Baby Don’t Drill
As an environmentalist he’s gotten high billing,
And as a man of principle, he seems willing.
And whatever the motivation
Behind Obama’s vacillation,
We’re glad he finally came out against offshore drilling.
Year: 2010
Verbatim
If you ever see me sign up for a gig on Fox News, it’ll be a clear indication that I’ve decided to run for president — that’s not in the cards anytime soon, thanks.
— Mitt Romney, in an interview with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, when asked whether Fox News had ever approached him to work as a correspondent.
Andrew Sullivan: The Dickishness of the GOP
Former Republican sympathizer, Andrew Sullivan:
What we’ve observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party’s arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency.
These people are not conservatives in this core civilized sense; they are partisan vandals.
I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008. Just opposition to everything, zero support for a president grappling with a recession their own party did much to precipitate, and facing a fiscal crisis the GOP alone made far worse with their spending in the Bush-Cheney years. There is not a scintilla of responsibility for their past; not a sliver of good will for a duly elected president. Worse, figures like Cantor and McCain actively seek to back foreign governments against the duly elected president of their own country, and seek to repeal the signature policy achievement of Obama’s first two years, universal health care.
I know it is the opposition’s role to oppose. But the sheer scale and absolutism of the opposition, and its continuation in the lame duck session, even over such small but integral reforms such as the new START and DADT repeal, is remarkable… These people are not conservatives in this core civilized sense; they are partisan vandals.
And if the GOP blocks the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, despite the careful Pentagon study, a slow roll-out of its provisions, and support from the Joint Chiefs chairman and the defense secretary, then we will find out something else. The contempt the GOP has for gay lives, gay citizens and those who wear the uniform of the United States is as deep and as vile as we ever thought it was.
Yes, I’m angry at this general nihilist partisanship, and wounded once more by these people’s profound, obsessive homophobia. But I cannot, alas, say I am surprised. The degeneracy has been building for a long time. It is just the stench of it right now that overwhelms the nostrils. [Emphasis added.]
Verbatim
Politics is increasingly becoming a blood sport where the end game often means somebody goes to jail.
— John Feehery, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), quoted by Swampland, arguing that “common practice here in D.C. looks an awful lot like plain old corruption everywhere else in the country.”
Why Are Republicans So Giddy about Tossing 2 Million Jobless Americans to the Wolves at Christmas?
Mike Barnicle’s debate with outgoing Arizona GOP-T Rep. John Shadegg on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” has gotten attention because of the outrageous new Grover Norquistian talking point about unemployment benefits that Shadegg trotted out:
It wasn’t Shadegg’s audacious lying that was remarkable — you can see that 24/7 on Fox — it was his swagger, the near-giddiness with which he consigned 2 million unemployed Americans to the wolves at the same time that he was demanding tax breaks for people so wealthy they don’t need to work.
BARNICLE: What about the fact that unemployment benefits pumped into the economy are an immediate benefit to the economy. Immediate.
SHADEGG: No, they’re not. Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that.
BARNICLE: Unemployed people spend money, Congressman, because they have no money.
SHADEGG: Ah — ah — So your answer is it’s the spending of money that drives the economy. I don’t think that’s right. It’s the creation of jobs that drive the economy.
BARNICLE: But if you spend money in a variety store —
SHADEGG: Actually, the truth is the unemployed will spend as little of that money as they possibly can. Job creators create jobs.
A little later, Barnicle followed up on unemployment benefits:
BARNICLE: Let’s go back to what you said about unemployment checks. Unemployment checks, people don’t spend that money?
SHADEGG: No. They will spend as little as they can because they’ll hold on to it as long as they can. In reality, they don’t create jobs. You still haven’t told me how unemployed people create jobs.
Zombie Birthers: The Stoopid ‘Conspiracy’ That Won’t Die – Watch Anderson Cooper Battle Stubborn Ignorance with Truth and Facts
One observation about the birther conspiracy that seldom gets made is that Pres. Obama’s handling of this entirely fictional, made-up controversy is proof positive that he can play hardball when he wants to.
Even if Jeebus himself descended from heaven and unfurled Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate from the top of Mt. Sinai, the birthers would not believe it. What they really want is a president who is a white guy.
It is more than likely — almost a dead cinch — that Obama has in his possession a copy of the actual long-form birth certificate from Hawaii that birthers claim they need to see in order to put their purported concerns to rest.
The president’s mother had to have the long form document to show Customs officials when the family moved to Indonesia when Obama was five years old and and to show U.S. Customs when he returned a few years later to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. He also presumably had to show his birth certificate in order to get a driver’s license when he was 16 and likely had to produce it again when he received his passport.
Assuming those suppositions are correct, it’s good to see that he’s sticking it to these idiots, because the truth is, even if Jeebus himself descended from heaven and unfurled Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate from the top of Mt. Sinai, the birthers would not believe it. What they really want is a president who is a white guy. Half-white just doesn’t cut it.
That fact comes through loud and clear in Anderson Cooper’s interview, in the video above, with Texas birther and state Rep. Leo Berman, a Republican — who, it must be pointed out, is a ex-pat New Yorker.
Last month, Berman introduced legislation in the Texas House that would “require any candidate for president or vice president of the United States to show his or her birth certificate to the Texas secretary of state,” because, as Berman put it, “we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place”:
