Actress Rosario Dawson laughs as President Obama delivers remarks at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner
David Arquette
Secretary Of Defense nominee Leon Panetta
Archive for April, 2011
30
Apr
11
oh, facts are pesky things….
Nate Silver (NYT): Earlier this week, Ezra Klein of The Washington Post published a column titled “Obama Revealed: A Moderate Republican”….he argued that the president’s policy preferences in some key areas, including health care, resemble those of a Republican from the early 1990s….
….I’m a big fan of Mr. Klein’s work, but I don’t find his thesis persuasive in this case … It’s fairly easy to demonstrate that Mr. Obama’s policy preferences resemble those of a typical Democrat in today’s Congress … A system called DW-Nominate rates each member of Congress on a scale from negative 1 (very liberal on economic issues) to positive 1 (very conservative) based on their roll-call votes. The system also creates a score for each president based on cases in which the outcome he desired from a vote in Congress was clearly articulated.
According to the system, the score for the average Democrat in the 111th Congress was -0.382, although there was a fairly significant range, from very liberal Democrats like Dennis J. Kucinich (-0.612) and Barbara Lee (-0.743) to moderates like Heath Shuler (-0.100) and Ben Nelson (-0.030).
Mr. Obama’s score of -0.399 was very close to the average, splitting the difference between his party’s liberal and moderate wings….
Mr. Obama’s positions are also broadly in line with the median Democratic voter. According to polling conducted by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm, 70 percent of Democrats think Mr. Obama’s positions are “about right”, and those who disagreed were about as likely to say he was too conservative (12 percent) as too liberal (14 percent).
Read full article here – and more here at The People’s View
Thank you Dorothy 😉
New York Times: It has been the deadliest natural disaster on American soil since Hurricane Katrina. But the government response to the tornadoes that devastated the South last week has, at least in the first few days, drawn little of the searing criticism aimed at federal agencies back in
In numerous interviews in the low-income Alberta neighborhood here on Friday, shortly before President Obama and other officials toured what is now an unimaginable wasteland, residents said they had few complaints about the handling of the aftermath by state, local and federal agencies.
Many expressed mild frustration about limits on their access to damaged homes, the pace of road clearing and power restoration, and traffic jams caused by roadblocks and nonfunctioning signals. But most agreed that government and charitable agencies were coping as effectively as feasible with immediate demands for shelter, food, water and medical care, along with search and rescue operations.
“It ain’t like Katrina,” said Darius Rutley, 21, whose house in Alberta was obliterated. “We’re getting help.”
Axavier Wilson, 20, who survived the storm in a closet as the rest of his house blew away, said he had been impressed that both Gov. Robert Bentley and Mr. Obama had visited rapidly. “I don’t think there’s much to mumble and grumble about,” he said. “Everybody feels secure about getting help.”
There was a single cry of “Help us” on Friday from a man who watched the president’s motorcade roll through a treeless lunar landscape, but hardly the wails of stunned desperation shouted from New Orleans rooftops…..
Full article here
Thank you Blackwaterdog
30
Apr
11
ah, wonderful wisconsin
😆
30
Apr
11
‘an epic punking’
Stonekettle Station: Why? I hear you cry. Why oh why, Jim?
Why? Help us understand. Explain it to us, Oh Great Wizard of Stonekettle Station.
Why didn’t Obama release his actual no-foolin’ long-form double-platinum birth certificate before now? If he was going to do it, why wait this long? Why didn’t he just produce the damned thing when all the hoopla started?
…He could have saved the GOP tens of thousands of man-hours lost shaking the bushes for the mythical snipe. The Republicans could have solved the financial crisis, turned poor people into tasty Jesus flavored gasoline, and made Karl Rove CEO of NPR by now if they had not had to deal with the code-orange security threat posed by the National Obama Birth Certificate Crisis.
He could have saved Glenn Beck untold gallons of salty crocodile tears – the poor man is so dehydrated now that he may never be able to sell gold again and he’ll have to leave FoxNews –and who then will protect our nation from the impending Nazi Illuminati New World Order Nazi Muslim Brotherhood Caliphate of Socialist Nazi Doom? Also, Nazis.
Obama could have saved The Donald millions, instead the tycoon was forced to spend his fortune on private investigators and lawyers and air-time, talk about forced redistribution of wealth. By the time Obama dropped the punchline, Trump was reduced to getting his hair weed-wacked by the same toad licking dog groomer Orly Taitz uses.
And he could have aborted the birthers before they ever drew their first gin and tinfoil scented breath. Obama could have given the entire Tea Party movement one big D&C, scraping them off the moist fecund uterine wall of America politics like the twenty year old girlfriend of a conservative Senator in a Costa Rican “health spa.”
Yes, Obama could have done those things.
But he didn’t.
Why?
If you have to ask why, why would Obama let all those people twist in the wind for so long, then you obviously don’t recognize an epic punking when you see one.
Read the full magnificent post here
Thank you Betsey 😉
30
Apr
11
tonight’s the night
President Obama at the White House Correspondents Awards Dinner, May, 2009. (Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
Live coverage tonight begins at 9:40 ET on the White House website
C-Span’s coverage starts at 6:45 ET with the arrival of the guests – here (thank you UT Austin Liberal)
I see Jake Tapper is getting an award for ‘excellence in presidential coverage’ – seriously.
This photo on the White House Correspondents’ Association website always cracks me up:
😆
30
Apr
11
good grief
(Thank for the video link, TeamObama)
The Boston Globe: Expected Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney tread on socially dangerous ground last night as he talked about the need to “hang” a misery index around the neck of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president.
Romney almost immediately caught himself, with the English major declaring “metaphorically” speaking, but the mix of nervous laughter with applause indicated at least some in the audience realized its potency.
Romney said: “You remember during the Ronald Reagan/Jimmy Carter debates? That Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the ‘misery index,’ and that he hung that around Jimmy Carter’s neck, and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well, we’re going to have to hang the ‘Obama Misery Index’ around his neck. And, I’ll tell you, the fact that you’ve got people in this country, really squeezed, with gasoline getting so expensive, with commodities getting so expensive, families are having a hard time making ends meet. So, we’re going to have to talk about that, and housing foreclosures and bankruptcies and higher taxation. We’re going to hang him — uh, so to speak, metaphorically — with, uh, with, uh — you have to be careful these days, I’ve learned that, with an Obama Misery Index.”
A video of the remarks posted on YouTube cuts off at, “you have to be careful,” without the final 10 words.
2007
****
Thank you Kelly
The Obama Diary 
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