Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Fireside chat for May 15, 2010 (VIDEO)

The President explains how Wall Street Reform will not only end bailouts and bring accountability for big banks, but empower consumers, shareholders and community banks.

Friday, May 14, 2010

"None of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault..."

From a Michael Kinsey piece in Atlantic, bagging on the Teabaggers (and rightly so). Still, this paragraph caught my attention (especially after Andrew Sullivan highlighted it as well).

Some people think that what unites the Tea Party Patriots is simple racism. I doubt that. But the Tea Party movement is not the solution to what ails America. It is an illustration of what ails America. Not because it is right-wing or because it is sometimes susceptible to crazed conspiracy theories, and not because of racism, but because of the movement’s self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault.

“Personal responsibility” has been a great conservative theme in recent decades, in response to the growth of the welfare state. It is a common theme among TPPs—even in response to health-care reform, as if losing your job and then getting cancer is something you shouldn’t have allowed to happen to yourself. But these days, conservatives far outdo liberals in excusing citizens from personal responsibility. To the TPPs, all of our problems are the fault of the government, and the government is a great “other,” a hideous monster over which we have no control. It spends our money and runs up vast deficits for mysterious reasons all its own. At bottom, this is a suspicion not of government but of democracy. After all, who elected this monster?

Eyjafjallajökull the Video...

Nothing to do with Politics, just...well, just look...

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Scolding B.P. (VIDEO)

It starts as a standard Presidential report on the state of the Gulf Oil Spill, along with usual plea for speedy passage of some legislation.

Then you hit the 3:17 mark...

The President, the Reporter and the Hovercraft (VIDEO)

I know, I know. We're in the middle of two wars, too many people can't get jobs, and the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico is about to be poisoned...

...but stuff like this is fun. It's fun to stop and take a moment, engage in some well-meaning silliness. This is the stuff that makes being President fun, and keeps him from having to "play" Barack Obama.



What do I mean by that? Check out Jonathan Alter's book on May 18th.

Hamsters (still) don't vote.

Caught this on Andrew Sullivan's blog. Worth remembering.





Monday, May 10, 2010