Mock, Paper, Scissors

Sweet Baby Jeebus with a Subpoena, Wingnuttia is starting earnestly to talk about impeaching The Kenyan Usurper, according to Tiger Beat on the Potomac:

Senator John McCain, who famously defended his then presidential opponent Barack Obama against an islamaphobic supporter during a 2008 campaign rally, defended President Obama once again on ABC’s This Week Sunday, cautioning his Republicans colleagues to cool it with talk of impeaching the President over the Benghazi attacks and its aftermath.

I was around during the Clinton years, when every two-bit grifter with an (R) after his name chased the Clenis around the country. They spoke of impeaching him before there was even a forced crime of low-level perjury, and by any measure of sanity the 1990s-era wingnut was the model of sobriety and good mental health compared to the New Millennium Edition Wingnut with new and improved Teabagging added to seal in the freshness.

Senatorette Miss Lindsey Graham is calling Benghazi! Benghazi! BENGHAZI! Obama’s Watergate (and if that doesn’t take your breath away, I’m not sure what will), and now that the local Cincinnati IRS office has gone rogue and investigating Teabagger money-laundering organizations resulting in headlines of Obama’s IRS…, well you know. The Crazy has become both industrial strength and weaponized.

There are a thousand reasons for us lefties to not like Obama (and I’m sure in the comments we will be told 1,001 reasons, probably from long-time Scissorheads, and you know who you are), but the fact remains that there is no High Crime and Misdemeanor in any of this.

And remember this: I knew Ambassador Chris Stevens; we went to high school together; we hung out with the same friends; he went to a party at my house. None of us from back then (that I know of, and we talked, many of us did talk) are outraged at the Administration. We are–including his family–outraged that the Right is making his tragic death a political witch hunt.

Yes, it is personal. No one should be exploited like this.

The other day when The Kenyan Usurper said:

“I cannot force Republicans to embrace … common-sense solutions,” Obama said at the press conference, referring specifically to budget gridlock. “I can urge them to. I can put pressure on them. I can rally the American people around those common-sense solutions. But ultimately, they, themselves, are going to have to say, we want to do the right thing. And I think there are members certainly in the Senate right now, and I suspect members in the House as well, who understand that deep down. But they’re worried about their politics. It’s tough. Their base thinks that compromise with me is somehow a betrayal. They’re worried about primaries. And I understand all that. And we’re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country. But it’s going to take some time.”

…I have to admit I heard Permission Slips instead of Permission Structure, and I did laugh thinking that Obama finally has realized he is dealing with feral children in the GOP. “Good for him,” I thought.

It is really upon reflection of the latest screeds from the likes of known pop-culture fetishist MoDo and Dame Peggington Noonington of the Brooklynshire Nooningtons that I started to understand what he was really getting at, and it was not to get permission slips to take the pinheads bowling (to paraphrase Camper Van Beethoven).

The Republicans have admitted as much this week–as they have in the past–that their sole objective is to make our first black president a failure, and to that end they will oppose anything Anything ANYTHING he wants, whether or not they want it too. Nothing is too great or too small to deny him. Even being seen with him makes the Teabaggers suspect their representatives of collaborating with the enemy. Not to put too fine a spin on it, but it strikes me that their strategy is thinly veiled racism dressed up as nihilism.

I think what Obama’s Permission Structure means is that he will not publicly support or encourage anything (other than process?) so that the “you can’t make me” caucus feels empowered to actually do something.

Now whether behind the scenes that means he will continue his so-called charm offensive to try to peel-off some of the grownups, I’m not sure. It might be like a marketing-advertising campaign where you get a few celebrity endorsements (to the degree that Wingnut politicians are celebrities, but work with me here) to act as influencers on the rest of the caucus, but Obama himself cannot be seen to be one of the influencers.

Wingnuttia used to accuse him of leading from behind, and this might actually be his strategy now, it’s hard to say. Which of course will make Nooner and MoDo go nonlinear, but that’s kinda fun.

(Correction: An earlier version of this post misdientified Take the Pinheads Bowling as being a Dead Kennedy’s song. We regret the error.)

(Hat tips: TPM, Digby, Ezra Klein)

A series of polls released today show that Americans trust The Kenyan more than they trust the Republicans. Take it away, Bloomberg:

Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance in office, his strongest level of support since September 2009, according to a Bloomberg National poll conducted Feb. 15-18. Only 35 percent of the country has a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest rating in a survey that began in September 2009. The party’s brand slipped six percentage points in the last six months, the poll shows.

However, that’s not just the best/worst of it. For that we turn to the USA Today/Pew Research poll:

President Obama starts his second term with a clear upper hand over GOP leaders on issues from guns to immigration that are likely to dominate the year, a USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds. On the legislation rated most urgent — cutting the budget deficit — even a majority of Republican voters endorse Obama’s approach of seeking tax hikes as well as spending cuts.

There’s also this handy little bit of info: “Now just 22% of Americans, nearly a record low, consider themselves Republicans.”

I don’t know if that reflects the Teabagger exodus, but wow! That’s gotta hurt.

So when you look at the other results for critical issues, from gun control, immigration reform, and climate change, the official GOP position is way outside the mainstream, even their own members are not buying what they are selling.

One could ask if Wingnuttia is deliberately misreading the polls, or perhaps they hired Mitt Romney’s pollsters, but their Fourth and Forty Hail Mary pass to try to blame the upcoming sequester vote on Obama looks like it will fail, decisively.

So much for the claims of Weepy and Wattles McConnell that they know what the American people want.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent at the Plum Line agrees.

I’m only a pajama-clad, Cheeto-stained wretch in Mom’s Basement and not part of the Village. I know my opinion counts less than Harold Ford Jr., and that I will never be on This Week With a Greek Dwarf, Morning Schmoe, or Dancin’ with the Gregory.

All that said, my opinion on SOTU address is that if anything is remembered it will be that a sitting president had to actually remind/cajole/shame the fetus-fondling god-botherers to do their jobs. The call-response chant “They Deserve A Vote” was as much an indictment of Wingnuttian Obstructionism as it was a rallying cry for gun control.

I think this is also one for future historians: it was the moment where Obama officially, publicly gave up on his high-minded we-can-get-it-done-working-together beliefs of his first term. I think he realizes now that HE has to set the agenda, and not Wingnuttia.

Since the mid-term elections, he let the GOP vandals lob cinderblocks from the overpasses. It was a two-year long PSA for Austerity, and in the end, nothing was done. He never got his previous SOTU policy initiatives enacted, and that this fact of American life is like complaining that the sky is blue or John Boehner is orange.

But no more. Last night, with a more than 50% approval rating that towers over the single-digit GOP, Obama lobbed a cinderblock back at them: they must now either act on these popular policy initiatives, or explain why they won’t.

I’m not expecting much, but I’m pleased to see that Obama now seems to understand something we liberals understood going back, well, since forever. Wingnuttia is not your friend, they never will be. Trying to meet them half-way is only the cue for them to move the goalposts further away.

NYTimes:

The White House on Wednesday directed the Justice Department to release to the two Congressional Intelligence Committees classified documents discussing the legal justification for killing, by drone strikes and other means, American citizens abroad who are considered terrorists.

[snip]

…”Today, as part of the president’s ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters, the president directed the Department of Justice to provide the Congressional Intelligence Committees access to classified Office of Legal Counsel advice related to the subject of the Department of Justice white paper,” said an administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the handling of classified material.

The official said members of the Intelligence Committees would now get “access” to the documents.

Please note that access to the documents means that members of the Intelligence Committees only get to read it, take no notes, no trascripts, and the document goes back to being secret. Oh, and they cannot discuss what they learned about it. And We the People are never to learn about it?

Bitch, please.

That’s not transparancy, that’s making members of the Intelligence Committees co-conspirators.

Wasn’t this the same routine that Chimpy allowed his coterie of toadies and minions to read John Yoo’s justification of the War Crime of torture?

I’m not a policy wonk, and I’m not sure it would matter to me if I was allowed to read it. There is nothing about the Drone Strikes that I like. This is a terrible policy and if it is not illegal it should be made explicitely illegal.

This is as morally repugnant to me as Torture was under Chimpy. I don’t want the President to have an enemies list, let alone justification to kill civillians–including US Citizens–at will, without due process, trial by a jury of his peers, etc. This is not who we are supposed to be.

The always excellent Jon Perr has a piece up at his site that might appeal to the more legal-wonk out there. Worthwhile reading.

“My mommy always said there were no monsters. No real ones. But there are.”

…Ilsa she-wolf of the Nazis Michelle Malkkkin said that The Kenyan was using children as props and it counted as child abuse?

(Petunia and Pals) If it’s Thursday, it must be Malkkkin. Today she says that the President is a Child Abuser. No, really.

…it of course triggered off a day of Wingnuttian outrage comparing the president’s use of children to Sadaam Hussein‘s, it’s never been done before, etc., etc., etc.

Yes it has:

(Wired)

Aw, man, it was just getting fun:

“Starting today, as we move into a second term, [We the People] petitions must receive 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order to receive an official response from the Obama Administration. This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist.”

No more petitions to secede? To build Death Stars? To deport unpopular Brits (I was strangely OK with that one)?

It’s tyranny! or Tranny because I cannot spell and I’m too lazy to look it up!

(White House)

Ezra Klein at the WaPo has the definitive statement: Treasury: We won’t mint a platinum coin to sidestep the debt ceiling

And then James Fallows at The Atlantic gives us two sentences:

1) Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize one single penny in additional public spending.

2) For Congress to “decide whether” to raise the debt ceiling, for programs and tax rates it has already voted into law, makes exactly as much sense as it would for a family to “decide whether” to pay a credit-card bill for goods it has already bought.

So, I guess we are back to being held hostage by terrorists/GOP threatening to destroy the world economy unless we all agree to feed granny catfood.

Of course, this is another example of negotiating against yourself before the negotiations begin (having also ruled out the 14th Amendment option), so one can assume that anything that the Administration does end up giving away is something that they wanted to give away.

The Kenyan has learned to use the Twitter Machine.

This film claims to be The Kenyan Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby’s birth in Kenya! Footage taken by Carebear Senior, as a home movie? Yes. Because that was really common in Kenya of the 1960s, duh.

The monster-sized baby, with full head of hair and open eyes looking around the room, just sort of appears from under a bed sheet after what appears to be no effort on the part of the mom, not even any sweat, and the umbilical cord (link sausages?) of an entirely different color than the baby is cut and the kid still isn’t screaming. Good thing Père Obama filmed Ann Durham’s chart twice, otherwise I might think this is a fake.

Read the whole crazy thing at Vice

(Raw Story) Obama was hung by the neck with care in Riverside California and at the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh.

But, aw shucks, we didn’t mean nothing by it, they said after the Secret Service showed up.

“This is just a misunderstanding,” Eddie Million said. “This is getting all blown out of proportion. It’s down. It’s gone. We didn’t want to hurt the president.”

Million said he used the hanging figure as a party decoration because it was “spooky,” but took it down after talking to local police on Monday.

“If I had it to do all over again, I absolutely wouldn’t have done it,” Million said. “It was not meant to offend anybody.”

When you go to the trouble to make an effigy, and then put a mask of Obama on it, you absolutely meant something by it. And I don’t need to parse Spooky to know what you meant.

(Raw Story)

[Short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump] said that if Pres. Obama releases his college records and his passport records, then Trump will give a $5 million check to a charity of President Obama’s choice.

And that is all there is.

(WTVR)

MPS Coverage of the 2012 Goat Rodeo

Tengrain and Axel Grease are live-tweeting the debate between team Willard and Team Carebear

Tweets about “#2012GoatRodeo”

You can join the fun, too: We’re using the Mock, Paper, Scissors hashtag of #2012GoatRodeo. Pro tip: if you click the little box that says Tweet #2012GoatRodeo, you can tweet right from MPS! (I think you have to have a Twitter account though. Test it and see!)

Mitt Romney continues to show improved numbers in polls published since the presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday and has now made clear gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. The forecast gives him roughly a 20 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, up from about 15 percent before the debate. Mr. Romney’s gains in the polls have been sharp enough that he should continue to advance in the FiveThirtyEight forecast if he can maintain his numbers over the next couple of days.

–Nate Silver, from the NYTimes 538 blog.

Gee, you guys, there’s only an 80% chance The Kenayn Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby will win. Before the debate there was an 85% chance he would win.

(NYTimes)

MPS Coverage of the 2012 Goat Rodeo

Tengrain and Axel Grease are live-tweeting the debate between the Kenyan Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby and His Willardness, the Stench. Drinking game rules are below the Tweet box.

Tweets about “#2012GoatRodeo”

You can join the fun, too: We’re using the Mock, Paper, Scissors hashtag of #2012GoatRodeo. Pro tip: if you click the little box that says Tweet #2012GoatRodeo, you can tweet right from MPS! (I think you have to have a Twitter account though. Test it and see!)

Drinking Game Rules

One drink:

• Reagan
• “By Golly”
• A Willard Zinger
• Revenue Neutral
• Middle class
• Obamacare
• 47%

Two drinks:

• Birth Certificate
• “You People!”
• Rafalca

And that concludes the MPS live-coverage of the Preznintial debate. Your blushing editors, Axel Grease and Tengrain, will now take an asperin and come up with an amusing reason we call in sick tomorrow. Suggestions are always welcomed.

According to The Hill:

The presidential contest is far from over, but House Democrats are already readying their legislative wish-lists in hopes that President Obama is reelected.

Well, putting the chicken eggs in the basket before the cart before the horse before their hatched, but anyway what are some of those issues?

“He’s got to continue to concentrate on jobs,” Rep. Bill Pascrell said last week as the House was leaving town for a long, pre-election recess.

“I’m hoping he’ll do immigration reform,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas).

“We should get back to an energy policy – one that acknowledges that climate change is real,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

“The critical issues will be revenue generation … and … a concerted push on immigration reform,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

“I think he’d want his administration to start on healthcare,” said Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.).

This is a fine list, but I would add to it:

• Overturn, remedy, whatever Citizens United ruling from the Supreme Court
• Return the Rule of Law to Banking, and arrest and prosecute those f***ers.
• Limit the power of the Presidency, remove assassination lists and ground all the Drones unless we declare war via Congress.
• Sing the treaty for the International Court and immediately send Chimpy and Co. to the Hague.

A boy can dream.

(The Hill)

…Ask what you can brew for your country:

We are proud to have created a blend in honor of President Obama’s 2012 campaign. This bold cup of coffee consists of 3 parts, Hawaiian, Kenyan, and Indonesian beans. The mixture of these beans gives an aroma of leather and rye. There is a savory quality reminiscent of chicory and roasted nuts. Smooth mouthfeel and forward acidity round out this cup. What we are getting: bittersweet chocolate, dried berries, toffee, and graham. And remember, made in America!

Bittersweet

Wait a minute, what about Intelligentsia, my preferred coffee while in Chicago?!

Oh lordy, no, No, NO! He drinks tea.

…NASCAR team owners:

The Zogby poll revealed that President Obama has a seven point lead over Mitt Romney among likely voters, 48%-41%, and even larger nine point lead when all candidates are included, 49%-40%. The real shocker is that the poll found the president doing very well with some traditionally thought of Republican voting blocs.

Obama leads in almost every region of the country, and only trailed Romney by six points in the South, 41%-47%. Among voters who shop at Wal-Mart on a weekly basis, Romney’s lead is within the poll’s 3.4% margin of error, 45%-42%. Obama leads with voters who are or who have a family member in the military, 54%-39%. Most surprisingly, Obama only trails Romney by seven points with those who consider themselves born again Christians, 40%-47%. The president also leads with NASCAR fans, 48%-41%.

(Zogby–Fair Warning! – it’ a PDF)

Vanity Fair

Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of “Moneyball” and “The Big Short,” was granted extraordinary access to President Obama for his latest article in Vanity Fair.

But with that access came one major condition.

Like other journalists who write about Washington and presidential politics, Mr. Lewis said that he had to submit to the widespread but rarely disclosed practice of quote approval.

During a discussion at Lincoln Center on Monday night with Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, Mr. Lewis volunteered to the audience that as a condition of cooperating with his story, the White House insisted on signing off on the quotes that would appear.

Look it, the much vaunted “access” that drives so much of Villager punditry isn’t worth very much if the access gives you meaningless quotes and pre-digested information. I don’t blame Michael Lewis for this–he’s not alone–but he could have told them to go to Hell, and he probably should have.

I find it very alarming that anyone,let alone mainstream journalists would allow themselves to be tethered to giving final approval of quotes back to their subjects. That is not journalism, that is stenography.

(The Caucus)

As someone who brews beer at home, I think this is pretty cool. I’d be more impressed if they were doing all-grain brewing, but one step at a time.

The beer recipes are posted online at the White House web site.

Although he predicted it would not happen, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday it would be “wise” for President Obama to take Vice President Joe Biden off the Democratic presidential ticket and replace him with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton .

Because Grandpa Walnuts knows how to pick running mates.

(Yahoo News)

Well, of course America isn’t going to elect a certifiable idiot to be the President of the United State, it’s just funny that the Republicans have nominated such a buffoon as Chimpy. No need to worry.

I remember thinking those words and saying them (in effect) to friends preceding the eventual stealing of the election in 2000, and to a degree it was true: Chimpy never won the popular vote, and if Al Gore had not run such a sloppy campaign it would never have gotten close enough that Wingnuttia could screw the pooch.

I know that it is apostasy to say that out loud, but let’s be honest: Gore had peace and prosperity to run on, and somehow he choked and lost it to a third-rate intellect with such obvious Elmer Gantry hucksterism that it is still breath-taking that it could come down to having Bush-the-Elder fix it for Bush-the-Lesser in the Supreme Court. Am I bitter? Like an aspirin. But I digress.

I write this today because I keep seeing a trend in the Progressive side of the ledger to not worry, that there is no way that America will elect such an odious cretin and liar as Willard to be the President of the United States.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as they say.

Back in 2000, I was very smug, contributed nothing to any of the national campaigns, and on election day here in California I proudly and safely voted for Ralph Nader. And given the demographics of this state, I would do it again if I could. I knew that it would not make any difference (Al Gore and Chimpy knew it too, which is why neither of them made a single campaign stop here except to hoover up money. They didn’t need to campaign, Cali was a given.)

And so believe me, I’m well aware of the purity calls in Dimlandia saying that Obummer hasn’t lived up to his campaign promises, Gitmo!, and drones, and… and… and I agree with all of you and all of those points. In the old days before the GOP lost its mind, Obama would have been a Country Club Republican (if they would, you know, let one of them into their club), and I would not be writing even this weak sort of an apologia for a politician I do not whole-heartedly (half-heartedly?) support.

For what feels like the bazillion-seventh time I find myself reminding friends and families about the checks and balances within the government. The President doesn’t make the laws, The Congress does. The Congress doesn’t enforce the laws, the Executive Branch does. Only the Supreme Court can rule on the Constitutionality of the laws that the Congress passes. It’s basic Civics 101 stuff, but everyone screams that Obama hasn’t done enough; I argue that he cannot act unilaterally. Some of his absence is without a doubt that he doesn’t care (or care enough), but that still is tempered by that he cannot declare a law.

So that leaves us at a kind of funny place with Obama: The Teabaggers scream that he is a jack-booted Tyrant standing on their necks (and photoshop him as Hitler, Stalin, and God-only knows who else in fascistic garb), and Progressives scream that he is spineless and if you think about it, it sounds as if Dims want Obama to be more of a tyrant. Go figure.

No President is in it alone, and no president can install a progressive era on his own. Congress writes the laws, and Wingnuttia has been absent from governance, and vocal about destroying this man and his presidency.

If you want to end Drone strikes, elect a new Congress. If you want to close down Gitmo, elect a new Congress. If you want Single-Payer Healthcare, elect a new Congress. If you want to change indefinite detention, elect a new Congress. If you want to see real reforms on Wall Street, elect a new Congress.

It’s easy to complain and to take the low road while riding on your high horse. You need to vote, and not just at the top of the ticket. Anything less than that is just whinging that Santa didn’t leave you a pony.

This post at Esquire is required reading, and no, it is not Charlie Pierce.

I believe that Presidents probably always had secret kill lists. What is new and disturbing here is that the kill lists now include US Citizens, and that our president now has notches in his belt from killing US citizens over seas with drone strikes.

It is all so antiseptic: no invasion, no strategy, no derring-do. Just a push of a button to launch the drone. I suppose that there must be some rational reason for killing a 16-year old American boy, and maybe a moment or two of regret. But overall, the whole process seems too easy and too easily abused. I mean, where does it end? This has such a dystopian quality to it, it would not be hard to imagine these things flying around America looking for political enemies.

I keep returning to my basic civics class from my school days: the Congress writes the laws, and the executive branch enforces them. Killing US Citizens by drone appears to be legal because no one has said that it is not illegal. This is the stratagem of bratty middle school kids to test their limits.

It is time for Congress to curtail this ability. It needs to explicitly state that targeting US Citizens for drone attacks is illegal, just the way that wiretapping us was illegal. Oh, yeah.

One of our on-the-ground in Wisconsin operatives, Scissorhead Zombie Rotten McDonald says:

by the exit polls, somewhere around 60% of the voters in Wisconsin felt that the recall was inappropriate, and should be reserved, at the least, for criminal misbehavior. That’s pretty much the story; less than support for Turdwaffle, it was antipathy toward a recall.

Of course, there are a fair number of people who support Turdie’s efforts to kill the middle class, demonize public workers, and sell of the natural splendor of Wisconsin to pillagers and plunderers. Apparently, the solution to stagnant wages and non-existent economic demand is to slap around schoolteachers and take their lunch money, to give it to the insanely wealthy. Oh, and fracking, not to mention polluting groundwater, which is FREEDOM.

However, given the state of the John Doe investigation, there is a good possibility that the people who feel that recall should be limited to criminal acts will see Turdwaffle reach that threshold. Of course, before that, he will make his play to change Wisconsin electoral law to allow felons to serve as Governor.

ZRM raises an interesting point about the 60% — it is also the same number as those who intend to re-elect President Obama according to the exit polls. This election is a single data point from a single state at a single point in time. I would caution anyone from extrapolating a national trend.

Here in Cali, when we had our own successful recall against a sitting governor (Gray Davis, who was no crook, unless being boring and being easily snookered is a crime) and installed the movie-star buffoon Ahhhhhhnold, I remember my reaction was to vote against the recall, not to vote in favor of Davis. The recall was so manufactured (as was the Enron Crisis as was the car registration tax issue that was used to justify it) that at the end, when Darryl Issa (yes, THAT Darryl Issa) complained that because he actually paid for the recall, he should be governor.

Anyway, I think ZRM’s comment reeks of the truth.

Also/too: My snark against President Carebear still stands. His absolute tepid, single-tweet support of Mr. Barrett was too little and way too late to make any difference. Would it have made a difference if it was full-throated howl? Probably not, except to the bone-tired volunteers who are the ones that Obama really will need in the fall. Good luck with that. I don’t think I would volunteer to help again if I were them.

Obama’s weak tea tweet reminds me of the worst of the Bill Clinton political calculation of the 1990s and beyond. Dr. Dean’s 50-state strategy was so completely dismantled by the Obama team when they came into power that the 2010 and now this election show that the Dims are back to Rahm Emmanuel’s old stratagem of giving up on the small races and only funding the sure bets. It is a plan for failure as I think last night showed us again.

Lastly: Citizens United. I don’t think that there is any doubt that we need to have a Constitutional Amendment to decree that corporations are not people, and money is not free speech. I also think we should have unicorns, but I digress. There is no doubt in my mind that this debacle shows what the influence of corporate America feeling free to buy an election means. Before Citizens United, I advocated that we needed Media Reform before we needed Campaign Finance Reform (on the theory that if getting the message out was free, then the big buckets of money would not be needed), but this election changed my perspective when I could see clearly what happens when unfettered money can pour into a campaign. Welcome to Robber Barons II.

This Wonkette article on the secret kill list that the Administration has really says it all for me. I have nothing to add.

“I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

OK, now we have to make him do something about it. Still, it is a first step.

…and nothing much has changed:

Well, we are about 5 months into the new presidency, we are still fighting two of Chimpy’s wars, the rich are getting bailed out while the working stiffs are getting stiffed, gays & lesbians are thrown under the bus by that fierce advocate, single-payer healthcare is officially off the table, there is no movement at all to investigate — let alone prosecute — any of Chimpy and Companies’ war crimes, our phones are still being tapped, torture is being defended, Gitmo most likely will not be shut down, and women are being terrorized into forced pregnancies by Xristian Xrazies with guns. Right wing domestic terror is taking hold of the country, but no one in charge is willing to call it that. It might upset the Malkkkins of the world.

…and in that post I concluded:

I’ve said it here before, and I will say it again now: This is Ronnie Reagan’s eighth term. Nothing has changed. Nothing.

But here’s the kicker: The Carebear will be a one-term president, and the next one will be a GOPer with a familliar name: JEB BUSH. You read it here first.

Ok, I’m not sure I got all of that right, but I’m willing to take my lumps on the Jeb Bush part. So why am I bringing this post from 2009 up again now? Because as I am often accused of plaigerising Charlie Pierce both here and at Watertiger’s joint (just because he is famous doesn’t mean he said it first), I want to note for the record that MPS was saying back in 2009 that Obama was choking by hippy punching and ignoring his base. Pierce now agrees.

Anyway, it is a great post (Charlie’s, and, well, mine isn’t bad), and his conclusion is that it is too late now to try to try to show that you are willing to fight for us; that was my conclusion 3 years ago.

(Mock, Paper, Scissors)

This just in the email box:

Growing up, I’d get pretty excited about NASCAR races. And I still love them. That’s why I want to be the one to tell you that the folks planning the 2012 Democratic National Convention have figured out a way for you to show your support — on a NASCAR stock car.

The convention’s host committee is going to debut an official “Powered by the American People” car. And they want to put your name on it.

When you become a sponsor by donating just $5 or more, your name will appear on the car.

For me, this is a no-brainer. All you have to do is tell them how to spell your name, and you’re off.

Sponsor the “Powered by the American People” stock car.

Grassroots support is the only way this convention is going to be a success. The 2012 convention will be funded by supporters like you, not special interests, lobbyists or political action committees — and that’s why we’re not putting any corporate logos on the car. Just the names of folks like you who step up to make this happen.

The convention is going to kick off with a free Labor Day celebration at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, where everyone who comes out will see the official stock car.

Is your name going to be on it?

https//:charlottein2012.com/Powered_By_the_American_People

Let us know soon.

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

A) I’m not a registered Dim and have not been one for more than a decade and B) NASCAR?!

President Carebear has a Pinterest page.

Heads all over Wingnuttia to explode in 3… 2… 1… that the Kenyan Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby is spending time pinning (pining?) on another social media site