‘help wanted – seeking: president of the united states’

Eclectablog: ….you will need to accomplish the following tasks:

* Freeze pay of highest-paid White House staff on first day of office while maintaining good workplace morale.

* Make federal government more transparent by opening up records of previous administrations and instructing staff to be more amenable to Freedom of Information Act requests. This should be accomplished no later than the day after assuming office.

* Sign Executive Order to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This should be done by no later than the third day in office and should be done despite the fact that Congress will not allow you to actually accomplish this by denying any funding for it.

* Sign Executive Order to prohibit torture. This should be done by no later than the third day in office.

* By no later than the tenth day in office, sign legislation into law that requires fair pay regardless of gender, race or age.

* During the third week in office, direct the Secretary of Interior to cancel 77 oil and gas company leases on federal lands that were authorized by the previous office holder’s administration.

* By the end of the third week in office, sign an Executive Order backing the use of union labor for large federal construction projects.

* During the early part of the second month of your term, you shall begin the process of repealing or modifying a federal law protecting health workers who refuse to treat patients for reason of “conscience”. This process shall culminate no later than two years into your term, plus or minus two months.

(Much more at this link)

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This is magnificent – please go here to read the full post. And pass it around!!

so, do the teabaggers love huckabee now?

I held my nose and visited a site jammed with birthers tonight, just to see if they all now worship Mike Huckabee.

Err…..

“Do you think maybe that Huck is off his meds?”

“Maybe he’s trying to provide some balance here by currying favor with the “Birther” vote.”

“Huck said: “And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American.” If he MEANT to say: “…having grown up in Indonesia,” then the rest of his comment would have made no sense?”

“I think Huckabee blew it big time. You can’t say: He grew up in Kenya. Had a Kenyan father. Had a Kenyan grandfather. And there was Mau-Mau involvement. And that’s why he hates the British. Because of the Kenyan connection. Because he grew up in Kenya. And then try to recover with “Slip of the tongue. I meant Indonesia.” Huckabee clearly thinks that Obama grew up in Kenya. He’s a moron.”

“Not that Huckabee ever had a chance at being President, but his “misspeak” dooms him to a life as a FOX network employee.”

“Huckleberry needs to shut his pie-hole. I wish he’d go away.”

“Well, as Dante said in his poetry,
There ain’t nothing half so painful as having a
really ignorant cracker on your side in politics.
Hell, it’s tough enough in baseball.
That old Italian guy knew Huckabee, apparently.”

“This will be pretty damaging for Huckabee. It can’t be passed off as a simple misspeak because he elaborated with the comments about growing up in Kenya forming Obama’s attitudes toward the Brits. Definitely a significant negative for Huck.”

“There’s a sin worse than ignorance, and that’s not wanting to improve upon the situation.”

“Had he said “Indonesia” he’d be clear. If he said “Cambodia” he misspoke. But Kenya, he’s toast.”

“It will be interesting to watch the media reaction. What would happen if Gov. Palin had made such a mistake?”

😆

“This looks almost like an attempt to tar the whole GOP as stupid.”

And one guy posted this pic:

That worked well Mike, hey? Even the nutjobs think you’re a nutjob.

😕

game, set & match!

Information here

man in a hurry

President Barack Obama passes staff from the White House Military Office as he jogs along the Colonnade of the White House following an event that ran late in the State Dining Room, March 1, 2011. The departing officers and members of their families were lined up to take departure pictures with the President in Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

there are no words….

I was going to ignore this, but maybe there’s no harm in this bile being highlighted?? And this man is supposedly a ‘rational’ and ‘moderate’ Republican?

CBS: In a radio interview on Monday, potential 2012 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee repeatedly made false claims that President Obama grew up in Kenya.

A spokesman for Huckabee later told CBS News that the former Arkansas governor misspoke.

….Huckabee made reference to Mr. Obama’s “having grown up in Kenya” and spoke of him growing up “with a Kenyan father and grandfather” – despite the fact that Mr. Obama grew up largely in Hawaii and barely knew his father at all.

In responding to Malzberg’s question about whether “we deserve to know more about this man” and his origins, Huckabee responded that “I would love to know more.”

“What I know is troubling enough,” Huckabee said of the president. “And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American.” The exchange was circulated by liberal media watchdog Media Matters.

A spokesman for Huckabee later said the former governor “meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia.”

“When the Governor mentioned he wanted to know more about the President, he wasn’t talking about the President’s place of birth – the Governor believes the President was born in Hawaii,” Hogan Gidley said in a statement to CBS News….

…There is no evidence that the president grew up in Kenya, and various reports show he spent little time with his father over the course of his life… Mr. Obama has visited Kenya only three times, most recently in 2006. According to the president’s 1995 memoir “Dreams from My Father,” he visited Kenya for the first time in the late 1980s after his father was already dead.

…When asked if he would bring up the “birther” issue with Mr. Obama in a presidential debate, Huckabee expressed doubts. “The only reason I’m not as confident that there’s something about the birth certificate, Steve, is because I know the Clintons,” Huckabee said. “And believe me, they had lots of investigators out on him, and I’m convinced if there was anything that they could have found on that, they would have found it, and I promise they would have used it.”

Read more here

From Media Matters – on the claim that Huckabee ‘misspoke’ and that he meant to say Indonesia:

“Here are just a couple reasons why subbing “Indonesia” for “Kenya” renders Huckabee’s entire conversation with Malzberg nonsensical (well, more so):

* It’s unclear how growing up in Indonesia supposedly gave Obama a unique view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya (and resulting deep-seated hatred for British people).  *Regardless of where he grew up, Obama still did not grow up “with” his Kenyan father. As revealed in the autobiography Huckabee has clearly never read, Obama only met his father once, when he was ten. *And once again: it’s very hard to buy that this was simply a misstatement, because he repeated it twice.

Keep digging, Mike.”

Stephen Stromberg (Washington Post): ….Huckabee says he misspoke when he repeatedly claimed that President Obama grew up in Kenya and that this might inform the president’s views on foreign affairs. And the depressing thing is that Huckabee’s probably telling the truth.

…This episode demonstrates something more pernicious than the existence of one more Obama conspiracy theorist. It demonstrates the extent to which references to birther-like mythology – and its less-offensive-but-still-pretty-absurd cousin, the Dinesh D’Souza-inspired speculations about Obama’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial worldview” – have become embedded in conservative political culture.

It demonstrates the extent to which Republican politicians feel the need to indulge the portions of the GOP base for whom Obama’s “Kenyan” roots matter – whether by asking for his birth certificate or merely suggesting that this man, who has in many ways lived a quintessentially American life, is nothing like the rest of us in some fundamental, worryingly foreign way.

the president & the presidents

President Barack Obama meets with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the State Dining Room of the White House, March 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

behind the scenes: motown at the white house

Here you go Hopefruit 😉

the ease with which they lie ….. part 25,275

The Raw Story: Fox News has been making a lot of hay about one of their reporters allegedly being “punched” by a protester in Madison, Wisconsin. Turns out, that didn’t happen.

Mike Tobin, reporting from amid the massive demonstration on Friday, claimed that one of the protesters “punched” him in the arm. In another broadcast, he claimed a man threatened to break his neck.

In both cases, supporting evidence for these claims was not broadcast — yet still, Tobin’s reports have been widely cited across conservative blogs that seem eager to depict union workers as hateful and violent.

What’s worse, Tobin’s allegation that he was assaulted might have slipped past without rebuttal were it not for a camera-equipped bystander, who captured the scene.

Turns out, someone merely touched his shoulder, as evidenced in the video below. The incident he claimed was a “punch” could instead be described as a pat, at most.

More here

poor steve

Greg Sargent (Washington Post): The other day, the Associated Press reported that House Republicans were going easy on their own budgets for staff and salaries even as they hack away at the budgets of many federal agencies.

Along these lines, constituents in Arkansas’ third district recently had a question for their new Congressman, freshman GOP Rep. Steve Womack. If Republicans are cutting the budget, why not cut proportionally into their own salaries and benefits, too? A local Arkansas paper reports that Womack gave his constituents an interesting answer:

More than one person asked Womack, during and right after the public meeting at the Northwest Arkansas Convention Center in Springdale, why members of Congress couldn’t trim their own salary and health benefits as part of the many other domestic programs facing cuts.

Womack responded … “My income is $174,000 a year. I do make a sizable amount, more than many people in this room, but I am not a wealthy person.”

Full article here

‘obama threaded the needle in egypt’

Robert Shrum (The Week): Judge the president’s diplomacy by the results — not by the critics

A president can bluster or blunder this country into a world of trouble. That was the tale of most of the past decade. But with skill and judgment, with a nuanced combination of restraint and initiative, Barack Obama has just zigged and zagged his way through a crisis in Egypt in which he successfully secured American interests and ideals.

The 18 days in Tahrir Square now belong to history. Soon enough, what happened behind the scenes in Cairo and Washington will be recounted in some insider-infused first draft. But in an age of impatience, some rushed to conclude that Obama’s administration had bungled the crisis or caught up to the revolution a little too late. The truth, like Obama’s diplomacy, is more subtle.

…in carefully modulated fits and starts, the president, the Pentagon, and his national security team facilitated a more democratic dispensation in Egypt while simultaneously achieving the best that was possible for the United States and its allies.

…That Obama had got it wrong was the instant verdict of commentators; see how ineffectual he is, how little influence the U.S. has. The next day Mubarak resigned…

…Obama understands that diplomacy is not one-dimensional … the saga is unfinished there, across the region, and for the United States. But the results so far are not bad. In 18 days, the White House advanced our values, protected our vital interests, and demonstrated the power of America’s reach and influence.

Full article here

(Don’t know how I missed this article, but better late than never!)