barack obama

Remember when the right thought Stephen Colbert was the real deal? They believed he was really a right wing comedian/commentator and couldn’t seem to understand that his whole routine is making fun of the right. Well those righties haven’t become any smarter since then:

Fox News' opinion website Fox Nation and their readers don't seem to know satire when they see it.

The Fox News sister site re-posted a joke from the satirical website The Onion Friday about President Barack Obama sending a 75,000-word e-mail to the the entire nation. At no point does Fox Nation note that the story is a satire.

The Onion story joked that Obama had "reached the end of [his] rope" and sent out the "rambling" stream of consciousness e-mail that addressed everything from the war in Afghanistan to his live-in mother-in-law.

At this rate the right will make the movie Idiocracy become a reality.

A lot of talk yesterday about the foreclosure scandal sweeping the nation. With calls mounting for Congress to intervene, we are starting to see bigger names in Washington coming out to protect the poor bankers. Here’s Eric Cantor coming to their defense yesterday:

What we’re talking about, Debbie, you have 10 percent, if that, of the population who are now in a foreclosure situation or in a mortgage that they have been unable to meet the obligations… Now, come on, people have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don’t need government intervening in every step of every aspect of this economy.

Yet when the bankers didn’t take the responsibility of properly filing paperwork or even verify that people should be foreclosed on, Cantor didn’t stand up and say they needed to take responsibility.

But even more infuriating is to hear a key White House advisor also come out and more or less defend the bankers:

President Barack Obama's top adviser said Sunday that he wants Congress to address improper foreclosures but indicated that the White House doesn't support calls for a national moratorium.

For a party that claims to be increasing the size of their tent, the party elders seem hell bent on keeping it the size of a teepee. Case in point, Newt Gingrich:

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.

Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."

"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]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.

"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."

It’s not just the strong racism present in this interview, but its also the fact that Newt has decided to go full birther.

Having a major political party in the U.S., where it’s leaders not only embrace the wildest of conspiracy theories, but also try to echo them, is a very dangerous situation. It’s a danger not only for the GOP, but America as a whole. On the other hand, stock prices for aluminum foil are flying through the roof.

Like many others, I have spent the last few days really contemplating what will happen in the elections this November. As much as I want to be optimistic, I just can’t bring myself to it. Democrats are looking at a very dark mid-term and, as Peter Daou puts it, these are “dark days for the left”.

But what happened? What caused the rapid fall from glory for President Obama over the past two years? When he was sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States, Barack Obama enjoyed one of the highest approval ratings in history. Now he is treading water to keep from hitting bottom. I believe there are three main factors that play into this; healthcare, economy and war. I want to take a minute and look at what happened with each of these issues and how it turned the base sour on the President.

Caroline Baum from Bloomberg has some very interesting advice for Democrats this fall:

Congressional Democrats like to blame former President George W. Bush for just about everything: the lousy economy, high unemployment, trillion-dollar deficits, two wars - and probably the bedbug epidemic in New York City.

With the 2010 midterm elections 10 weeks away, Democrats are debating whether "blame Bush" is still a winning strategy almost two years into the reign of President Barack Obama.

In general, it's not. If the Democrats were smart, they would refocus their campaign and point a finger at Bush for the one thing they can rightly blame him for: the "biggest tax increase in history."

(emphasis added)

Baum gives good reasoning to this and reminds the country of something the Republicans don’t want them to remember:

In order to enact a tax cut of that size with the Senate evenly divided, Congress used the reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority, not a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority.

If proposed legislation increases the federal deficit beyond the 10-year budget window, it is subject to a 60-vote point of order as provided by the Byrd Rule, named after the late West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd. The rule was designed to prevent lawmakers from adding extraneous amendments to reconciliation bills. Everyone knew, or should have known, that this was a temporary tax cut (wink, wink) designed to put pressure on future Congresses.

And the tax cuts will do just that – raise the deficit beyond the 10-year budget window. Even Republicans like Eric Cantor admit that one. That is “pay to play” rules that the Republicans tout, but want to ignore when it comes to their agenda.

Peter Orszag will become the first member of President Obama’s cabinet to leave:

White House budget director Peter Orszag plans to leave government in July, becoming the first member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet to depart, administration officials said Monday. Orszag is likely to join a think tank, colleagues said.

Presidential advisers say a possible successor as director of the Office of Management and Budget is Rob Nabors, who was Orszag's deputy and went over to the Chief of Staff’s office to be a senior adviser to Rahm Emanuel. Nabors now he attends the 7:30 a.m. senior staff meeting and insiders say his stock never dropped, but only gained in value.

Two other possible replacements each served as chief economic adviser to President Bill Clinton: Laura D’Andrea Tyson of the University of California at Berkeley, named by Obama as a member of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board; and Gene Sperling, now a counselor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. 

What we really need is a new thinker in there – someone along the lines of a Paul Krugman. Everyone agrees that things like the stimulus was never enough, and the President never pushed for more. He needs advisers that will push him to really get this economy under control.

This really isn't that shocking of a news story:

Right after health care reform passed, we started hearing teabaggers and Republicans shouting for repeal. Now it looks like that might not be happening so much:

Anxious backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are starting to see a flicker of hope.

While polls show Americans remain sharply divided over the Democrats' landmark legislation, they aren't clamoring for its repeal.

Instead, the public seems willing to listen to candidates who would give the overhaul a chance and fix or improve it as needed. That's the signal from some surveys and a congressional race in a bellwether Pennsylvania district.

It's a pragmatic, somewhat counterintuitive outlook.

That could be a break for Democrats in the fall elections, since Republicans are campaigning hard for repeal of the health care law.

"Though most Americans still do not favor the law, they tend to be leaning toward candidates who would give it a chance and make some changes, rather than those who would repeal it and start over again," said Robert Blendon, a Harvard public health school professor who follows opinion trends on health care.

I believe the big problem is that Americans realize our current system is really fubared. The only hope they have right now is with the current bill, flawed as it may be. Republicans aren't putting forth any plans to deal with soaring costs. They are playing right into the old "party of no" meme, and that is going to hurt them.