Blogmaster JohnGCole is tweeting, again.
Imani ABL’s thumbs are much faster, though.
Can’t hardly wait for the post-con trip reports!
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
Blogmaster JohnGCole is tweeting, again.
Imani ABL’s thumbs are much faster, though.
Can’t hardly wait for the post-con trip reports!
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Readership Capture
With TaMara’s permission, this week’s Recipe Exchange will be on Friday, because right now we’re all too excited to think about eating.
Vanity Fair has a teaser slideshow up for Michael Lewis’ big article in the October issue:
… “Assume that in 30 minutes you will stop being president. I will take your place. Prepare me. Teach me how to be president,” Lewis, who interviewed President Obama multiple times over six months—on Air Force One, in the Oval Office, and on the basketball court—asks. Obama explains that every president is deeply aware of his duty to the American people. “Everything you are doing has to be viewed through this prism,” he says. “I don’t know George Bush well. I know Bill Clinton better. But I think they both approached the job in that spirit.”…
“Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable,” Obama tells Lewis. “Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.” …
His odd relationship to the news: “One of the things you realize fairly quickly in this job is that there is a character people see out there called Barack Obama. That’s not you. Whether it is good or bad, it is not you. I learned that on the campaign. You have to filter stuff, but you can’t filter it so much you live in this fantasy land.”
His difficulty with faking emotion: “I feel it is an insult to the people I’m dealing with. For me to feign outrage, for example, feels to me like I’m not taking the American people seriously. I’m absolutely positive that I’m serving the American people better if I’m maintaining my authenticity. And that’s an overused word. And these days people practice being authentic. But I’m at my best when I believe what I am saying.”…
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How go everyone’s at-home preparations for tonight’s big convention celebration / wrap-up? Got your confetti cannons properly aligned?
Thursday Evening Open Thread: “Obama’s Way”Post + Comments (264)
by Dennis G.| 49 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Teabagger Stupidity
<a href=”http://s1162.photobucket.com/albums/q524/dengre/?action=view&current=f111bf2d.jpg” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i1162.photobucket.com/albums/q524/dengre/f111bf2d.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”Photobucket”></a>
While we wait for the evening’s events to kick off, I thought I would share a fresh dispatch from crazytown.
This one comes from old Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland who told an audience that Federal involvement in student loans will take us down the path Germany followed in the 1930s to Hitler.
Why? Well that requires one to leave all reality and embrace a little Wingnut math and crazytown logic. According to Roscoe, he could not find “education” in his narrow reading of the Constitution, nor could he find any way that the Federal government could have any role in education in the text. Therefore, the student loan program–regardless of the intentions–will lead to a Holocaust:
“Not that it’s not a good idea to give students loans, it certainly is a good idea to give them loans,” Bartlett said. “But if you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad. You could. There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other [inaudible]. The Holocaust that occurred in Germany — how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope.”
Roscoe’s crazy filters are switched to ‘off’ and that has him marching in step with his Wingnut brethren Only in their reality-free world could you make the case that Federal Student Loans are the first step down the slippery slope to mass murder and genocide–that plus black helicopters, armed Social Security shock troops and the Kenyan usurper in the white man’s house.
Thanks to redistricting in Maryland, Roscoe is facing his first competitive campaign and people are paying attention to the crazy things he says. We only need 25 seats to take back the House and Roscoe will be one of them.
I’m fired up and ready to go. Let’s clean House, hold onto the Senate and Re-Elect the President!
Cheers
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads
Have at it!
I’ll put some stuff here when I can.
Also tweeting.
@johngcole; @soonergrunt; @angryblacklady; @tomlevenson; @zandarvts
Carol Berman, Senior Citizen, Medicare Recipient, 5:32 PM ET
Rep. Donna Edwards, 5:34 PM ET
Rep. Barney Frank, MA, 5:39 PM ET
With nothing to lose. Not that THAT ever stopped him from verbal hardball, but this should be interesting. TRANSCRIPT
Harvey Gannt, Mayor, Charlotte NC, 5:47 PM ET Tribute to recently departed Democratic luminaries, or as Mitt Romney thinks of them, newly baptized Mormons.
UNKNOWN
Rep. John Lewis, original freedom rider, 6:00 PM ET
CPT Jason Crowe, USA (Ret), Veteran’s issues, DADT Repeal, 6:08 PM CT
Points out that Rmoney never mentioned military personnel, or Afghanistan, even once in his speech last week.
Mary J. Blige, recording artist, Grammy Award winner, 6:12 PM ET
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, FL, DNC Chair, Cancer Survivor, 6:22 PM ET
Convention Chair Antonio Vilaregosa, Mayor of Los Angeles, 6:30 PM ET
Rep. Tammy Baldwin, WI, 6:39 PM ET TRANSCRIPT
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment, Teabagger Stupidity
Fact checking the “fact checker” Matt Apuzzo over at Daily Kos.
Apuzzo and his bosses and coworkers at AP have doubled down on the twitter. It just gets sadder and sadder.
After conservatives screaming about how there has to be something significant about the fact that the DNC cancelled the BofA stadium for tonight and moved everything indoors–Charles Krauthammer has been especially delicious “the Democrats knew what the weather would be three months ago!” we find…
100% chance of rain in Charlotte, NC tonight.
EDIT–Here’s hoping that John makes it back to the hotel in one piece tonight.
Maybe the god botherers should think about voting for Obama. He can either control the weather, or has a direct line to someone who can.
Bill Clinton is going to be campaigning in the midwest on behalf of the President.
Convention Weather and More Fact Checking Open ThreadPost + Comments (121)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 49 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
James Fallows, Why Bill Clinton’s Speeches Succeed:
Because he treats listeners as if they are smart.
That is the significance of “They want us to think” and “The strongest argument is” and “The arithmetic says one of three things must happen” and even “Now listen to me here, this is important.” He is showing that he understands the many layers of logic and evidence and positioning and emotion that go into political discussion — and, more important, he takes for granted that listeners can too.
Joe Patrice at Recess Appointment, Bill Clinton — No, He Wasn’t This Good Before:
[…] Bill Clinton is now your smartest drinking buddy, explaining his take on politics over a beer. He introduced statistical comparisons with variations of, “now, check this out…” The shrugs, the eye rolls, the pointed, yet conversational tone make him persuasive and likable, but would not meet the accepted image of a President. If President Obama dropped the “it takes a lot of brass” line, it would chafe with Americans because Presidents can’t talk that way. But your smart drinking buddy can.This is Clinton’s greatest speech because we finally see him without the cloak of the presidency, which creates a stronger bond of identification between Clinton and the audience.
Both are worth reading in full.
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 63 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Cole went rogue tonight. There may or may not have been a lady involved. It’s after 3 a.m. and his status is unknown.
Dunh dunh dunnnnnnnh.
Here are a couple shots from an on-air segment I did for HuffPostLive with Zach Carter and Jason Linkins.
You’ll have to CLICK THIS LINK, for the full post and more photos.
Peace.
*** Update ***
John here.
My liver hurts, my atm card is smoking, I have blisters on my feet the size of Chris Christie’s ass, and I am dreading tomorrow morning.
Also too, all unauthorized photographs of fat boy will become Rick Rolls. I will tame this woman, and I will use the force of the commentariat to do it.