckabee’s, you Sarah Palin soccer moms, Glenn Beck and your 9/12 minions- your reactionary zeal, your mindless lockstep zeal against healthcare reform is killing us.

You might as well bow towards Mecca, hop on a plane, hijack it and fly into the Sears tower.

6 times.

Because that is what you are doing to you own citizens you homegrown terrorist freak shows- you are killing us.

So clearly- there can be no more polite debate. Anyone opposing single payer is a terrorist.

A murderer.

Your co pay for this video is 25 dollars. Pay the fuck up.

John Stewart VS. The Death Panel Bitch

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Updates/ Changes here…

Operation Itch is coming out of a winter hibernation period and is gearing up to launch THE HERMIT 3.0 on Tuesday, June 2^nd.

I want to thank all of the writes & video creators who contributed content to this site while Op Itch was part aggregator, part creator. Going forward I will focus solely on content creation. I will no longer serve in an editorial role nor will I aggregate content from other sources. From this moment forward, everything on this site will be of my own creation. The Operation Itch NING is the place where anyone can post videos, stories, pics, blogs, etc. I invite one and all to join that open platform. 

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About THE HERMIT But Were Afraid to Ask

On Tuesday, June 2nd, THE HERMIT 3.0 launches right here. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies.
See also: THE HERMIT/season 1   and       THE HERMIT/season 2

IN 1997, Davis was the star of a one-person reality TV show that was being shot to air on MTV called THE HERMIT.

Really.

He was 27 years old, and imagined himself poised for greatness. The concept of the show was simple and revolutionary: Davis was to be locked in a studio apartment with hidden cameras all over the place. But the show never aired.

Those outside of the cloistered world of MTV who have seen the early episodes have remarked on the enormous potential of THE HERMIT. The artist Francesco Clemente purchased all of the original footage from MTV with the legal caveat that they could not be shown publicly until the year 2012. Clemente will premiere the 1997 Fleetwood footage at world premier event entitled I STAY IN SO YOU CAN GO OUT at a specially constructed drive in movie theatre festival on the site of The Burning Man Project in Black Rock, Nevada on December 12, 2012.

Clemente: An unlikely champion of Davis Fleetwood

Clemente described his passion for bringing THE HERMIT to a wider audience: “boredom is the origin of any good idea. In this respect, THE HERMIT proves to be both the source and the execution of a brilliant artistic idea.” While being interviewed on the Charlie Rose program in 2000, Clemente, confounded Rose as he waxed poetic about the unknown artist ‘Davis Fleetwood’.” When Charlie Rose suggested it odd that a renowned surrealist and expressionist painter would labor for years on the unedited video footage from a never before seen MTV reality show, Clemente replied:

“Fleetwood will be known for “his ransacking of every literature. For the precision with which he knows the homely and workday details of culture as well as the big abstraction, the ease with which he moves about in history from neolithic times to the report of the latest congressional committee. There is his wish to be, and the acceptance that it will never com to pass, Ian Svenonius circa 1991. And there only the slightest of winks as he simultaneously slings shit at the world, suffers your silly slings and arrows, and then, true to his Irish background- genetically predisposed to pugilism, he punches you in the gut with the truth.”

The New Opposition: Republicans Take Minority Role in Two-Party System

Alex W    

see all posts from Alex W

The Republicans are suddenly worried about spending our grandchildren into inherited poverty, but why the sudden change of rhetoric? Are they getting back to their small government roots, or are they just in a position to complain now that they’re in the minority? The Republicans have taken the role of the opposition minority party and so far, it seems like they’re much better at it than the Democrats.

See the latest in: NEWS & ANALYSIS   •  HUMOR  • ARTS & CULTURE •  SEX & RELATIONSHIPS 

Putting War Waste on the Chopping Bloc

By David Swanson 

In the ordinary course of things in Washington, D.C., and on television, there are two separate conversations. In one conversation, everything that the government spends money on (schools, transportation, police, etc.) must be trimmed back to save money. In the other conversation, the expenses of wars and the military must be unquestioned. After what he said this week on ABC, it will be interesting to see whether Congressman Barney Frank is permitted on television anymore. He combined the two conversations. 

After a right-winger proposed more tax cuts to “stimulate” the economy and denounced any spending programs as not being “stimulus,” Frank pointed out that the largest spending program we’ve seen is the war on Iraq. Host George Stephanopoulos clearly felt the force of some galactic wind about to suck him into a different dimension in which the two conversations are permitted to overlap. He jumped in and said “That is a whole ‘nother show.” But Frank faced the taboo head-on, saying: 

“No it isn’t. That’s the problem. The problem is that we look at spending and say oh don’t spend on highways, don’t spend on healthcare, but let’s build cold war weapons to defeat the Soviet Union when we don’t need them, let’s have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars going to the military without a check. Unless everything is on the table then you’re going to have a disproportionate hit in some places.”

Late last year, Frank proposed cutting the military by 25 percent. When I spoke with his chief of staff, he told me that he thought 10 percent could come from ending the occupation of Iraq. So, Frank is apparently thinking of the military and war budgets as a whole and proposing to cut a quarter, with 15 percent coming out of the standard military budget. “If we are going to get the deficit under control without slashing every domestic program, this is a necessity,” Frank said. Now, I’ll be the first to point out that 25 percent is grotesquely insufficient, and that there is a perverse sort of unstated public apology here, in that Frank led the charge to throw $700 billion at Wall Street tycoons and has sat by as trillions more has flown out that golden door without any pretense of oversight. But when someone in power gets something right, our focus should be on moving it forward, not analyzing the purity of heart of a politician. 

Iceland on the Brink

The Independent   
Two years ago, Iceland was top of the UN living index. Now it is in the frontline of the global economic crisis after the failure of its banks, reports Sophie Morris in Reykjavik.

Just a few short years ago, Iceland had much to be proud of. The good times were rolling so fast that one expected the country’s almost round-the-clock summer daylight to last all year. Business was booming, society overfed, and the capital, Reykjavik, was in vogue as a travel destination for rich revellers, gastronomes and culture lovers.

Iceland is a country of dramatic natural beauty: lunar landscapes, spouting geysers, sheer glaciers and craggy volcanic rock formations; an impressive but inhospitable isle floating in mid-Atlantic isolation. When, in 2007, it topped the UN’s Human Development Index for its high standard of living, literacy and life expectancy, the tiny community of 310,000 felt they had proved their educated, hard-working and resilient character on an international scale.

The previous year, America had abandoned its long-standing naval air station at Keflavik. Symbolically, the move set Icelanders free from more than seven centuries of foreign domination, first as a Norwegian and then a Danish colony, and for the past 65 years, less formally, under the wing of the US.

“The Vikings” had risen again, and this is the admiring title the country bestowed upon the small group of aggressive businessmen whose high-risk investing bloated the island’s economy to 10 times its GDP, buying up chunks of the British and Continental European high streets in the process. French Connection, Debenhams, Karen Millen, Oasis, Warehouse, Mappin & Webb, Hamleys and many more fell into Icelandic ownership. So did West Ham United football club. When Icelanders visited Copenhagen, they would strut into its smartest department store to buy expensive fashions from “their” shop. Like many British chains, it too was owned by the “Viking” Jon Asgeir Johannesson’s Baugur group: one in the eye for the mother country.

VALENTINE’S FOR PALESTINE

video by John Harrison. 
Visit the official VALENTINES FOR PALESTINE website:

The show in downtown LA will be held at the Lost Souls Café on Thursday February 12thAfter the LA show, pieces will be permanently displayed in the Arts & Crafts Village in Gaza City 

Submit donated work to:
124 W. 4th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013

for additional info, email: ValentinesforPalestine@gmail.com

Many thanks to Bambu for giving us permission to use his song “When Will The Time Come”. Visit his site:

http://www.bambu.la

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The “Obama Abortion Ad”; The Super Bowl Ad Rejected By NBC

The Uptake wants to hear your voice. Submit your own video “Op/ED.” More information here:http://opinion-editorial.groups.theup…
How to submit a video
1) Have something intelligent to say
2) Record it on a video using your real name.
3) Upload it at http://www.tubemogul.com using info@theuptake.org as your log in and uptake411 as your password.
4) Send an email to info@theuptake.org telling us about your video.

Springsteen Should Donate Wal-Mart Profits To Employee Free Choice Act Campaign

Al Norman • Operation Itch Contributing Writer 
more in NEWS & ANALYSIS
see all posts from Al Norman

 

Four weeks ago, I figured out something that took Bruce Springsteen months to conclude: it’s a mistake to do business with Wal-Mart.

This week, Springsteen had to do a little “shuffle” of his own to explain his strange consort with the company that puts profits ahead of people.

In this space (Dec. 28th ITunes, Wal-Mart, Springsteen Killing Off the Independents) I wrote: “The Boss has signed on with the Retail Boss, much to the chagrin of his many fans, who saw Springsteen as the voice of the disenfranchised. Now he’s just another Walton commodity. Born in the U.S.A. meets China-Mart.”

It is jarring to see the Greatest Anti-Union Corporation promoting Springsteen’s Greatest Hits CD as a “Wal-Mart exclusive” (for $10–you save $2.98). Now Springsteen is apologizing to his fans for having “dropped the ball on it.” But until he “drops the money” from this deal, Springsteen’s regret doesn’t go far enough.

“It was a mistake,” Springsteen told the New York Times. “Our batting average is usually very good, but we missed that one. Fans will call you on that stuff, as it should be.” In response, Wal-Mart went right to the heart of the problem, anticipating the backlash Springsteen would cause: “We are proud of the good jobs, benefits and career opportunities we provide to more than 1.4 million U.S. associates who choose to work at Wal-Mart and serve our customers every day.”

B’Man’s Sabbath Watch: Jesus Walked With Dinosaurs

from THE RED STATE REVOLT
When I saw this picture, I knew that I had seen it before in some sort of children’s Bible book. And it brought back the image of Jesus on horsedinosaurback with a sword in hand, ready for the rapture. The Bible got the stuff about horses all wrong. It was dinosaurs. I also notice that this particular Jesus looks like I did when I was in my 20’s. This is something I didn’t realize, but makes a lot of sense, since I am treated as if I am a God.

But I also found out that He didn’t ride just the TRex in battle against the hordes of hell. He also rode some dinosaurs instead of camels, everywhere he went. When it was recorded that He came to town on a donkey, it was no donkey… it was a Barapasaurus and His side gig was a Barapasaurus baby sitter. All the throngs of leaves and branches thrown into the road were actually food for the baby dinosaur Jesus was carrying.

Unfortunately, this was the time that Jesus began riding side saddle causing all the other prophets to question if he was gay or not… 

But then, we find an old picture of BeulahMan, before his most recent incarnation (and when I had lots of hair) and we realize that not only was I gay back then, I was a weird dinosaur pedophile. I’m sure glad that some of these traits aren’t passed along with each new life.

h/t Vintage Faith

And just so that we are all on the same page about the Sabbath (and watching over it), it is obvious to me that if you feel you must cut the tongue out of your daughter’s mouth BEFORE burning her to death due to her recent Christian conversion, that your child is too verbose and probably deserved it. God knows that if it weren’t for His followers, there would be no one to keep the faith in line. BuelahGirl, you better watch yourself…

Saudi man kills daughter for converting to Christianity

Riyadh: A Saudi man working with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice recently killed his daughter for converting to Christianity.

According to sources close to the victim, the religious police member had cut the tongue of the girl and burned her to death following a heated debate on religion…

Then there is this arrest for the vile transformation from Islam to Christianity. In this story, religion proves, again, that it can repeat itself countless times throughout the history of the world and nothing changes. It wasn’t too long ago that the very same could be said about Christians converting to Islam and how barbaric those “Godly Men” could conduct themselves.

Granted, the Saudis would have my head for this blog. But so would have Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, if they could have gotten away with it.

h/t Jonathon Turley

Our Safety And Our Ideals

Dennis Trainor, Jr • Operation Itch writer/ editor
more in NEWS & ANALYSIS

see all posts by this author

 expanded text below the break
  

The UpTake is opening up a call for Opinion/Editorial videos. To kick this off, I am happy to say, they have brought me in to provide regular video commentary for them. We do not have a name for the show yet, and look forward to hearing ideas for the show’s name from the audience (leave your ideas in the comments). We also hope that more people feel inspired to send us “video op/eds”. To do just that, follow these instructions:

1) Have something intelligent to say; 2) Record it on a video using your real name; 3) Upload it atwww.tubemogul.com using info@theuptake.org as your log in and uptake411 as your password; 4) Send an email to info@theuptake.org telling us about your video. 

GEMINI JIVE: “Annals of History: Begging Your Pardon?”

Maralyn Lois Polak • Operation Itch Contributing Writer 
©2009 ML Polak
see all posts by MLP

In the final fatal moments of his lethal Presidency, claiming he was acting to preserve his place in history as well as his legacy as a Compassionate Conservative, Bush-Wah pardoned a rough and ready gang of what his livid critics characterized as “some of the worst evildoers who ever existed in life as well as literature, on the planet, or on the page”– 1,549 past, present, and future villains in all, recipients of executive clemency.

 Among the beneficiaries of GWB’s last-minute legalistic largesse, to say nothing of his reanimating the dead and revitalizing the (sometimes) barely living, were Lizzie Borden, Adolf Hitler, Dr. No, Josef Stalin, Goldfinger, Adolf Eichmann, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Atilla the Hun, Sherman Adams AND his Vicuna Coat, Raskolnikov, Mussolini, Shylock, the Unabomber, Iago, Lavrentiy P. Beria, Margaret Thatcher, Leopold and Loeb, Falstaff, Cruella De Ville, the Iceman, Carlos the Jackal, Tony Blair, Al Capone, Lyndon Johnson, Jack the Ripper, Norman Bates, and yes, even Saddam Hussein and The Joker. But never Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, or anyone else who really deserves to be pardoned like most of those currently imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, you can bank on that. 

 And yet, revealing a surprising depth and breadth of insight long obscured by his image as a generic booze-coke-and-pretzel-loving-upside-down-children’s-book-reading-911 plot-machinations-country-hijacking-good-ole-boy, GWB’s solid, sophisticated deconstructive Shakespearean analysis of heroes and villains is worthy of a Lifetime Chair in Criminal Psychology at Harvard, let alone the last gasps of the Ultimate Lamer, er, Lame Duck:

 

“While a Hero represents ‘the perfect man,’ I don’t know any, except maybe my brothers and my father. Sure, Shylock’s an outsider not only because he’s actually Jewish and the rest of the town’s Christian, but also because he has a different value system. Like me, in Washington, only in reverse. Shylock makes it clear he enjoys his role as an outsider when he tells Bassanio. ‘I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you’ (I.3.33-35). In Shakespeare’s play, Shylock’s both victim and villain. Like, he’s a decider and a people person, like me. See, he gets betrayed by his only daughter when she elopes with a Christian and loots his house of all the gold and jewels. Although he’s angry about the loss of his prize material possessions, he’s devastated when he learns his daughter also sold a memento which was very important to him, you know, a sentimental thing. This shows Shylock’s definitely not just motivated merely by financial gain. Let’s face it, he could have been an ordinary Texas oilman, who ran a baseball team, and somehow, through an accident of fate, or family connections, or the right folks pulling the strings of the election machines, became President instead.”

 However, Bush 43’s misplaced generosity with this deluded avalanche of pardons, exceeding even Bill Clinton’s megalomaniacal excesses, seems to have spurred a seriously contentious fissure in his own family, with his wife Laura tearfully calling a global press-conference at 3 AM on the eve of the Inauguration. “My fellow Americans, and our overseas friends, I’m here to tell you I’m creeped out,” she admits. “I know my George has a big heart. I know he secretly roots for the bad guys, I mean, underdogs. But the notion of all those freed miscreants roaming the defenseless streets of our afflicted nation, well, I swear I’ll never sleep again, so help me, Lord. And I don’t know how my dear sweet husband, who had his own two darling daughters to protect until they managed a flimsy pretext to escape his clutches, I mean, leave home, could ever do that to Obama’s little girls, exposing those adorable darlings to all that potential danger of a pent-up Norman Bates suddenly let loose. As for me, I’m afraid to take a shower ever again. Oh, George!”

Outsourcing War: American Mercenary Forces Exploit Remnants of Old Dictatorship

Alex W • Operation Itch Contributing Writer 
see all posts from Alex W

A subject that has always interested me is the continuing effects on society of having lived through a dictatorship or totalitarian rule. This is an important topic for the United States, because we live in a society that has supported dictatorships for many years, and as nations are emerging from the turmoil inflicted upon them by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, we’re starting to see the long-term effects. We need to pay attention, and avoid continuing to cause these problems for future generations.

One obviously can point out that today we reap what we sewed; World War II fractured the Middle East, because of its oil, the U.S.S.R. tried to take advantage of it, we armed the militant fundamentalists to fight them, and then we tried to gain control of the oil for ourselves. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard the arguments.

What I’d like to focus on now is the condition in South America, where the U.S. took similar action against the spread of, in most cases, democratically-elected governments which we considered a little too pinkish. The military dictatorships we helped financially and in some cases militarily tortured and killed thousands in the name of fighting terrorism. An entire generation in several nations were in very real danger. The crimes punishable by death in clandestine torture chambers varied from being a militant revolutionary, being a communist or socialist, or simply going to college or helping the poor.

I’ll save my comparison of the long-term effects this has had on society and the adamant human rights organizations that came out of this to what may happen in the future due to the new U.S. torture and detainment policies for a later date, but you can expect an article on it. For now I want to address the issue of the stagnant throwbacks which remain sympathetic to an overthrown dictatorship.

Obama vs. Labor: Vacillating on Card Check?

By DAVID MACARAY • CounterPunch more in NEWS & ANALYSIS   

In the span of, literally, a few weeks—beginning with President-elect Obama’s nomination of Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor, and ending shortly after his inauguration—organized labor has gone from a state of euphoria to one of confusion to one of resentment, then back to euphoria, and then back to resentment, before settling, finally, on something resembling Hindu fatalism. 

This emotional roller coaster ride was propelled by one question:  How hard will Obama push to get the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act) passed?  In a nutshell, the EFCA would make it extraordinarily easier for America’s workers to join labor unions by doing away with the necessity of NLRB-sanctioned union certification elections. 

Under the EFCA, employees would merely sign cards saying they wished to join.  If a majority of them signed cards, presto!—they automatically become union members.  No more wildly biased management propaganda meetings, no more bureaucratic thickets, no more stalling tactics by company goons intent on torpedoing the organizing drive.  Known as the “card check” method, if fifty percent plus one says Yes, they have themselves a union.

Holy Wars and International Lawlessness

Alex W • Operation Itch Contributing Writer 

see all posts from Alex W
From Alex: A video containing my opinions on the relationship between current developments in the Israel-Palestine conflict and the international political climate and the long-lasting negative effects of the rhetoric and false logic used to justify American aggression and war crimes. Visual material is from a variety of different sources; these are current events portrayed in a manner I believe to be consistent with fair use. Update: Barack Obama, immediately following his inauguration, has started to reverse some of the illegal policies of the previous administration, but has not taken a stand against the use of white phosphorus or uranium “bunker busters” in civilian areas.

(VIDEO) Continuing Bush Policies in Israel and Afghanistan

Glenn Greenwald    more in NEWS & ANALYSIS

By all accounts, the U.S. is suffering extreme economic woes.  We continue to borrow trillions of dollars simply to prevent financial collapse.  Our military resources are spread so thin that the establishment consensus view blames the failure of our seven-year (and counting) occupation of Afghanistan, at least in part, on the lack of necessary resources devoted to that occupation.  And a significant (though not the only) reason why we are unable to extricate ourselves from the endless resource-draining and liberty-degrading involvement in Middle East conflicts is because our one-sided support for Israel ensures that we remain involved and makes ourselves the target of hatred around the world and, especially, in the Muslim world.

Despite all of that, the Bush administration, just days before it left office,entered into yet another new agreement with Israel pursuant to which the U.S. committed to use its resources to prevent guns and other weapons from entering Gaza.  That agreement cites “the steadfast commitment of the United States to Israel’s security” and “and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself,” and vows that the U.S. will “address the problem of the supply of arms and related materiel and weapons transfers and shipments to Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza.”

Speaking about that new U.S./Israeli agreement on her show late last week, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (in the course of aggressively questioning an absurdly evasive Sen. Claire McCaskill on the wisdom of Obama’s plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan and noting the cadre of Bush defense officials on whom Obama is relying — video below) observed that the Obama administration has enthusiastically expressed its full support for the new Israeli agreement entered into in the last days of Bush’s presidency.  Maddow said (h/t Antiwar.com):

Also, not particularly change-like, then-President Bush made a deal in his final day in office with Israel about the terms of Israel’s relationship with Gaza. I’m sorry – it wasn’t his last day in office. It was within his last few days in office — my mistake.

The U.S. under President Obama is bound by that last-minute agreement between the U.S. and Israel. And a statement from Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today says that President Obama supports the agreement fully.