Bachmann-Ryan Overdrive

What some saw after Obama's SOTU speech...

Grayson: Hey Cheney, shut the f?!k up

The former vice president and White House puppetmaster just can't keep his trap closed of late, accusing President Obama more or less of treason. Even ballsier lawmaker Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, dismisses Big Dick with four familiar letters.

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Who knew that fearless Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who has steamrolled the GOP's paper tigers, sent potential opponents scurrying, and once made Matt Taibbi almost pee his pants, had such a sweet singing voice?

What If: Obama logic applied to presidencies past

Now don't get me wrong, I like Obama and think his best days are still to come. But his administration has so far been a strange collection of backtracks, waverings, retreats, retreads, flip-flops, cricket chirps and sellouts, with a few successes here and there.

Friend of mine saw a link somewhere that wondered what it would be like if Team Obama applied its logic on health care to other progressive battles in history. He lost the exact link, which I don't have either, so I hope my list below isn't copycatting someone else too closely (email or comment if so, esp. if you have the link in question).

Anyway, here are a few headlines from history, if Obama logic was at work...

HUSSSEEEEEINNNNNNNNNN!!!

Well, that's settled then.

God's slam poet

So the Rev. Joseph Lowery is among the many fine individuals newly awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for 2009. The good reverend has had a long and storied career, with a recent highlight being his poetic excoriation of the Bush administration with President George W. Bush himself sitting behind Lowery as he spoke at Coretta Scott King's memorial service in 2006.

What will the loquacious Lowery say at his Freedom Medal acceptance speech? I can imagine it'll go something like this:

Diplomasea

President Obama in serious discussion with the Horn of Africa's pirate king.

Scenes from a new reckoning

What a day. Here are a few moments to remember it by...

Stuck with Reid forever

I don't much like Sen. Harry Reid. So he's a pragmatist who's willing to cross the aisle to get things done, yeah great. What that's actually meant during his tenure is that he's willing to kowtow to corrupt Republicans to stay on everyone's Christmas card list. Reid is more interested in sealing deals than in right or wrong.

How to boot the moral milquetoast? Granted, his job isn't an easy or glamorous one, and there hasn't exactly been an avalanche of challengers. I had hopes that Sen. Hillary Clinton might push for it, but check this telling info from a piece on President-elect Obama's discussion of Sec-of-State with Clinton in today's NY Times, emphasis mine:

For Mrs. Clinton, there are pros and cons to taking the job as well. Senior Senate Democratic officials say it has become increasingly clear to Mrs. Clinton and her advisers that there was no quick route to a position of influence in the Senate, potentially increasing her interest in a prominent role in the Obama administration.

She had approached the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, about becoming chairwoman of a special subcommittee to handle health care issues, but he squelched the idea, Senate officials said. Aides to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, made it clear that despite his illness, he intended to consider health overhaul before the full committeethat he leads.

Mrs. Clinton was also discouraged from trying to mount a challenge to any junior members of the party's Senate leadership, one official said. In a seniority-driven institution like the Senate, it could take years for Mrs. Clinton to accumulate real power despite her status as a national political celebrity and the appeal she demonstrated in the primary season.

Egad. Well, here's hoping Russ Feingold mounts a challenge, or is he too principled?

Dignity restored

America must look evil if it looks like Obama

So Republicans like to say that the difference between Obama and Osama is a little B.S. Let's take a look at some of the GOP's own B.S.

Check out this post on Brad Friedman's site. It's all from a local Republican elections mailer sent out in Virginia. Let me preface this by acknowledging Brad as one of the best and most important bloggers/investigative journos out there.

The back of the envelope features a pic (above the words "AMERICA MUST LOOK EVIL / IN THE EYE / AND NEVER FLINCH") that Brad says is Obama, which ties in with the reference to the "Democrats who want to control Washington" line inside the mailer, and would also be a natural deduction given the mailer's design color... brown, like Obama's skin such as in this photo.

However, that's not Obama. It's Osama bin Laden. Notice how the original photo has been tinted a la the infamous O.J. Simpson photo on the cover of Time.

I showed the image to a colleague of mine who also thought it was Obama at first, no doubt overtly influenced by the sepia tint. By his and Brad's--and surely the intended recipients'--erroneous IDs, a subconscious connection is made, which is exactly what is intended.

Clever trick, righty ratfuckers. And an old one too. You bastards never quit, do you?

McCain booed by own supporters

After repeatedly allowing planted GOP ratfuckers and assorted riff-raff to shout crap about Obama like "TRAITOR!" and "KILL HIM!" at his rallies, Sen. McCain seems to be losing control of the loons his campaign has driven into a desperate fervor. He even yanks the mic away from some old woman terrified that an "Arab" might get elected. He's starting to sound like Anakin Skywalker after he got Mace Windu offed: "What have I done, my friends?"

I expect one of his lackeys will be on Fox soon explaining that those weren't boos, they were joyous calls of "Magoo!"

Over 70 percent of CEOs fear Obama presidency will be disastrous

Who better to follow the first "CEO president" than a guy whom most corporate bigs want to be the next prez?

Chief Executive magazine conducted a poll of 751 CEOs that revealed they prefer Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) over Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) by a four-to-one margin.

Not only are the biz bosses typically ga-ga over the Republican nominee, nearly 75 percent of them fear that an Obama administration "would be disastrous for the country," according to a press release accompanying the poll.

Some surveyed chief execs even said that Obama's programs "would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented."

Whatever. Such reactionary corporate fearmongering is to be expected as the non-stop bacchanalia of orgiastic greed that big business has enjoyed under an indifferent dunce in the Oval Office may finally come to a close. Let the chips, and the fatcats, fall.

Obama VP will be Biden

Sen. Barack Obama hasn't made it official yet in the much-awaited email to his special mailing list, but it appears if this ABC News blog post is to believed that Sen. Joe Biden is to be his running mate:

The United States Secret Service has dispatched a protective detail to assume the immediate protection of Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a source tells ABC News, indicating in all likelihood that Biden has been officially notified that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, has selected him to be his running mate

CNN later confirmed through multiple sources that Biden will indeed be named Obama's running mate on Saturday.

Obama's choice of veteran senator Biden (D-DE) comes as little surprise for many in the media and blogosphere who had expected Obama to pick seniority over obscurity.

His pool of potential candidates had dwindled over recent weeks. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas were other names often bandied about as possible contenders, but Biden seemed to have the lion's share of the attention.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama's bitter rival in the Democratic primaries, was out of the running early, signified by her and former president Bill Clinton's tepid support for the Illinois senator in the days following her concession. Just recently her brother also had paid a visit to the McCain camp.

Sen. John McCain will announce his VP pick on his 72nd birthday on Aug. 29.

Grover Norquist comes up with perfect GOP bumper sticker

The conservative toadie quips that Obama is "Kerry with a tan." Good thing he's not "running for anything" and "can get away with such remarks," as the LA Times blogger helpfully and sadly points out.

Hey, the Obama monkey shirt was a hot seller; this suggested bumper sticker--perfect for the brash Republican racist in your family--is bound to break new records too. Good thing I'm not running for anything either.

Boiling hot McCain

There's a rumor going around that there's a tape featuring Michelle Obama blaming "whitey" for Katrina and other ills in America. Obama himself has even been asked about it. The story is ridiculous, as BooMan explains.

Well, as long as the Obama haters are going to spread falsehoods, I may as well bring this up.

There's another rumor going around that John McCain has a strange fetish involving sharp-clawed crustaceans. While I have no documented proof that McCain gets sexual gratification from jamming lobsters down his pants, I did have this damning photo emailed anonymously to me. I blacked out the alleged victim's eyes to protect its identity.

McCain must explain this. I urge the same reporters and bloggers hounding Obama over the "whitey" fiasco to get to the bottom of this spiny mystery.

HOT BUTTERY UPDATE: I've been asked if there's a videotape. Yes, there is indeed a scandalous tape, and my contact promises to release it today drat on a slow Friday crap day before election rats... when the time is right. Stay tuned.

Obama makes a molehill out of a mountain

Huffington Post and others tried to capitalize on this earlier, an out-of-context quote from Obama supposedly characterizing rural Pennsylvanians as bitter, gun-totin' nutballs. If you read the original quote in context, you'll see how Jake Tapper et al. could carve it up for cheap hits on a slow Friday.

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Having been set up for easy lay-ups, both Team Magoo and No. 2 went in for some gimme points by issuing snarkments on this non-story.

Well, Sen. Obama slaps them both down with his just-issued response to it all:

...I made this statement -- so, here's what rich. Senator Clinton says 'No, I don't think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack's being condescending.' John McCain says, 'Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he's obviously out of touch with people.'

Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain -- it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch? No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania. I know what's going on in Indiana. I know what's going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that's why I'm running for President of the United States of America.

Richardson says Viva Obama

This may be the final blow to Sen. Clinton's bleak hopes for the White House. At least Gov. Richardson, who worked for Pres. Bill Clinton, waited till after Texas to endorse Obama likely out of respect and loyalty to his old friends. This must have been tough for him, but apparently it was tougher for Hillary.

The endorsement from Richardson:



The acceptance from Obama:

Novak: Large number of Dem insiders believe Obama will be '08 nominee

Nuggets from Bob Novak's takes on the recent Democratic and Republican debates in New Hampshire:

* Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom Novak accidentally identifies as a Republican, "never looked better physically," he writes.  "She is slow-walking her way toward the nomination, which is often a path leading to defeat."

* Why defeat?  Because Novak reveals that "[t]here are a surprisingly large number of Democratic insiders who now believe [Sen. Barack] Obama will be the nominee."  He says Limbaugh's Magic Negro is "still a little rough around the edges, but getting better."

* On Gov. Bill Richardson, Novak has less than stellar things to say.  Oh, who'm I kidding, he rips him a new one.  To wit: "He appeared totally unprepared at the debate.  It was a continuation of his disastrous performance on NBC's 'Meet the Press' last Sunday -- perhaps the worst performance in the show's history."  Ouch.  There's more... "Longtime Richardson-watchers say he has been flying by the seat of his pants his whole career, and this time he crashed and burned."

* And that brings us to Novak's odds-on favorite to succeed King George, Sen. Fred Thompson.  Novak just can't gush enough about Uncle Hulka, despite the fact that Thompson wasn't at the debate since he hasn't even announced yet, and trails in most polls.  Looking into his crystal ball, Novak matter-of-factly asserts, "Thompson now leads in the futures markets, with Giuliani and Romney close behind and McCain a distant fourth place."  We could truncate that sentence to simply, "Thompson now leads ... with Giuliani," because as I mentioned before, that will be the 2008 GOP ticket if Karl Rove has his way, and he's certainly already clued in his friend Bob.