This is what happens when the nerd kid gets a new pair of jeans and thinks they make him cool. Kelsey Grammer is starting up a conservative TV network and he says it’s a “B-F-D” and will give Keith Olbermann a “case of the Mondays” and make Bill Maher shed a single tear. Right. When will conservatives learn that they can’t do cool and they can’t do funny? FishbowlLA offered a programming idea for the new network — Conservative Cheers: “Where everybody knows your name unless you’re gay, Mexican or believe in global warming.”
When you make an important decision in your life when you’re angry, there’s an 80 percent chance you’ll make a mistake. To have an election based on anger, apathy and amnesia is nuts. That’s exactly what’s going on all over America today.
Former Pres. Bill Clinton, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Atlanta.
What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.
— Racist adulterer Newt Gingrich, quoted in the National Review, arguing that President Obama “is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works.”
Is a person’s behavior determined by his or her race?
Take the case of a theoretical mixed-race American boy — let’s call him Barack Obama — whose mother is a Caucasian American and whose father is an African native of Kenya. Let’s say the father leaves the boy and his mother when the boy is two years old and moves back to Kenya, 10,000 miles away, never to be heard from again, except for one visit when the boy was 10 years old. How will the father influence the boy when he grows up?
A) Is the boy predestined by his genetic connection to his father to grow up and emulate his African-ness (whatever that is) — even going so far as to hold the same political beliefs rooted in Kenyan culture as his father?
Or B) is the boy more likely to identify with the culture and politics of the United States, the country where he spent most of his formative years and that he considers to be his home?
If you answered A, you are a racist, just like Newt Gingrich, the smartest guy in the Idiocracy — who is floating a possible run for president in 2012 — who made one of the most outrageously racist statements by a national politician since the Jim Crow era:
If there is going to be some big national announcement I’m going to do it where it’s most worthy. I’m going to do something big, even bigger then Glenn Beck. It’s going to happen on the Bob and Mark show.
— Sarah Palin, asserting that if she makes any announcement about 2012 presidential plans, she’ll do it on a KWHL drive-time talk radio show, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
Proclaiming, “A Watched Tea Party Never Boils,” teapartytracker.org has launched. Rumored to be backed by progressive hero George Soros, the site features instances of tea baggers doing what they do best: taking stands that don’t fit with reality and making weird, disjointed statements that make no sense, or as the site says, “Monitoring racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement.” Check out this video produced at the recent Million Moron March in Washington.
Net number of jobs created under Pres. George W. Bush after his tax cuts were enacted in 2001, according to the Wall St. Journal. Bush created the least jobs of any president since Hoover during the Great Depression. Pres. Bill Clinton created 22.4 million jobs, and left Bush with a $236 billion budget surplus. Historically, the economy tends to grow under Democrats, who traditionally do not cut taxes, and shrink under Republicans, who almost always do.
We welcome John Boehner’s change in position and support for the middle class tax cuts, but time will tell if his actions will be anything but continued support for the failed policies that got us into this mess.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, in a statement quoted on Politico.
Buoyed by polling and the media narrative that the GOP will win control of Congress in a wave election this November, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, the next putative speaker, and other Republicans in Congress have been caught in the act of measuring the drapes in the Capitol.
The fact that 39 percent have never heard of Boehner — who is known in the Capitol for boozing, schmoozing and playing golf with lobbyists — offers Democrats the opportunity to introduce him as what he is: the ultimate Washington insider.
If Boehner and his party win, it appears they won’t get much of a honeymoon with voters, however. A Wall St. Journal/NBC poll last month found that congressional Republicans had just a 24 percent approval rating, the lowest rating they had ever received.
Now a new CNN Opinion Research poll [PDF] finds that Boehner has a lower approval rating than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been the object of unrelenting demonization on the GOP-Fox channel and right-wing radio for years.
Boehner received a 22 percent favorable rating, with 23 percent unfavorable. Thirty-nine percent had never heard of him and 16 percent had no opinion.
Speaker Pelosi’s favorables were 33/51, with just 9 percent saying they’d never heard of her and 7 percent having no opinion.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
“The man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing. He’s trying to stifle the ability of journalists to let the people of America know what’s really going on with their government.”
— “Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House ‘absolutely abhorrent,’” The Wrap reports.
“Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one research PhD, as opposed to China, where half the cabinet is science and technology PhDs. We’re led by grifters and fools.”
— Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, on X, on President Trump’s 35-person cabinet.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far… The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
— Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), breaking with President Trump in a direct-to-camera video.
“Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July,” The Guardian reports. “His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.”
“The unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House has changed the congressional districts for one-tenth of Americans and significantly altered the makeup of at least one-fifth of districts, according to a new study,” the Associated Press reports.
A new Fox News Poll finds 71% of voters think the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the Iran War, including 95% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 43% of Republicans. Sixty percent say U.S. military action against Iran was the wrong decision, while just 37% say it was right.
“The Trump administration last year spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave for federal workers as part of its plan to shrink the government and save taxpayers money, according to a new estimate by a congressional watchdog,” CNN reports.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.