MERGED: The Politics Thread

[Galidan]

And what did the leadership before them do to cause people to dance in the streets in celebration?

Well, there was that one time where they created a National Cake Day. A long time in coming, that one was.

[TheZookie007]

YouTube: "Seth Meyers remarks at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner"

[3deroticer]

YouTube: "Seth Meyers remarks at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner"

Does Bob Saget know Seth stole his jokes?

[tommyboyddd]

Paul Ryan Joins Unprecedented Attack On Freedom

[3deroticer]

Does Bob Saget know Seth stole his jokes?

When I made this comment I had no idea that there was another side of Bob Saget from the lame "Full House" show and the funniest home video segment.

[3deroticer]

http://crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2011/05/gop_magic_calendar_lg.png

[Klcarsite]

Heh... this amused me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlOIy6QEbes&feature=feedwll&list=WL

[pedonbio]

Same whine, different year:

[3deroticer]

Same whine, different year:

Whine do age well!

[JJ]

the missing "other" view  

[3deroticer]

Same whine, different year:

I like Pedonbio post better because it was more specific and in the end it meant more job with decent pay for everyone and in a safer working environment, While JJ post is just mudslinging with no concrete fact! He lose!

[TheZookie007]

"Surprise!"...not.

PopEater: "Donald Trump: 'I'm Not Running for President'"

[TheZookie007]

In the latest non-controversy fueled by Faux News -- Common was invited to the White House, oh my! -- Jon Stewart takes Bill O'Reilly to school.

part 1
part 2

[3deroticer]

In the latest non-controversy fueled by Faux News -- Common was invited to the White House, oh my! -- Jon Stewart takes Bill O'Reilly to school.

part 1
part 2

I like how they are still friend even after a beating!

[rtpoe]

What's this? Intelligent and respectful political discourse?

The world must really be coming to an end!

[JJ]

 

[DruulEmpire]

Inasmuch as war is politics by other means -- JJ, thank you for that.  In fact, it would have merited its own thread.

My grandfather served in the Pacific theater in WW2, and if anyone ever asks me "Why are you here?" I reserve the right to say "Because my mother and father met in the Air Force."  I salute all veterans both here at the Archive and beyond.

V to 3d below: I daresay a lot of scenes like this are going on everywhere all the time.

[3deroticer]

I thought the photos were too much of a setup and pose. Expecting this to be a photo opt, like much of the war photos we see. But John Moore was voted best Magazine Photographer of the year and much of his work is past the green zone of the middle east battles. He happen to be a right place at the right time for this.

[TheZookie007]

Yes, they may have been set-up and they may have been posed, but the sentiment is honest, and correct. Many people only think of Memorial Day as "the unofficial start of summer" or the day that they have sales. This is NOT what the day is about.


Meanwhile, you know you're in trouble when even your friends and allies take subtle potshots at you:

MSNBC: "The Insult Behind Obama's U.K. Codename"

[3deroticer]

I started watching on netflick "America, the story of us" and it start from the beginning to the new millennium, in 12 part series.

[Shara]

In the latest non-controversy fueled by Faux News -- Common was invited to the White House, oh my! -- Jon Stewart takes Bill O'Reilly to school.

part 1
part 2

this is almost as good as Fox News Sundays trying to take on an 'unprepared' pres Clinton a few years ago

[DruulEmpire]

You cross Stewart at your peril, he always has his A game quietly on, talking with people who otherwise get too used to their own off-the-cuff blathering.  I still think of his episode with Jim Cramer.

Say, I just had a brainwave -- what is honestly stopping Palin from settling into her own radio show?  From where I sit, it's not Obama's job she wants, it's Limbaugh's.  She refuses to get out of the limelight, she has a background in broadcasting, radio would be ideal for remaining a perpetual ignorant and unscionable gadfly, and her crazed harpy-schoolmarm voice is allegedly about half of her mysterious "appeal."  This "little old me is not quite exactly running for the White House as I show my new biopic in Iowa" gambit of hers is bullshit, she's just not that into her true believer supporters (sorry, Q_BE, wherever you are) and she's not even that into the grind of any elective office (Exhibit A: Alaska).  About the only thing I can see holding her back is that it would still be some kind of work to handle a show of any appreciable length, but she might get around that by making it more of an ensemble show, by bringing in lesser characters to take over most of the air time.  She'll never be a new Oprah -- heck, she'll never be a new Tyra -- but she may have a shot at beating Beck's run.  Or so it seems to me.

[pedonbio]

Druul, most Americans are with you on that point. Granted, things can change in politics, but for more than the past year it has looked more and more as though it is impossible for her to secure any nomination (when 48% of self-identified Republicans express an unwillingness to vote for her under any foreseeable circumstances) and she has put no effort at all into making herself acceptable (For starters, going back to school and getting a real degree).

I don't care what she "becomes" because of what she is: A liar. She and Limbaugh do share that; they would rather make shit up than look it up.

[TheZookie007]

Plus, the heffer doesn't even know how to eat pizza properly! Who uses a knife & fork when they're grabbing a slice? I mean, really?? The Globe and Mail asked the question, "Is Sarah Palin now just campaigning for campaigning's sake?" and I think it should be pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that the answer is "yes". What Bill Cosby said about her dining companion is equally true of her: "The only thing [she's] running, is her mouth."


Meanwhile, back at the adult's table:

TheWeek: "The GOP's dangerous arrogance"

"Nationally and globally, the economy is at a tipping point. The GOP, driven by invincible ignorance or cynical design – and perhaps both – is working overtime to trash the recovery with budget cuts that would drain demand from the economy – or a debt ceiling vote that could trigger a financial collapse equal to 2008, or perhaps unpredictably graver. For proof, all you had to do was listen to Mitt Romney's announcement speech today. In it, he made a smarmy attempt to blame Barack Obama for the economic pain actually caused by the dereliction of duty by George W. Bush & Co., pain that was then prolonged by the obstruction of congressional Republicans. Those legislators contrived successfully to limit the stimulus package, block a second one, and forthwith blame the stimulus that saved us from another Great Depression for the slow climb out of the Great Recession. Never, of course, did they mention that the America’s deep deficits were generated by the fraudulent Bush war in Iraq and the unfair Bush tax cuts, which were founded on the false premise that they would pay for themselves....

...And now the GOP that has moved decidedly to the right of Bush would compound his errors. Congressional Republicans could shatter the restored credibility of the United States by refusing to protect its full faith and credit by raising the national debt ceiling or by holding that essential measure hostage to the repeal of the New Deal – something that never even occurred to Ronald Reagan or either Bush president. In those Oval Offices, they regularly signed debt-ceiling increases.

Republicans generally, from the newest tea-soaked member of Congress to the weak brew of presidential candidates, have also adopted and ritualistically invoked a notion of American exceptionalism that all but explicitly proclaims that we have a unique mandate – with the religious right, presumably our own Mandate of Heaven – to do whatever we want, wherever we want. In the name of strengthening the nation, they would weaken it, losing respect, fraying alliances, and forcing the United States to go it alone in a fateful time? Retreating to this notion would represent one of history’s more stunning examples of the triumph of arrogance over experience....

American exceptionalism required another dimension 50 years and more ago – a dimension profoundly implicated in the economic and budget choices that face Washington this summer. To stall or reverse the recovery would impose new pain on tens of millions at home. But this is not just a domestic issue. The decisions shortly to be made in that short span from the White House to Capitol Hill won't ripple, but roll across the world, with vast consequences for people on every continent. The decisions will also reassert or subvert this country’s unique place and influence in the global economy.

An American default – or deliberate descent into another economic crisis – is still unthinkable to most of the world’s markets, most of the world’s leaders, and most of global civil society. What great nation would do this to itself – and everyone else?

The unthinkable was entirely unsaid at a meeting of NGOs, major corporations, and female entrepreneurs and political figures who came together over Memorial Day weekend at Villa La Pietra, the NYU campus in Florence. They weren't intent on abstractions; their focus was women's economic empowerment. They shaped an agenda for next November’s G20 summit of the major economies – a message to the G20 from the G50, the women who are half the world. The agenda proposes specific, achievable measures in areas that range from land rights to women’s access to finance.

The question here is not only justice, but, as the corporate representatives emphasized, the prospects for global prosperity. The fuller participation of one billion women who are today exiles in their own economies will be a key to future global growth, a generation of new demand from new consumers – and over the next decade and more, a rise in jobs and standards of living in the US and Europe as well as the developing world.

This may seem far from the spectacle of partisan maneuver currently playing out in Washington. I suspect that House Speaker John Boehner and his cohorts have given even less thought to such challenges than they have to the unemployed in their own districts, for whom they have yet to offer a single actual jobs bill. Those who have formed the La Pietra Coalition assume that progress is possible, that their voices can make a difference, that the G20 can be brought to respond – and that America can and will lead.

None of that will happen if instead we are misled or blunder on economic policy. Then the G20 won't be discussing how to make progress, but how to climb out of a catastrophe of America’s making. Women, and so many others, will be left behind. America’s word will be less heeded, and perhaps it will actually mark a starting point for America’s decline...."

[pedonbio]

I can certainly understand the events of the day. All his staffers woke up and asked themselves, "Who do I work for?" And the answer hit them: That asshat, Newt Gingrich!!

Buh-bye, Newtski!

[TheZookie007]

It Takes a Village...to abandon one prime asshat. I'm going to buy his former staffers a drink the next time I see any of them

Meanwhile, more unfortunate headlines for the person representing New York's 9th Congressional District:

[pedonbio]

Tragic about the dog, Zookie.

[solvegas]

Tragic about the dog, Zookie.

I dunno. The dog was a real bitch just like its owner. 

[TheZookie007]

I dunno. The dog was a real bitch just like its owner. 

True dat.

[SamV]

I think Newt's problem was quite well stated weeks ago. On one of the Sunday morning political/news shows I happened to hear some talking head give his view about Newt's announcement to seek the GOP nomination. He said something to the effect that "Newt has always been an idea kind of a guy when it came to politics, but he has little understanding on how to campaign for higher office, be it in a state wide election, or for a national office like the presidency." (my words, not a direct quote). This person also went on that he thought Newt had little chance of winning the GOP nomination.

Perhaps a very prophetic insight given the mass revolt and subsequent resignation that just occurred within his campaign staff.

[pedonbio]

Gingrich was the first advocate of the "take no prisoners" school of ideologically rigid politics to get very far in the Republican Party and, unfortunately, salted the ranks with the followers who are now the House leadership. Gingrich will be remembered, if at all, for his "great idea" to shut down the federal government which torpedoed Bob Dole and guaranteed Clinton's re-election.

[pedonbio]

Oh, no! Say it ain't so!!

[3deroticer]

Oh, no! Say it ain't so!!

That is really reaching!

[DruulEmpire]

I give Bill more credit.

I associate Weiner more with Screech Powers, played by Dustin Diamond -- all the more since Diamond freaked out a little later on in his life.

[3deroticer]

Blend DNA of Screech and Neil Patrick Harris