Republican's Can't Help Themselves - They Are So In Bed With Their Lies, The Truth Cannot Find A Way In

I watched the State of The Union tonight.  It was normal, nothing to write home about.  But, watching Sen. Rubio give the Republican "rebuttal" to the SOTU was like watching Fox News!

There was nothing that came out of this man's mouth that was remotely true.  I was flabbergasted by the sheer amount of lies.  I thought perhaps using Sen. Rubio was to give a more lightened and cooperative response, less decisive (especially since the Tea Party was going to offer up their own rebuttal by way of Rand Paul) but it was a slice in the pie.  I guess they just wanted a gentler, kinder representative to give the Republican bull shit a better taste than it had when it was given by Mitt Romney.  Throw out the son of an immigrant who is not a so called millionaire, and voila, we have a representative of TRUE America.  Uh, not ...!

I thought it was interesting that the Republican response to raising the minimum wage was to ask how the "government" was going to be able to pay for this.  Equating raising the minimum wage to an increase in government spending is one of the little lie tricks that Republicans use to try to confuse those already stupid on economics.  But, it's quite simple - the EMPLOYER pays the wage increase, not the government.  And let's not confuse this with stating that a minimum wage increase will raise the cost of government by giving government employees money the government does not have.  Those employees are already paid above minimum wage, so raising the minimum wage does not impact government employees (thanks to their unions, cough, cough).  No, it is the rich CEO's making millions and billions on the backs of their poverty level income earning employees that will have to take a small percentage off of their profits to pay for the increase.  However, the mentality of the rich is "not in my back yard" because they just cannot fathom in this day and age how their money is not their right, and they cannot figure out how to justify paying even less money to their employees so as to make more money. 

The argument about the ACA causing "small" businesses to have to let their employees go because they can't "afford" to pay for the health care mandate is another lie the Republicans like to use.  When you actually research the type of companies that are laying off employees because of the ACA, they are the big, big, big, and let me say again, big companies that can afford to pay, but want to stick it to the agenda of the "left"  by sabotaging their own workforce and making a "statement."  The Papa John's, the Taco Bells, the Denny's, the Red Lobsters, the Olive Gardens etc. and their ilk are the ones laying off or cutting back to avoid paying their employees a fair wage over their ideological opposition to health care.  In fact, considering the number of fast food operations that are scaling back full time employees to fuck them over, I would personally not want to eat at a place where the workers are NOT HAPPY.  No telling what health hazards might be on the horizon at the hands of these workers.

Don't get me started on the energy companies.

Get ready for more bitter fighting, and probably an even more regressive Congress than the one that preceded it.

Why Are Republicans So Racist?

What is it with today's Republicans and the right wing blow tards and their utter disdain for President Obama?  I don't get it one bit, except, of course, for the mass racism.  And that, my friends, saddens me.

I am up to my neck in anger over the constant drumbeat from this group of people that consistently try to portray this President as un-American and wanting to hand over this country to some boogie man representing a leftist, socialist, liberal leader of a foreign nation.  And equally stupid is their claim that Obama is in bed with the "terrorists," whatever that means.

You have to be extremely stupid to believe that a sitting president of the United States is actually working to decimate this country!  And yet, that is the propaganda that forms the basis of the Republican party's belief system.  It is the constant topic on Fox News.  Currently it is Obama's alleged plan to take all the guns away.  That is so stupid on so many levels it seriously makes me want to smash my television when I hear reporters go off on this subject.  As if!  What is wrong with these people?  Do they not know that the majority of Americans do not believe them?  The Republicans LOST AT THE LAST ELECTION and they need to get over it.  And NO, they did not take the House as the mantra goes on Fox News.  They simply kept the majority, but lost in their mumbo jumbo is the FACT that they lost numbers in the House, despite still maintaining the majority.  All of this crap about a left wing take over of the country would be a laughing matter if those Fox viewers weren't so overwhelmingly stupid as to believe what Fox is feeding them. 

And just who is leading this attack of the stupid?  Well, it can't very well be the stupid people that are following this line of thinking.  It has to be started at the top and then fed to the bottom.  It is astounding to me that those good ole white boys in power, both in government positions as well as corporate positions, are the leaders of this racist ideology.  These people are so full of hate for the man of color at the top that they are willing to fracture this country solely because they still harbor, and cling to, their outdated belief that people of color are physiologically inferior to their white asses.

The statistics that show the number of Republicans that believe Obama was not born in the United States is astonishing.  I did not know that stupidity was contagious.  Equally disappointing are the number of Republicans that continue to espouse the belief that Obama is Muslim. 

The left attacked Bush during is eight years, mostly on the grounds that he was stupid, and his stupidity led him to be governed by seriously bad guys, which led to the two unfunded wars in the Middle East, and the give away of our national treasury funds to corporate big wigs.  As bad as that was, the mantra never was that Bush was un-American.  He was bad for America.  But no one suggested that Bush was in bed with the terrorists or that he was trying to hand over the country to other oligarchs.

It is embarrassing that racism is so prevalent in the country that it comes out in full bore by the Republican party and their stronghold in outright lies about Obama.  Lies that are easily negated by the truth, but only to those that are not racist.  And these racists are so full of hate for people of color that they are willing to crash this country just so they could say "that n...r ruined this great country."

Rock on Obama.  I may not agree with all of your centrist ideas and actions, but you are the President of the United States, and I am a citizen of this country, and as such, I will support you as my President, color of your skin being irrelevant to the fact that you made it to the top office and are worthy of that job.

Death Star A No Go For White House

I think it is totally funny that people are using the White House petition format to seek the building of a "Death Star."  Even more hilarious is the White House response!

Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, responded to an earlier petition to “secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.″

[snip]

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

 Ok, I am laughing hysterically so far!

PLEASE take the time to read the FULL response here.  You will NOT be disappointed!

Some choice tidbits:

Even though the United States doesn’t have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, ...

We don’t have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke’s arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star’s power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Florida Goes To Obama

While ballots are still being counted in the state of Florida, a senior adviser for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign told the Miami Herald on Thursday that they are effectively conceding the Sunshine State and its 29 electoral votes to President Barack Obama.

I knew in my gut that the Republican talking points claiming the election was close, that Obama and Romney were virtually tied, and that Romney would win by garnering over 300 electoral college votes, was utter bullshit.  It's nice to see that my initial feelings about this election were right.  332 for Obama, 206 for Romney. 

It's Official! NO MORE ROMNEY!

And Republican strategists predicted Romney was going to trounce Obama and get over 300 of the electoral votes.  How's that reality working for you, now?

Florida is trending Obama, and if it is called, that will be 29 more electoral votes to add to the 303 Obama already has.   How sweet a victory, 332 to 206.  Bite me, Republicans.

Megyn Kelly and the rest of Fox News are in denial!



UPDATE: 11/7/12 - NYT

John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., has long argued that the party’s reliance on the votes of older white men was putting it on a demographically unsustainable path. 

“We have a choice: we can become a shrinking regional party of middle-aged and older white men, or we can fight to become a national governing party,” Mr. Weaver said in an interview. “And to do the latter we have to fix our Hispanic problem as quickly as possible, we’ve got to accept science and start calling out these false equivalencies when they occur within our party about things that are just not true, and not tolerate the intolerant.”

Very true.  It will be interesting to see how the Republican party handles the solid rejection of their ideology.

A Mormon Smackdown By Somone Who Knows His Bible

Let's just start off by making one thing clear. I am not a Christian, nor do I believe that Jesus is God, or that by accepting Jesus I will go to "heaven." I do, however, believe in God, and I accept the teachings of Jesus vis-s-vis the "book" most Christians accept as the writings of Jesus, the Bible, which of course, anyone with an education, especially in religion, knows that the Bible was not written in any fashion by Jesus, nor can any of the New Testament be proven to have been written by the actual apostles that the writings have been attributed to. More importantly, the Bible as we know it today was put together by a "king" in order to put forth some sort of ability to control the "church" and the "believers" approximately 300 years after Jesus was known to have died.

Be that as it may, I respect the right of REAL Christians to believe in Jesus and do the work in his name. I do not respect the new Christian belief system that amounts to bigotry, anger, war, nationalism, or capitalism, which has morphed into this ideology that America is a Christian nation (especially, again, when education proves that this country was clearly founded upon the freedom to worship as one chooses, that insofar as our government is concerned, one's religion shall not be a test marker, and lastly, religion and government should not be entwined). These "Christians" represent, to me, and to a lot of people, the same Christians that roamed the world during the Crusades basically killing anyone that refused to accept Jesus as God, desecrating many holy places along the way.

Enter the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons. I have had serious personal interactions with Mormons for over 40 years and know well the teachings of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. But I have never seen a smack down as good as this by a person that knows his Bible!



I used to have the same experience. When one actually uses the Bible against a Mormon, they are stumped. And like the gentleman in the video says, the Mormons don't believe in Jesus as much as they believe in Joseph Smith.

And here the Christians who represent a majority of the white, older aged American, male dominated Republican party are putting their Christianity on the line by supporting a Mormon for POTUS.

"Touch It, Dude" Says Obama

If you haven't seen this picture yet, you will soon. I LOVE this picture. Read the story here.

11/22/63

48 years ago, we lost a president to a bullet. In hindsight, many controversies have arisen, not only as to how and by whom he was killed, but whether he was, or could have been, the greatest president ever.

Writer Robert Stein has this to say on his blog today:

After November 22, 1963 I wrote an editorial attempting to define the deep grief over his shocking death-—that beyond his attractiveness and intelligence, there was the loss of a leader “who was still growing—-in understanding, in skill, in compassion, in commitment."

Today's contenders for the Presidency are, in contrast, overwhelmed by challenges. For all our sakes, we can only hope that whoever wins next year can attain ultimately the stature John F. Kennedy did in the thousand days he spent in the White House.

Ha Ha Ha -- Even Matt Damon Won't Talk To Obama!

There's a lot of talk about Matt Damon running for president. Not since Reagan have we had an actor take a serious run for the top spot.

It appears, however, that the White House has begun to notice Damon's comments over the past few weeks concerning his disappointment with this administration. So much so, that Obama, who is pretty much spineless when it comes to opposition, actually took a cheap shot at Damon at a recent speech.

First, Damon's statement on the Piers Morgan show:

Damon, during a March interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, said he was “disappointed” with Obama’s presidency for a number of reasons, including this one:

“He’s doubled down on a lot of things, going back to education ... the idea that we’re testing kids and we’re tying teachers salaries to how kids are performing on tests, that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher order. We’re training them, not teaching them.”

Then the President's comeback:

Last Saturday night, Obama, who targeted a number of his critics in his speech, said this in mocking response to Damon’s “disappointed” remark:

“I’ve even let down my key core constituency: movie stars. Just the other day, Matt Damon -- I love Matt Damon, love the guy -- Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance. Well, Matt, I just saw ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ so...right back atcha, buddy.”

That's really supposed to be funny? We are hemorrhaging financially in this country, fighting several announced and unannounced wars, inflation abounds, recession is HERE, people are homeless and jobless, and the Prez wants to open up sludge oil pipelines from Canada to Texas (not tipping his hand there, is he?), but he's got time to take a shot at an actor.

Talk about really losing your base constituency, and not being afraid to show you don't give a shit.

It turns out that people in the Obama administration made several attempts to reach actor Matt Damon just before he spoke at last month’s Save Our Schools rally in Washington D.C., blasting education policies that focus on high-stakes standardized tests.

According to two people familiar with the efforts, the administration tried to arrange a meeting with Damon and government officials, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, before the July 30 march. The sources declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

In fact, Duncan was willing to meet Damon at the airport when he flew into the Washington region and talk to him on the drive into the city, according to the sources. Damon declined all of the requests.

Damon in 2012! H/T to Valerie Strauss here and here.

Obama Administration Now Attempting To Run Interference With AG's And Investigations Of Bank Fraud, Etc.

Why am I not surprised? Why are many Democrats in America not surprised? Why are the American PEOPLE not surprised?

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.

In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.

Mr. Schneiderman and top prosecutors in some other states have objected to the proposed settlement with major banks, saying it would restrict their ability to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing in a variety of areas, including the bundling of loans in mortgage securities.

Well, DUH! If you haven't figured out by now that Obama is propped up by the financial industry (and the oil industry, and big pharma, etc.), and watches out for THEIR interests over the interests of the American people, then you simply have had your fingers in your ears and yelling out loud so as to NOT know these things about the president YOU elected to change things.

This is disturbing to me, because I first read about Mr. Schneiderman's efforts to stop the settlement of a paltry $20 billion because such settlement includes a bar against further investigations into the banking industry's other notorious practices. Uncovering wrong doing is supposed to be an AG's responsibility, and the fact that the president of the United States is taking an active role in curtailing such investigations, continues to strike me as proof positive Obama and the banks have their hands in each others' pockets.

I cannot tell you how many cases my office has where we are representing clients who have had their homes foreclosed upon, and the documents produced by the banks and lending institutions are all signed by a handful of these robo-signers! Seriously! We just "google" some of the notaries and other signers and the list of those that are under current investigation is remarkable. One such signer, who also signed off on many documents on a couple of our cases, said in a deposition (which is available on the internet) that she signed about 180,000 of these documents every month, never read them, and just did what the banks and lending institutions told her to do. One day she was an officer of Chase Bank, the next day she was an officer of Countrywide, etc. She was signing and or notarizing documents transferring title (generally AFTER the fact and not BEFORE the fact) where banks would then use these documents to prove they held the underlying loan on the property, hence they were entitled to foreclose. Many of these properties, as you have undoubtedly read time and time again, were never delinquent in the payment of the loans by the borrowers ... the "industry" as it were, simply was (and still is) stealing homes, many of them with equity and not "upside down" as the term is generally used when the value of the property is less than the mortgage attached to the property. Millions of people have lost their homes due to this unsavory practice, and the small settlement offered by the banking industry does not come even close to bringing satisfaction to those millions who have lost their homes. But all the president seems to care about is, once again, not prosecuting the bad guys, whether it is banks, Wall Street, or the Bush Administration.

I love this quote from the article, which concerns an argument Mr. Schneiderman had with Kathryn S. Wylde, a "member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who represents the public."

Characterizing her conversation with Mr. Schneiderman that day as “not unpleasant,” Ms. Wylde said in an interview on Thursday that she had told the attorney general “it is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”[my emphasis]

But Ms. Wylde, they ARE doing indefensible things, and HAVE been doing said indefensible things for quite some time now.

I shudder as I continue to watch this president devolve into a greedy politician.

How's That New War In Libya Working Out For Us?

And while we are on the topic of this President's illegal and secret actions, let's take a moment to bring up the unprecedented involvement in Libya!

Now the President believes he has the ability to conjure up "war powers" not actually vested in him and not authorized by Congress.

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation" -- candidate Barack Obama, December, 2007.

More from Glenn Greenwald:

When President Obama ordered the U.S. military to wage war in Libya without Congressional approval (even though, to use his words, it did "not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation"), the administration and its defenders claimed he had legal authority to do so for two reasons: (1) the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (WPR) authorizes the President to wage war for 60 days without Congress, and (2) the "time-limited, well defined and discrete" nature of the mission meant that it was not really a "war" under the Constitution (Deputy NSA Adviser Ben Rhodes and the Obama OLC). Those claims were specious from the start, but are unquestionably inapplicable now.

From the start, the WPR provided no such authority. Section 1541(c) explicitly states that the war-making rights conferred by the statute apply only to "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." That's why Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman -- in an article in Foreign Policy entitled "Obama's Unconstitutional War" -- wrote when the war started that the "The War Powers Resolution doesn't authorize a single day of Libyan bombing" and that "in taking the country into a war with Libya, Barack Obama's administration is breaking new ground in its construction of an imperial presidency."

Well, that was then, and of course, Libya is now.

But even for those who chose to cling to the fiction that the presidential war in Libya was authorized by the WPR, that fiction is now coming to a crashing end. Friday will mark the 60th day of the war without Congress, and there are no plans for authorization to be provided. By all appearances, the White House isn't even bothering to pretend to seek one. A handful of GOP Senators -- ones who of course showed no interest whatsoever during the Bush years in demanding presidential adherence to the law -- are now demanding a vote on Libya, but it's highly likely that the Democrats who control the Senate won't allow one. Instead, the law will simply be ignored by the President who declared, when bashing George Bush on the campaign trail to throngs of cheering progressives: "No more ignoring the law when it's inconvenient. That is not who we are."

Of course not! Liar.

This war, without Congressional authorization, is illegal in every relevant sense: Constitutionally and statutorily. That was true from its start but is especially true now. If one wants to take the position that it's not particularly important or damaging for a President to illegally start and sustain protracted wars on his own, then it's hard to see what would be important. That is the ultimate expression of a lawless empire.

Welcome to our tyrannical Presidency.

Time To Start Thinking Primary Challenge To Obama

Long piece by Clarance B. Jones over at Huffington Post. It's a must read, especially for those that think bring a primary challenge to Obama in 2012 is unthinkable.

Then, I began to think about 1968: about Allard Lowenstein, President Lyndon Johnson, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Sarah Kovner and Harold Ickes of the New York Democratic Party New Coalition who had the courage to lead a grassroots challenge to Lyndon Johnson's re-election.

Lyndon Johnson was one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country. He enacted Immigration reform, bills establishing a National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Highway Safety Act, the Public Broadcasting Act, creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a bill to provide consumers with some protection against shoddy goods and dangerous products, Social Security and Medicare, Voting Rights Act of 1965, only to mention a few. But, he squandered and threatened the viable implementation of these legislative achievements by his aggressive pursuit and escalation of the war in Vietnam.

Some of us, like Allard Lowenstein, Sarah Kovner, Harold Ickes, Eleanor French, Blair Clark, decided that Johnson's pro Vietnam policy had to be publicly challenged. Our "agent" for this challenge was Senator Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota. He may have been an "uncertain trumpet" on other domestic issues. However, we worked hard to support his candidacy for President in the New Hampshire Democratic primary as a challenge to the Vietnam policy of President Johnson. McCarthy came in second with 42% percent of the vote against 49% for the President. This precipitated Johnson to announce that he would not seek re-election as the candidate of the National Democratic Party.

When few other public figures of national stature spoke out about Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, at New York City's Riverside Church, before a meeting of Concerned Layman and Clergy, on April 4th, 1967, said "A time comes when silence is betrayal." For Dr. King, it was "time to break the silence."

And, so it is with Obama's continued squandering of the extraordinary support he developed for his election as President.

Go and check out the video clips of the panorama of faces that assembled in Grant Park in Chicago after the election results confirmed his victory. Check out the million + people who came to Washington to witness his Inauguration.

It is not easy to consider challenging the first African-American to be elected as President of the United States. But, regrettably, I believe that the time has come to do this.

It is time for Progressives to stop "whining" and arguing among themselves about whether President Obama will or will not do this or that. Obama is no different than any other President, nominated by his national party. He was elected with the hard work and 24/7 commitment of persons who believed and enlisted in his campaign for "Hope" and "Change."

You don't have to be a rocket scientist nor have a PhD in political science and sociology to see clearly that Obama has abandoned much of the base that elected him. He has done this because he no longer respects, fears or believes those persons who elected him have any alternative, but to accept what he does, whether they like it or not.

It is time for those persons who constituted the "Movement" that enabled Senator Barack Obama to be elected to "break their silence"; to indicate that they no longer will sit on their hands, and only let off verbal steam and ineffective sound and fury, and "hope" for the best.

The answer is blowin' in the wind

So, Who Actually Buys The Government's Statement That 75% Of The Gulf Spill Is Gone?

I'm really having a difficult time understanding the Obama administration's position with regard to the BP oil spill. At each and every step in what should have been a government controlled investigation, the Obama administration sidestepped the issue and allowed BP to call all the shots.

Now, the government is saying that "all is good," that 75% of the oil has been cleaned up, and in proving that the water is safe, Obama even orchestrated a photo op with his daughter and him in the water off the coast of Florida!

What part of all of the above reminds you of Bush, his "good work, Brownie" comment, and his planned photo op with firemen in NOLA after Katrina?

Yep, all of the above, gosh darn it! No one has been allowed to investigate, tabulate, videotape, explore, examine, view, work at, work with, work for, or even fucking view the spill site unless you either "work" for BP (wherein you signed a document that says you'll be fired if you so much as sigh in the direction of media, and probably contains a lot worse, but I can't say for sure right now, except I would not put it past BP to have a "we'll sue you" clause in it as well), or your are controlled by our corporate government, which of course, means again, you work for BP and not the American people.

Just like the Bush administration refused to let reporters into the really bad areas of NOLA, how they controlled the "reports" of the levees being fixed, and withheld pertinent information about the trailers they tried to herd NOLA residents in (especially those from the Ninth Ward), and basically ignored anyone's opinion about the conditions that didn't work for the inner circle of the Bushies. It was all about "the right party" during that era, and making sure that all the public agencies were staffed by those that bought the party agenda, and regurgitated it verbatim.

Now, with our new and viewer friendly president, whom we expected "change" in how government was going to be run, is pulling the same shit as the Bush administration did! No transparency, no cracking down on the parties responsible, no real investigation, and whooooaaaa nellie, the unbelievable cover-up of the depth of the disaster such that Obama was willing to put his own daughter at risk by actually getting into that seriously infested water. That's a mind blower to me.

Is our president really that beholding to major, non-American corporations, and to the bloody oil money, that he'd put the entire American population at risk just so that BP can "save some money?" This doesn't just impact the gulf area, we are talking about saying it is ok to fish and SELL the fucking fish and EAT the fucking fish (and shellfish) that are in these waters, when they don't even have a test to determine the toxicity of the Corexit used to disperse the oil? They are relying on SMELLING THE FISH? You have got to be kidding me.

You put tainted fish into the open markets across America, and you have no clue the level of contamination contained, and that's ok with you as POTUS? Wow ...

I realize that Obama hasn't lived up to his various promises such as comprehensive health care reform, repealing DADT, rejecting DOMA, closing Gitmo, having an open and transparent government, etc. But to literally put the entire American population at risk by falsely claiming that 75% of the oil has been cleaned up from the Gulf is not about not living up to any promise, but is a clear and deliberate act to expose the American people to real danger at the expense of allowing a corporation to skate through. That's pretty darn bad.

When it is factually provable that Alaska has not fully recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill many moons ago, it is not believable that a spill that was so much larger and dangerous by the tenfold than Exxon Valdez, magically in a few months, has just cleaned itself up! This is horse pucky as my grandfather would say. I am just amazed that these statements can come from the Obama administration, and that they don't feel any sense of duty to humanity to double down on the safety factor. No, it's business as usual. Drill some more, it's ok, there's no oil here ...

We should start a campaign to send Obama and his family fish caught from the Gulf waters on a daily basis and see just how much of it he eats, or he allows his family to eat. Any takers? Any guesses as to whether or not he'll actually eat anything caught in those still contaminated waters?

Uh huh. I thought so.

Ok, So I'm Not As Enthused As I Used To Be (aka Did Not Watch The SOTU Address)

I didn't watch the President's SOTU speech tonight. But, I've read enough to feel like I've been there and done that.

I thought this funny:

I can't stand when he mentions Ronald Reagan in a positive fashion and he did that again tonight. When will he realize that conservatives will never support him and to suck up to the Gipper is a mistake?

And this as well:

Dear Justice Alito:

The President is allowed to call your decision enabling corporate takeover of elections bad for America. It's his opinion, and he's more than entitled to it.

Hugs and Kisses,
The Constitution

"THOSE DAYS ARE OVER"

When I see Obama at the beginning of any of his speeches, and the way he points and winks or nods his head, he reminds me of a star, be it an athlete or a television or a motion picture star. In my lifetime, I have never seen a president appear that way, and although I have seen pictures and videos of JFK, his demeanor was not that casual. Bill Clinton was casual, but he didn't have the star quality that Obama has.

I didn't go to work today, and watched CSPAN all day, and saw the mortgage plan hearings that Maxine Waters was chairing, and the grilling she and others gave to the banking representatives.

I like that jab at Coleman with the reference to the Minneapolis 54 police that would have lost their jobs, which were saved by this stimulus package.

I have never seen an address to congress and the American people like this. He inspires by his speeches, which I sometimes identify with rhetoric, and have already expressed doubts about his ability to succeed, but damn, it, his speeches make me cry every fucking time!

I have to say it's nice to see BOTH sides stand up and applaud. After 8 years of Bush and the one sided speech/applause level, it is refreshing to see a sense of bipartisanship.

My Take On The President's Press Conference

First up, on this press conference, it was nice to see a president that could speak in complete sentences, and could actually answer the questions (well, except for Helen Thomas' one about who else in the middle east has nukes -- cough cough, Israel, cough cough), and he understood the issues. Bush was such an ass that he rarely held conferences that allowed for real questions, because he was too dumb to even know how to answer them.

I usually watch CSPAN but went to the talking heads shows for the after-talk just to see what kind of reaction the "media" were going to spin on this press conference.

We shall see what happens with the stimulus bill. Personally, I am still not happy with all this "bipartisanship" talk. All the Republicans have done the past eight years is bankrupt this country, and pocketed as much money in their oil, banking, lobbying, defense contracting and other rich people's pockets (including their own), and then to have the entire House vote NAY on the stimulus package, was like giving the finger to all Americans. That is just not right, and if bipartisanship means kowtowing to the very people that gave us this mess, I say give them the finger right back.

The Many Colors Of The New "White" House

For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

A refreshing change, don't you think?

H/T to Crooks & Liars

At Last, At Last -- No More Bush, I Give You The 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama

I have chills going down my spine watching Barrack Hussein Obama take the oath as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Glory Hallelujah, A New Day Has Begun!

Bye bye Cheney. Bye bye Bush.

What is that I am feeling? Oh, it's a breath of fresh air!

Throw Something At Bush!

Here's the link. Go throw whatever you want at Bush!

Change = Undo

H/T to Crooks and Liars.