Tag Archives: President Obama

The President v. The Pundit

Posted on by

Daniel Hernandez, President Obama and First Lady Michele Obama at the memorial event, 'Together We Thrive: Tucson and America', at the McKale Memorial Center in Tucson, Arizona, on 12 January 2011. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

I wish the media, including NPR and PBS, would stop comparing President Obama’s popularity to that of Sarah Palin. For example, many pundits compared reaction to his speech at the memorial service for the victims of the shooting in Tucson to her videotaped statement on the subject.
Barack Obama in the President of the United States. He has to triangulate the demands of Congress and its opposing parties, the international obligations of the United States to its foreign allies, national security, and many more concerns. The decisions of the President have real consequences, and he has to make sure things happen.
Sarah Palin was, briefly, a governor. Now, however, she is a pundit and nominal leader of an ill-formed political movement. Furnaces and air conditioning already work under pressure depending on the temperature. buy viagra without rx The generic india levitra US government does not regulate the prices of medicines. And the historic such as the Grosvenor Museum and the Museum purchase cialis online purchasing here of Contemporary Art have quite a delightful surprise that are sure to enchant you and come back for more. Ayurveda recommends the consumption of urad dal contains 189 calories, 13 gm of protein, 12 gm cialis online of fibre and just 1gm of fat. It is easy to snipe and criticize, when you don’t have to provide solutions. It so happens that her videotaped speech was highly criticized and damaged her popularity rating, whereas the Presidents speech was well received, but who cares how they compare. If the President’s comments are to be compared to anyone’s, it ought to be to John Boehner, Mitch NcConnell, or a prominent Senator. Essentially any national figure from the Republican party in a policy making role would be more appropriate, not Sarah Palin, whose opinions have no real consequences.

Policy ≠ Politics

Posted on by

President Obama announces the compromise.


A couple days ago the White House and Congressional Republicans reached a compromise on issues that included extending the Bush tax cuts and unemployment benefits.  It took a while.  In the press conference announcing the agreement, President Obama commented that the agreement is not what he wanted, but said that Republicans were holding tax cuts for the Middle Class and an unemployment benefits extension “hostage.”  Many in the Democratic base oppose the compromise, seeing it as capitulation rather than compromise, and are resistant to approval.
Mainstream media has been providing blow by blow coverage of this process.  The tell us which side which wants what but not in a lot of detail and not why.  For the most part they spend their time speculating about the impact that whatever compromise might be reached will have on the 2012 elections.  Then they let party representatives and their surrogates in the punditry argue about what agreements might be better and for the nation and how.
It’s all very entertaining.  There is drama, conflict, suspense.  Who is winning the skirmish as the pundits argue?  Who will win the battle when the legislation ultimately makes it out of Congress?  Most importantly, who’s likely to win the war in 2012!
Continue reading →

Don't Take My Tax Cut! And Get a Job!

Posted on by

Petition: Tell Congress: Protect Workers, NOT Millionaires!


Senator Scott Brown made a fiery speech a couple of days ago as he blocked the Senate from considering an extension of unemployment benefits. He said that first we need to find a way to pay for those benefits without raising the deficit. At last report the unemployment rate in this country stands at 9.7% and Brown wants to put their ability to buy groceries, pay their bills, mortgage or rent payments in doubt while Congress turns its attention to the deficit.
I believe that Washington has finally turned its attention to the deficit in earnest, and that Brown’s theatrics are not necessary.  The report that bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has just been released provides outstanding recommendations for debt reduction. Holding the unemployed hostage during the holiday season is little more than political theater. Brown needed an issue to distinguish himself on, and he chose this. Nice, Senator! Pick on the unemployed. They’re so busy job hunting they won’t be paying much attention!
Continue reading →

Fox News Chairman says NPR Executives are Nazis, "of Course"

Posted on by

Fox News, a News Corp subsidiary


Honestly, I am think that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes and most at that network live in a reality that is different than mine.
I was just pointed to an interview with Howard Kurtz in which he said that President Obama “has a different belief system than most Americans” and that on his recent travels he “told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.”  I don’t know if Ailes believes this or if it is part of the continuing campaign of the right to paint the President as so radically different from us that he is somehow threatening, but the statements are not simply wrong, they are absurd.
President Obama is a capitalist and he believes in our system of representative, Constitutional democracy.  He has given no indication otherwise.  He would not have risen in the party system were that not the case and he certainly would not have got elected to the highest office in the land, either.  The Presidents differences with the the opposition are differences of degree, not belief systems.
As for France and Germany telling him that his socialism is to far left, well that is ridiculous.  Germany, France and the United States do have differences on approaches necessary to stimulate their economies because in a global economy what is done in one country impacts the others, but the questions concern the means and scale of intervention and have nothing to do with ideology.  France and Germany are also democratic, capitalist states, but both are fundamentally more socialist in character then the US.  Both have and have had for some time, state funded systems of education, government owned rail systems, universal health care, strong labor movements, etc.
Continue reading →

Checking Facts on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster

Posted on by

The April 20 explosion that started oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico has prompted a slew of claims and counterclaims about the disaster. What caused it, how it’s being handled, the history of drilling accidents in the area – all are subjects ripe for false or misleading statements by politicians and others.
We keep track so you don’t have to. Some of the lowlights so far, in no particular order.
* Some Republicans falsely claimed Obama was slowing the cleanup by not waiving the Jones Act, which actually doesn’t apply to the cleanup operations.
* Obama said he issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. Not quite. Much drilling continues.
* A Republican governor keeps saying the spill is the first big blowout in the Gulf, failing to note a 1979 disaster that continued for 10 months, and numerous smaller blowouts.
To get it you have to log in the site and thus apply sildenafil online canada for it through online. One should inquire all his queries relating to sex and its levitra without prescription diseases. This anti impotence medication is easily available on the online shops because here the viagra generic usa medicines are cheap and good at quality side by side the company or shop is offering the best brand to a reasonable price. generico levitra on line In what capacity can a man build his charisma? To expand one’s charisma one needs to first comprehend the explanation behind losing it in any case. * A DNC ad claimed that a GOP lawmaker spoke for his party when he said BP deserves an apology. But that apology had already been rejected by other leading Republicans.
There are plenty more where those came from. See our “Analysis” section for a roundup of the oil-spill whoppers we’ve encountered.

Continue reading →

Respect My Authoritah on The Daily Show

Posted on by

Jon Stewart did a segment on tonight’s Daily Show that made me laugh but also incredibly sad at the same time.  It contrasted the rhetoric of candidate Obama with some recent policy decisions continuing to deny prisoners the right to challenge their detention in court (habeus corpus), continuing to send prisoners to foreign countries where they can be interrogated by harsher means than allowed here (extraordinary rendition), invoking “State Secrets” to protect sensitive information, rethinking when prisoners need to read Miranda rights and even prosecuting whistle blowers.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Respect My Authoritah
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Balance is achieved through rebalancing the subtle system as well as cleaning the centers. cialis sale sale Not being able to enjoy go to these guys super viagra online one’s sexual life can be the culprit. This annual was bogus by the producers of levitra 60 mg, which is a prescription drug. Thankfully, cialis for women this cause is much less likely to be behind the fear of pain during intercourse.

Continue reading →

Stop this Dangerous Rhetoric

Posted on by

A drive for signatures on a petition from Credo says that in his new book FOX News contributor Newt Gingrich compared President Obama’s administration to Nazi Germany saying that his “secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”
If anyone has read this book, I’d be interested in knowing how Gingrich defines socialism. It is an oft repeated charge, and I don’t understand it, because this country has a long way to go before it even become a “mixed” economy. Even the health care reform measures that passed recently will work through private insurance! Essentially the new policies of the administration check the excesses of capitalism, no more and no less. It has been acknowledged since the first recession of the Modern era that this is necessary.
Continue reading →

Dear Birthers…

Posted on by

I doubt any documentation would satisfy them.

Dear “birthers”,
Mercifully, you are less present in the news these days, but every once in a while some item passes before my eyes and penetrates my psyche to annoy me again. The fact that Hawaii is still so overwhelmed with requests for the President’s already published birth certificate that the legislature has passed a law authorizing “any Hawai’i department to ignore repeated requests for information from the same person if the department already has responded within a year,” is one example. (HonoluluAdvertiser.com)
Ordinarily I would applaud your sense of civic involvement. If a citizen suspects something is afoul, it’s noble to root it out. But there’s also a time to give up and accept that all the evidence should not only lay your suspicions to rest, but also tuck them in and sing a lullaby. In this case that time was about 15 months ago immediately after the President took the Oath of Office. But you can’t give up and I’m now starting to take your wacko claims personally, an implicit insult to my intelligence.
A popular wireless transmission protocol called WEP can be cracked without needing to resort to traditional methods order generic cialis such as brute force password attacks if you have smart enough computer software. For those who are not knowledgeable about this disease, they might find the appearance of psoriatic skin a bit troubling. order generic viagra What are the side effects of Livoplus capsules? tablets viagra These capsules get rid of toxins without causing any harm to the body, take them as and when any such problem arises in their life. It strengthens the penile muscles and controls the occurrence raindogscine.com cheapest tadalafil 20mg of emotional health disorders naturally. Continue reading →

What's Wrong with Arizona?

Posted on by

It’s refreshing to see the media doing their job from time to time.  Notice how carefully Arizona State Representative Cecil Ash avoids saying that he believes President Obama was born in the United States of that the President’s birth certificate is legitimate, and Tongkat is one of those viagra pill on line magical herbal extracts that have served the people of Southeast Asia for centuries. Do Not Ignore ED Many men are embarrassed about being impotent, and as a result, they might want to sweep it under the cheapest levitra rug and pretend that it does not exist. But they don’t need to be disheartened. levitra order check stock The muscles generic prescription viagra without of penis get a lot to blood thus makes it relaxed. how Anderson Cooper presses him to clearly define his position, without being unnecessarily rude or confrontational.