hey, a rant!

Okay, so we all know about the decision of Kathleen Sebelius to block the Plan B morning-after pill from being sold over the counter to young teens.

Today the President was asked if he supported the decision, and he said he did.

So, everyone has their own position on this – some back the move, some are outraged by it.

It’s, obviously, a hugely important debate, and once you exclude the voices of the nutjobs whose ultimate fantasy is to control what women do with their bodies, the genuine opinions on both sides are fascinating to hear and read – not least for someone like me who is torn on the issue simply because children are involved. And that’s what, say, 12 or 13-year-old girls are: children. Just because they can have babies at that stage of their lives doesn’t make them adults. When I was a 12 or 13-year-old girl I had significantly less sense than a lump of wood, so, even then, would have laughed at the notion that I was an ‘adult woman’ capable of making big decisions.

Any way, some of the anger about this decision is coming from genuine people who just think it’s seriously wrong.

But then there are commentators like Rebecca Traister at Salon.

I know, I know, it’s ridiculous to give any thought to a post that appears on Salon these days, it’s a long, long time since you could take the site seriously. This, after all, is the home of my most loved comedian, the increasingly hysterical Greenwald creature, who has just become a caricature of a caricature of a caricature of himself, “OMG! I SO TOTALLY HATE OBAMA” the gist of what he writes all day, every day. Cutting edge journalism. And then there’s the embarrassment that is Arianna Huffington-wannabe Joan Walsh, not to mention Gene Lyons who so stylishly compared Melissa Harris-Perry to the KKK.

If they just renamed the place The Anti-Obama Diary they might get a few more hits. Crikey, at least us ‘Obots’ are honest about our affections, but Salon still bills itself as progressively righteous. As the young people say: LOL.

Any way, Rebecca Traister posted a fairly extraordinary article on Salon in response to the Plan B decision, which was a whole lot more about releasing some of her pent-up loathing of the President than it was about the actual issue.

The headline: “Obama’s woman problem – The president shamefully uses his daughters to justify limiting the healthcare options of America’s young women.”

Eh?

“When will Barack Obama learn how to talk thoughtfully about women, women’s health and women’s rights?”

(Funny, I thought he spoke pretty thoughtfully about women’s rights as early as his first month in office when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. But, never mind. Maybe Rebecca was still recovering from the pain of seeing him inaugurated, so missed the historic occasion? And she probably skipped his appointments of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court too, that level of woman-hating was way too much to take.)

“Obama pooh-poohed the findings of the FDA, which had concluded that Plan B pills posed no medical hazard.”

Really?

This is what the President said today (see his full remarks here):

“…. as I understand it, the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore, should be able …. to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect …. It has been deemed safe by the FDA. Nobody is challenging that. When it comes to 12-year-olds or 13-year-olds, the question is can we have confidence that they would potentially use Plan B properly. And her judgment was that there was not enough evidence that this potentially could be used improperly in a way that had adverse health effects on those young people.”

So, no, the President didn’t poo-poo the findings of the FDA at all – on the contrary, he said that “nobody is challenging” their decision to deem the product safe. His argument, which was crystal clear – whether you agreed with it or not – was that there were concerns that “12-year-olds or 13-year-olds …. would potentially” use it “improperly in a way that had adverse health effects on those young people”.

Hey, by all means, dispute his argument, but why completely misrepresent what he said?

Next.

“But part of what was most disturbing about Obama’s statement was his reliance on language that reveals his paternalistic approach to women and their health. “As the father of two daughters,” Obama told reporters, “I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine.”

So, a father of 13 and 10-year-old girls expressing concern about their welfare is “disturbing”? And suggests his approach to women and their health is “paternalistic”?

Really?

Call me weird, I just thought he sounded like a father who cares about the welfare of his young daughters and girls of their age. Is that a bad thing now? Is it way more progressive for a father to say to his 13 and 10-year-old girls, ‘hey, go get pregnant, there’s always Plan B!’.

“…. as an American, I think it is important for my president not to turn to paternalistic claptrap and enfeebling references to the imagined ineptitude and irresponsibility of his daughters …. Obama is just laying down some Olde Fashioned Dad Sense …. he diminishes an issue of gender equality, sexual health and medical access. Recasting this debate as an episode of “Father Knows Best” reaffirms hoary attitudes about young women and sex that had their repressive heyday in the era whence that program sprang.”

Please forgive my language: what a load of complete ****ing bullshit!

I’ve been a fiery feminist all my friggin’ life, but this kind of crap is cringeworthy and just gives ammunition to enemies of women’s rights – it’s pitiful, lamentable, pathetic, whingy shit. Take your pick.

“….the imagined ineptitude and irresponsibility of his daughters….”

His daughters are 13 and 10!!!!! They’re not inept or irresponsible, and he never implied any such thing – they’re not “young women”, they’re CHILDREN!! That is why their father is protective of them, it’s what good, loving fathers do. Father might not always know best, but fathers loving and caring for their young daughters doesn’t make them enemies of women, it makes them decent human beings and great friggin’ Dads.

“When he says that he wants to “apply common sense” to questions of young women’s access to emergency contraception, he is telegraphing his discomfort with the idea of young women’s sexual agency, or more simply, with the idea of them having sex lives at all.”

Oh God. It’s hard to know where to start here, and it’s certainly hard to compete with her psychoanalysis of the President.

Again, Traister chooses to categorize children, as the law regards them, as “young women”.

Help me out here? Traister is saying that the President experiences “discomfort” at the notion of children “having sex”. Children maybe as young as 13 and 10? Does that make him a woman-hating freak? No, it makes him sound a bit like my late Dad, and every normal loving Dad. You know, the ones who become clinically depressed when their daughters first start using lipstick. Does that make them woman-hating monsters? No, it just confirms they are human beings who don’t want their beloved little girls to grow up. And the mere thought of their girls having sex nigh on drives them over the edge. Why? Again, because they’re human!

Which is why we love them, because they actually care. Is it more progressive to be a ‘deadbeat’ Dad who couldn’t give a shit if his 13-year-old daughter is risking becoming pregnant? Most daughters, especially fatherless ones, crave ‘Olde Fashioned Dad Sense’ – that kind of love is worth the price of gold.

So, who is the oddity here: the President or Traister?

“Moreover, Obama’s invocation of his role as a father is an insult to the commitments and priorities of those on the other side of this issue. Are we to believe that those who support the increased availability of emergency contraception do not have daughters? That if they do, they care less about those daughters than Barack Obama does about his? And that if they do not, they cannot possibly know better than a father of daughters what is best for young women?”

Right, at this point Traister has mislaid the plot. Completely.

By citing his love and concern for his daughters, the President was pissing on those who don’t have daughters?

Really?

And he insinuated that he cares for his daughters more than any other parent cares for theirs?

Seriously?

Hey, call me cynical, but methinks Traister heard what she wanted to hear today, her misrepresenting of the President’s comments laughably deceitful.

Then she went on to detail the President’s varying positions on late-term abortions over the years, just to beef up her argument that he doesn’t like women much.

You know, I truly envy Rebecca Traister’s glib and easy stance on “reproductive freedom”. She’s so lucky that it’s all so uncomplicated for her. For some of the rest of us it’s way more challenging than that, we actually have to stop and think. Some of us are passionately pro-choice, but are uneasy about late-term abortions. No, that doesn’t mean we hate women, or that we’re Rick Perry-ites, it just means we think about these things, unlike the ideologically pure, for whom every issue is a bumper sticker, rather than something that makes you pause.

Traister, though, excelled when she turned her attention to the President’s view of his wife.

“…. the president “often points out that he is surrounded by strong females at home,” an argument that not only mimics an old saw about how being henpecked by women is equivalent to respecting them, but reflects a dynamic as old as patriarchal power itself.”

Interesting. Traister assumes that the President saying he is surrounded by “strong females at home” automatically means he is “henpecked” …. does this not say a whole lot more about her assumptions than those of the President? Why does she take it that “strong females at home” automatically equals “henpecked”? Heck, maybe it just means….. they’re “strong females”?

Does Traister, you can’t but wonder, have a problem with the First Lady?

She reckons the President’s comments on The View in 2010 about his wife watching the show suggested she “just doesn’t have a head for news delivered by anyone other than Elisabeth Hasselbeck”.

Really? He suggested that? He implied his wife was an airhead?! Truly? And he’s never, ever pointed out that his wife watches this stuff for light relief, just to escape the relentless bile directed towards him on all the other channels, that she is Princeton and Harvard-educated, is way smarter than him, that she is his rock and the first person he seeks advice from – on a personal and political level? And next in line is his longest term advisor, Valerie Jarrett – a mere woman! Yep, the President is a misogynist.

“….  no one seems to have told him …. that the best way to address a question of women’s health and rights is probably not by making it about his role as a father.”

Really? Why is being a father to two young girls so inconsequential when discussing issues like these?

Why is a “role as a father” something not to be mentioned?

When he cites his daughters, in an attempt to explain how he is emotionally involved in an issue, he is exploiting them.

When he doesn’t ‘humanize’ an issue like this, he is an aloof, professorial robot.

Rebecca Traister’s Salon article was a whole heap of steaming crap, of the very worst dishonest and disingenuous kind.

Why? Who knows.

But, by the way, she was a diehard Hillary supporter in 2008 and really has never forgiven Barack Obama for beating her pick.

And that is what this is all about – along with a brand of demented feminism that regards with contempt any role, however benevolent, fathers try to play in their daughters’ lives.

Why did I even draw attention to her pathetic article? Good question!

I just did it to try and shine a little light, again, on the agendas of the President’s most bitter detractors on the so-called left.

The thing is, they sneer at us ‘Obots’, but at least we’re honest about where we stand – these people are deceitful to their core. There’s usually an agenda. As there was with Rebecca Traister’s piece in Salon – all she succeeded in doing was unveiling her bitterness, again.

By all means, while sticking to the facts, attack the President for his position on Plan B …. but attack him for his relationship with his wife and daughters? Ah, that’s when the professional left becomes indistinguishable from Limbaugh and Co.

And their core is just as ugly.

exposed

87%

So, how many articles have we read recently that claimed the President is losing African American support? No, not the support of Maxine Waters, Cornel West and Tavis Smiley – African Americans living in the real world.

I know, too many to count.

Take GOPolitico. For months they’ve promoted the line that the President is disproportionately losing Jewish support, much to the amusement of serious commentators – because the polls repeatedly contradicted their claims. (See here, here and here)

That didn’t work too well, so now they’re pushing the ‘African Americans Desert Obama’ line.

In a piece today they talk about the President’s “relationship with African-Americans (being) complicated from the beginning by questions about whether a mixed-race senator born in Hawaii was “authentically black” enough to win their support”.

Seriously, almost three years after he was elected, GOPolitico is still wondering if he’s black enough. (The author, who has written three similar pieces in the last month, is African American, so that’s okay).

The most critical quotes in the piece are from two ‘sources’ “speaking under condition of anonymity”. GOPolitico really do love their anonymous sources, especially when they give them quotes that neatly match their agenda. Whether they are real people or not, hey, who knows?

But if their thesis is true, that African-Americans are rising up against the President, how come they need to quote people anonymously? Surely if there was that much anger out there they could find someone other than Waters willing to lash out publicly?

The problem?

The President isn’t losing the support of African Americans living in the real world – in fact, that support is increasing.

GOPolitico and most other outlets – including supposedly ‘progressive’ ones – love quoting Gallup polls when their findings aren’t good for the President.

The latest Gallup poll? They’re not mentioning that much.

Why?

Because it shows that African American support for the President is up five points to 87%.

Link

Considering how the struggling economy has impacted on his figures across most groups, and bearing in mind how African Americans suffer disproportionately in terms of unemployment, that 87% figure is remarkable.

But still we’re told that Waters, West, Smiley and Co speak for African Americans. Well, clearly they don’t for 87% of them.

Just like that other media darling, Dan Choi, doesn’t speak for the entire gay community, most of whom appreciate the work this administration has done – and is trying to do – to promote equality.

That GOPolitico produces this kind of dishonesty is, of course, no surprise at all – it’s their area of expertise. But, as we all know, the Firebagger crew – especially at Salon – are relentlessly spreading the lie too. Rather than mentioning that 87%, they persist in claiming that Waters, West and Smiley speak for African Americans.

Of course, Salon’s Joan Walsh doesn’t have much time for that 87%:

April 2011

After all, only those who oppose the President represent the base, right?

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I see Gene Lyons at Salon has described Melissa Harris-Perry as “a left-wing Michele Bachmann, an attractive woman seeking fame and fortune by saying silly things on cable TV”. That was the level of his response to her thoughtful article on white ‘liberal’ racism. “A photo negative of KKK racial thought,” he wrote.

See the Reid Report on the article here

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And see this post by Flaming Emilia

‘voting machines can be hacked by remote control’

Brad Friedman (Salon): ….. Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education …. experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

The new findings echo long-ignored concerns about e-voting vulnerabilities  ….. “This is a national security issue,” says Roger Johnston, leader of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. “It should really be handled by the Department of Homeland Security.”

…. Almost all voters in states like Georgia, Maryland, Utah and Nevada, and the majority of voters in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Texas, will vote on DREs on Election Day in 2012 … Voters in major municipalities such as Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh will also use DREs of the type hacked by the Argonne National Lab.

…. In what John Warner (VAT) describes as “probably the most relevant attack for vote tampering,” the intruder would allow the voter to make his or her selections but when the voter actually attempts to push the Vote Now button, which records the voter’s final selections to the system’s memory card, he says, “we will simply intercept that attempt …. change a few of the votes,” and the changed votes would then be registered in the machine…..

Full article here

Thanks Tally – this is scary as hell.

a long and desolate night of bitterness…..

Toon from AngryBlackLady

Well, this snippet of news today made my heart sing….

Formerly Popular Sites that Are Dying:

Salon.com

“One of the oldest online magazines, Salon.com, has sunk like a rock lately, losing about one million regular visitors over the past year, per Compete.com, a 37 percent decline.”

37 percent! And Salon chuckles at the drop in the President’s approval ratings!

Poor Joan ‘I resent African Americans who say THEY are THE BASE’ Walsh. There she was on Twitter tonight, frantically dismissing the story because she said it came from Fox. Except the stats quoted weren’t from Fox, they were from Compete.com, as some truly heartless Twitterers pointed out.

Oh dear, looks like Salon’s Greenwald-fuelled firebaggery isn’t paying off.

Oh, speaking of Greenwald.

There was a time I avoided reading him, in a life’s-way-too-short kind of way, the guy’s interminable hysteria and bitterness zzzzz-inducing. Truly, the king of vitriol had become a parody of himself. There were times – and forgive me for this – that I actually felt sorry for him. He made Dan Choi seem like a well-balanced, chilled-out kind of dude.

Now, though, I read him occasionally because the entertainment levels are just fantastic!

Yes, it usually takes him about 10,000 words to make a single point, when really five would do: “I hate Obama, like totally”. But there are so many laugh-out-loud moments in his tirades it’s like you’re reading The Onion.

Today he was attacking Michael Tomasky for his “this may be a truly great foreign-policy president in the making” post on the Daily Beast (here), while also sneering at Ezra Klein and Steve Benen for pieces they had written recently that acknowledged the President’s achievements and the depth of opposition and obstruction he faces.

Greenwald’s narcissism, as we know, won’t tolerate any one disagreeing with his point of view, and the fella pretty much needs to be sedated when supposed fellow ‘progressives’ (*) refuse to join him in spitting bile all over the President. So, we can expect more of these ‘Oh My God! Tomasky, Klein and Benen are, like, totally brainwashed Obot sheeple, besotted with the exotic Dear Leader’ tantrums. Lots more.

(* Greenwald is not and has never been a ‘progressive’ – see his views on immigration below. He’s a part-time Libertarian, but generally this privileged white boy sits on the sidelines and sneers at the efforts of any elected representative who tries to change things for the better, even if, thanks to the political system, that change can only be incremental.)

The highlight of today’s screeching session?

“Gadaffi certainly wasn’t worse than Saddam.”

No, seriously, that’s what he said (I won’t link his excrement, just trust me). So, Gadaffi tortured and murdered marginally fewer folk than Saddam, so he’s a fluffy harmless Obama-persecuted bunny?

Hey Glenn, tell that to this Libyan kid, I’m sure it’ll comfort him enormously:

(Sky News, August 25)

(What? It’s tacky to use a child in an argument? Okay, but tell that to Glenn ‘Obama slaughters babies’ Greenwald).

We can only hope a brighter day will come for that boy, and all Libyans. If it does, as Tomasky (no friend of the President) argued, it will be partly because of the President’s response to the uprising in the country.

But, Greenwald is still insisting that President Obama’s foreign policy is as morally depraved as Dick Cheney’s. Ah, but remember when Cheney’s name was celebrated around that part of the world? No? Okay.

But why, exactly, has Greenwald upped his vitriol?

It could be that he sees no credible GOP candidate emerging who could beat the President next year. Let’s face it, his beloved Gary Johnson and Ron Paul have as much chance of winning the GOP nomination as Bernie Sanders.

Or maybe it’s the President’s “humane immigration policy” (Steve Benen) that has incensed him.

After all, this is the King of the Progressives who wrote:

“….illegal immigrants have poured into the United States by the millions … The parade of evils caused by illegal immigration is widely known, and it gets worse every day. In short, illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.“

“There already is a “closed sign on the border” when it comes to illegal immigration. It’s called the law. The problem is that the “closed sign” isn’t being enforced because the Federal Government, which has its interfering, power-hungry hands in virtually everything else, has abdicated its duty in one of the very few areas where it was actually meant to be: border security.”

No, honest, that wasn’t Rush Limbaugh, it was Greenwald (see here)

Note the aggression and venom in the language. No one, I think, would argue that illegal immigration isn’t an issue that has to be dealt with – hopefully with a revived DREAM Act – but a “parade of evils”? What? People, often desperate for a new and better life for their families, who enter America illegally, are a “parade of evils”?

How progressive!

But look, maybe it’s Salon’s sinking traffic and the firebaggers’ funding going through the floor (here and here) (remember, he once profited handsomely from his collaboration with Jane ‘Grover Norquist’s best buddy’ Hamsher), that has driven him over the edge?

Who knows?

But….

“One of the oldest online magazines, Salon.com, has sunk like a rock lately, losing about one million regular visitors over the past year, per Compete.com, a 37 percent decline.”

…. won’t lighten Glenn’s mood. Seems like fewer and fewer folk care to read his bile.

‘if rick perry is a front-runner there’s something wrong with all of us’

Alex Pareene (Salon): Rick Perry is running for president, probably…..POLITICO, the arbiter of such things, declares Perry electable!

…. The Wall Street Journal sums up the Perry message: He is the things Republicans like about Michele Bachmann plus the things some human somewhere theoretically likes about Mitt Romney …. CBS News says Perry is an immediate front-runner because he’s more palatable than Bachmann…

The GOP “establishment” prefers this evangelical nitwit with fringe tendencies to that evangelical nitwit with fringe tendencies, sure. This Dominionist purposefully evoking some of the most radical far-right movements and ideas of the last 200 years is so much more electable than this other one!

I mean, Rick Perry may be a neo-Confederate sympathizer with a recurring tendency to bring up secession, but he doesn’t look as weird in a photograph as Bachmann does, I guess.

Perry’s flirtations with neo-Confederate organizations and symbols – ably documented by Justin Elliott – are so extraordinarily reprehensible that it should immediately and permanently disqualify him from being taken seriously for national office. The Confederacy was not a bunch of generally well-meaning dudes who went a little too far, it was a gang of racist traitors who launched a bloody war to defend a monstrously unjust institution. Having neo-Confederate sympathies in America should be equivalent to supporting the reconstituted Fascist party in Italy, or worse. It should not be considered something that 50 percent of the nation should be willing to look past, or even embrace.

And if that embracing happens it’ll be in part because of a press that won’t explicitly describe a disgusting sentimental attachment to a racist, brutal regime of oppression as anything other than an acceptable ploy to pick up Southern white support.

This, of course, is not even mentioning the time Rick Perry f**king killed an innocent person …. This is the new front-runner, the man who doesn’t care that he killed an innocent person. Whee!

Full article here

****

Natasha Lennard (Salon): Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in stressing his opposition to “out of control Washington spending,” disagrees with federal subsidies to the agriculture industry. But this wasn’t always so. In fact, as a farmer himself, he embraced federal agriculture programs and personally benefited from farm subsidies to the tune of $80,000.

…. when Perry was running for the state’s agriculture commissioner position in 1990, he had strong words about the farm subsidies that had helped his 40 acre farm:

“I’ve participated in the program as a producer. My neighbors participate. I know what would happen to rural areas of Texas if these programs were discontinued. I do not support such an action,” Perry then said.

In the mid-1990s, however, Perry began to oppose the agriculture programs. Now he is firmly opposed even to federal support for using grain such as corn in the production of ethanol…

More here

farce

****

Steve Benen: …. Speaker Boehner’s budget proposal doesn’t have the votes. In the hopes of twisting a few arms, the House proceeded to take up a few measures related to — I kid you not — naming post offices. (Yes, five days before an economic catastrophe of Republicans’ making, they’re reduced to naming post offices on the House floor.)

Nearly two hours later, GOP leaders have said they still expect to hold a vote “tonight,” though that’s a time frame that could conceivably go into the morning. Democratic leaders also anticipate a vote this evening, and have told members not to leave Capitol Hill.

By most accounts, Boehner is a vote or two shy of what he needs to pass a bill … which everyone knows will then be promptly killed by the Senate. The Speaker’s argument to his caucus is that passage of his budget plan will give him greater leverage in the final round of talks, after this bill dies, but as it turns out, that’s not much of a rallying cry for a right-wing caucus that doesn’t like Boehner’s bill much anyway.

At this point, it’s also worth noting that Boehner’s hold on the Speaker’s gavel is weakening, and failure tonight, if there’s a vote, would be a stunning rebuke of his leadership by dozens of members of his own caucus.

Harry Reid’s communications director, meanwhile, explained about an hour ago, “The Senate stands ready to defeat the Boehner plan whenever House Republicans can get their act together.”

…. Update: At about 8:10 p.m., Eric Cantor’s spokesperson said the vote will occur “before tomorrow.”

More here

****

****

Joe Klein (Time): Let us not put too fine a point on it: Thursday’s House vote on Speaker John Boehner’s debt ceiling proposal is a joke. If it passes the House, Harry Reid has said it is dead on arrival in the Senate. If it somehow passes the Senate, which it won’t, President Obama will veto it. It is, therefore, a symbolic act that is wasting precious time. It follows last week’s Republican theatrics, the passage of the Cut and Demolish Act (or whatever they called it), which also was a waste of time. These are the actions of a party that has completely lost track of reality – and of a leader, John Boehner, who has lost the support of his party.

…. This has been an exhausting process – one that might have resulted in an exhilarating triumph, if the Republican party were not led by nihilists like Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist. But one senses that the President is feeling the exhaustion and frustration. He is preparing himself for the worst of all possible scenarios: the uncertainty caused by the Republican anarchy has already damaged the economy, businesses are waiting to see what the interest rates will be and therefore delaying plans to expand. That uncertainty, added to the higher oil prices caused by Arab Spring, the European Debt crisis and the Japanese earthquake could well bring us a double-dip recession.

… And so, here we are. Our nation’s economy and international reputation as the world’s presiding grownup has already been badly damaged. It is a self-inflicted wound of monumental stupidity. I am usually willing to acknowledge that Democrats can be as silly, and hidebound, as Republicans–but not this time. There is zero equivalence here. The vast majority of Democrats have been more than reasonable….

The Republicans have been willing to concede nothing. Their stand means higher interest rates, fewer jobs created and more destroyed, a general weakening of this country’s standing in the world. Osama bin Laden, if he were still alive, could not have come up with a more clever strategy for strangling our nation.

Full article here

President Obama talks with staff during a Domestic Policy Council meeting in the Oval Office, July 28 (Photo by Pete Souza)

****

Andrew Leonard (Salon): As I write these words, the U.S. House of Representatives is debating the appropriate name for a post office in Pasadena, Calif. Meanwhile, C-SPAN is running a crawl at the bottom of the screen that reads “Final Vote on Speaker Boehner’s Plan to Raise Debt Ceiling Postponed.”

And so, ludicrously, is history made. The Republican Party is on the cusp of one of the greatest self-inflicted disasters since a crack cadre of two-bit bumblers broke into the Watergate Hotel. Right now, John Boehner cannot count on enough Republican votes to pass his own debt ceiling bill….

…It is still, at this point, nearly inconceivable that Boehner’s bill could go down in flames. Because if it does, intransigent House conservatives will have handed President Obama one of the biggest victories of his term.

Here’s why: The Boehner bill is already a conservative bill that won’t pass the Senate. But if House Republicans can’t pass it on their own, they will have conclusively demonstrated that it will be impossible for them to come to agreement on any kind of compromise deal acceptable to both parties. They will have effectively declared themselves incapable of governing …. exposed as both irresponsible and incompetent.

… Washington will be a different town, and Boehner will be a neutered political leader. And those of us who lived through this period will wonder how in the world this man managed to hold the U.S. government hostage for so long, when he couldn’t even control his own party.

Full article here

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‘siroto, the nancy grace of politics’

You have to see this reply at Salon to David Siroto’s latest diatribe, it’s majestic:

The Aggressive Progressive: Sirota = The Nancy Grace of Politics. Actually, Nancy Grace’s understudy.

Really that honor goes to Glenn Greenbeck.

GG is basically Nancy Grace at this point…his entire shtick is now just exclusively Outrage Porn. Hysterical, breathless, hyperbolic, pearl-clutching Outrage Porn for the diehard core of emotionally unstable weirdos that are addicted to it.

….Here’s proof that Sirota is a fucking parasitical douchenozzle that is making a career profiting off of fomenting Obama Derangement Syndrome among so called “progressives” – back 3 days before Obama’s Inauguration, he wrote a piece of shit concern/outrage troll piece basically saying that Obama’s Presidency was a failure…NEGATIVE FOUR DAYS before the guy even came to office! I mean, holy shit! Even the entirety of the right wing waited for the guy do get sworn in before they released the hounds. Sirota couldn’t even wait that long:

Biased much? So of course he’s going to construct a wall of lies to create this false reality to contort to his own personal vendetta against the man.

I would also remind anyone (although in vain as Salon is pretty much FUBAR); whether an inbred retarded neoconfederate racist bucktoothed teabagger brandishing a mispelled racist sign on a rascal scooter, or a Mommy’s basement anarcho-nihilist Greenbeck who is also addicted to ODS Outrage Porn; the following:

Obama Derangement Syndrome is not an organizing principle or philosophy of governance.

****

The comments under these ‘Outrage Porn’ posts at Salon are always amusing. They usually start like this (from under Sirota’s post):

They all agree, ‘the Obots keep playing the race card’, and then they write stuff like this (again, all from under the Siroto post):

Who exactly is obsessed with the color of the President’s skin?

ah bless, maddow defended by ‘fragile, irrational’ fact-ignoring cheerleader

Salon: ‘Maddow feels the wrath of Obama fans‘ (Lovely, teabagger-speak!)

Natasha Lennard (Salon): Following the announcement on Friday of same sex marriage legalization in New York, Rachel Maddow made a comment on her MSNBC show – a comment which invited a backlash Maddow could not have expected …. “Obama is against what just happened” she said … the comment invited a backlash on Twitter from Obama fans, and some of the criticism was heated.

“What u said was that Obama was against what happened in NY which is inherently dishonest. U made like he lobbied against the bill,” read one tweet; “why did you lie?” demanded another; and “@maddow has Hate and Racism towards Obama!” wrote another. The playwright and journalist J. Samuel Cook tweeted, I feel sorry for all the #LGBT Americans whose victory last night in New York is overshadowed by @maddow’s and @ltdanchoi’s hatred of Obama.”

…… Maddow is not the first person to publicly criticize the president and endure the wrath of his defenders. Indeed, as our own Glenn Greenwald sees it: (Obama is evil …. bla bla bla …. Obama is a monster …. bla bla bla ….  Obama forces me to live in luxury in Brazil! …. bla bla bla  …. OMG! I hate Obama! Like SOOOOOOO much!)

Maddow may have been a too strong in her initial comments, but clearly she touched a fragile, irrational nerve in the body of Obama’s diehard supporters.

Full article here

Thanks Tulips

So, supporters of the President are fans; supporters of his opponents are, well, supporters?

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Interesting – if you’re lucky you’ll forget my past rants about GOPolitico’s ‘Click’ page, one of the most vile, scummy corners of cyberspace you’ll ever come across. I emailed them a few times asking why they allow endless racist comments appear under stories about the Obamas, but I never got a reply.

Guess who was a staff writer for Click until a couple of months ago? Yep, Natasha Lennard. (See here)

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Some of Natasha’s work in recent times:

Matt Damon disappointed in Obama – By Natasha Lennard (Politico) …. Luke Scott: Obama Wasn’t Born Here – By Natasha Lennard (Politico) ….. Obama apparently unaware what year it is – By Natasha Lennard (Salon) …. Obama mistimes his toast to the Queen – By Natasha Lennard (Salon) ….. Does Obama’s trip to the border actually matter? (The president is calling for immigration reform — but there’s reason to treat it as an empty gesture ) – By Natasha Lennard (Salon) …. Does “Dinner with Barack and Joe” break the rules? – By Natasha Lennard (Salon) …. and on and on and on

Crikey, it’s hard to tell her Salon work from her Click efforts.

Ah yes, such impartial reporting.

🙄

‘the dirty trick that launched anthony weiner’s career’

Steve Kornacki (Salon): …if this does end up being the end for Anthony Weiner’s public career, it might not be quite the injustice it seems like – at least if you know how his career began.

Twenty years ago, Weiner’s opening came when the City Council was radically expanded … One of the new districts, the 48th, would be in Southern Brooklyn. It was a neat match for Weiner … there was no incumbent, and the population was heavily Jewish. He jumped in the race.

He was not the favorite … as the all-important Sept. 10 Democratic primary approached, the consensus was that he’d come up short…

It was at this point that Weiner’s campaign decided to blanket the district with leaflets attacking his opponents. But these were no ordinary campaign attacks: They played the race card, and at a very sensitive time. They were also anonymous.

Just weeks earlier, the Crown Heights riot – a deadly, days-long affair that brought to the surface long-standing tension between the area’s black and Jewish populations – had played out a few miles away from the 48th District…

It was just days after order had been restored that Weiner’s campaign distributed its anonymous leaflets, which linked (Democrat rival) Adele Cohen – whose voters he was targeting in particular – to Jesse Jackson and David Dinkins, who was then New York’s mayor. It is hard to imagine two more-hated political figures in the 48th District at that moment … The leaflets urged voters to “just say no” to the “Jackson-Dinkins agenda” that Cohen supposedly represented. At City Hall, Dinkins held up the flier and branded it “hateful.”

….Weiner finished in first place … only after the ballots were counted did he admit that he’d been behind the leaflets, claiming that “We didn’t want the source to be confused with the message.”…

… who knows where Weiner would be today if he hadn’t made such a dark appeal to racial hostility days after a notorious riot?

…..Is it unfair if he loses his political future because of a scandal as dumb as this one? Sure. But it’s also not exactly fair that he ever made it this far.

Full article here