"Historians will puzzle over the fact that Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn't want. Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master." Jim Marone, "political scientist." Link
Last summer, when the tea-baggers were defining the Obama presidency, he chose to ignore it and go on vacation like his name was John Kerry.
Will the Democrats lose the House and the Senate bacause of that stupidity?
Will Obama be a one-termer because of that Texas-sized error?
Will we get President Bush-with-a-vagina in 2012 because of that mistake?
Mr President, if only you had a staff that could see snakes before they bite.
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Take the PEW Research news IQ test here.
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Must see video: SNL: Rahm apologizes:
http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/02/teabagger-watch-part-one-rahm-apologizes.html
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With the latest revisions, a clearer picture of the financial collapse emerges.
As Obama took office in January of 2009, the economy shed 779 thousand jobs.
It would continue to shed jobs at a 700k+ rate in both February and March.
Over the entire decade, 421k jobs were lost, net. See chart.
In contrast, over Clinton's term, twenty-three million jobs were created.
Clinton created 24M jobs and in 2008, Kos and half the Democrats said,
"The last thing we want is another Clinton in the White House."
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More Blackwater contractors than cops in Pakistan's capitol. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/08-6
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"Try never mentioning your spouse, your family, your home, your girlfriend or boyfriend to anyone you know or work with - just for one day. Take that photo off your desk at work, change the pronoun you use for your spouse to the opposite gender, guard everything you might say or do so that no one could know you're straight, shut the door in your office if you have a personal conversation if it might come up. Try it. Now imagine doing it for a lifetime. It's crippling; it warps your mind; it destroys your self-esteem. These men and women are voluntarily risking their lives to defend us. And we are demanding they live lives like this in order to do so. Yes, Admiral Mullen. It is about integrity. It's also about a minimum of human respect." - Andrew Sullivan, responding to the National Review's Rich Lowry.
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Helen Thomas: Obama, The War President
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A people's movement that never was
Stick a fork in it, it's done. Over. Toast. Influential Nashville blogger Adam Kleinheider declared the tea party movement dead this weekend, hijacked by corporate interests, money-hungry opportunists, and Sarah Palin.The tea party movement is dead. The one I was familiar with anyway. Judson Phillips held it down and Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span in front of an unsuspecting audience.
Sarah Palin didn't give a tea party speech last night. She gave a partisan Republican address. It was a purely political speech designed to position her for a presidential run in 2012 or 2016. Period. She wasn't there to celebrate the organic nature of a movement she had nothing to do with creating. She was there to co-opt the name and claim the brand as hers. And she did.
Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/02/people-movement-that-never-was.html
And don't miss what The Rude One has to say about her.
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Don't Read This
Don't read this. The corporatist media don't want you to know about it. It's only the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, yet they all but ignore it. And when they do pay attention, it's to create a false narrative that what is now accepted science isn't accepted science. It's to create a controversy where there isn't one.
Imagine if the greatest threat humanity has ever faced got even a fraction of the attention given to the small band of extremist idiots who wasted hundreds of dollars each, over the weekend, to delude themselves that they are brave heroes on engaged in a noble cause. Extremist idiots who, themselves, deny the existence of the greatest cause humanity has ever faced.
Keep reading: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/014773.php
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A question for all you teabagging senators.
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h/t Dick
Bedfellows. Congress in action or inaction.
Shocking news: The party of 'no' gave a chilly reception Monday to President Barack Obama's invitation to discuss health care in a bipartisan, televised setting later this month, part of the White House effort to revive the stalled legislation.
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HHS investigating Blue Cross of California for raising individual rates by as much as 39 percent.
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Wow, for once, I agree with Meghan McCain:
Congressman Tancredo went on TV and he was the first opening speaker and he said, 'People who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House whose name is Barack Hussein Obama.' And then he went on to say that people at the convention should have to pass literacy tests in order to be able to vote in this country, which is the same thing that happened in the 50's to prevent African Americans from voting. It's innate racism and I think it's why young people are turned off by this movement. And I'm sorry, but revolutions start with young people, not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English.
You can watch what McCain had to say about Palin here.
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... That's Tim Tebow's mom and that's the Focus on the Fags Family ad that came out during the second half of yesterday's Super Bowl. If you don't have strong feelings about gay rights or abortion or any of the hot button issues on which evangelicals stake their reputations and build their platforms, then it's hard to see what the big deal was about.
It tried to fit in with the typically humorous commercials (all the way down to Tebow's mom being the victim of a CGI'd takedown a la Betty White) and, depending on your degree of social polarization, it succeeded. So, what's the big deal? It didn't feature James Dobson thundering from his bully pulpit promising fire and brimstone on those who have abortions. In fact, the word "abortion" was never mentioned.
So what was the big deal?
http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-dat.html
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Maybe Republicans should have to take a civics test
There's a key point in danger of being lost in all the he-said-he-said froth over what Congressional Republicans were told in the hours after the failed Christmas attack: none of the GOP leaders disputes that an Obama aide informed them that suspect Umar Abdulmutallab was being held in FBI custody. ... The key question is whether the Republicans, who have been hammering President Obama in recent weeks over the decision to hold and try Abdulmutallab in the criminal justice system, should have known that the fact that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody meant that he would have been read his Miranda rights.
I'll bet that of all of the Constitutional rights Americans enjoy, that most people can make a passable attempt to recite their Miranda rights. But when it comes to Republican congresscritters, I guess not.
John Bolton (R-Warmonger) once again calls for attacking Iran.
Best Western drops Beck over his 'Obama = unAmerican' comments:
"Needless to say, I'm not alone in this outrage- a petition for this incident is already circling the web via Media Matters. Combined with the signatures on the pre-existing petition from ColorOfChange.org and the efforts of Stopbeck.com, Beck's remaining sponsors are under serious pressure to sever their ties to him. Best Western dropped sponsorship Friday (2/5/10), making them the 101st sponsor he's lost to this kind of speech."
