Obama

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No Benghazi conspiracy, say Republicans

Hey, remember that terrible Benghazi conspiracy that was going to bring down the Obama administration?  The one that was an evil, illegal conspiracy because … well, they never actually explained that part, but it was certainly terrible because Fox News told us it was.

Well, guess what?  Here’s the funny thing.  The Republican-controlled Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives finally concluded, after years of investigations, that golly gee, I guess there was no conspiracy after all!   benghazi_scandal

“This report shows that there was no intelligence failure surrounding the Benghazi attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans. Our investigation found the Intelligence Community warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened, … which is consistent with testimony that the attacks appeared to be opportunistic.”  (from the Washington Post story of the report)

This comes after they lied about what previous reports had said, and after it was proven that the Obama administration was correct about the reason for the attack.

Aren’t you glad they spent millions of your dollars investigating nothing?  Well, don’t you worry your head, because prominent Republicans have vowed to continue to search for non-existent ghosts and continue to bash the President over this.   Fox News will continue to claim that there is a terrible scandal there somewhere and the only reason the rest of the media is ignoring it is because they are all subservient to Obama.  Benghazi will continue so long as it can be used to rile up the party faithful and get them to donate to the GOP.

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GOP, suing Obama over Executive Actions, demand he take Executive Action

To follow up from yesterday’s post where the GOP was suing Obama for using an Executive Order to slow down implementation of Obamacare (the law they had been trying to not have implemented for four years) — today they demanded that Obama do something about immigration “without the need for Congressional action.”

Let’s let that sink in for a minute.

The Republicans are upset that Obama uses Executive Orders (even though he’s used them less than any President since Grover Cleveland).  They sued him over it, and it was for postponing parts of a law they had been trying to kill forever.

Today, Speaker Boehner issued a statement demanding that he use his Executive Order power to do something about the immigrant children.

No, no.  I still can’t wrap my head around it.

Executive Orders are bad — and he should use them more often?  Executive Orders are bad when Obama does things we agree with and good when he does things we agree with?

Cannot … comprehend … does not compute … can’t make sense …Exploding-head

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GOP mad because Obama doesn’t implement law GOP tried to get him to not implement

I am not making this up.

Can anyone take these guys seriously at all?  Is there anyone out there who really thinks the Republicans are doing anything other than political theater?

They tried 57 times to repeal Obamacare.  They appealed it to the Supreme Court and lost.  They shut down the government to get him to not implement it.

Does this man look worried?

Does this man look worried?

And now they’re suing because — ready? — he postponed part of the bill to give employers more time to adjust to it.

Yes.  They are suing him because he is not implementing the bill they have spent four years trying to get him to not implement.

Obama treats this lawsuit with the seriousness it deserves.  He laughs, calls it a “stunt”, and says mockingly, “You’re going to squawk if I try to fix some parts of it administratively that are within my authority while you’re not doing anything?”

So, even though I shake my head at the Republicans, I am happy they are doing this, because (a) the suit has absolutely no chance of prevailing and (b) it just angers moderate and liberal voters who may be motivated to kick these bozos out office.   This “Impeachment Lite” should be about as effective as the Clinton impeachment was (which led to the Democrats winning big in the midterms).

So bring it on, Republicans.

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Tyrannical Obama tyrannically uses his tyrannical power to tyrannically force gays not to be discriminated against

He’s done it again.  Obama has once more used his Super Powers granted to him to ignore the Constitution and tyrannically declare in an Executive Order that anyone doing business with the US government is not allowed to fire people for being gay.   dictatorobama

He’s taking away the God-given right of business owners who want to get our taxpayer money for their business to be able to fire taxpayers who just happen to have been born in a way they don’t like for reasons that cannot quite be explained using logic.  How tyrannical!

Why, it’s unprecedented that a President would issue an order limiting who the government gives business to!  Except of course for all the other times Presidents have done it (such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon).  Yes, it’s true — we’ve been living in a tyranny for at least 50 years, don’t ya know.  Even under Reagan!

This only affects businesses that do business with the federal government so if you want to hate fellow Americans and discriminate against them, you’re just going to have to do that on your own, buddy — because this is a tyranny.

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It’s only wrong if YOU do it

Republicans are suing Obama because he is doing his job, and everything else they have tried in order to stop him from doing his job hasn’t worked.

“He’s using Executive Orders to accomplish things!” they scream, as if no other President has ever done that before.  They are once again ignoring reality, in that Obama’s use of Executive Orders is far less than any President since Grover Cleveland.

Executive Orders_chart

If only Romney had been elected, they say, we wouldn’t have to do this!  You all remember Mitt Romney — the man who promised that on day one of his Presidency, he would use an Executive Order to cancel Obamacare (a/k/a “Romneycare”) despite it having been passed by the House and Senate and confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Do I need to point out that absolutely none of Obama’s Executive Orders have cancelled or overturned laws that were passed?  Talk about a tyranny!  Can you imagine a President saying “I don’t care that a majority of Americans through their representatives have passed this bill;  I have the power of a King to cancel anything I damn well please.”  That was Romney’s promise in a nutshell, wasn’t it?

The difference, of course, is that the Republicans’ outrage against these things is only limited to when the President is a Democrat.  Republican presidents can do whatever they want.

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Obama worst President since WW2?

Conservatives are jumping with joy over a recent poll wherein people said Obama was the “worst President since WW II.”

Let’s put this into perspective:

1.  Whoever is President at the time wins this.  When this poll was done in 2006.  George W. Bush won it.  It’s kind of expected and comes with the territory; the current President is always the worst, and then the longer they are away from office, the better they get.  We Americans have short memories.  worst

2.  33% said Obama was the worst, which is certainly not a majority.  George W. Bush was second, followed by Nixon.  (If the question had been “Worst President since the 70s, GWB would have won readily…)

3.  Many of the respondents who took the poll were not even alive when some of these guys were President.  Nixon?  That’s ancient history to them.

4.  Obama was rated 4th best President in the exact same poll, after Reagan, Clinton and Kennedy.  (Hey, remember when this poll was done in the 90s and Clinton was the worst President ever?)  So Obama is not only the worst President since FDR, but he’s also better than eight others.  Go figure.

5.  64% of Republicans named Obama in this poll.  Democrats and independents were more varied, and their numbers were not even half of the Republican number combined for Obama.  The Republican hatred of Obama skewed the poll.

6.  The respondents are not a true random sampling.  It has more people from the South than any other region (and not proportionate to the population), and more white respondents than are represented in America overall.

7.  According to Gallup (a more reliable pollster), Obama is doing better than George W. Bush was at this same point in his Presidency.  And Obama is doing way better in the polls than Congress, and better than most of the possible 2016 Republican  candidates.  No one likes any politician right now.

Now, does that mean Obama is sitting pretty?  No, of course not.  His poll numbers are not good.  But worst since WWII?

 

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Quotes from the Nerd Prom 2014

The annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner (held last night) allows the President to throw some barbs at himself and the press and is a good time to observe a President’s sense of humor first hand. Known jokingly as the “nerd prom” it gets bigger and bigger every year.  Last year I posted some of my favorite jokes from the President’s speech.  Here’s this year’s version.

I admit it — last year was rough.  In 2008 my slogan was, “Yes We Can.”  In 2013 my slogan was, “Control-Alt-Delete.”  

I want to thanobama dinnerk the White House Correspondents Association for hosting us here tonight.  I am happy to be here, even though I am a little jet-lagged from my trip to Malaysia.  The lengths we have to go to get CNN coverage these days. 

MSNBC is here.  They’re a little overwhelmed.  They’ve never seen an audience this big before. 

We have some other athletes here tonight, including Olympic snowboarding gold medalist Jamie Anderson is here.  Michelle and I watched the Olympics — we cannot believe what these folks do — death-defying feats — haven’t seen somebody pull a “180” that fast since Rand Paul disinvited that Nevada rancher from this dinner.  As a general rule, things don’t end well if the sentence starts, “Let me tell you something I know about the negro.”   You don’t really need to hear the rest of it.  

Colorado legalized marijuana this year, an interesting social experiment.  I do hope it doesn’t lead to a whole lot of paranoid people who think that the federal government is out to get them and listening to their phone calls. 

And speaking of conservative heroes, the Koch brothers bought a table here tonight.  But as usual, they used a shadowy right-wing organization as a front.  Hello, Fox News. 

Let’s face it, Fox, you’ll miss me when I’m gone.   It will be harder to convince the American people that Hillary was born in Kenya. 

Anyway, while you guys focus on the horserace, I’m going to do what I do — I’m going to be focused on everyday Americans.  Just yesterday, I read a heartbreaking letter. A Virginia man who’s been stuck in the same part-time job for years; no respect from his boss; no chance to get ahead.  I really wish Eric Cantor would stop writing me.  

And I’m feeling sorry — believe it or not — for the Speaker of the House, as well.  These days, the House Republicans actually give John Boehner a harder time than they give me, which means orange really is the new black. 

Look, I know, Washington seems more dysfunctional than ever.  Gridlock has gotten so bad in this town you have to wonder:  What did we do to piss off Chris Christie so bad? 

One issue, for example, we haven’t been able to agree on is unemployment insurance.  Republicans continue to refuse to extend it.  And you know what, I am beginning to think they’ve got a point.  If you want to get paid while not working, you should have to run for Congress just like everybody else.  

 Last year, Pat Buchanan said Putin is “headed straight for the Nobel Peace Prize.”  He said this.  Now I know it sounds crazy but to be fair, they give those to just about anybody these days.  

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“He only won because he’s black”

Michelle Bachmann said Americans voted for Obama because he was black and they felt guilty. Yep! That’s why I supported Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Carol Mosley-Braun and Herman Cain. s-michele-bachmann-large300

No. Wait. I remember now. I didn’t support any of those people.

Dammit! Why can’t the world be as simple as Michelle Bachmann, where there is black and white and nothing inbetween — where the color of someone’s skin is the determining factor instead of complicated things like their experience, stand on the issues, and education?

But no, that’s just too subtle for her. The fact that the majority of Americans supported a Senator who graduated at the top of his class from both Columbia and Harvard Law, whose positions on the issues most matched theirs, and who belonged to the party that had won more votes in three of the last four Presidential races is completely meaningless to her, because the only thing she sees is the color of Obama’s skin.

Let’s see … there is a word for someone like that, isn’t there?

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No, we are not moving toward a tyranny

It’s hard to debate with people who are convinced that the United States is becoming a tyranny.

Does anyone really believe that Obama will say, “I’ve decided to suspend elections and remain President-for-Life”?  Do you really believe the military, who swear an oath to the Constitution and not the President, will go along with this?  Do you think all the politicians who won’t even pass a simple jobs bill for Obama will roll over at this?  Hell, can you imagine Hillary Clinton deciding she’ll go along with it?

It ain’t gonna happen.  But some paranoid people who probably should be taking some sort of medication think that basically “If I don’t get my way, then clearly this country has become a tyranny.”

There are a lot of things our country does that I don’t like.  And I think the President has become much too powerful (but that has been going on for generations).  But the chance of anyone turning our country into a tyranny is next to zero.  Calm down already.

This usually comes up with gun debates.  Gun owners who feel that their rights are being trampled cannot understand that the vast majority of Americans disagree with them.  Even the Supreme Court disagrees with their interpretation of the Constitution.  Only 13% of Americans in the latest Gallup poll think there are too many gun control laws.  49% say there aren’t enough, and the rest think it’s just fine or have no opinion.

As I stated previously, the way you get change in the US is by getting the population on your side and voting in change (through referendum like the ones legalizing marijuana and gay marriage), by electing politicians who agree with your views, or by bringing lawsuits to protect your rights and affect change.ExecutiveOrders_byPresident (1)   Sometimes your viewpoint will lose.  That’s how it works in a democracy.

The latest crap is about Obama’s Executive Orders.  Executive Orders are not mentioned in the Constitution, but have been around forever and the Supreme Court has said they are Constitutional.   There’s one internet story going around about “Obama’s 932 Executive Orders” which is a complete pack of lies (whoever wrote that hopefully was wearing flame-resistant pants).  Further, he’s issued less Executive Orders than many of the Presidents before him.

So just calm down.  There are indeed issues concerning our personal rights and liberties that we should be worried about with the government.  But we’re not going to become a tyranny.

EDIT:  Obviously, this was written during the Obama presidency. I no longer hold to this belief.

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Buncha Girly-girl Marines?

I’m always amazed at people who believe things that are easily proven false simply because their belief better fits into their world view. I’m not just referring to people who deny science, but to all the crazies who believe anything said about Obama. bilde.jpeg It’s gotten so ridiculous that one satirical web page suggested in jest that the pregnant, diabetic woman who almost fainted in the sun while standing behind Obama was planted to get sympathy for the President — only to find right-wing morons actually arguing this on Fox News and other disreputable places. Really, you just can’t make fun of these guys.

The latest one is almost as ridiculous: Obama Wants Marines to Wear “Girly” Hats” screams the New York Post headline. (The Post, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdock, who also owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets that pretend their biased attacks are “news.”)

Not only did the article insult women Marines (we have those now, guys, remember?) but also the French just to make sure it’s clear that Real Men (which don’t exist in France) wouldn’t ever wear the hat.

As you are no doubt aware, the report is not true and is easily proven to be not true. The Marines themselves clarified that, according to an article in Stars and Stripes. And they obviously pointed out that the President of the United States might have a few more important things to worry about than what hats the Marines wear.

“The president in no way, shape or form directed the Marine Corps to change our uniform cover,” said a Marine Corps spokesperson. “We are looking for a new cover for our female Marines for one overriding reason: The former manufacturer went out of business … The Marine Corps has zero intention of changing the male cover.”

So we should be seeing an apology and a correction any time now on Fox News and in Murdock newspapers, right? Right?

And now, a disclaimer: A few days ago I mistakenly believed that women had to take their husband’s name in Texas. That was my mistake, as I misheard a broadcast. I immediately corrected my mistake and apologized once I realized I was wrong. That’s the difference.