Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

T R E 4 5 O N

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

This really is a full service blog.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Ah, the different things are different argument.

You are here: Home / Archives for The Failed Obama Administration (Only Took Two Weeks)

Smoking Crack Rock

by | 206 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

By now, you all have heard that the Republicans, in one of their first acts back from the midterm elections, have decided to scuttle START. Yes, that is crazy, obscene, and will undercut our foreign policy with Russia while making the world less safe, but to me, the craziest thing I’ve seen about the whole affair came in this NY Times write-up:

President Obama’s hopes of ratifying a new arms control treaty with Russia by the end of the year appeared to come undone on Tuesday as the chief Senate Republican negotiator moved to block a vote on the pact, one of the White House’s top foreign policy goals, in the lame-duck session of Congress.

The announcement by the senator, Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican point man on the issue, blindsided and angered the White House, which vowed to keep pressing for approval of the so-called New Start treaty. But the White House strategy had hinged entirely on winning over Mr. Kyl, and Democrats, who began scrambling for a backup plan, said they considered the chances of success slim.

Really? This blind-sided them? Sweet mother of everything holy.

Just what the hell have the members of this administration been paying attention to for the last two years? The Republicans are going to do EVERY single thing they can to ruin your administration. If they sense there is the slightest chance for you to do anything positive or constructive, they will block it. Did you not see them demanding that Robert Byrd be wheeled to the floor of the Senate at midnight on Christmas to vote for HCR? Did they not learn from Chuck Grassley saying that sure, if everything I want in HCR is in there, I will still vote against it. Did they not learn anything from all their dealings with the snow princesses in Maine? Have they not learned anything from the antics of mean old man McCain in regards to DADT? Lindsey Graham on cap and trade and immigration? They are actively working to keep the economy in the shitter until 2012, for chrissakes.

With all due respect, what the hell are you idiots in the White House smoking? You incompetent boobs. THE REPUBLICANS WILL NOT WORK WITH YOU IN GOOD FAITH ON ANYTHING. Get it through your god damned heads. And they will screw you dim bulbs on tax cuts next, and then you all will throw up your hands and tell us no one could have predicted. The Republicans aren’t the only one living in their own reality, as this White House clearly has constructed a new reality in which Republicans act in good faith. It’s about as real as Narnia.

Smoking Crack RockPost + Comments (206)

I want it all; I want it all; I want it all… AND I WANT IT NOW!

by | 243 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

A Letter to a Whiny Young Democrat Progressive.

This:

Oh, now you’ve done it. See? You see what happens when you young liberal voters get so disgruntled and disillusioned that you drop all your party’s newborn, hard-won ideas about Hope™ and Change™, without any patience, without really giving them sufficient time to mature, without understanding that hugely foreign, anti-American concept known as “the long view”?

See what happens when you wallow in hollow disappointment, trudging all over your liberal arts campus and refusing to vote in a rather important mid-term election, all because your pet issues and nubile ego weren’t immediately serviced by a mesmerizing guy named Barack Obama just after he sucked you into his web of fuzzyhappy promises a mere two years ago, back when you were knee-high to a shiny liberal ideology?

Well, now you know. This is what happens: The U.S. House of Representatives, the most insufferable gaggle of political mongrels this side of, well, the rest of Congress, reverts to GOP control like a brain tumor reverts to a more aggressive form of cancer, and everything gets bleaker and sadder and, frankly, a whole lot nastier.

What happens is: Many kinds of fragmented, muddled, but still constructive Democratic progress might get stopped quite nearly dead, and even a few pieces of legislation we actually did gain get slapped around, threatened, stomped on the head like a scientist at a Rand Paul rally. Happy now?

::ducks and covers::

My liver hurts, I have to finish a motion for summary judgment tonight, and also, my liver hurts.

~Angry Liver Lady out!~

(H/T Danielle!)

I want it all; I want it all; I want it all… AND I WANT IT NOW!Post + Comments (243)

DADT and the Justice Department

by | 113 Comments

This post is in: , ,

This is something I’ve been really interested in the last couple of weeks, and that is the obligation of the Justice Department to defend extant US Law in the court system. My opinion was that it was the obligation of every Justice Department to defend laws, even ones the current administration does not like, and that seems to be true, but this statement from Ted Olson suggests that after the initial defense, they are not obligated to appeal:

“It happens every once in awhile at the federal level when the solicitor general, on behalf of the U.S., will confess error or decline to defend a law,” said former George W. Bush administration solicitor general Ted Olson, who is leading the legal challenge of California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state attorney general have both declined to defend the law in court.

“I don’t know what is going through the [Obama] administration’s thought process on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Olson said. “It would be appropriate for them to say ‘the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that.’”

Anyone have any examples of a Justice Department initially defending a law and then refusing to appeal?

I’m still of the opinion that once the elections are over, DADT will be repealed with the Defense Authorization Act. The recent court rulings will provide enough cover for a few Senators to vote the other way.

DADT and the Justice DepartmentPost + Comments (113)

DADT/Dream Act

by | 173 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Both are up for a vote today, and both will be filibustered:

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama repeated a campaign-trail promise to the gay community.

By the end of the year, Mr. Obama said, he would seek a full repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which bars gay and transgender people from serving openly in the armed forces.

The president called it a “law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are,” and he said repealing it was “the right thing to do.”M

The promise faces a critical test today as supporters of the current policy say they will try to filibuster military defense legislation that includes the repeal. With midterm elections just six weeks away, a unified Republicans filibuster would likely mean a delay in fulfilling the president’s pledge until next year.

Opponents of an unrelated immigration measure included in the annual defense authorization bill are also vowing to filibuster, increasing the odds that both issues will be put off.

If the Democrats can’t muster 60 votes to cut off debate, the delay on “don’t ask, don’t tell” would be a blow to gay activists, members of a key White House constituency who fear that next year’s Congress will be less sympathetic to a repeal of the 17-year-old ban. The policy was enacted during President Bill Clinton’s first term.

I doubt President Snowe or Collins will come through, although Scott Brown might flinch. McCain, being all mavericky, has flip-flopped so many times I have no damned clue which way he will vote. And, of course, if we do get a republican to vote for cloture, that means President Nelson can hold up the Senate for some sweetheart deal for the real Murrikens in whatever shitty flyover state he represents.

Also, it goes without saying that any failure to have these two items passed is not the fault of the troglodyte bigots who blocked the bills or the dysfunctional Senate rules that always seem to call for a supermajority when the President is a Democrat, but Obama for failing to use the bully pulpit.

DADT/Dream ActPost + Comments (173)

Where Have They Been

by | 41 Comments

This post is in: , ,

If this is true, this is just gross political incompetence at the White House political division:

President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.

White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate. The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska.

“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.

Apparently, the only places left on earth where they do not realize that the tea party is a GOP operation are Fox News and the White House.

Where Have They BeenPost + Comments (41)

How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away

by | 69 Comments

This post is in: , ,

No one could have predicted this:

When the Obama administration called a halt to virtually all deepwater drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout and fire in April, oil executives, economists and local officials complained that the six-month moratorium would cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Oil supply firms went to court to have the moratorium overturned, calling it illegal and warning that it would exacerbate the nation’s economic woes, lead to oil shortages and cause an exodus of drilling rigs from the gulf to other fields around the world. Two federal courts agreed.

Yet the worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields.

So maybe pausing drilling for a couple months after a catastrophic disaster may have been a reasonable thing to do after all.

How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go AwayPost + Comments (69)