News Roundup for 5/7/12

Mittens the Clown

-Headline of the Day-
"Romney Supporter: Obama Taking Credit For Bin Laden Like ‘Giving Ronald McDonald Credit’ For Big Mac."

So sayeth Dave Yost. Who's Dave Yost? Why, he's the Ohio state Auditor. In other words, nobody.

So why is this news? Well, to tell the truth, it's not. But it allows me to comment on a bigger picture going on out there, namely the Republican Party's Bin Laden denialism. This is basically what every GOPer out there is saying -- that Obama shouldn't take credit because he didn't actually kill Bin Laden personally -- and it makes no damned sense at all.

Here's the thing; contrary to what conservatives seem to believe, SEAL Team 6 doesn't wander the world aimlessly, looking for bad guys. They aren't like cops on a beat who just happened to stumble across Osama Bin Laden and took it upon themselves to take care of him. They were sent there. By this one guy. A guy named Barack Obama.

On the other hand, Mitt Romney said categorically that he would never, ever, not once in a million years send troops into Pakistan to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. Now, of course, Mittens says something 180 degrees opposite -- which is kind of a hobby of his. Romney switched positions only after it became clear that Obama's way was a good idea. If Bin Laden were still alive, it's pretty clear a President Romney would not send SEAL 6 into Pakistan to take him out. And, as we've already established, SEAL Team 6 doesn't wander around looking for baddies to knock off all on their lonesome.

So who is Dave Yost again? On this issue, he's identical to every other Republican moron. Call him the GOP everyman. (ThinkProgress)


-Here come the waterworks again-



Looks like Boehner's going to have to head over to Earl Scheib's to get another coat. (GoComics)


-Bonus HotD-
"Failed AL Governor Has Ditched Wife To Knock Up Lesbians In New Zealand."

Oh sure, it's a Wonkette headline, but here's the thing: not a word of that is untrue. (Wonkette)

News Roundup for 4/30/12

Don't you dare accuse him of telling the truth


-Headline of the Day-
"Inside the Mitt Laden Smackdown."

Last week, the Obama campaign put out a video suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have dropped the hammer on Osama Bin Laden. Obviously, this was terrible. Mittens is not happy with it.

The problem, of course, it's Mitt's kneejerk messaging strategy -- i.e., everything Obama does is wrong. This puts him in the situation of having criticized the president for doing the sort of thing that eventually got Osama.

"In line with the late Bush administration policy and messaging on OBL, Romney repeatedly said that the US shouldn’t focus on hunting him down," writes Josh Marshall. "The point wasn’t that OBL was off the hook but that we shouldn’t be focusing on this one guy. Romney followed by attacking Obama in 2008 for suggesting that he would unilaterally send American troops into Pakistan to kill bin Laden. In both cases, Romney was doing little more than repeating the strategic or political orthodoxy of the GOP leader of the moment, in the first case George W. Bush in 2007 and then John McCain in 2008."

If Mittens says he wouldn't send troops into Pakistan to kill Bin Laden, how is he supposed to get into the situation where he gives the order for troops to kill Bin Laden in Pakistan? Romney specifically ruled out doing exactly what it took to get the guy. So when the President said Romney wouldn't have killed OBL, he was just taking the man at his word.

In other words, Mitt's getting bent out of shape because President Obama is not calling him a liar. That might be a first. (Talking Points Memo)


-I'm a terrible person-



I thought this was hilarious. (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)


-Bonus HotD-
"Depressed Bin Laden thought about ‘al-Qaida' name change, White House says."

Unfortunately, "The Apple Dumpling Gang" was already taken. (Yahoo! News)

Stories to Watch: 4/28/12

I was going to head out to Milwaukee today, but the weather is crap. Cold and rain. So tomorrow it is. Now here's the news...


Obama pushes the killing of Osama Bin Laden as one of his signature accomplishments. John McCain doesn't care for this and wants it off his lawn. Of course, McCain is a clown.


Not that Obama's forgetting about the War on Women.


Speaking of that war, Susan G. Komen for the Cure is still limping from their self-inflicted wound.


Robert Reich on the GOP's demographic kamikaze run.


Science confirms; religion makes a lot of sense -- until you think about it.


Finally, politicians like to point to silly-seeming studies as a waste of taxpayer money, but the bigger picture tells a different story; all knowledge has value. And real world applications.

Related articles

• McCain Is Outraged That Obama Politicized 9/11, But He Did The Same Thing
• Presidential race ad war begins in earnest
• McCain: What war on women?

News Roundup for 3/22/12

Rove makes an appearance on The Colbert Report

-Headline of the Day-
"Karl Rove: Bin Laden killing was no biggie."

Republicans just can't let President Obama have nice things. If Obama does something, then it's automatically terrible -- unless you can't possibly spin it that way. In that case, it's trivial.

Karl Rove proved that today in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. In it, Rove uses a 17-minute Obama campaign web movie to point out that the president is just God awful -- unlike that fella Karl served under.

Anyway, Karl's biggest challenge was making the death of Osama bin Laden seem like one of those not-automatically-terrible-so-it-must-be-trivial things and he hit kind of a dead end. There's no way he could do it. Scratch that; there's no way he could do it honestly. This is Karl Rove here, so he quickly overcame this problem.

"As for the killing of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation," Karl writes. "Even President Bill Clinton says in the film 'that’s the call I would have made.' For this to be portrayed as the epic achievement of the first term tells you how bare the White House cupboards are."

Tiny little bit of a problem here: that's not exactly what Clinton said. What Bill said was, "He took the harder and the more honorable path. When I saw what had happened, I thought to myself, 'I hope that’s the call I would have made.'" Contrary to what Karl wants you to believe, Bill's not saying it was an easy decision anyone would've made, he's saying it was a hard decision.

And would Karl's boss have made that call? Here's GWB on the subject: "I truly am not that concerned about [Osama bin Laden]. I am deeply concerned about Iraq... I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say no. (Plum Line)


-The Distracto DeVille Deluxe-



"Guess it's back to calling women sluts, then." (McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"Ann Coulter Says It Is Now Time To ‘Go After’ The Obama Children."

Ann who?

Oh yeah... She's that one woman who used to say deliberately offensive things for a living. The troll lady... You know...

Man, I thought she'd be insane and homeless by now. I guess I was half right. (Wonkette)

Stories to Watch: 12/8/11

What's nearly as good as fresh-baked lasagna? Leftover lasagna. I'm eatin'. Now here's the news...


RNC chair Reince Priebus comes out against a Trump-sponsored GOP debate. When it's beneath even Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, that tells you a lot. This thing is probably dead.


A payroll tax cut fails again in the Senate.


Meanwhile, Republicans offer their own payroll tax cut plan. As always, the GOP wants to cut off your left arm as the price for saving your right.


David Frum sees Newt Gingrich as the latest GOP fad-candidate. But this time, he sees it hurting the party. "[G]iven that these balloons take typically 6-8 weeks to shrivel, the impending Gingrich bust may not arrive soon enough to save Romney," he warns. "No question though, it will arrive in time to freak out the Republican party."


A certain fella named "Mitt" seems to agree with Frum.


Eric Cantor shuts down a bill in the Financial Services Committee that would've made insider trading by congress critters illegal. If congress shuts off the easy-money tap, Republicans like Cantor might have to actually, you know, do work.


President Obama bitchslaps GOP candidates who claim he follows a foreign policy of "appeasement": "Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever’s left out there about that."


As ads tying Elizabeth Warren to Occupy Wall Street fail to impress Massachusetts voters, Karl Rove switches gears and tries to tie her to big banks. When one argument contradicts another, that's what savvy DC insiders call "amateurish bullshit."


Finally, here's a good way to join the ranks of the unemployed.

Related articles

• Why The GOP Fears Gingrich (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• WATCH: GOP Candidate's Wild Night In DC (huffingtonpost.com)
• Fox News Poll: Gingrich Leads in GOP Voter Preference (foxnews.com)

Stories to Watch: 10/20/11

OK, better late than never. Now here's the news...


Sen. Lindsey Graham wants to spend a big ol' pot of money on infrastructure -- Libya's infrastructure. America, on the other hand, can go screw herself.


More Republicans come out with the bizarre argument that President Obama didn't win Libya right. Mitt Romney looks especially stupid on that point.


Marco Rubio's story about being the son of Cuban exiles turns out to be bullshit.


Herman Cain comes out as pro-choice. Everyone's pretending to be confused over the fact that he personally opposes abortion, yet says the government has no business making that decision for people. I'm sorry, he's saying he's pro-choice. The only thing I find confusing about this is all the confusion.


Louisiana has passed what may be the stupidest, most poorly thought out law in history.


Andrew Sullivan: "To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now."


Finally, the GOP's claims about what they laughably call their "jobs bill" are, quite frankly, insane.

Related articles

• Herman "Sanger" Cain: Pro-choice and gonna lose (americablog.com)
• GOP Sen. Marco Rubio's harrowing family immigrant story that never happened (americablog.com)
• Santorum labels Cain 'pro-choice,' Cain rebuts (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

News Roundup for 8/4/11

History's greatest educator

-Headline of the Day-
"How Bush Killed Bin Laden: What’s Really In Huckabee’s 9/11 Cartoon."

Mike Huckabee is a man who thinks of the children. And so it only makes sense that he puts out cartoons that help the little tykes understand history. In one video, kids learn how Ronald Reagan saved America from black thugs in t-shirts that said "DISCO" on them and Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn't around to fight WWII. You know, real accurate stuff.

And so it is with 9/11 and terrorism. In case you've forgotten, the story goes like this: a bunch of Muslims attacked America, because they hate our freedom and because they were Muslims. Then George W. Bush yelled at them with a bullhorn and gave birth to the PATRIOT Act atop the pile of rubble. Liberals, of course, hated the whole idea because they like terrorists and don't like to make people mad, so they just wanted to forget 9/11 ever happened.

But not George W. Bush! He did a bunch of intelligence stuff and some stuff happened for a while that no one really needs to know all that much about and then, lo and behold, Osama bin Laden was dead! Yay for Bush!

Thank God we have Mike Huckabee to set the record straight. (Talking Points Memo)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, with all the fightin' and feudin' and fussin', wouldn't a little "bipartisanship" be nice? Well, we're going to find out how bipartisanship in Washington works Yay!


Click for animation

Remember, bipartisanship means never having to say you're sorry for breaking someone's kneecaps with tire iron. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Obama Turns 50 Despite Republican Opposition."

Onion headlines are often amazingly accurate. (The Onion)

Stories to Watch: 5/8/11

Happy Mothers Day. Now here's the news...


The Washington Post tells their readers that there's simply nothing that can possibly be done about unemployment. So Dean Baker points out all the stupid in the WP's editorial, while Brad DeLong does the same. Also in economics news: worried about runaway inflation because the fed "keeps printing money?" Yeah, you can knock that off now.


Rightwing media are shocked to learn that the president shares information with generals (make sure to read the breathlessly panicked comments -- don't worry, the crazy isn't catching). Obama is "caught on video" handing a "secret note" to an Air Force General and... Well, that's it. The fact that he's out in the freakin' daylight, giving a memo to a general is... I don't even know what it's supposed to be. These guys know that the president is supposed to talk to generals, right? "Apparently this is what happens when the media can no longer accuse President Obama of having shady information on his birth certificate," writes Mediaite's Frances Martel.


This is fun; Taegan Goddard goes back to 2008 to find an example of Bill O'Reilly being vehemently wrong. "You're not gonna invade Pakistan, Senator [Obama], if you're president. You're not gonna send ground troops in there. You know it."


Osama bin Laden's death proves that evolution is a buncha hooey. Sometimes, I wonder if creationism isn't just an elaborate prank.


The courageous and oh-so-serious Paul Ryan plan to balance the budget turns out to have yet one more flaw -- there's no way it balances the budget.


Finally, whenever I start thinking I have the worst governor in America, I think about Florida's Rick Scott, who cut unemployment benefits to fund a tax giveaway to the wealthy.

Related articles

• Bill O'Reilly Attacks Alan Colmes To Defend Bush Torture Policies (crooksandliars.com)
• Fox Scrubs O'Reilly Flub On Obama's Social Security Number - 4/15/11 (yourdaddy.net)
• Glenn Beck To O'Reilly: Obama's Ground Zero Visit Was 'Shameless' (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Bill O'Reilly: Conservative Criticism Of Obama's Handling Of Bin Laden Is 'Crazy Unreasonable' (mediaite.com)

Stories to Watch: 5/7/11

 Forecast for the upcoming week; rain. Then some rain. With rain on top. I comfort myself with the knowledge that any forecast more than 48 hours out is just guesswork. Now here's the news...


Contrary to what all the rightwing sadists have been saying, the Bush administration's reliance on torture almost certainly delayed bringing down Osama bin Laden.


President Obama says that green energy means jobs -- mostly because everyone in the world is jumping on the bandwagon and the US is in danger of being left behind, hugging old, obsolete technology. "I don't want other countries to win the competition..." he says. "I want American to win that competition." Needless to say, this is the worst thing ever.


It's going to be a pleasure to watch Rick Santorum lose almost as badly as he deserves to.


For the fourteen-bazillionth time: more drilling won't lower gas prices. That is simply a fact. Whether you like that fact or not is irrelevant.


Remember that Kloppenburg/Prosser recount in Wisconsin? Yeah, Waukesha County continues to be a freakin' mess, electorally. If those people reelect Kathy Nickolaus, they're either rewarding corruption or rank incompetence.


Finally and still in Wisconsin news: although Gov. Walker and Republicans deny that they're efforts are about busting unions, broken unions would undoubtedly be the result.

Related articles

• Wisconsin: Prosser ahead by 7316 votes in final canvass (americablog.com)
• Wisconsin Court Election Update: Kloppenburg Seeks Open Records Request from Waukesha County (news.firedoglake.com)
• Kloppenburg team begins review of Waukesha County voting records - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (news.google.com)
• Waukesha County Clerk Finds Votes for Brookfield on Her PC, Adds Over 7,500 Votes to Prosser's Total (news.firedoglake.com)

News Roundup for 5/5/11

Jane Corwin

-Headline of the day-
"Blogger Who Punked Gov. Walker Mocks Campaign Rival With Fake Website."

Go to JaneCorwin.org. Do it now. Shut up. I don't care. Just do it.

Ok, so that was weird, huh? Corwin is a Republican is running in a special election to replace the naked Craigslist guy (yeah, this thing is fun on all sorts of levels) and I think you've probably already figured out that's not really her site.

According to the report, "The site was registered by Paul Fallon, publisher of The Buffalo Beast, under whose aegis blogger Ian Murphy tricked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) by pretending to be billionaire libertarian financier David Koch during a telephone call in February." Yeah, you remember that guy... Now he's running as a Green for the naked guy's office too (I almost said "naked guy's seat," which would've been terrible).

Anyway, if you go to the site, you learn fascinating things about Corwin (she wants to make soup out of old people, she has a "comprehensive pandering strategy," etc.) and find that she's endorsed by Moummar Qadaffi, Donald Trump, and Kim Jong Il.

The lesson here: if you're going to start buying domain names for your campaign, make sure you grab all the dot-net, dot-org, and dot-whatevers. Otherwise, people will think that less-than-reputable characters like George W. Bush are your Facebook friends. (The Atlantic, via ShortformBlog)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, you probably heard that they got that Osama bin Laden guy -- now here's the story in cartoon form! Yay!



Click for animation

Wow, Uncle Mark's idea of hell is exactly the same as mine! Weird... (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Exxon Makes $30.5 Billion, So GOP Votes Unanimously To Give Them Tax Breaks."

If we don't give these tax breaks to small businesses, they'll never get off the ground. (ThinkProgress)

Stories to Watch: 5/4/11

OK, so I've got the mobile versions up at my blogspot blogs and, for good measure, I added a printer-friendly button at the bottom of each post. This weekend, I'm probably going to add javascript animation to the buttons on the Tumblr blog. Busy, busy, busy. Now here's the news...


President Obama decides against releasing postmortem bin Laden photos. But Fox's Shepard Smith threatens a FOIA request. It probably wouldn't go anywhere, since the reason for keeping them locked up could arguably be termed "a matter of national security." But how ironic is it that Fox is now the home of "screw national security?"


Mittens Romney's campign chair quits over the candidate's constant flip-flopping. That might scar.


House Democrats will force a vote tomorrow "on repealing billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks." A tough choice for the GOP; dance with them what brung 'em or face the "in the pocket of big oil" ads with dinging gas pump meters in November.


Speaking of House Republicans, they took another hopeless whack at repealing healthcare reform and micromanaging women's decisions to abort. Reminder: they still haven't done a damned thing about jobs. Apparently, they believe they were elected to be grandstanding jackasses. We'll see how that works out for them.

Finally, there are at least three gullible Republican senators.

News Roundup for 5/3/11

Whew!

-Headline of the day-
"Public 'Relieved' By bin Laden's Death, Obama's Job Approval Rises."

After going to Afghanistan and personally beating Osama bin Laden to death with a lamp, President Obama is only seeing a mild bump in the polls. Then again, it's still early. Pew took a look at public's reaction and finds that "relieved" is the most common emotion attached to the event, with 72% using the word to describe themselves.

Overall, the president's approvals stand at 56% approving and 38% disapproving, compared to a 47%/45% split last month. Not surprisingly, Independents make up most of that, with approvals rising 10 points to 52% from last month.

But here's the weird thing: Repblican number have shifted in a way I can only describe as goofy. In April, 16% approved of Obama. In May, 16% approve of Obama -- identical. But last month, 81% disapproved, while today, 79% disapprove. So you can not get a Republican to switch from disapprove to approve. You can only get them to switch from disapprove to no opinion.

Kind of makes them seem like stubborn jerks, doesn't it? (Pew Research Center)


-No comment-



(Reddit)


-Bonus HotD-
"Rep. Peter King: We Should Still Use Waterboarding Because That's How We Captured Bin Laden."

Except it's not. (ThinkProgress)

Stories to Watch: 5/2/11

Bin Laden's dead. So, is it safe for us to have some of our rights back or is that too much to ask? Now here's the news...


Was some of the information that brought down Osama Bin Laden obtained through torture? A lot of people are making the case that it was, but there's really no evidence to back the claim up.


Consistent right up to the end, bin Laden shuffled off this mortal coil with a final act of cowardice. He also reportedly has a posthumous "death to America" tape in the pipe.


Joe Scarborough's a dick. Rick Santorum is an assclown. Bryan Fischer's just an idiot. Eric Cantor reminds us why he's been nicknamed "manager of the asshole store."


Crap. Does this mean I have to follow Dwyane "The Rock" Johnson's twitter feed now?


Were bin Laden and the Pakistani government in cahoots? The evidence -- circumstantial though it may be at this time -- is damning. On the other hand, the Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, makes a fairly sound argument to the contrary. Count Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) among the unconvinced.


Finally, Raw Story collects "The 5 craziest conspiracy theories on bin Laden’s death." Make sure to watch the video, which is completely insane.

News Roundup for 5/2/11

Trump reacts to the news of Bin Laden's death

-Headline of the day-
"Donald Trump Congratulates Obama On Osama Bin Laden Killing, Asks For End To 'Party Politics' Debate For 'Next Several Days'."

After President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, Donald Trump -- like many other GOP candidates -- saw the road to the White House get really rocky, really fast. No one on Earth believes that Obama isn't going to have rock star approval ratings in the next round of polling.

So what a perfect time to put all this ugly campaigning on hold. "I am so proud to see Americans standing shoulder to shoulder, waving the American flag in celebration of this great victory," Trump said. "We should spend the next several days not debating party politics, but in remembrance of those who lost their lives on 9/11 and those currently fighting for our freedom. God Bless America!"

Yes, let's wait until his polling numbers fall back to Earth and then engage him in a popularity contest. (ABC News)


-And the internet chimes in...-
Get used to it, because you're probably going to be seeing a lot of this stuff.



When you stop seeing it, that'll be just about the time Donald Trump will want to "debate party politics" again. (Reddit)


-Bonus HotD-
"Can We Stop Questioning Obama's Legitimacy Now?"

Bush speechwriter David Frum wants to know.

I'm guessing the answer's going to be "no." (FrumForum)