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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.
Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.
if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
White supremacy is terrorism.
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.
My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.
Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.
They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.
When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?
Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.
In after Baud. Damn.
Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?
Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.
Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
Second rate reporter says what?
Accountability, motherfuckers.
It’s a doggy dog world.
Laura W Darling
Yay, Phoebe Snow.
Here’s a great version of At Last.
(Albeit with poor quality.)
Comrade Jake
A good amount of buzz building over Obama’s weekly YouTuber yesterday. Check out Al Giordano’s take:
Brian J
I only saw one part of it, but the part about preserving historical recordings and videos and stuff like that was pretty interesting. It’s also incredible how far we have progressed with storing information in small ways. It made me think of the time one of my college professors talked about how a terrabyte of information could or would one day be able to fit into something the size of a small calculator or ipod and go right in your pocket.
JL
Anyone watching CBS Sunday Morning? It appears that after dating Barack for awhile, Michelle asked her brother to play basketball with Barack to see what he thought. Barack passed the test.
Dan
God I love that show. It is my church on Sunday morning.
Comrade Jake
@JL:
That story’s been around for awhile. You can tell a great deal about a person by playing basketball with him. Some guys are real jerks on the floor.
Lesser known is an article that appeared in SI by a sportswriter who got the chance to play one-on-one with Obama. The backdrop was the same: he was trying to get insight into Obama’s character. I think he walked away with a lot of admiration for the candidate’s jump shot.
Phoenix Woman
Basketball and poker — and lately, golf (Michelle was worried about how banged up he was getting in pickup hoops games and wanted him to try a lower-impact sport) — are his games.
He’s apparently a very, very good poker player, the sort that calmly builds up to the occasional big play — and is still quietly adding to his chip stacks in the meantime. As one state legislator said, "If he runs the country like he plays poker, I’ll sleep good at night."
Laura W Darling
@Comrade Jake: Yeah, I’d heard that story many times over the last year or two. Of far more new interest to me was the nice interview with their mom.
(Just when you thought MTP had totally jumped the shark, it goes back for another jump. Scarborough on panel. Really? REALLY?)
JL
I had not heard that but with his personality, he’d be a heck of an opponent.
bago
It’s terabyte, and yes, we can get them for $100.
Iowa Housewife
@Laura W Darling: Darling? Did I miss something?
Laura W Darling
@Iowa Housewife: Shoot. I knew I forgot to send someone a wedding invite!
See here…
Apparently, John was told by someone that he had minions. "Laura W Minion" sounds like something you’d get if you crossed a minnow with a grunion.
"Laura W Sycophant" sounds like a psychotic elephant.
CatHat posted a 3-pronged definition in that comment thread and I liked door #3: "Darling".
It has many applications, including Joe the Plumber playing the role of Pan — Leader of the Lost Boys.
Ya sorta have to go read the thread. Probably makes more sense if you’ve got a glass or three of wine in you.
Brian J
@ Phoenix Woman:
I try not to rely too heavily on the faith-based approval for politicians, not so much because they often disappoint, but because I feel it leads us down the path towards not asking questions in the first place.
That said, I have full confidence in Obama and his team. It was really pleasant to read an article in Fortune yesterday that showed a lot of pictures of his domestic team–Christina Romer, Melody Barnes, Larry Summers, Diana Farrell, Austan Goolsbee, among others–in their offices and at meetings. One of the reasons people are so eager to join the administration, I imagine, is that they know they stand a chance of actually being listened to and having their advice make a difference.
I may not like everything he does. I wish, for instance, he’d attack "free trade" in the Dean Baker sense (i.e. not having trade deals protect the jobs of professionals), which is both economically sound and politically just, as opposed to throwing out some populist bones while doing nothing to become the protectionist so many on the right fear. But for the most part, I love where he is going, and if I am reading him correctly, I believe him when he says what he says. Since the deficits for the next few years will be staggering, it’s only natural that many would be concerned, myself included, but I’m confident he’s going to make it a priority to get our fiscal situation under control.
I mention all of this because when you hear what sort of person he acts like, whether it’s in politics, like we saw in his campaign, or in his personal life, as in how he supposedly plays poker, you see he thinks for the long term. It’s not that he’s too stubborn to change course, but that he’s genuine in his convictions, confident in his vision, and smart and able enough to accomplish his goals that you can envision him doing what he says he wants to do. I suspect that a large part of the reason the right fears him so much is that he will actually do what they don’t want him to do. In other words, he’ll be successful.
Iowa Housewife
@Laura W Darling: Ha, got it.
It’s funny, my husband first guessed some Peter Pan reference.
Phoenix Woman
@ Brian J: Yup. About the only slightly disappointing thing for me so far has been his handling of the detainee issue — he’s backing up Bush’s DoJ for some reason (then again, Bush left the DoJ in a shambles and Obama’s been struggling to get DoJ nominees past the GOP in the Senate — the DAG nominee was finally allowed out of committee just last week; seems Orrin Hatch held him up because — GASP! — he’d done First Amendment work for Playboy!)
Then again, what seem at first to be failures for Obama often turn out to be successes. Look at the stimulus bill: People like Dean Baker and Krugman were saying that it was too small, and so it likely is. BUT: This year’s budget bill is considerably bigger than last year’s, and not just because Obama’s being honest in how it’s calculated. So guess where all the things — such as earmarks (which in most case are stimulative spending) — that couldn’t get passed as part of the Stim Bill went? Yupper, the budget.
The beauty of this is that the budget bill is even more of a must-pass item than the Stim Bill. What happens if they don’t pass it? Well, the government shuts down — and the GOP still remembers how they got their asses kicked when Newt shut down the government in 1995. They’re not ready for a second helping.
AhabTRuler
Personally, I am trying to take the historical view of the entire situation. If I am still here in 200 years, I’ll let you know what I think.
O/T: Hey, whaddya think about that whole French Revolution thingy? Fraught with interest, I’s tell ya, fraught with interest.
Digital Amish
Add the fact that Gregory puts up some blurb from the Heritage Foundation as a serious premise for a budget discussion and I can safely say that I won’t be watching MTP much in the future.