US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

Yep. Plus after Obama gave the one speech in DC criticizing Ryan, he has since kept quiet while everyone reported that Biden would deal with the Republicans on Medicare cuts. Even after the NY election, the White House has been quiet on Medicare rather than advocating a stance that might give at least a few of the bluedogs some backbone on the issue.

it doesn't even sound to me, from reading through all of this, that there was any actual indication that his account contacted this woman's account; some other, 3rd party twitter use she says had already been harassing her for a month posted it to her feed.

A George Will column appeared in my paper today, wherein he criticizes Obama for not complying with the War Powers Resoution in regard to our little war party in Lbya. Apart from the execrable politics and questionable judgement normally associated with GW, he's absolutely right about this.

Congress won't pressure Obama on that. The Republicans are too busy playing their hardball politics on other things. In regards to Obama announcing his new nominee for the Department of Commerce, John Bryson, the LA Times (and Washington Monthly) reported:

Shortly before Obama announced Bryson’s nomination, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office reiterated Republicans’ threat to block all administration nominations until the president acts on pending trade deals with Panama, Colombia and South Korea.

Vietnam basically set precedent for the President to do whatever the fuck he wants wrt waging wars. This will probably never change. I helped work on a blue ribbon panel report type thing about the War Powers Act and Im pretty sure it died a quiet death because nobody cares.

Dunno why no one took heed of the Mayor Jingleberries Report.

Slate had the same complaints about that RS piece on Ailes:

There are few facts in Dickinson's well-reported pile that I'd take issue with—Ailes has worked hard to establish his credentials as a malicious man, absent of scruples. But I draw the line at "fearing" Ailes or being daunted by his Fox News "power," the two searing take-home messages in Dickinson's piece. Ailes can't be a very fearsome or powerful media monster if he failed to prevent the election of a freshman senator—a black, liberal freshman senator with an, um, exotic name—to the White House!

Instead of exposing Ailes as a powerful prince of darkness, Dickinson reveals the liberal tendency to inflate mortal opponents into boogeymen. Ailes is nowhere near as mighty as Dickinson would have you believe, a theme that Gabriel Sherman whistles in his May 22 New York magazine feature about Ailes. The kingmaker's alleged magic is not working this election cycle, Sherman reports, as the wheels of Fox's 2012 "presidential-circus caravan" have "started to come off."

None of the potential presidential candidates who Ailes signed to the Fox News talent roster—Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin—has broken through in the polls, and he's not impressed with the other contenders. ("He thinks Palin is an idiot," Sherman writes.) That leaves Fox News without a horse to ride, and it leaves Ailes depressed by the realization that Obama will win re-election. The Glenn Beck supernova has come and gone, leaving Ailes to deal with a hole in his daily schedule and in his ratings book. Plus, the 71-year-old Ailes found himself dragged into the ugly Judith Regan lawsuit against News Corp., which owns Fox News, and his contract is set to expire in 2013.

"the liberal tendency to inflate mortal opponents into boogeymen"

I seem to have read this complaint on this board

<3 Morbs

a black, liberal freshman senator with an, um, exotic name

the liberal tendency to inflate mortal opponents into boogeymen

Odd that this guy thinks of himself as a liberal. But hey...

search: Phil Ochs

i could swear 99% of the content in that RS ailes piece has been reported/written elsewhere, it's quite the rehash of other people's work, without credit. anyway, i wish a reporter would ask him to explain more about why he believes some of these crazy things he believes (if he does, unless he just likes to say absurd things to see how people react)..

i also wonder if most of the people quoted who hype up how intimidating and horrible he is are.. not very bright, tbh. or not very perceptive, at least? i have watched plenty of fox and an atmosphere of fear is not what i get from it, exactly. it's more that everyone has a chip on their shoulder and are really defensive about fox. it's also really campy.

i think the real thing they should worry about is that fox's audience is the oldest for tv news and ailes' approach to programming is not attracting younger viewers and they don't get the internets, most of them (and this includes how modern political campaigns operate, primarily using that very thing, not television any more).

not to pimp my own website but if you want some new reporting on ailes lunatic paranoia!

http://gawker.com/5793012/roger-ailes-caught-spying-on-the-reporters-at-his-small+town-newspaper?tag=rogerailes
http://gawker.com/5797078/fox-news-chief-roger-ailes-cant-stop-calling-the-cops?tag=rogerailes
http://gawker.com/5800439/roger-ailes-continues-to-ruin-his-adopted-home?tag=rogerailes

it may help to read this nyer article first, if youre a subscriber: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/31/110131fa_fact_boyer

he liberal tendency to inflate mortal opponents into boogeymen

Odd that this guy thinks of himself as a liberal. But hey...

oh c'mon: liberals are expert at eating their own. It's our most attractive feature.

After the House vote yesterday on a "clean" raise the debt limit vote:

As for nervous Democrats, who were split on the House floor yesterday, it’s worth noting that the National Republican Congressional Committee issued two kinds of press releases after the vote: one attacked Democrats who voted for the Republican bill, the other attacked Democrats who voted against the Republican bill. The Dems who sided with the GOP were smeared as cowardly hypocrites; the Dems who sided against the GOP labeled “brazen kings of debt” who want to “make the problem worse.”

xp Jack Shafer def does not consider himself a liberal dudes.

Dunno why no one took heed of the Mayor Jingleberries Report.

― wmlynch, Tuesday, May 31, 2011 7:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah no shit. fuck everyone.

link here. all I did was help proofread it. Im trying to make myself seem important over here.

http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/National%20War%20Powers%20Commission%20Report.pdf

As for nervous Democrats, who were split on the House floor yesterday, it’s worth noting that the National Republican Congressional Committee issued two kinds of press releases after the vote: one attacked Democrats who voted for the Republican bill, the other attacked Democrats who voted against the Republican bill. The Dems who sided with the GOP were smeared as cowardly hypocrites; the Dems who sided against the GOP labeled “brazen kings of debt” who want to “make the problem worse.”

See this is the kind of ground game the democrats just don't have. That's fucking politics right there, throwing it all at the wall and seeing what sticks. We all might think the cynical hypocrisy is disgusting, but it has a certain gravitas...

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/tv-executives-admit-in-taped-interviews-that-hollywood-pushes-a-liberal-agenda--3086

is anyone actually surprised by any of that

Yahoo! was; it was the lead headline on their homepage

Hollywood, those free-market hating bastards. This also explains the disturbing lack of gun violence in American movies.

"people who make entertainment that take socially liberal positions are not fans of politicians that are socially conservative; HOW SHOCKING IT MUST BE A CONSPIRACY/AGENDA"

creative types more likely to be liberal, and people often hire others from similar backgrounds and with similar mindsets... I am shocked.

next you'll be telling me software engineering is overrun with literal-minded libertarians.

"New study shows police departments largely run by pro-authoritarians"

it's like I'm seeing things for the first time...

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/164199-gop-rolls-eyes-as-obama-talks-about-lower-taxes-than-reagan

By Molly K. Hooper - 06/01/11 01:21 PM ET

Republicans attending a White House meeting on Wednesday didn’t take kindly to President Obama telling them tax rates were higher during the Reagan administration.

GOP members engaged in a lot of “eye-rolling,” according to a member who was on hand to hear Obama, who invited House Republicans to the White House for discussions on the debt ceiling. The White House and Republicans are trying to reach a deal on spending cuts that could allow the $14.3 debt ceiling to be raised.

"Entertainment industry exec admits he hates poor people as much as right wingers."

many xposts - max i totally read those and the new yorker thing off the newsstand, i guess that's why the RS piece didn't seem like anything new

also the entire media has gone insane w/this anthony weiner story. and it IS weird.

but i think he did it on purpose for the LOLz. because now, every obsessive political blogger that had previously occupied many hours of his time investigating, photoshopping, pixelating, filtering and scrutinizing in great detail and writing post after post about images of obama's birth certificate and, before that, memos about w bush's service in the texas air national guard, are now putting those mad internet sleuthing and blogging skillz to good use examining in great detail..

While doing research yesterday, I found this clip. I didn't expect to hear this president mention the urgency ("with great reluctance") of raising the debt ceiling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaN_qjih08

today's GOP base would think reagan (also nixon) was a liberal RINO wouldn't they.

no doubt

only if he polled poorly

Rep. Paul D. Ryan, architect of a Medicare overhaul aimed at slashing the cost of the popular entitlement program by reducing the government's open-ended commitment to seniors, accused Obama of "mis-describing" his plan and implored the president to ease up on the "demagoguery."

In reply, Obama said he was no stranger to cartoonish depictions, reeling off a list of conservatives' favorite attack points: "I'm the death-panel-supporting, socialist, may-not-have-been-born-here president," Obama said, according to people familiar with his remarks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-gop-debt-20110602,0,7998900.story

Poor crybaby Paul Ryan

so shameless

Between that and the "eye-rolling" in response to him citing the facts about how taxes are lower now than under Reagan, this confirms that they are in a bubble. But it also confirms for me that Obama should take them on regularly to at least make it harder for them to live in their bubble

tribal fools like contemporary "conservatives" don't listen to reason though. the bubble just thickens in defense

I guess. But maybe he could at least wake up some of the mainstream media covering this.

And make his base happier

wealthy showbiz 'liberals' (ie Democratic donors) seem fully capable of hating poor ppl, it's the most commonplace bipartisan vibe. The ones waving at me and my fellow protesters on their way into Bill Clinton's 50th-birthday gala at Radio City Music Hall certainly seemed full of secure contempt.

i bet he's going to steadily get more outspoken, curmudgeon, as the campaign heats up. not saying it's good he'd be that strategic about timing his outrage, but it seems his habit

who – Morbs?

morbs is perma-outraged. no - owebama

don't quite get why Paul Ryan is so upset about people describing exactly what his plan actually does? does he really think handing seniors a voucher for medical costs will not leave a significant number of them destitute? how clueless can he be.

I guess he's realized that his grand medicare plan failed (even most conservatives oppose it), and is trying to position himself as someone that was misunderstood rather than as someone who had a catastrophically stupid idea. And if post-catastrophe image is the goal, he can pretty much just make up shit. With enough repetition and exposure at least a healthy chunk of people will believe him.

Obama comeback is lol

I think Ryan once worked for Jack Kemp who pushed all that supply-side nonsense way back when. I think Ryan may, in his bubble, believe (or rationalize) that handing seniors a voucher for medical costs is somehow better than a government panel determining costs of medicare items. But I am guessing that until now he had noone telling him that in the real world prices will go up for medical items and seniors won't be able to afford increased expenses with just your vouchers.

The question is whether Obama and the Dems will keep the pressure on Ryan and the Republicans especially with the media elite and other elites playing down the flaws of the Ryan plan. Come August Obama will probably want a bipartisan answer to the debt limit crisis and give in to some of the extortion from the Republicans.

like the sun will probably come up tomorrow

I am guessing that until now he had noone telling him that in the real world prices will go up for medical items and seniors won't be able to afford increased expenses with just your vouchers.

You can't be serious. He just doesn't think it's true--and I'm sure he has his evidence for it, flawed and incomplete as it may be.

i honestly don't think he cares. and when the chickens come home to roost, the GOP would simply blame Obamacare... and approx half of the country would believe them.