Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates
Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges
Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate
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Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate |
Blowing |
Who'd have thunk it? I just don't know what to think anymore.
More than a week ago, news anchors were predicting this very capitulation ,er... outcome. I mean, to a tee! Why not at least be a little mavericky and do something that might surprise even a news chuckler. If your "strategy is predicted by every 'Who Flung Dung' in front of a camera, I would like to suggest that it isn't a strategy at all.
I won't repeat myself about letting everything expire and then...blah, blah, blah.
If giving everyone a tax break for up to $250,000 and NOT borrowing to give tax breaks for billionaire Hedge Fund managers (what jobs do THEY create), and standing up to the Party of NO when they refuse to extend unemployment for those who can't find jobs -- well, if that makes me sanctimonious, then what is our President? And I will proudly wear my sanctimony for all to see.
POOOT!
By James Dao, New York Times, May 18/19,2013
[....] As of Monday, just under 600,000 claims qualified as backlogged, meaning they had been pending for over 125 days.
Though the numbers have grown, delays in processing disability claims are nothing new, and neither are complaints about the backlog. Just last year, some veterans advocates tried to make the backlog a presidential campaign issue. They failed. But this year, something changed: the criticism grew louder and perhaps more partisan, and began reaching a wider audience.
A new conservative-leaning nonprofit organization, Concerned Veterans...
By Hunter Walker, TPM Muckraker, May 20, 2013
In a scathing new report Monday, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General accused onetime Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke of leaking confidential documents to a reporter in a politically-motivated attempt to “undermine” a whistleblower who helped spark the investigation into the “Fast and Furious” operation.
Burke, a former aide to Janet Napolitano while she was Arizona governor and then secretary of Homeland Security, was appointed as U.S. attorney by President Obama in 2009. He resigned as he was initially being questioned about the leak in 2011.
The Inspector General...
By Brian Stelter and Michael D. Shear, New York Times, May 20/21, 2013:
The White House on Monday defended President Obama’s support for aggressive investigations into national security leaks despite new disclosures about a 2009 case in which the Justice Department searched a reporter’s personal e-mails and attempted to track his movements.
Details of the government’s investigation of the reporter, James...
Even by the standards of the TED conference, Henry Markram’s 2009 TEDGlobal talk was a mind-bender. He took the stage of the Oxford Playhouse, clad in the requisite dress shirt and blue jeans, and announced a plan that—if it panned out—would deliver a fully sentient hologram within a decade. He dedicated himself to wiping out all mental disorders and creating a self-aware artificial intelligence. And the South African–born neuroscientist pronounced that he would accomplish all this through an insanely ambitious attempt to build a complete model of a human brain—from synapses to hemispheres—and simulate it on a supercomputer. Markram was proposing a project that has bedeviled AI researchers for decades, that most had presumed was impossible. He wanted...
Right now...with the White House...everything is a Study in Foregone Conclusions.
I don't understand his desire to attack his allies before his opponents. Sometimes I think that if Obama had been president after 9/11 he'd have invaded Portland.
LOL!
Look on the bright side. At least Obama would have known about the cultural divisions here, between the minority in Portland who like the sun (let’s call the Sunnys) and the majority who don’t (let’s call them Shia, as in “Shia! It’s too hot today”)
Here is a comment I made in response to the santimonious speech yesterday.
“Mr. President, you frame reality in your terms that this was the best deal you could make and are 'sanctimonious' about this.
We see you concede everything before you even enter the negotiations we feel like we are getting short changed in the negotiations. We want to go into negotiations without conceding everything first and see what we get then. To me that's not sanctimonious, it's 'intelligent'.
Mr President your leadership style is not working for our country. While it appears to you that you have made short terms gains that are 'best', I see the long term costs for your choices making us far worse off in the long term.”
Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that the 'concessions' in this bill were not really concessions. Democratic senators believe they would have eventually gotten the unemployment extensions if they stayed in session longer. She also pointed out the the other tax cuts the president got 'for us' were concessions made to the republicans in the stimulus bill.
This bill is very nice for the republicans because they can also blame the expansion of the deficit on the president. It's all a great big christmas present for the republicans and a big FU to the dems.
I am done with this president. I already asked him not to run in 2012 a few weeks ago.
yw
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson