white house

OMG – Obama Plays Golf!

From the typical type of garbage headline I have come to expect from the Politico:

PRESIDENT OBAMA TIES GEORGE W. BUSH ON GOLF

President Barack Obama has only been in office for just over nine months, but he's already hit the links as much as President Bush did in over two years.

Needless to say the wingnuts, lead by Drudge, are jumping on this as the indication of major fail of our new President. Of course they seem to overlook minor things like Bush spending weeks on end playing rancher in Crawford. There’s a big difference from being a few miles from the White House playing golf and being thousands of miles away playing cowboy.

But like I said at the beginning, this is the garbage we have come to expect from the newest tabloid called The Politico.

The White House’s Embrace Of Open Source Software

Following up on yesterday’s news of the White House now using the open source content management software Drupal to power their site I decided I needed to expand on it a bit more for my less tech savvy readers.

First an explanation of open source software is in order before an understanding of what it means to the citizens and taxpayers of our country.

The open source model is very powerful and starting to dominate the computing world. Approximately 75% of the websites on the internet are powered by software developed as open source. Apache is the most popular web server software and is open source. Linux is the most popular operating system for servers and is open source. Even MySQL, the database which powers most sites including Google is open source.

Open source software can be freely obtained. Any of the examples I gave above you can go and download right now and even download the underlying code that makes the software run. You are free to modify it however you like, given you follow the very lenient licensing requirements, and run those changes openly.

Making this software free doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made. Drupal is a perfect example of this. The software is so powerful and robust that it ends up with a very steep learning curve. That’s not by design, but rather because of what the software has to offer.

The Right Is In A Hissy Over Olbermann And Maddow Being Invited To The White House

How dare President Obama invite the MSNBC hosts and not anyone from FOX. Bush would have never done that!

Oh wait….

Already The Lies Start On Iran’s Second Plant

The news of the day hands down is the news that Iran has been working on a second nuclear plant. This comes as a surprise to the world, but not the world leaders and intelligence communities:

American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a “pilot plant” under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.

Of course this covert project that has been underway for several years is going to somehow become the fault of President Obama, and evidence of that lie has already started on Drudge:

The construction of this plant started and mostly occurred while George Bush was in the White House and has been no secret to the government, yet Drudge wants us to think that Iran pulled a quickie on the administration. If this is a surprise to Obama then it should be a down right shocker to Bush.

FOX Gets Called Out

Following up on FOX complaining because the President didn’t appear on their network yesterday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told ABC:

"We figured Fox would rather show So You Think You Can Dance than broadcast an honest discussion about health insurance reform"

Now that is a bold and true statement. As matter of fact I hope it’s the start of something new. Maybe it’s time to start really snubbing FOX overall. They don’t want to live up to the obligations of their broadcasting license to provide public service, which would be the President’s address to Congress a couple of weeks back, so the White House won’t give them any face time. Tell administration people to stop going on FOX news period, and try to get all the Democrats in Congress to jump on the same band wagon. Before long FOX will realize if they don’t want to play right, then they won’t get the chance to play at all.

Maher To Obama: “Stand Up For The 70% Of Americans Who Aren’t Crazy”

Last night Bill Maher gave one of his best new rules ever, and this is coming from a guy who has scene every single episode of Real Time. Talking about the White House’s constant caving and reaching out to people like the teabaggers, Maher has apparently reached the tipping point and tells Obama to start standing up for those who elected him and those who aren’t crazy.

Why Baucus Should Be Shit Canned

It seems that Max Baucus decided to distribute his plan to special interests groups before he even let the White House see it. This man isn’t working for the American people, he is working for his own financial gain. The Democrats should fully remove him from the health care talks. If he is allowed to continue his reign over it, then we will end up with something worse than we have now.

When The Crazies Out Crazy The Crazies

I have heard a lot of support for President Obama’s speech to school children from a lot of unsuspecting allies on the right, but the latest is a real shocked. Newt Gingrich has tweeted:

Just read President Obamas speech to students.white House posted it. it is a good speech and will be good for students to hear

And followed up with:

Remember that Presidents Reagan and Bush also talked to students nationwide. As long as it is non political and pro education it is good.

When Newt Gingrich is starting to sound like the sane one on the right then the crazies are really taking over. This could easily be the start of a real bi-partisan issue – fighting back against the lunatics.

Adding…

Here is the text of the President’s speech (below the fold). It mostly focuses on personal responsibility. That is the socialistic message the lunatic fringe has been fearing. The don’t want the government doing anything for its citizens and they don’t want their children learning about personal reasonability. That right there is the perfect recipe for a disastrous future for our nation.

What’s Behind Obama’s Falling Poll Numbers?

There has been a lot of talk today about a new CNN poll finding Obama now losing the independents. When I dug deeper into this poll I found something very interesting:

The first column is approve and the second is disapprove. If you look you will see the numbers have done a reversal since March. Now what has changed since then? Well that’s simple. Back in March Obama was strongly supporting a public option. Now he is wavering on it.

If the White House doesn’t get back on the message it had during the Spring, or even the message that brought him into office, then we won’t only lose the chance of having a public option, but also Obama can kiss his presidency good bye.

Kick Them To The Curb

I really never thought I would hear something like this from Rahm:

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

That’s the strongest position yet taken by the White House on the health care debate, and it gets extra points coming from the President’s right hand man.

Sadly it took them awhile to realize that and that could cost them some public support. But there could be a silver lining here. What the Democrats need now is strong message control. Let Republicans around the country know that they were willing to work with Republicans, but the Republicans didn’t want it. Instead the Republicans in Senate were set on being the party of “no”. Just ask John Kyl.

More Outrage Please!

On Monday I floated the idea that the mixed messages from the White House with regards to the public option could have been more or less planned. Maybe the White House was hoping to get this out there in order to help fire up the base. It appears that this may actually be happening:

Noam Scheiber:

Around the conference table at TNR, we've been saying for weeks that what Obama really needed was a group of equally vocal, equally zealous critics on the left, pulling the debate's center of gravity in the other direction. And, wouldn't you know, that's exactly what's happened over the last 48 hours. We've now got a pole on the left to match the intensity of the pole on the right. (Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting a moral equivalence between the two. As far as I'm concerned, the critics on the left are basically right and the critics on the right are either insane or deeply cynical.) From a sheer tactical perspective, I think the White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress have dramatically improved their position.

(h/t Cesca)

We are also hearing more on the left call for marches on Washington and for our side to exhibit the outrage the right has. The sad truth is that lack of civility is how things get done in this country. Think Vietnam, Malcolm X and the Iraq war. In order to win over public support people need to take to the streets and yell and scream. Our side has always been much better at that than the right. Just compare the tea parties to some of the big Iraq war protests.

Quote Of The Day

Matt Taibbi:

I’ll say this for George Bush: you’d never have caught him frantically negotiating against himself to take the meat out of a signature legislative initiative just because his approval ratings had a bad summer. Can you imagine Bush and Karl Rove allowing themselves to be paraded through Washington on a leash by some dimwit Republican Senator of a state with six people in it the way the Obama White House this summer is allowing Max Baucus (favorite son of the mighty state of Montana) to frog-march them to a one-term presidency?

No Public Option?

That’s the news catching on like wildfire this morning – that President Obama has dropped his support for a public option in the healthcare bill. Like most on our side I was at first really upset over this, but instead of starting my screams of anguish, I sat here and thought about it.

When you start looking into the story you quickly realize that there is mixed messages going on. Kathleen Sebelius was the one who brought us the news of no public option yesterday, but Robert Gibbs basically denied it. Is the Obama White House this confused on message, or is it part of a bigger plan?

Democrats are losing the message war during the August recess. Townhalls are turning into shouting matches thanks to the right wing opponents of health care reform, and now the two big things they have complained about, a public option and end of life counseling, are rumored to be gone. That takes away their two biggest complaints, while the loss of these items should ignite our base.

Perhaps this is a way for the administration to regain control of the message war in August. We are at the halfway point of the recess, and now the White House can see what happens at the townhalls with these two items off the table. If they start seeing outrage from the left about it then they can come back in September and reinstate the options, citing a public outrage over the removal of them.

On top of that, if there is visible outrage from the President’s own party, that will be much more meaningful than opposition from a bunch of McCain/Palin supporters. That will also help to push the Blue Dogs over to our side that much more. After all once the recess is over they need to start their campaigns for the 2010 elections.

Perhaps Obama Should Pull A Palin

It has been an interesting weekend. First rumors started flying that Todd and Sarah Palin are getting a divorce, which was immediately followed by a cease and desist from Palin’s attorney to the reporting website. Then we found out President Obama was truly born in Kenya, as proven by a birth certificate.

For the former story our proof only lies in rumors and what individuals say. We have to take Palin’s word on it that they are not getting a divorce, and it appears that not only myself, but most on the left are willing to take their word for it. As for the birth certificate, well that has been widely proven to be a forgery, and not even a very good one (forged documents involving Africa – haven’t we been down this road before?).

So I was thinking about these two stories and thought that maybe President Obama should follow in the leadership examples of Sarah Palin. Perhaps its time for some White House lawyers to issue cease and desist lawyers to the people trying to push this whole birther notion. Go and serve them at their places of employment, and especially serve CNN and WND for their promoting this nonsense.

Now if that happens I wonder how the right will respond? Will we see yet another double standard where Palin can be allowed to do such a thing, yet Obama isn’t? It wouldn’t be surprising if that was exactly the case.

White House Kegger

MSNBC reported that both Prof. Gates and Officer Crowley have agreed to the meeting at the White House with President Obama over the arrest this week. I was just thinking of the outcome this could have. We could end up seeing an entire new chapter opened up when we talk about race – a chapter that could lead to better understanding.

Then I got thinking even more about it.

Could this also be the reason the right has been so negative on the entire thing? Perhaps Rush Limbaugh was afraid this very thing could happen. A new path to heal racial tensions in this country – that’s the worst nightmare for a bigot like Limbaugh.

I can’t wait for this meeting to happen. Its going to be very interesting to see the outcome.