Friday, October 7, 2011

Lawrence O'Donnell's complete interview with arrogant ass Herman Cain (VIDEO)

First off, a word of caution, watching this takes a strong stomach.

Herman Cain has accused me (however indirectly along with every other African-American who supports President Obama) of being brainwashed because I (as a black man) won't support him.

Herm, that tends to happen to black people who stab their own in the back. How can I say this? He was in College from 1963 through 1967, by his own admission, in his own worthless misbegotten book, and did not participate in the Civil Rights Movement.


He also got out of serving in Vietnam to work on Ballistics Analysis, which my Father assures me was an actual field...until computers did away with it.

Now, Mr. Cain can call me brainwashed all he wants, but to do so, he needs to give and every other black person and explanation of why he didn't march in the Civil Rights Movement. My personal assessment...and by the way, I don't have any facts to back this up, but...the words House N***** come immediately to mind.

Also, let me say for a guy who claims to be a Mathematician, most of the numbers he used were suspect at best, and outright lies at worst.  I mean, c'mon, did Herman even know he was being interviewed by someone who used to write Tax Code for a freakin' living?

My father, who is an actual black Professor of Mathematics said that his computations of poor people's taxes were just flat out wrong, and his statement about the "percentage" GOP votes for the Voting Rights Act...also wrong, deceptive, and a curious editing of history.  (see: Dixiecrats)


Part 1:




Part 2:




Part 3:


Thursday, October 6, 2011

The President's Press Conference on the American Jobs Act for Oct. 6, 2011 (VIDEO)

Steve Jobs. 1955-2011.



You may remember this ad, as it was ultimately voiced by Richard Dreyfus. This version was narrated by Mr. Jobs himself.

Godspeed, sir. At least you pain is over now, and your family was at your side.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Jed Lewinson: Governor Goodhair's not dead yet.

From the Jed Report at Daily Kos:

Rick Perry's fundraising haul for his first six weeks on the campaign trail was $17 million, almost as much as Mitt Romney raised in his first reporting period and significantly more than Romney raised over the past three months. And Maggie Haberman also reports that Perry has $15 million in cash on hand, about $2.5 million more than Mitt Romney had after his first report.

As Haberman points out, Perry's cash on hand is significant: if the campaign ends up becoming a war of attrition between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

...

As Kombiz Lavasany points out:

$15 million is a lot of money in IA and NH tv to remind voters that Mitt Romney has no real belief system and flip flops all the time.

Monday, October 3, 2011

New York Observer: How Jesse LaGreca kicked Fox's ass, even though they didn't show it on-air (VIDEO)



From the New York Observer:

Even if Geraldo Rivera was at the Zuccotti Park yesterday, Fox News has generally been a tad dismissive of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Foxnews.com (as of this writing) has no coverage of this national event on their front page stories. (Hard to imagine for a network that was so gung-ho about the Tea Party!) Red Eye‘s Bill Schulz went out to try to “prank” the protesters. Bill O’Reilly sent a producer minion out with the same mission: to belittle OWS’s cause by cutting up interviews to make people sound stupid.

Well, here is an interview that Fox News filmed, but doesn’t want you to see. The segment was shot on Wednesday for Greta van Susteren‘s show, (though it looks like the same producer from this O’Reilly segment questioning Michael Moore‘s anti-capitalist agenda) though the decision was made to leave it on the cutting room floor. The reason should be obvious pretty quickly.

The speaker giving Fox News the buisness is Jesse LaGreca, a vocal member of the Occupy Wall Street protests. This video comes courtesy of Kyle Christopher from OccupyWallSt.org‘s media team.

Now, no news organization is under obligation to air every interview they’ve filmed, especially when it makes them look bad. But you’d think that a “Fair and Balanced” network (that tells an interviewee that they are here to give them fair coverage to get any message they’d like to get out) would try to include at least a couple of opposing viewpoints to Mr. Shulz’s smarmy jokes or O’Reilly’s “infiltration” of the camp.

The ball is in your court, Fox.

Somebody book this guy on Lawrence tonight, or at least Olbermann or Rachel.

The Manifesto (and thus message) of the Wall Street Occupiers...

There is the Wall Street Occupation, and those of us who support it, but still want them to step their game up. What do I mean? The Teabaggers have a message, its mostly uniformly anti-Obama, but it is a message. What is the message of the Wall Street Occupiers?

One of the things that got on my nerves late last week was the Wall Street Supporters defending their lack of a message, even going so far so that that it's intentional. Well, that's bull@#%. You need a message. If you're protesting something, you need people who are not protesting to understand what you want.

Well, they took an important first step forward. It's still too long and I agree with Randi Rhodes' idea that it should be "Get The Money Out of Politics", but it basically says the same thing:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.


They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *


To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
That last part is not a joke added by me or anyone else, it's on the site.

The President's Remarks before the HRC's Annual National Dinner (VIDEO)

Friday, September 30, 2011

Huffington Post. Still the scum of the Journalistic Earth...

Finally, since I figured out how to use screen capture, you get to see what I mean.

So I saw this this evening:


Don't worry, the actual story is just as bad.

Oddly enough, I was familiar with Biden story before seeing this headline. Familiar enough to know that Huffington Post's take (or at least the headline's take) was 100% bullshit.

If you wanna know what the Vice President actually said, you might have to go to an actual newspaper like the Washington Post:

“Even though 50-some percent of the American people think the economy tanked because of the last administration, that’s not relevant,” said the vice president. “What’s relevant is we’re in charge.”... 
Biden said it is “totally legitimate” for the 2012 presidential election to be “a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature and state of the economy.” He said Americans will need to make a choice between what the Obama administration is offering to address the problem and what is being offered by the eventual Republican nominee.

Greg Sargent put it like this:

You can see why conservatives would jump on this — it gives them something to undercut the idea that Bush continues to deserve more of the blame for our current mess than Obama does. What Biden’s quotes really reflect, I think, is the tricky political spot the White House is in when it comes to the former President. White House advisers are aware that the public does still blame Bush more than Obama for our current predicament — this is confirmed in poll after poll, though that may be changing — but they also think voters probably don’t want to hear Obama telling them they should continue to blame Bush more than himself.

Conservatives constantly claim that Obama does try to fob off blame for the economy on to Bush, in order to dodge blame himself. But by and large, the real political argument Obama is making when he invokes the problems he inherited is one about the scale of the challenges we face, and how long they were in the making. It’s not finger pointing. It’s a plea for patience.

By the way, conservatives are right: Obama probably does “own” the economy in political terms right now. Indeed, it’s possible for the two following things to be simultaneously true: First, the public continues to blame Bush for originally tanking the economy; and second, this may be mostly irrelevant in 2012. The American people know Bush made an absolutely hideous mess of things. They hired Obama to clean up that hideous mess. They will judge Obama in 2012 on his progress towards completing that chore — whether the public will factor in GOP efforts to block Obama’s solutions remains to be seen — and will decide whether they think his GOP opponent would manage it any better. Obama will argue that his GOP foe plans to revive the ideas that tanked the economy under Bush in the first place. But that will ultimately be an argument over how to proceed in the future, not a relitigation of the past.

Bush broke it. Obama now owns it. Americans will judge his efforts to fix it — and will pick whichever candidate and party they think would best complete that job. Okay?

So Greg's right about Conservatives spinning the story this way...

...so why is Huffington Post doing the same thing?

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Well, now the White House is saying they didn't try to save Troy Davis...

From Politico, in the same spot where I found the previous story:

A White House official and a reporter who was in the room today denied a report from an African-American radio host who says Obama told a group of black journalists that he tried to save Troy Davis.

The report from Rob Redding Jr. at The Redding News Review, which we were unable to confirm, says the president said he'd looked into saving the death row inmate for "three days" and inquired with the local authorities.

But White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer flatly denied the report to me just now, as did American Urban Radio Networks' April Ryan, who was among the reporters at the off-the-record meeting from which the story purported to draw.

"That article was completely, 100 percent wrong," said Ryan, who said she'd pressed Obama on Davis at the gathering with African-American media figures including radio hosts Joe Madison, Tom Joyner, and Michel Martin, though not Redding. Obama, she said, was "unequivocal" that there was "nothing he could do" in the Davis case, though he did tell the group that in general, he had concerns about innocent death row inmates, and that he'd worked in Illinois to improve the criminal justice system.

UPDATE: Redding emails, "In your report, even April D. Ryan says that the death penalty was mentioned at the meeting. She is clearly not the source of our story. We stand by the story, as posted on our websites."

I'm not sure what to make of this since its possible both sides are speaking the truth. All the Redding News said was that the President looked into it, and determined there was nothing he could do, which is not far from the: "Obama, she said, was "unequivocal" that there was "nothing he could do" in the Davis case."

So we're really arguing over whether or not he looked into it before realizing there was nothing he could do.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The President tried to stop the Troy Davis execution...

From Politico, via the Redding News Review:

Obama's White House spent "three days" looking at how it could legally get involved in the case on a federal level, one source said. The Obama administration even called the state of Georgia about getting involved and were told "No".

"'We looked at every possible avenue legally,'" the source reported Obama said. "'There was not one there.'"

"'It was a state case and I could not intervene because it wasn't federal,'" another source reported Obama said.

If you really want to see the President get heckled by a Religious Zealot (VIDEO)



His reaction to these always makes me smile. Most politicians have a "how dare you interrupt me" look on their face as this is going on. The President meanwhile has you "Are you done yet? Can I get on with my speech as the Secret Service knocks you into next week?"

The President's LinkedIn Town Hall for Sept. 26, 2011 (VIDEO)

Friday, September 23, 2011

Thursday, September 22, 2011

AFSCME: More Jobs Equal Less Debt (VIDEO)

Can't be posted (or seen on TV) enough:

What a shock. Republicans are set to break their word on the Budget Control Act.

Did I call it...or did I call it?

I said in an earlier post, this:

For John Boehner, nothing is worth doing, unless you can screw the Democrats at the same time. My bet is he tries to go the Teabagger route, because he wants to do whatever it takes to kick a Conservative bill into the Senate, and have the Democrats there "take the blame" for shooting it down.

And now, we have confirmation from Talking Points Memo:

Looks like House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will try to close GOP ranks around existing legislation to fund the government rather than scrap a controversial requirement that disaster relief funds be offset with an unrelated budget cut. And that means they'll be moving ahead without Democratic support -- a risky gamble that could lead to a government shutdown if it fails.

"The Speaker's seeking more Republican votes," Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who led a House conservative rebellion on Wednesday, told reporters after an impromptu Thursday GOP meeting.

According to other Republicans, Boehner will swap out the existing disaster relief offset -- a hybrid vehicle manufacturing incentive -- with new cuts.

Remember there are consequences to this strategy, from Stan Collander:

[By moving to the right] to pick up tea party votes by (1) proposing bigger spending reductions for fiscal 2012 than were included in the bill that was defeated yesterday and (2) continuing to refuse to allow the Hurricane Irene-related disaster assistance to be provided unless others spending is cut to pay for it. The tea partiers want fiscal 2012 discretionary spending to be set at the level included in the House-passed budget resolution — AKA, the Ryan plan — rather than the higher level included in the debt ceiling increase/deficit reduction plan (the Budget Control Act) enacted on August 2.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that it will likely lose other votes from Republicans in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey — the states that were hardest hit by Irene. Note that three of these four — all but North Carolina — have Republican governors who have said that they want/need/must have the federal assistance. And House Democrats are very unlikely to go along.

Lemme repeat something. There was a deal between the White House and Congress as to how much spending would be cut made back in August. I'm sure you remember.

Now, in order to secure more Republican votes (some of which he may lose, but I bet they can twist enough arms), they are going back on their word.

Boehner is probably going to get this out of the House, and make it the Senate's problem...but hopefully the Senate will turn around and throw it back in the House's face, meaning Conference Committee here we come!

In the meantime, the Senate will be screaming over how the House went back on their word.

Oh, and by the way, they need to do all this by the end of the month.


Sooner or later, that 9% approval rating is going to look sky high.

So what's more important to Boehner, his ties to the Tea Party or the Country?

We're about to find out...even though, if we're honest, we already know the answer.

From Stan Collender:

The big question now is the one we’ve been wondering about for some time in analogous budget situations: Where do Boehner and Cantor go from here?

On the one hand, they can move to the right to pick up tea party votes by (1) proposing bigger spending reductions for fiscal 2012 than were included in the bill that was defeated yesterday and (2) continuing to refuse to allow the Hurricane Irene-related disaster assistance to be provided unless others spending is cut to pay for it. The tea partiers want fiscal 2012 discretionary spending to be set at the level included in the House-passed budget resolution — AKA, the Ryan plan — rather than the higher level included in the debt ceiling increase/deficit reduction plan (the Budget Control Act) enacted on August 2.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that it will likely lose other votes from Republicans in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey — the states that were hardest hit by Irene. Note that three of these four — all but North Carolina — have Republican governors who have said that they want/need/must have the federal assistance. And House Democrats are very unlikely to go along.

In other words, moving toward the tea party may not guarantee that the bill passes.

On the other hand, moving in the other direction on this one bill very likely will cause the tea party to split permanently with the two House leaders. The tea partiers have been leery of both Boehner and Cantor since the start of the year. In fact, a tea party supporter is running against Boehner in the GOP primary and the Virginia tea party has been threatening to challenge Cantor since before the 2010 election. Working with House Democrats at this point might get the bill passed but might also make it all but impossible for the GOP leadership to lead in 2012, that is, in the months heading into an election where anger about Congress is already at an all-time high.

For John Boehner, nothing is worth doing, unless you can screw the Democrats at the same time. My bet is he tries to go the Teabagger route, because he wants to do whatever it takes to kick a Conservative bill into the Senate, and have the Democrats there "take the blame" for shooting it down.


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Where I wish the execution of an innocent man was more important that an argument about Presidential Powers...

This is an national tragedy but idiots like Michael Moore (who apparently said sometime today that this was all on Obama) are making it worse by not understanding something called the Constitution.  It doesn't exist by convenience. It says:

"...he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

Ummm, Mike?

But it turns out that not even the Governor of Georgia has the power to stop the execution (this is where David Roberts and Zerlina Maxwell come in, because they put this piece from the Atlanta Journal Constitution out on the twitter.)

NOTE: David from what I can tell sent it out first, but Zerlina helped by tracking down a proper link, so, thanks to one and all!

Q. Can the president grant clemency or stop the execution in any way.

A. No. While President Obama has said he thinks the death penalty does little to deter crime, he has no legal authority to get involved, officially, with a state execution. When the death penalty is imposed for a state crime like murder, it is a state issue.

Q. Can the governor stop the execution?

A. No. Georgia's Constitution gives that authority only to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Q. Can the Chatham County district attorney ask the judge who signed the death warrant to withdraw it?

A. Mike Mears, a professor at John Marshall Law School and who has challenged the death penalty for decades, said probably not. "I don't think there is a legal mechanism to ask a judge for a do over," he said.

Q. Can the courts stop it?

A. Though his attorneys he can fill appeals, the only viable option is the Georgia Supreme Court and that is a questionable one. His lawyers would have to file in the Superior Court in Butts County, where the prison is located, and then, if necessary, the Georgia Supreme Court and then directly to the US Supreme Court. Federal law limits appeals in that court system and Davis has exhausted those.

Q. Can the Pardons and Paroles Board change its mind?

A. If additional evidence is provided the board could step in but the board has already twice rejected Davis' requests for clemency. This morning they said they would not reconsider additional requests.

You know that Elizabeth Warren? I...uh...think she can campaign... (VIDEO)

Just a little bit...

This is her SAVAGING the Class Warfare argument.

The President's Address before the U.N. for Sept. 21, 2011 (VIDEO)

The (mostly) rights and wrongs of Ron Suskind's Interview on the Daily Show (VIDEO)

I'm starting to wonder if Jon is turning into one of Liberal Whiners.  He so loves stories about how Wall Street got away with murder, that if you have a pamphlet saying just that and are handing it out on the street, he'll have you on the Daily Show to talk about it.

But Ron Suskind is no pamphleteer.  He is a serious author, and his new book has serious things to say, both good and ill about the Administration.

The problem is now we have two Administration Sources quoted in the book who are saying that they were either taken out of context (that old chestnut) in the case of Anita Dunn, or misquoted entirely in the case of Christina Romer.  Book publishers are so hell bent on providing juicy nuggets in advance of a book sale that they tend to overshadow the rest of the damn book.  And worse if there is any reason to doubt said nuggets, it tends to throw the rest of your book into question; all while under a harsh media spotlight.

This is a long way of saying, yes, I think Ron Suskind fucked up, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the book is crap.  He didn't help himself any, thought.

This is also a long way of saying Jon was right to give the man an interview on the Daily Show and did a credible job, though I am starting to doubt whether or not he's helping in the long run.  Undercutting the President may be noble and honest in his eyes, but how does that help the country if all it does is get Rick Perry or Mitt Romney elected President?

That aside, Jon said one thing that did actually bother me in the interview: "Geither's tied to Wall Street", which is true and in some ways very much not. Remember, this is a meme spread by the Huffington Post, and we know what great experts they are.

Geithner has had only one job outside of Government, and that was working for a Think Tank run by (shudder) Henry Kissinger. He has never worked in Wall Street. Never! (Never evah? Never evah!). In his position as Chair of the New York Fed, Geithner has worked with Wall Street, and has represented their interests, which is kinda what you expect the New York Fed Chair to do.

When the Huffington Post says what its been known to say, and when Jon makes his crack like he did in Part 2 of the Interview, it makes it sound like he's Hank Paulson, going from the Head of Goldman Sachs right into the Treasury Building, and that part is just not true.

Part 1:


Part 2:

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

President Obama's salute to the people of Libya (VIDEO)

Markos: For anyone thinking Hillary Clinton would've been better than Obama...

From today's Huffington Post.  Remember, this was the guy running Hillary's campaign (right into the ground):


Strategy Corner: Obama -- Don't Bring Back Class Warfare



Once again, for those of you who missed it, Ralph Nader is a racist.

It's getting harder and harder to remember that this man was once a champion of anything.

But Ralph Nader's ego is way to of control.  It's his fault that we had Bush in the White House for at least four years.  He's got a lot of blood on his hands.  I don't care what he says.

And he's also a racist.

I'm sorry, when someone calls the first black President an Uncle Tom, on the record, he's a racist.  I said so in January of 2010, and I'm saying it again now.

And now that he's talking about recruiting candidates to run against the President in the Primary, I can only assume that his motives here are racist as well.


Monday, September 19, 2011

"We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable" (VIDEO)



And yes, thre was a direct shot in the speech at Paul "Punching Bag" Ryan's voucher program.

A couple key graphs from the text of the speech:

You know, last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner gave a speech about the economy. And to his credit, he made the point that we can’t afford the kind of politics that says it’s “my way or the highway.” I was encouraged by that. Here’s the problem: In that same speech, he also came out against any plan to cut the deficit that includes any additional revenues whatsoever. He said -- I'm quoting him -- there is “only one option.” And that option and only option relies entirely on cuts. That means slashing education, surrendering the research necessary to keep America’s technological edge in the 21st century, and allowing our critical public assets like highways and bridges and airports to get worse. It would cripple our competiveness and our ability to win the jobs of the future. And it would also mean asking sacrifice of seniors and the middle class and the poor, while asking nothing of the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.

So the Speaker says we can’t have it "my way or the highway," and then basically says, my way -- or the highway. That’s not smart. It’s not right. If we’re going to meet our responsibilities, we have to do it together.

And...

[A]ny reform should follow another simple principle: Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires. That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that. Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it.

It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million. Anybody who says we can’t change the tax code to correct that, anyone who has signed some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness -- explain why somebody who's making $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15 percent on their taxes, when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying more than that -- paying a higher rate. They ought to have to answer for it. And if they’re pledged to keep that kind of unfairness in place, they should remember, the last time I checked the only pledge that really matters is the pledge we take to uphold the Constitution.

Now, we’re already hearing the usual defenders of these kinds of loopholes saying this is just “class warfare.” I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare. I think it’s just the right the thing to do. I believe the American middle class, who've been pressured relentlessly for decades, believe it’s time that they were fought for as hard as the lobbyists and some lawmakers have fought to protect special treatment for billionaires and big corporations.

Nobody wants to punish success in America. What’s great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it and everybody should be able to try -– the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea and make us millionaires or billionaires. This is the land of opportunity. That’s great. All I’m saying is that those who have done well, including me, should pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that made our success possible. We shouldn’t get a better deal than ordinary families get. And I think most wealthy Americans would agree if they knew this would help us grow the economy and deal with the debt that threatens our future.

It comes down to this: We have to prioritize. Both parties agree that we need to reduce the deficit by the same amount -- by $4 trillion. So what choices are we going to make to reach that goal? Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.

Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.

This is not class warfare. It’s math.  The money is going to have to come from someplace. And if we’re not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit and we are trying to reach that same target of $4 trillion, then the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more: We’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor. We’ve got to scale back on the investments that have always helped our economy grow. We’ve got to settle for second-rate roads and second-rate bridges and second-rate airports, and schools that are crumbling.

That’s unacceptable to me. That’s unacceptable to the American people. And it will not happen on my watch. I will not support -- I will not support -- any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share. We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.

Friday, September 16, 2011

"When you tell Dakota he can't do something, he's is going to do it."



There's a damn good reason Sgt. Dakota L. Meyer got himself a Congressional Medal of Honor.  The text  comes from (of all places) Gizmodo. And in case you're wondering (courtesy of the above video), Meyer did get that beer with the President.

I want you to imagine it's September 8, 2009, just before dawn. A patrol of Afghan forces and their American trainers is on foot, making their way up a narrow valley, heading into a village to meet with elders. And suddenly, all over the village, the lights go out. And that's when it happens. About a mile away, Dakota, who was then a corporal, and Staff Sergeant Juan Rodriguez-Chavez, could hear the ambush over the radio. It was as if the whole valley was exploding. Taliban fighters were unleashing a firestorm from the hills, from the stone houses, even from the local school.

And soon, the patrol was pinned down, taking ferocious fire from three sides. Men were being wounded and killed, and four Americans — Dakota's friends — were surrounded. Four times, Dakota and Juan asked permission to go in; four times they were denied. It was, they were told, too dangerous. But one of the teachers in his high school once said, "When you tell Dakota he can't do something, he's is going to do it." And as Dakota said of his trapped teammates, "Those were my brothers, and I couldn't just sit back and watch."

The story of what Dakota did next will be told for generations. He told Juan they were going in. Juan jumped into a Humvee and took the wheel; Dakota climbed into the turret and manned the gun. They were defying orders, but they were doing what they thought was right. So they drove straight into a killing zone, Dakota's upper body and head exposed to a blizzard of fire from AK-47s and machine guns, from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Coming upon wounded Afghan soldiers, Dakota jumped out and loaded each of the wounded into the Humvee, each time exposing himself to all that enemy fire. They turned around and drove those wounded back to safety. Those who were there called it the most intense combat they'd ever seen. Dakota and Juan would have been forgiven for not going back in. But as Dakota says, you don't leave anyone behind.

For a second time, they went back — back into the inferno; Juan at the wheel, swerving to avoid the explosions all around them; Dakota up in the turret — when one gun jammed, grabbing another, going through gun after gun. Again they came across wounded Afghans. Again Dakota jumped out, loaded them up and brought them back to safety.

For a third time, they went back — insurgents running right up to the Humvee, Dakota fighting them off. Up ahead, a group of Americans, some wounded, were desperately trying to escape the bullets raining down. Juan wedged the Humvee right into the line of fire, using the vehicle as a shield. With Dakota on the guns, they helped those Americans back to safety as well.

For a fourth time, they went back. Dakota was now wounded in the arm. Their vehicle was riddled with bullets and shrapnel. Dakota later confessed, "I didn't think I was going to die. I knew I was." But still they pushed on, finding the wounded, delivering them to safety.

And then, for a fifth time, they went back — into the fury of that village, under fire that seemed to come from every window, every doorway, every alley. And when they finally got to those trapped Americans, Dakota jumped out. And he ran toward them. Drawing all those enemy guns on himself. Bullets kicking up the dirt all around him. He kept going until he came upon those four Americans, laying where they fell, together as one team.

Dakota and the others who had joined him knelt down, picked up their comrades and — through all those bullets, all the smoke, all the chaos — carried them out, one by one. Because, as Dakota says, "That's what you do for a brother."

Dakota says he'll accept this medal in their name. So today, we remember the husband who loved the outdoors —Lieutenant Michael Johnson. The husband and father they called "Gunny J" — Gunnery Sergeant Edwin Johnson. The determined Marine who fought to get on that team — Staff Sergeant Aaron Kenefick. The medic who gave his life tending to his teammates — Hospitalman Third Class James Layton. And a soldier wounded in that battle who never recovered — Sergeant First Class Kenneth Westbrook.

The Today Show Interview with Joe McGinnis, author of "The Rogue" (VIDEO)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There was a time when James Carville was considered smart, right?

More from the same, epic Bob Shrum piece (shudder!).

I never thought I'd live to see the day when I thought James Carville was a useless sack of crap, but here we are:

My friend James Carville [argues] in a pyrotechnic CNN piece that yes, the White House should "panic." There is no more time for "explanations" — although it usually helps to think things through before making what Carville calls "a complete change [in] direction." And what does that change consist of? "Fire a lot of people" — which Obama won't and shouldn't do. So thus, the "geniuses" of 2008 become the scapegoats of 2011. Playing a hasty game of musical chairs would turn Obama's ship of state into the Titanic. It's a reflex, a gimmick — and it's ahistorical. As Bill Clinton's campaign chief in 1992, Carville didn't panic — he certainly didn't fire himself — in the early summer of that year, when Clinton was in last place, at 22 percent, in a three-way race with Ross Perot and the first George Bush.

Carville also wants Attorney General Eric Holder fired — boy, that will set off a popular pro-Obama groundswell. And the Ragin' Cajun recommends that the Justice Department "indict people," presumably a host of people and presumably on Wall Street — a white hot populist gesture that could cripple or crash financial markets. In any case, Obama wouldn't debase the law to score political points; we had enough of that in the last administration. In this one, indictments have been made and will be — but on the merits.

Carville is on target about one thing: Obama has to "make a case like a Democrat." But that's what this president is doing now. Day after day, he is drawing the dividing lines. He does have to keep at it — and show as well as say that he's the one fighting for ordinary, hard-working, and out-of-work Americans. That's been the right course for some time — and with Obama on course, he doesn't need to be told, "Fire. Indict. Fight." It's a catchy aphorism, but it's only one-third right.

Bob Shrum explains what happened in the New York 9th Special Election...

Is THIS what it comes down to?  Me agreeing with Bob Shrum??!?  (BOB SHRUM for pity's sake!!!)

The GOP reaction was predictable: This was a referendum on Obama and a portent of doom in 2012. After all, here was the first Republican elected from this district since 1923. (Actually, that's a sloppy factoid, echoed in the media, to make it easy to blame Obama first; it's a fact in the Brooklyn rump of the district, but not in Queens, the district's predominant swath, where Forest Hills and other neighborhoods sent Republican Seymour Halpern to Congress in the 1960s and 1970s.)

Al Smith, the master of the sidewalks of New York, in a characteristic phrase, might have called the Democrat in this special election "a bum." At the least, David Weprin was a bumbler. He confidently offered up a figure on the national debt; he was off by 10 trillion (with a 'T') dollars. He skipped out of a debate, citing the threat of Hurricane Irene; the storm had already passed. He didn't go on the attack until it was too late; he never brought Gov. Andrew Cuomo into a district where he is overwhelmingly popular.

James Carville would have the president play a hasty game of musical chairs that would turn Obama's ship of state into the Titanic.

Weprin fled any identification with the president after former New York Mayor Ed Koch urged voters to retaliate against Obama's Mideast policy by rallying to the Right. Koch, whom I was proud to help defeat for re-election in 1989, has a record of exploiting ethnic tensions and turning on his own party. He race-baited Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential primary — and in the past, he's endorsed Rudolph Giuliani, the state's last Republican senator (Alfonse D'Amato), and George W. Bush.

Never mind that Weprin is an Orthodox Jew, an undeviating rubber stamp for Israeli policies, with relatives living in that country. And never mind that Obama's position is the same as Bush's, Bill Clinton's, and the peace deal Israel offered in 2000 and 2001 — a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps. And never mind that as Israel's self-ordained champion, Koch in reality endangers the increasingly isolated Jewish state with his knee-jerk support of a Netanyahu regime that subordinates the strategic imperatives of national survival to the political survival of his own extremist-infested coalition. To cite Abba Eban's famous phrase, it's now Netanyahu who "never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity" — say, to avert a dangerous break with Turkey — and there are "friends" of Israel like Koch who are there with him every lurch of the way.

Koch undoubtedly hurt Weprin; but there's little doubt that other, stronger Democrats — including former District Attorney and Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman — would have won anyway. But Democratic bosses outsmarted, or more accurately, out-dumbed themselves by ruling out a primary in favor of picking a patsy who would compliantly disappear after redistricting eliminated one of New York City's congressional seats. They got the patsy they wanted, only he inconveniently disappeared 14 months early.

Randi Rhodes said all of this on her show like on...Wednesday.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Memo to Liberals: Being taken seriously involves actual work

From Ta-Neishi Coates' piece: Liberal Sorcery:

The other day Tavis Smiley made the point that president's job plan didn't go far enough. I'd bet a lot of progressives concur and I think pushing the point is healthy, legitimate, essential and fair. But it's also healthy, legitimate, essential and fair to then ask, "What would make more progressive legislation possible?" That line of thinking has to confront the kind of statements and action by Democratic Senators who evidently feel little or no pressure from their progressive base.

One of the reasons why I've harped on the "flying while brownish" series is because I think liberals are much more comfortable attacking whoever seems to hold the most power, and much less comfortable examining the power of the "weak," as well as the power that they, themselves, wield. Power confers responsibility. In evading the notion that citizenship in a democracy confers power, you also evade the notion that it confers responsibility. It's comforting to believe in a narrative of liberal "betrayal," to argue that the game is rigged in such a way that the Hippie-punchers always win.

It's also pretty cynical.

Tom Carper [mouthing off that the best Jobs bill is a bill that reduces the Long-term deficit] from the comfortable environs of blue Delaware is a failure of Team Commie to be regarded as serious political force. People who talk of primarying Obama need to pick smaller targets--and thus elicit bigger results.

But being taken seriously involves actual work. It means a poverty tour that doesn't just bark (Obama the black mascot) but bites (voter registration in swing districts.) If you don't like the current iteration of America, you need to remember that you are America. The failure to build a more progressive America isn't merely a testimony to dastardly evil, it's a testimony to the failure of progressives.

Matt again:

If you're a progressive and you feel that the political system isn't doing what you want, it's misguided to look at this as a personal failure of elected officials. It's, if anything, a personal failure of you and people like you. Justice and equality doesn't just happen because it's nice, people need to make it happen. If it's not happening, then its advocates are failing.

Somehow we got in our head that the Civil Rights movement happened because Martin Luther King was a really nice guy. We don't really talk about the movement as an actual force, as applying force. We don't think about what SNCC was really trying to do when they were risking their lives to register voters in the delta. When we think about people trying to kill them we think about evil, but we should think about power and fear.

Let me make my stance clear, in case it isn't already. I love Liberalism. I love its ideals.

Liberals, on the other hand...

Happiest words of the day: Scott Walker has lawyered up...

This is from another Steve Benen story, and it brings joy to my heart:

About a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, raided the home of a former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday as part of a growing investigation into whether county employees did political work while at their jobs.

...

There’s also this tidbit of news.

There was no comment Wednesday from Governor Walker, who has retained legal counsel, although he claims not to have been personally contacted by federal agents.

Now, there may be nothing to this, but when a sitting governor retains outside counsel as part of a growing corruption investigation, and FBI agents are paying visits to his former top aides, it would appear Scott Walker has a bit of a problem.

It’s worth emphasizing that the allegations, according to local media accounts, are focused on potential misdeeds committed before Walker became governor — the accusations focus on whether county staffers did political work for Walker when they were supposed to be doing official work for the public — but the controversy can still do some real damage.

Walker, best known for picking a huge fight over stripping state workers of their collective bargaining rights, is already unpopular in his home state, and the threat of a recall election still looms on the horizon. It makes this story something to keep an eye on.

"There will be no Social Security in the recommendations..."

Social Security and a raise in the Medicare age are off the table. Why? Because the GOP burned the President one too many times:

And even Huffington Post (the worthless Huffington Post, for pity's sake!) agrees:

Jilted by Republican leadership during the deficit-reduction talks that accompanied the debt ceiling debate, the Obama administration is now pulling back an offer to put Social Security reform on the negotiating table.

The president will not include changes to that program in the series of deficit reduction measures that he will offer to the congressional super committee next Monday, administration officials confirm.

This was all caught by Steve Benen first this morning, who follows up with:

And what about the possibility that the president might recommend raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67? Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal report today that the White House doesn’t intend to recommend this, either. It’s more likely Obama’s plan will call for cuts to providers and/or higher premiums for wealthier recipients.

In other words, President Obama, burned by Republicans who rejected his outreach, apparently intends to keep up the fighting spirit we saw last week with the introduction of the American Jobs Act. If the reports today are accurate, the White House’s debt-reduction plan will be largely in line with what much of the left has wanted him to do all along.

Oddly enough, perhaps the most important progressive victory of the summer came when House Republicans turned Obama’s Grand Bargain offer down. Nevertheless, it appears the president learned a lesson from the ordeal, and isn’t inclined to make the mistake again.

I am not one of the Obama supporters who believes that the President is a Jedi, or a guy who's playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. No, the President is smart. He's the smartest guy in the room, but he's not Yoda (Obi Wan, maybe). He is super intelligent, and this intelligence gives him an ability to react better and more quickly to situations than most other people.

This is a long way of saying yes, he actually believed in a Grand Bargain. He was genuine in his offer. It was not a feint or a double-move, or thinking ten moves ahead. He wanted a deal, and when the GOP rejected that deal, he was able to quickly and smartly change tactics to deal with the situation.

But the strategy remains the same: Get re-elected and leave the country in better shape than you found it.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The President's American Jobs Act Tour comes to Columbus, OH (VIDEO)

The President's American Jobs Act Tour comes to Raleigh, NC (VIDEO)

How President Obama helped to save six Israelis with a phone call...

First caught by Andrew Sullivan.  This was an interesting read, but as an Obama fan I'm glad the President did what he did, I'm just not sure why this was "historic" as the author keeps suggesting.  For the record, the guy doing the speaking I don't believe is a native english speaker. He's also the former head of the Mossad, Efraim Halevy. That might explain some of the blocky usage you're about to read.

During [last Friday night], as you know, [the Israeli] embassy [in Cairo] was surrounded and was on the verge of being stormed. And [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] went to the special command center in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from there he actually ran and commanded this operation of trying to extricate our staff from the embassy. And, at the end, there were six people left, six people of the security detail of the embassy. They were there inside the last room, which had been the ultimate room in the embassy. And, they had one steel door, which was between them and the mob.

And the Prime Minister took many very, very important decisions that night. Successful decisions, very responsible decisions. And for that he has been lauded, and rightly so I think by the public in Israel and by the population at large for his cool and his measured way of handling this crisis.

But one of the decisions he had to take in the end, he wanted to take, was to find ways of extricating his people, our people, out of that embassy. And he turned to one man, to the President of the United States, and he spoke to him. And the president of the United States, without having much time to consult with Congress, and with the media, and with the analysts and with all of the other people who have to be consulted on major and grave decisions. He took a decision to take up the telephone and get on the line with the powers that be in Egypt, and get them to order the release of these six people, and the detail of the Egyptian commando forces entered and saved them.

I think that this decision by President Obama was a unique decision in many ways. Because I don’t have to tell you, and this was just said time and time and over again this afternoon/this evening, that the United States is not in a position the way it was many years ago in the Middle East, it has its problems, it has its considerations, and rightly so. But I believe the leadership that the President of the United States showed on that night was a leadership of historic dimensions. It was he who took the ultimate decision that night which prevented what could have been a sad outcome—instead of six men coming home, the arrival in Israel of six body bags.

The rest can be found here. Like I said, I don't know about "historic". The United States and Israel are allies, and this is what allies do for one another.

And let's keep in mind that our non-interference in the Egyptian Uprisings also helped out a lot.  Because we don't go in as strong (as McCain and Graham always suggest), we don't screw up relations with the new Egyptian Government, so there is someone willing to take our call and listen.  And I also doubt Obama ordered the Egyptians to do anything.  It's not his style, and he wasn't in much of a position to order anything.  He picks up the phone, and makes a simple request, laying out how a non-violent resolution helps everybody.  The Egyptians listened, said sure, and sent their own Commandos in to save the Israeli Security personnel.  Done.  All in a night's work.

I appreciate the story, and this is pretty much what I voted for in 2008.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Lawrence's Interview with Howard Dean... (VIDEO)

Howard's had his ups and downs in my eyes, but ever since William Daley was named Chief of Staff, I've noted a lot more positive tone from the good Doctor:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The President answers questions on the American Jobs Act...

...and by the way, it should be passed right away.

\

Funniest moment, the President takes a question from an Atlanta-based reporter...and drops some smack about the Bears-Falcons game the day before.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Lioness Program...

First caught this video on the Daily Beast this morning.  I'm sorry not to have seen it earlier.

Jonathan Chait: What the left doesn't understand about Obama (and by extension Poltiics)

I'm a little mad at myself for not having read this sooner, but this was a fantastic piece to be found in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s. Congressional Republicans pursued a strategy of denying Obama support for any major element of his agenda, on the correct assumption that this would make it less popular and help the party win the 2010 elections. Only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster. Moreover, Republican opposition has proved immune even to persistent and successful attempts by Obama to mobilize public opinion. Americans overwhelmingly favor deficit reduction that includes both spending and taxes and favor higher taxes on the rich in particular. Obama even made a series of crusading speeches on this theme. The result? Nada.

That kind of analysis, however, just feels wrong to liberals, who remember Bush steamrolling his agenda through Congress with no such complaints about obstructionism. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently invoked “the panoply of domestic legislation — including Bush tax cuts, No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Part D prescription drug entitlement — that Bush pushed through Congress in his first term.”

Yes, Bush passed his tax cuts — by using a method called reconciliation, which can avoid a filibuster but can be used only on budget issues. On No Child Left Behind and Medicare, he cut deals expanding government, which the right-wing equivalents of Greenwald denounced as a massive sellout. Bush did have one episode where he tried to force through a major domestic reform against a Senate filibuster: his crusade to privatize Social Security. Just as liberals urge Obama to do today, Bush barnstormed the country, pounding his message and pressuring Democrats, whom he cast as obstructionists. The result? Nada, beyond the collapse of Bush’s popularity.

Perhaps the oddest feature of the liberal indictment of Obama is its conclusion that Obama should have focused all his political capital on economic recovery. “He could likely have passed many small follow-up stimulative laws in 2009,” Jon Walker of the popular blog Firedoglake wrote last month. “Instead, he pivoted away from the economic crisis because he wrongly ignored those who warned the crisis was going to get worse.”

It’s worth recalling that several weeks before Obama proposed an $800 billion stimulus, House Democrats had floated a $500 billion stimulus. (Oddly, this never resulted in liberals portraying Nancy Pelosi as a congenitally timid right-wing enabler.) At the time, Obama’s $800 billion stimulus was seen by Congress, pundits and business leaders — that is to say, just about everybody who mattered — as mind-bogglingly large. News reports invariably described it as “huge,” “massive” or other terms suggesting it was unrealistically large, even kind of pornographic. The favored cliché used to describe the reaction in Congress was “sticker shock.”

Compounding the problem, Obama proposed his stimulus shortly after the Congressional Budget Office predicted deficits topping a trillion dollars. Even before Obama took office, and for months afterward, “everybody who mattered” insisted that the crisis required Obama to scale back the domestic initiatives he campaigned on, especially health care reform, but also cap-and-trade, financial regulation and so on. Colin Powell, a reliable barometer of elite opinion, warned in July of 2009: “I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all. And we can’t pay for it all.”

Rather than deploy every ounce of his leverage to force moderate Republicans, whose votes he needed, to swallow a larger stimulus than they wanted, Obama clearly husbanded some of his political capital. Why? Because in the position of choosing between the agenda he came into office hoping to enact and the short-term imperative of economic rescue, he picked the former. At the time, this was the course liberals wanted and centrists opposed.

On two subsequent occasions, Obama faced this same choice. Last December, he could have refused to extend any of the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. Republicans vowed to let all the tax cuts expire if he did so. If Obama let this happen, it would have almost fully solved the long-term deficit problem, while at the same time setting back the recovery by raising taxes on middle-class and low-income workers. Obama decided to make a deal, extending all the Bush tax cuts and also securing a progressive payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits, both forms of stimulus that Republicans would never have allowed without an extension of upper-bracket tax cuts in return.

There is a decent argument that the president should have refused this deal. But if you make that argument, you have to accept the likelihood that nearly a million fewer jobs would have been created and that we would have been at risk of a double-dip recession back then. Yet the liberal critics most exercised about Obama’s failure to secure more stimulus were, for the most part, enraged when he did exactly that. Take Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor under President Clinton. Last November, Reich pleaded for an extension of unemployment benefits, calling the plight of the jobless our “single newest and biggest social problem.” When Obama made his bargain, Reich called it “an abomination,” complaining that “the bits and pieces the president got in return” — including the unemployment benefits previously deemed vital — amounted to “peanuts.”

And then, this summer, Obama let the G.O.P. hold the debt-ceiling vote hostage to extract spending cuts. I think he should have called the Republicans’ bluff and let them accept the risk of a financial meltdown. But the reason Obama chose to cut a deal is that calling their bluff might have resulted in catastrophe. And Obama made a point of back-loading the G.O.P.’s budget cuts so as not to contract the economy. He may have chosen wrongly, but he chose exactly the priorities liberals now insist he ignored — favoring economic recovery over long-term goals.

Liberal critics of Obama, just like conservative critics of Republican presidents, generally want both maximal partisan conflict and maximal legislative achievement. In the real world, those two things are often at odds. Hence the allure of magical thinking.

The highest compliment I can give political writing is when I can't find easy places to cut an article, and Jonathan Chait, you did not make easy.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

TPM: Rick Perry. Ripping Gubmint with one hand. Secret Socialst with the other.

Rick Perry, eternal weasel.  Rips the Government with one hand, goes begging to Uncle Sugar (aka President Obama) with the other.  Now that he's gt his money, it's all smiles.

For about five minutes:

Today the President called Texas Governor Rick Perry to express his concern for citizens of Texas impacted by the unprecedented fires. During the call the President extended his condolences for the lives that have been lost as a result of these events, and made clear that the federal government, through DHS/FEMA and the U.S. Forest Service, will continue to make federal assistance available to state and local officials as they fight the fires. The President also assured the Governor that requests for additional assistance, including as recovery begins, would be quickly assessed. Following the call, the President directed his national security staff to continue to work closely with FEMA, the Forest Service and the State of Texas to ensure we were making all resources available. Over the last several days, at the request of the Governor, the Administration has granted eight Fire Management Assistance Grants, making federal funds available to reimburse eligible costs associated with efforts to combat the fires. FEMA is actively working with state and local officials to conduct damage assessments and to identify areas where additional federal assistance may be warranted.

Let's count the number of times Rick Perry calls President Obama dangerously out of touch and foreign at tonight's GOP Debate.

Jonathan Bernstein (once again) kicks the crap out of Thomas Friedman...

Just a reminder to my Father, who for some reasons still reads Mr. "Six More Months"...

Tom Friedman approvingly quotes a Singaporean diplomat:

There will be no painless solution. ‘Sacrifice’ will be needed, and the American people know this. But no American politician dares utter the word ‘sacrifice.’
That's right: it's yet another chapter of Tom Friedman apparently pays no attention at all to the President of the United State of America.

From an obscure web site called Whitehouse.gov, let's see...

September 5 in Detroit, the big Labor Day speech:

That’s the bedrock this country is built on. Hard work. Responsibility. Sacrifice.
He took a call from college student body presidents in August, so he could tell them (according to the WH blog):

President Obama jumped on the call to speak with these young Americans about the need for a solution that finds a shared sacrifice for all Americans. Just as was pointed out in the letter, he said that solving this problem is about investing in our future and making sure young people today have the same chances past generations had.
Here's a weekly address from July. Hint: he says it three times.

Thing of it is, it's not just Friedman. Its the Media, and or even some of my fellow Liberals who succeed in not listen to what the President says.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Did the President just say "Bite me" to Eric Cantor?

Granted, he said it in a very Presidential way, but still...



Key graph:

The main message that I have for all the residents not only of New Jersey but all those communities that have been affected by flooding, by the destruction that occurred as a consequence of Hurricane Irene is that the entire country is behind you and we are going to make sure that we provide all the resources that are necessary in order to help these communities rebuild.

And I know that there's been some talk about whether there's going to be a slowdown in getting funding out here, emergency relief. As President of the United States, I want to make it very clear that we are going to meet our federal obligations -- because we're one country, and when one part of the country gets affected, whether it's a tornado in Joplin, Missouri, or a hurricane that affects the Eastern Seaboard, then we come together as one country and we make sure that everybody gets the help that they need. And the last thing that the residents here of Paterson or the residents of Vermont or the residents of upstate New York need is Washington politics getting in the way of us making sure that we are doing what we can to help communities that have been badly affected.

And you watch Gov. Christie. He doesn't nod, but deep down (given his recent statements along the same lines) you know he does.

"We’re going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party.." (VIDEO)

The President always fires a warning shot before he gives a big speech. Here it is:




Thursday, September 1, 2011

"What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President?" (VIDEO)

First Richard Wolffe asks "the" question (video below):

The interesting question is: What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President? Why do Republicans think this president is unpresidential and should dare to request this kind of thing? It strikes me that it could be the economic times, it could be that he won so big in 2008 or it could be, let’s face it, the color of his skin. This is an extraordinary reaction to a normal sequence of events.



The complete minute by minute tick-tock can be found here at TPM:

Roger Simon, Politico, putting said the tick-tock to prose:

The White House was well aware the president’s speech would conflict with a planned Republican debate sponsored by POLITICO and NBC to be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The debate would be broadcast live by MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and live-streamed by POLITICO.

Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle. “With all due respect, the POLITICO-MSNBC debate was one that was going on a cable station,” the White House source said. “It was not sacrosanct. We knew they would push it back and then there would be a GOP debate totally trashing the president. So it wasn’t all an upside for us.”

And, at first, things seemed to fall into place.

At about 10 or 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, White House chief of staff Bill Daley called House Speaker John Boehner and asked that a joint session of Congress be assembled the following Wednesday night. The White House viewed Boehner as a political opponent, but not an enemy and the call was cordial, even pro forma considering such a request had never before been refused.

And, according to the White House source, Boehner said “okay” to Daley’s request for the Wednesday evening date. (Asked for comment, Boehner’s press secretary, Brendan Buck, said he had nothing to add to his statement of Wednesday that read in part: “No one in the speaker’s office - not the speaker, not any staff - signed off on the date the White House announced today.”)

Then things quickly unraveled. It turned out not everyone was as sanguine as Boehner with the notion that a Democratic president was going to step on a Republican debate.

At 11:55 a.m. Wednesday, the White House tweeted the news about the joint session. “And then Rush Limbaugh beat Boehner up,” the source said.

The conservative talk show personality was in his familiar state of high dudgeon. “This is a pure campaign speech and to give it the imprimatur of a speech before a joint session of Congress, there’s no way, he doesn’t deserve that,” Limbaugh said. “Boehner’s got to say no. Now, whether he will, I have no clue.”

A number of Republicans in the House and a few in the Senate did have a clue and they told Boehner that while they would allow the joint session – it was hard not to for both historic and political reasons – the timing had to be on their terms, which meant it could not conflict with the Republican debate.

At which point Boehner’s office announced that Boehner had never agreed to the Wednesday date, that Congress did not get back into session until 6:30 p.m. on that day, that various votes had to be taken, that security had to be arranged and Obama should push his speech back a day to Thursday.

Which just happened to be the evening the Green Bay Packers were meeting the New Orleans Saints in the NFL season opener. Which meant Obama would have to move his speech up an hour or so before the kick-off at 8:30 p.m.

The White House was not pleased. In reality, it believed, Congress really had never gone out of session, a parliamentary move that blocked Obama from making recess appointments. “And they had to arrange security?” the White House source scoffed. “As if they couldn’t do that! This was a political thing, a tea party thing, a Rush Limbaugh thing. They were all giving Boehner gas.”

The White House did not want to give in and look weak, but what was the alternative?

An Oval office speech instead?

“You can’t speak for 40 minutes from the Oval Office,” the source said.

How about the East Room?

“He’s going to speak to an empty East Room with just the Teleprompters and staff there? No,” said the source

So it had to be in the House of Representatives, which the Republicans control. “But we couldn’t go if they didn’t let us come,” the source said. “You can’t hold the speech in the lobby or in the parking lot. And you’re not going to get network coverage if you hold it at George Mason University.

“After a month of world chaos, the setting had to match the topic. And you don’t get any better setting than a joint session of Congress.”

In the end, the White House felt it had no choice but to give in on the date, and Obama sent an email to his supporters with the subject line: “Frustrated.”

“It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on,” Obama said in the email. “I know that you’re frustrated by that. I am, too.”

Obama said he was going to put forward “a set of bipartisan proposals to help grow the economy and create jobs” and he was “asking lawmakers to look past short-term politics and take action on that plan.”

It was, perhaps, not the friendliest message, but the White House was not in a friendly mood. Some Democrats were attacking Obama for once again “caving in” to Republicans, though others thought that it was an inconsequential matter.

The White House is viewing it as very consequential, however. “It is a big deal,” the source said. “It shows the House Republicans will do no outreach, nothing.”

And who does the White House believe was really behind treating the president so shabbily?

“At first, I didn’t think it was Boehner, but his caucus,” the source said. “But maybe not. Maybe it is him.”

Steve Benen:

By agreeing to Boehner’s preferred day, the White House at least prevents a prolonged argument about process. Because Washington rules dictate that there must be a “winner” in every dispute, the Speaker gets to gloat this morning, but the fact remains Boehner still looks small and petty, picking an unnecessary fight. That he claimed to be speaking “on behalf of the bipartisan leadership and membership of both the House and the Senate,” when he clearly was not, only makes him look slightly worse. If President Obama values being seen as “the adult in the room,” this little mess reinforced the perception.

But that doesn’t make yesterday’s developments any less ridiculous. If Americans wanted a responsible Congress, ready and willing to act in the nation’s interest, and able to work constructively in response to critical challenges, they made a tragic mistake in November 2010. Yesterday’s largely inconsequential fiasco will fade away soon enough, but it’s symbolic of a larger problem: voters elected far-right children to run the legislative branch of government.

Ezra Klein:

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. A speech can rally the base, and maybe even temporarily change the topic in the news. But it can’t change the fundamental fact of politics right now, which is that the two parties disagree on the most profound question in Washington. It’s not: How do we fix the economy? It is: Who should win the next election?


So long as Republicans and Democrats disagree on that, there will be no significant cooperation on substantive issues. Boehner simply will not cut off his party’s candidates at the knees, especially its presidential contenders, by handing Obama a major economic accomplishment. Because he controls the House of Representatives, that means Obama -- and, by extension, the U.S. -- is not going to get a major economic accomplishment.

Almost everyone in Washington understands this. The interest in the president’s speech is just a function of the fact that people who discuss politics and policy for a living need to seem like we’re doing something through the long summer months. The administration needs to look like it’s acting to create jobs, the media need to appear to be reporting news, the pundits need to generate opinions about it all.

This is the part of the column where, as a pundit, I lay out my three-point, politically implausible plan to turn the situation around. This is where I tell the president to fight harder, or take his message directly to the people, or fire up the lethargic Obama for America organization. This is where I remind the Republicans that they supported tax cuts as stimulus all through the last decade and even into 2009; where I beg them to put country before party; where I warn them that everything they are doing unto the Democrats today will be done unto them tomorrow. This is where I summon history to show how FDR or Reagan or Truman broke a similar logjam.

But such exhortations -- and I am guilty of writing variations on these many times over -- are pointless today. The facts are what they are. And what they are is depressing and unlikely to change.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

President Obama vs. Rick Perry boiled down to this 2 minute clip from the West Wing... (VIDEO)

Gee, maybe Mitt Romney hasn't changed that much. Maybe he's always been a brain dead-- (VIDEO)

Great catch by Steve Benen:

In February 2008, Romney delivered a speech announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race. He explained his rationale for quitting this way:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and frankly I’d be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

For those who may have forgotten it, Jon Stewart had a compelling reaction to the remarks at the time.

But more than three years later, I’m curious: does Romney think he was right? Barack Obama became president, and has proven far more successful in combating terrorism than his Republican predecessor. Does Romney stand by his belief that electing Obama president was part of “a surrender to terror”?

Or does Romney regret making the charge in 2008, and realize now he was wrong?

Since Steve didn't post it in his blog, and since Jon Stewart's still on Vacation, I figured I'd put up the whole video.


And for the record, Jon's response is just (ahem) two words, and it's still deserved.