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A Multi-Tasking Machine Of Spinelessness

Did anybody read the title and not think that this post was going to be about Obama?

I’ve reached the end of my rope with this president. The tax cut deal was the straw that broke bitchy’s back.

I’ve been of the belief that one of Obama’s problems is that he lacks conviction. I’ve graduated from “belief” to “certainty. He’s not passionate about anything to fight for it, or to even hold his ground.

I honestly thought I voted for a born leader when I cast my vote for him. Turns out that what I got is a middle manager with no real future. He tries to stay under the radar by capitulating to everyone in perpetuity; the quintessential middle manager.

The only belief that he seems to hold firm to, is that there’s always a middle ground to be found. Sadly, he defines “middle” as being slightly less than republicans are demanding, but far more than they ever expected to get.

Just four short weeks ago, all of the republican leaders were sending very strong signals that they would sign a tax bill that excluded the stinking rich if that was all they could get. Did Obama miss that? Was he busy creating a new playlist on his iPod to watch CNN that week? Seriously, what the fuck? Boehner couldn’t have been more clear about his willingness to cave. Don’t believe me? Watch!

And yet Obama still caves by giving them two more years of billionaire tax cuts, thereby increasing our deficit by another 140 billion dollars.

Here’s a fascinating breakdown of the relationship between the top marginal tax rate and the unemployment rate. This graph tells us that there’s an excellent chance that the unemployment rate in this most precarious of times, is very likely to stay high as a result of prolonging these tax cuts.

Can anyone guess what republicans are going to run on in 2012? Could it be the fucking deficit and the unemployment rate?

And what do you think Lloyd Blankfein is going to do with all of the extra cash in his savings account? Is he going to hire people, or is he going to use the money to bitch slap Obama in the 2012 elections by contributing to whoever his republican opponent is?

On the upside, Obama is figuring how to let republicans do three times as much damage with one single kick in the testicles. This saves them a lot of effort. While I admire his deference to Mitch McConnell, in making sure that he (McConnell) doesn’t tire himself out by having to expend more energy than necessary to turn Obama into a eunuch, I wish he would find just a little deference for the people that voted for him and the platform he ran on.

This latest buckling was like so many before it, unnecessary and damaging to us all. You see, we’re having to borrow more money from China so that Jamie Dimon doesn’t have to pay 3.5% more in taxes (as if his accountant can’t find loopholes to cover that).

This s bad for all Americans, but Obama is particularly bad for democrats. Each time he caves into republicans, the thing that he caved in on becomes the thing that Obama owns. These tax cuts for the rich will no longer be referred to as the “Bush tax cuts”. No, they’re the Obama tax cuts now.

Make no mistake – extending these tax cuts is the worst possible thing that can happen to our economy.

And no, this didn’t have to happen (something I hear from democrats all the time). Obama didn’t have to cave. 76% of Americans don’t want these tax cuts extended. He could have leveraged that political capital to stop a compromise from happening. He should have held a prime time press conference to spell out what republicans are trying to do to us, and named names in the process. He should have done this on the day that republicans blocked the tax cut vote on Saturday. He instead made a half assed effort to make his case.

Either he sucks at politics, or he wanted to extend these tax cuts all along.

Democrats already have a serious messaging problem. Having a leader that is willing to shit all over the basic tenets of the democratic party isn’t helping.

I’m worried that Obama is going to irreparably damage the party if he caves in on cutting social security. NO ONE wants for social security to be cut. Well, no one except the people that made out like fucking bandits on these tax cuts anyway. 76% of Americans (republicans and democrats combined) feel adamantly that social security should not be touched. If Obama does so much as raise the retirement age, democrats will forever be the party that cut social security.

Obama’s capitulation has escalated beyond the point of just being frustrating to the democratic base; it’s reckless and dangerous for the country and it will decimate the democratic party.

I’m well past the irritated with this president stage. I’m scared shitless of him in a way that I haven’t been scared by a president in my lifetime. If

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Another Disastrous Concession; Tax Cut Edition

David Axelrod just confirmed that Obama is going to cave in on tax cuts for the rich. I’m feeling demoralized, to say the least. This is another example of unnecessary acquiescence that hurts America, by Obama. We can file this one with Van Jones, Shirely Sherrod, and ACORN.

Look the strategy on this one should have been very simple since most Americans, democrats and republicans alike, are opposed to this. Democrats should have done nothing but ask republicans, “How are you going to pay for this?” like simpletons, stuck in broken record mode. That’s all they should be saying about anything. Regardless of what the question being asked by the reporter is, every single democrat should respond with, “How are republicans going to pay for the tax cuts they didn’t pay for the last time around?”. If the question is, “How about those Giants?” The reply should be, “How are republicans going to pay for extending the tax cuts for the rich?”. PERIOD. No other words should be coming out of their mouths until republicans cave.

Another prong of this strategy should be for Obama to continue the praise that he offered to Ronald Reagan during the campaign. Breathe, breathe, and hang in with me for a second. Obama should repeatedly exclaim that he intends to set tax rates where the great and wise Ronald Reagan set them. Over and over, in perpetuity, Obama should be regurgitating out the “Great and wise Ronald Reagan” line.

You wanna know where Reagan had the top tax rate? It was at 50%. Do you wanna know what we’re talking about today? We’re talking about going from 36% to 39%! Are you fucking kidding me with this shit? Off the top of my head, if that 3% difference we’re debating equates to 3/4 of a trillion deficit dollars over the next ten years, I’m going to go ahead and say that if we went back “the great and wise Ronald Reagan” rates, we would be able to raise roughly enough to pay off Bush’s deficit in five years.

This wasn’t a hard fight to win but once again, Obama didn’t even try. Axelrod claimed that they didn’t want to “jeopardize” the middle class tax cuts in order to fight to let the disastrous Bush tax cuts expire. That’s the kind of bullshit false choice that makes me extra, supersized bitchy.

Let me go a step further. I want to raise the corporate tax rate back to 91%, where it was under Eisenhower. That was the tax rate that got us out of the great depression. It works well because it forces companies to reinvest profits, rather than to let their executives pocket the money. Personally, there’s nothing that the government can squander that money on that would be less offensive to me than watching Paris Hilton snort it. Watching the government spend that money on $400 toilet seat covers would be less disgusting to me than watching Lloyd Blankfein spend it on anything. Yeah, I’m the jackass.

Guess what Obama? That extra 3% that you’re letting good old Lloyd keep is ultimately going to be spent on spanking you with his wallet in the 2012 election. Nice move, jackasses. You have once again managed to fuck the country and fuck yourselves.

I can’t imagine why 29% of democrats that voted in 2008 stayed home in 2010.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – You BLOW, Obama administration!

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Only 51 Days Left For Obama’s Testicles To Drop

That’s right, if Obama doesn’t grow a set in the next 51 days, he will undoubtedly be roadkill for the 730 days that follow. 51 days is now long he has until the 112th congress, laden with republicans takes over.

Let’s be honest, he’s been a giant pussy for the past twenty two months. Personally, I don’t think that he has it in him to be an ass kicker. I believe that he’s fundamentally a professor, not a leader. He’s conciliatory by nature which is fine, but a leader knows when to pull out the sticks because the carrots aren’t getting the job done. And once he set that “door mat” precedent, everybody started stomping on head (and agenda). Blue dog democrats and republicans all started acting like they were elected to lead the country because they knew that Obama would fold every time.

Obama has one last chance to turn this around, but he has to do it during the lame duck session. He’s lucky in that, he has more than a chance – he has a golden opportunity. He can do something bold that will cost him no political capital at all. And more importantly, it won’t cost him one thin dime in political contributions to him, or increase political contributions to republicans because corporations and wall street don’t have a dog in this race.

I know, at this point you’re wondering what brought on this hallucination and how is it that I can type in my current state. But I assure you that I haven’t lost it. The issue is simple.

President Obama must sign an executive order to repeal DADT (don’t ask don’t tell). There is no reason on the planet why he shouldn’t do it. The majority of Americans are for repealing it. Depending on which poll you look at anywhere between 59% and 79% of Americans are for repeal. Neither percentage can be achieved with republicans and independents supporting repeal. Military leaders under the age of 70 are for repeal. The only segment of the population that are against repeal are serving as republican representatives, or are geriatric veterans who were around to oppose blacks serving in the military. Repealing DADT doesn’t cost corporations or Wall Street anything, so they haven’t put any money into opposing the idea.

Obama has nothing to lose here, and everything to gain. Repealing by executive order will seem strong. It’s a complete no-brainer. If he seems strong now, the public is likely to get more excited about him again. And the opposition, whether it’s vultures in his own party, or the newly empowered republicans who have been steam rolling over him for nearly two years will think twice about blatantly dissing him.

If Obama expects to get anything done in the next two years, he has to single handedly repeal DADT. He has to set a new tone, or he’s toast. And let me be clear what I mean by toast. He’ll be legislatively dead in the water. I still stand behind my prediction that he will get a second term, but that will just mean four more years of not doing anything meaningful.

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I Whine Because You Blow

In the past week, Joe Biden has joined the white house administration chorus in crapping on the democratic base. Here, watch;

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Buck up? That sounds familiar. Hmmm…where have I heard that before? Oh right I heard it from Obama here. I’ve heard this enough from the administration to now be able to decisively say that these aren’t gaffes. This is a mystifying strategy. I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish, but I can tell you that the result is a division in the democratic party.

This happened on MSNBC yesterday:

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I wasn’t watching it because I wasn’t home, but I was checking twitter from my iPhone. My twitter feed exploded with anti-Cenk tweets. I had no idea what was going on, so I had to wait until I got home to catch up. I watched the clip and agreed with most of what Cenk said (although a less red-faced delivery might have been more appealing). I listened to Cenk’s show later (The Young Turks) and heard him say that he thought all of those tweets were a concerted effort to astroturf (sometimes right wing media outlets will tell their fans to pile on a specific left wing pundit on a specific day) him. They weren’t. They were tweeted by members of the democratic base that I follow.

These people are active democrats that buy into the idea that the health reform bill was “historic”. They buy into the white houses’ narrative that the administration has delivered on “70% of the promises made in the campaign, in twenty short months”. I suppose that’s one way to look at it, but you have to overlook a whole lot in order to maintain that point of view.

Was the health reform bill historic? No. Was the fact that something happened with health care legislation historic? Yes, but only in that, the last time we reformed health care was fourteen years ago. When something occurs that infrequently, it’s not unreasonable to refer to it as “historic”.

I don’t believe it was historic because it didn’t fundamentally change the system. We all still have to buy our health insurance from private companies, and there is still nothing place to prevent them from gauging us with obscene rate increases every year. I’m not saying it didn’t help some people out. I know that it did. I see comments and blogs from people that have been able to obtain health coverage for the first time in years, every single day. I thoroughly appreciate the difference this reform has made, for the small number of people that it’s helped.

But let’s be honest, this bill wasn’t much more than adequate. It was the bare minimum that could have been passed, and still labeled a “win” for Obama. As lacking as this bill is, there would still have been one way that I would have been satisfied with it – if the administration had actually fought to get the best thing they could, I could have championed this bill. But they clearly didn’t. Does anyone remember President Obama’s moving speech, strongly advocating for a public option? Yeah, me neither. Does anyone remember President Obama strongly advocating for a medicare buy in? Yeah, me neither. Does anyone remember seeing a single republican standing on the senate floor, reading the phone book in an effort to filibuster the passage of the bill? Yeah, me neither.

I could have accepted this crapfest of a health reform bill if you had tried and failed. You didn’t. Don’t tell me to buck up. Fuck you.

Same thing with financial reform. This administration didn’t do a goddamned thing to regulate the derivatives market, which is the thing that every economist agrees, is the root of our financial instability. They didn’t even try.

I will buck up when, and only when you don’t fuck up. And I’m not a whiner, a retard, or a vicious part of the professional left that is trying to undermine you. I’m trying to make you better. If you wanted an uninformed, sycophantic base, you should have run as a republican. Oh yeah, and fuck you!

Even with this split between democrats that need to believe, and democrats that need to think critically, I’m positive that one thing will happen – we will all collectively show up to vote. Active democrats don’t sit out elections, any more than active republicans do. You know who’s not going to show up? Everyone else. The people that turned out en masse to vote for change in 2008 will not be there for you this time. And if you don’t start to deliver meaningful change in the next two years, they’re not going to show up for you in 2012 either.

The sycophants in the democratic party will show up because they feel that you’ve given them enough change that they can stay on board. Disgruntled democrats will show up because we realize that you suck less than republicans. You’re wasting your time crapping on your base. We’re going to be there for you one way or another, but no one else will. You’ve disenfranchised and demoralized everyone else with your half assed legislative “victories”.

This administration sucks at politics if they can’t figure that out. Pointing at your base and saying, “A HA! This is your fault!” when you lose in November is stupid, and it won’t help you get your shit together for 2012. This strategy makes Obama a lot like Bush in that, both love pointing the finger at someone else when they fuck up.

I whine, because you blow. And my whining is not the root of your problems. You blowing is.


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Did You Fall For It, Gays?

Are you pissed at Obama for failing to repeal DADT? Maybe you blame Harry Reid? If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, you got played.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’m not a Harry Reid fan. You also know that I’m not an Obama apologist. After reading some of the reactions to the travesty yesterday, I felt compelled to go through how this happened.

Let me first start by saying that I viscerally wish that President Obama would come out of the closet already, and enthusiastically support gay rights in a demonstrable way. But intellectually, I feel that he would be hurting the gay cause if he did. As it was, this vote happened fairly quietly. Fox news and right wing radio weren’t hammering away at the issue. They were focused in rehabbing the nutbaggery that is Christine O’Donnell. Does anyone think they would have largely ignored DADT if Obama were out there audibly supporting its repeal? Let’s be honest here, anything that Obama comes out for becomes the epicenter of hate and controversy. I’m not saying that Obama shouldn’t take a stand on anything, for fear that he will start a political firestorm. I’m saying that given Obama’s pervasive and persistent weakness over the past twenty-one months, he made the right calculation in laying low on this one. In doing so, he increased Harry Reid’s (admittedly low) odds of making something good happen in the senate.

Here’s what went down yesterday; all forty republicans joined hands and created a filibuster. Two democrats joined them, but they were irrelevant since all forty republicans were united. As an aside, one of those two irrelevant democrats is going to get voted out of office in November. I say fuck you and good riddance, Blanche Lincoln. No one is going to remember you ten minutes after you’re gone. Anyway, back to yesterday’s vote. Republicans, and republicans alone blocked the repeal. Period. Every single one of them united to block the vote from taking place. Harry Reid (uncharacteristically) didn’t do anything wrong.

Actually, politically speaking he did make one mistake. He rolled the DREAM Act into the DADT bill. The DREAM Act creates a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants. Specifically, to illegal immigrants who have served in the US military for two years and minors who have been in the country for five years prior to the bills’ passage, and are obtaining high school and college diplomas. The DREAM Act is a bill written by Dick Durbin a year and a half ago, and it’s good for all of us. It’s good for all of us because it will help military recruitment and it will chip away at the skilled labor shortage in the US. Even in this crap ass economy, we don’t have the labor pool to match the jobs that are available. Our college graduation rate is going down, and we don’t have the skilled computer professionals that we need. As a recruiter, I do my best to hire a US citizen whenever I can. That hasn’t been as possible as one might think (even in the past year). I’m still having to process H1B visas for foreign workers. We need all the college grads we can get if we expect to hold our position in the world.

The DREAM Act is obviously a popular bill within the Latino community. I think that if Reid was good at playing politics, he would have called a vote on DREAM as a stand alone bill. This would force republicans to either filibuster it, thereby guaranteeing that the GOP wouldn’t receive a single Latino vote in the November elections, or passing it thereby undermining their SB 1070 rhetoric.

But he sucks at politics, so he combined them. This left Mitch McConnell with the opening to comically say that he would allow a vote on DADT if DREAM was removed from the bill. Oh, and he was going to buy every US citizen a  pony. Make no mistake, Mitch McConnell was never going to allow this vote to take place. Democrats in the senate acquiesced to republicans 170 times on the health reform bill, only to receive zero republican votes. In fact, I can count the number of affirmative republican votes over the past twenty-one months on my hands! Mitch McConnell is Lucy with her football from the Peanuts cartoons. It’s a fucking joke anytime he says he will work with democrats “if”. So he wanted Harry Reid to throw one group under the bus in order to give another group rights they should have had all along? That’s a bullshit choice, and I’m glad that Reid didn’t cave into that crap.

To summarize, Harry Reid didn’t make any mistakes that would have changed the outcome yesterday. Don’t let Mitch McConnell tell you otherwise. This vote (as with every other vote) was, for Mitch McConnell, about making people hate Obama. Did you fall for it, gays?

There will theoretically be another attempt at a vote on this issue after the election, during the lame duck session. I suggest focusing your Obama/Reid ire on a target that deserves it; Scott Brown. Why do I single him out? Because he represents the bluest of states, where gay marriage is legal. He did not represent his constituents yesterday. We need to put a world of hurt and pressure on Scott Brown. And you should start putting pressure on the ladies of Maine, since they’re low hanging fruit.

My guess is that if we can peel off one single republican, Reid will get all of the democrats in line since Obama explicitly stated that he would repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell this year. Once republicans united, the two democrats that joined them were irrelevant so I’m guessing that Reid didn’t fight as hard for them as he would if he had a republican. We won’t know for sure, until we get a republican.

So you can misplace your anger with Obama, or you can do something constructive with that anger. Call everyone you know in Maine and Massachusetts. Start Facebook pages pledging to vote against Brown, Collins, and Snowe. Organize rallies and money bombs to raise money to run commercials in those states.

Don’t fall for the “hate Obama” ploy. Let’s work together to get er done!

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Obama MUST Get A Blow Job

In order to save America. It’s his patriotic duty. We wouldn’t be suffering through any of this race baiting if our president would just get an extracurricular sex life.

Most liberals believe that Obama is reviled by the right because he’s black. I completely disagree. He’s reviled by the right because he’s a democrat. It seems like we’ve all collectively forgotten the Clinton years. They were a series of one batshit crazy accusation after another being hurled at both Clintons.

Let me refresh your memories:

Whitewater – Where Ken Starr spent 74 million tax payer dollars to find nothing (except Monica)

Vince Foster – Who, despite his suicide note was obviously murdered by the Clintons or their operatives ( I was never clear on which)

Postagegate – When republicans investigated whether Bill Clinton used tax payer funded stamps to respond to children that wrote the white house about Sox, the cat

Chinagate – Bill Clinton was accused of selling military secrets to China (yes, really)

Wag the doggate – Remember “NO WAR FOR MONICA!”? This was when Clinton bombed Afghanistan in an effort to get Bin Laden order to divert our attention from Monica

Buddhist Templegate (I’m not kidding) – When the Clintons and Al Gore used Buddhist monks to launder money to the DNC

I can go on and on until you go blind from staring at your computer monitor, but you get the point. The attacks against the Clinton were absurd and unrelenting.

Is Obama being attacked more than Clinton was? I honestly don’t think so.

More importantly, I don’t believe that the “masterminds” behind the attacks on Obama are necessarily racist. I think they’re profoundly lazy, or wiped out by the creativity they had to display during the Clinton years (seriously, Buddhist monkgate??). Stirring up racial tension is just the easiest and most obvious way for them to get people to hate Obama.

We learned in the Clinton years, that these guys don’t care what they have to say, who they hurt along the way, or how hypocritical they have to be in order to meet their objective of taking power.  Remember how sanctimonious Newt was about his disgust with Clinton over the Lewinsky affair? He was both outraged and pious in 1998, while he was banging his own staffer, while his wife was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. He actually served his wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital! But don’t feel too sorry for her, she was his mistress before she became his wife. I encourage you to google Marion Gingrich. What she has to say about Newt is nothing but fun!

No, the treatment Obama is getting isn’t a black thing. It may be a little bit a black thing, but it’s mostly a “getting power back” thing. And they don’t give a shit about what kind of collateral damage they create along the way. All of this anti-Muslim crap that the right wing is creating is purely about getting Obama.

A few Muslims getting killed or hurt along the way is meaningless as long as they can convince Americans that Muslins are bad, and that Obama is a Muslim. They have to make shit up because he hasn’t given them any ammo.

Which brings me to his duty to get a blow job. The insane accusations against Bill Clinton stopped when the right wing finally found Monica. There was no reason to make shit up after our president (hide your children!!!) GOT BLOWN!

If past is prologue, then the right wing will stop their nonsensical attacks when Obama finally gives them something to work with. Which is why I have concluded that Obama must have extramarital sex in order to restore race relations in America.

I don’t think I’m asking too much here. I didn’t get a decent health reform bill, I got DICK for financial reform, all indications show that Obama is about to piss all over social security. I think that a blow job in the name of peace is a perfectly reasonable request.

If you really think about it, a sex scandal would solve two problems simultaneously. He could get caught, and then seek marital counseling from his christian pastor. America could watch Obama walking into a christian church five or six times a week! The Muslim allegations would be laid (so to speak) to rest once and for all and we could all go back to coexisting peacefully.

And look, we don’t even really need for Obama to play along. I say to patriotic women in America, join together in accusing our president of having an affair with you! Seriously, if enough of us come out with these accusations, we’re bound to keep Fox news mired in Obama sex stories for months. This will take the heat off the Muslims.

Sorry Michelle, but you’re going to have to suck it up. America needs another presidential blow job!

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Are Democrats Born With No Balls, Or Does Someone Remove Them After They’re Sworn In?

Democrats are a party made up of the biggest pussies in America. And we all lucked out bigtime, by getting the cream of the pussy crop in the white house. And the best part is that every time democratic voters come close to forgetting that they support a party of eunuchs, they generously remind us by pulling a Shirley Sherrod type fiasco.

If you missed the story, here’s the background on the Shirley situation. She was asked (repeatedly and vehemently) to resign from the USDA on Monday after Andrew Breitbart posted a video of her online, in which she seems to be a racist. In the video, she recounts a 25 year old story in which considered denying a white farmer assistance because of her own racial bias. The video was edited and the remarks that she made before and after the clip that Breitbart posted clearly showed that she was speaking out against racial bias. It was a story about getting past bigotry.

Once the Breitbart version of the video was posted, the right wing did what they do – they turned the whole thing into a shit storm. Fox “news” anchors were salivating like starving cats looking at a raw piece of tuna, as they told the tale of racism at the NAACP. The more vitriolic pundits turned it into “further” evidence that Obama hates white people.

Let me take a step back and fill you in on Andrew Breitbart. He started as Matt Drudge’s bitch and it’s been downhill ever since. The most significant thing that he’s done, was to release the incriminating “pimp and ho” videos of ACORN. You know, the videos that we now know were hacked to pieces to make it appear that ACORN employees eagerly participated in helping a pimp and his ho launder their money.

So what do Tom Vilsack, the United States Secretary Of Agriculture (Shirley Sherrod’s boss)  and the white house administration do when an incriminating video is released from a dubious source? They naturally spring into action to try and minimize the hurt that the video and Fox news are putting on them by demanding Shirley’s resignation. Was this the rational thing to do? Not even a little. Was I surprised? Not even a little.

We’ve seen this before with the Van Jones incident and with the ACORN incident. I was LIVID when the administration forced Van Jones out because Fox baselessly smeared him. I was livid because I know that what the Obama administration had done, was set a horrible precedent. They let Fox know that they would happily play the part of road kill every time Fox felt like steam rolling them. They should have stood up to Fox, stood behind Van Jones by reiterating his remarkable record in the area of green technology, refuted (or refudiated for my less literate readers) the ridiculous allegations, and shown Fox who their daddy was. But no, they instead chose to throw Van Jones and themselves under the bus by becoming Roger Ailes’ bitch.

By the time the administration caved on ACORN, there was absolutely NO chance Fox wasn’t going to use the power that Obama had given them over him, every chance they got.

So when another video emerges from Andrew Breitbart, the administration didn’t even have to bend over. They hadn’t had enough time to stand upright from the last reaming. It was all very convenient and really just a matter of letting muscle memory do its thing.

But then something truly bizarre and downright inexplicable happened – the truth came out about the video, and the media reported it! In America! I was dumbfounded!

So Tom Vilsack called a press conference and did a mea culpa. He took complete responsibility for fucking this up, apologized to Shirley, and offered her another position. That part was fine. Personally, I like it when people admit they wrong and take responsibility for their mistakes. I find it refreshing and trust inspiring. He went on to shield  the administration from this whole mess by taking sole ownership over the debacle, although anyone that believes that this didn’t go up to (at least) Rahm Emanuel is a foolish child. I can live with that part of Vilsack’s comments, even though they were blatantly untrue. But I had one major problem with the apology. I had a problem with the fact that Vilsack didn’t address the biggest fuck up that they had made. He rightfully apologized for not taking some time to investigate the matter before firing this poor woman. But what he should also have apologized for, is not considering the source before trusting the information. He should have drawn attention to the fact that Andrew Breitbart and Fox news are clearly not reliable sources for information. He should have apologized for making that rookie mistake, and promised that he would never do it again. But he didn’t do that, because the Obama administration will forever be Fox news’ bitch.

So after all of this goes down, what do Fox and Breitbart do? They bitch slap the administration for jumping the gun on firing poor Shirley Sherrod. And the left wing media is going ape shit over this, to which I say, why? This may possibly be the first correct assessment that Fox or Breitbart have ever made! Why go ballistic over this part of it? Did they expect Fox or Breitbart to apologize for their part in it? If so, are they stupid? Expecting an apology or a mea culpa from these people completely unrealistic and just plain crazy. Fox and Breitbart just did what Fox and Breitbart do; they attacked. Expecting that they wouldn’t attack is like expecting that a mosquito won’t bite you. It just doesn’t make any sense. I understand being stunned and confused that the attack is legitimate (who could have seen that coming!), but I can’t fathom being incensed that it came. Make no mistake, the administration deserves to be spanked over this. They fucked up when they set the door mat precedent with the Van Jones incident. They compounded the fuck up by not stopping the ACORN witch hunt. Shirley Sherrod was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. They deserve to be spanked for everything they did that led up to this incident. And most of all, they deserve to be spanked for being afraid of Glenn Beck.

Oh, did I forget the Glenn Beck part of the story? Vilsack’s office called poor Shirley three times to demand her resignation. She was in her car when the third call came in. They made her pull over to type out her resignation email on her blackberry. Why the urgency? Because they wanted her resignation before Glenn Beck came on TV. Yup, they were afraid that Glenn Beck was going to be really mean to them. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE!

The left wing should have joined the right wing in condemning the hasty and ill conceived actions by the administration. Maybe if we all joined in a chorus together, the Obama administration might learn a lesson.

But no, the left wing media is doing the same (albeit much more mildly) thing that the right wing media does for republicans. They’re apologizing for the unacceptable.

I want better from my president than to have him perpetually cower to right wing media. And the only way to help him to see the error of his ways is to point out that he’s wrong every time he does it. Shielding him isn’t going to do anyone any good. It just ensures that he’ll be crapping his pants every time Glenn Beck says anything about him.

No, I won’t stand behind Obama on this, and I don’t believe that anyone that supports him should either. If you want him to be a leader, you have to spank him when he fucks up. I have my paddle warmed up for a good spanking because this country can’t take another failed presidency. I suggest you all get yours ready for action as well.

ps – I just want to add an observation. If you’re a black person serving in this administration, and you’ve been paying attention, you should know that you have less job security than anyone in the world. Racist against whites, MY ASS!


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A Rising Star In The GOP?

I’m referring to the emergence of the latest self entitled, petulant, underhanded and  egomaniacal, fucking child. I’m speaking, of course, about Stanley McChrystal.

Mark my words, he’s going to be yet another example of how America has embraced the concept of failing upwards, more than he already has. I say more than he already has because he should have been finished years ago. His active participation in the Pat Tillman cover up should have, at the very least, prevented McChrystal from rising any further in his career. If that didn’t do it, the prisoner abuse at Camp Nama in Iraq should have done it. But no, neither of those incidents were career killers. McChrystal was inexplicably appointed by Obama to lead the war in Afghanistan.

I was concerned that Obama had chosen a man that was obviously devoid of honor to lead a marching band, let alone a war. So when McChrystal “leaked” his counterinsurgency plan to the press in order to pressure Obama to give him everything he wanted, I wasn’t surprised at all. It was a maneuver that was consistent with his history of underhanded and honorless behavior. This man is the antithesis of the courage and honor we think of when we conjure images of our military . Think about it, if McChrystal had any courage, he would have had faith in his ability to make an effective case to the white house. Since he didn’t have any confidence that he had done that, he had to do something as sleazy as leaking his wish list to the press to increase his chances of getting the resources he was asking for. It was such a slimy move, that I can hardly believe it was made by a four star General.

Obama should have fired him then since the ending to this story should have been clear at that point. But instead of firing him, Obama gave McChrystal every single resource that he wanted to “win” Afghanistan. He got all of the troops and all of the money that he wanted but that wasn’t enough for him. According to the now infamous Rolling Stone piece, McChrystal also wanted Obama to hold his hand and shower him with admiration. He wanted Obama to be more “engaged”. I have a newsflash for McChrystal; Obama inherited more problems than just your war. He inherited literally, a country in ruins. A financial collapse, ten percent of the country unemployed and losing their homes, a failed occupation in Iraq, a thoroughly broken justice department, corruption in every regulatory agency imaginable, and an unprecedented national debt. He doesn’t have time to shower you with attention and praise, you fucking child. Plus, he never claimed to be a military strategist so he did exactly the right thing; he delegated. He deferred to the judgment of people with vast experience in this area. That would be you, McWhiney.

Most military officials would be thrilled with a situation wherein they got everything they asked for without being micromanaged. But not our egomaniacal Stanley McChrystal. I suppose he would have been happier with a no-nothing Rumsfeld barking inane orders based upon unproven and ill conceived theories?

And then there was all the shit he talked about people that disagreed with his admittedly iffy plan. He’s one of those assholes that believes he’s surrounded by idiots, regardless of the qualifications of the people he’s talking shit about. I’m not going to go into every salacious quote since you’ve probably already read the Rolling Stone piece but man, did he come off as a total dick.

I love the part of the article that talks about the fact that McChrystal walks around carrying nunchucks with his name and four stars on them. For most insecure and yet egomaniacal men, driving a hummer seems to do the trick, but our Stanley needs more compensatory symbols than the average asshole to help him get through the day. In the end, he was in over his head, and had to lash out at everyone else because he isn’t capable of self awareness. I think he may need bigger nunchucks.

Stanley McChrystal has managed to live down to every expectation I had of him.

Can you tell that I won’t miss him?

My prediction is that this asshole is going to become the new Sarah Palin for the GOP. They need a more effective “hit man” than she’s proven to be. But don’t worry because like Sarah Barracuda, McChrystal has entirely too many character deficiencies to actually pull off running for high office. No, his future is as a professional mouth piece for the GOP.

I’m going to need to start buying earplugs at Costco! Lord help us all.

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Who’s Your Daddy?

I love FOX News. I love the pundits, I love the “reporters”, I’m only mildly amused by the commentators (but that’s because they’re all dimwits). I mostly love them for their talent. Yes, I said talent. You have to be a pretty talented broadcaster to repeat the same talking points that have been repeated over and over again for the six hours preceding your show, and still make it fresh. Like it or not, it does take a high level of skill to parrot what you’ve been told to say, while making it your own. They’re talented in the same way that hosts on QVC are talented. Not everyone can talk about some worthless trinket for ten minutes, while still keeping the audience engaged.

Yesterday’s talking point was predictably, about how Obama was the loser in the elections on Tuesday. He lost big, because the two candidates (Specter and Lincoln) that the administration backed both lost. It was odd that they didn’t apply the same logic to McConnell’s boy losing in Kentucky, but that’s beside the point. All day on Wednesday, different pundits and reporters were bandying about the phrase “referendum against Obama”. Some of them spoke of this referendum authoritatively, others listened intently as their guest made this assessment, and yet others delivered their analysis as if they were making a brilliant point that had not yet been made. The entertainment lies in the different forms of delivery. It’s fascinating to watch it go on and on, hour after hour.

But style points aside, I have a newsflash for the people on FOX News. Obama is my president, not my daddy. I don’t take marching orders from him and I don’t consider a vote against the candidate that he supports to be a slight against him. He backed two candidates that weren’t liberal enough for democratic voters. If anything, Tuesday was a win for progressives who are doing what they can to move Obama leftward. He won his election by promising us change. We’re going to make him honor that promise whether he likes it or not. Voting for someone other than the candidate he stumped for is not a referendum on Obama. Voting for Obama’s opponent in the next election is a referendum against Obama.

Republicans have a hard time with the concept that your president isn’t your daddy because they generally go along with what their leader tells them they should go along with. Warrantlessly wiretap me? YES DADDY, I love small government! You’re going to drive up the biggest deficits this country has ever seen? YES DADDY, I’m a fiscal conservative! You want to funnel billions of my dollars to your corporate cronies at Haliburton? YES DADDY, I believe in the free market! They were happy to contradict every single tenet of conservatism because daddy told them to.

So now they’re left with nothing, other than to project. We’re not mindless lemmings, happy to go along with everything our president tells us to do, so we must hate him. We voted for candidates that were to the left of the ones he backed so we must all be turning against liberalism, thereby proving that we’re a right of center country.

Republicans don’t understand democrats and independents at all anymore, which is becoming problematic, since their voters don’t trust the establishment anymore. Daddy has slapped them around one too many times. When you simply don’t understand 60% of the country, and you’ve abused another 20% one too many times, you’re in deep trouble.

I sound like a broken record, but get it together republicans! I can’t have a country with only one viable party.

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Fear And Loathing In San Francisco

For three years now republicans have painted Nancy Pelosi as loathsome. Not because of anything that she did, but because she’s an easy target.

Let’s face it, she’s not viscerally likable. To be honest, between the turbo charged blinking and the overabundance of plastic surgery, she’s just not that appealing. Republicans leveraged those unappealing qualities to make her the focus of their base’s hatred because until a few months ago, President Obama was far too popular to effectively target. So poor Nancy has been loathed for a few years now, simply for being in a position of power.

Republicans don’t like their women in power. They like them cute and cheerleady. Okay, they like their men to be cheerleaders too. They just like the cheerleading in general, but I digress. I can’t think of one smart republican woman that the party has put forward as a leading voice. No, they give us Sarah Palin. When John McCain picked her, he clearly picked her as the antidote to Hillary. The problem is that his antidote sent a clear message to women, that any dumb bitch will do.

If republicans are smart (I know, I know, there I go with my optimism again), they will have figured out on Sunday that Nancy Pelosi is someone they should fear. Health reform is a victory that belongs to her more than anyone else. She’s fought republicans, democrats, the senate, the president, and his chief of staff to make it happen. There are reports that President Obama wanted to scale the bill back (even further) after Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts. Nancy refused to have any of that, referring to the president’s proposal as “kiddie reform”. She pressed on to fight for us when everyone else was ready to retreat. She one of a very few handful of tough democrats.

But beyond just being tough, she knows how congress works in a way that very few of our representatives do. When she announced that they were going to pass the vote by using “deem and pass” it wasn’t because she didn’t have the votes (Nancy doesn’t lose votes, look at the record), it was because she rightfully doesn’t trust the senate. Using “deem and pass” (as republicans have done hundreds of times), would have allowed the house to adopt the sucky senate bill while simultaneously reconciling the improvements to the bill. She was trying to bypass a lot of the reconciliation noise that I suspect we’ll be hearing this week. She wasn’t trying to be sneaky with “deem and pass”. She was being very smart.

Despite my early doubts, Nancy Pelosi has proven that she’s a force to be reckoned with. President Obama owes the (I predict) 8 – 10 point jump in his approval rating to her. And we owe the glimmer of hope that we have that health reform is possible to her.

Take heed republicans, Speaker Pelosi isn’t just a dumb liberal with San Francisco values. She’s going to go down in history as one of the most significant speakers this country has ever had. Sorry Boehner, no one will remember you for anything when you’re gone (much like Denny Hastert).

So don’t limit your feelings toward her to loathing. You should fear AND loathe her.

Bravo, Madam Speaker!

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