yep

Via The Onion:

Obama: Debt Ceiling Deal Required Tough Concessions By Both Democrats And Democrats Alike
.

Do you want fries with your sugar-coated Satan sandwich?

You want fries with that?
Via the examiner.com:

While the president seemed to breathe a deep sigh of relief that a deal was struck, members of the Democratic caucus were less than enthusiastic about the plan. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver dismissed the deal as “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich” and “a shady bill.”

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “This deal trades people’s livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals,” adding that “the lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want.”

Some Passing Thoughts...

From Thinkprogress:

The rumored deals flying around Washington today all sound pretty bad. And how could they not be? The White House started with a position that:

1. Failure to raise the debt ceiling is unacceptable.
2. The country should enact substantial deficit reduction in 2011.
3. Any deficit reduction package must include revenue increases.

But (1) and (3) were in significant tension. The White House strategy for getting (3) was to persuade the public that (3) was the correct position. They did that, and all polls showed that public opinion was on their side. But then an underpants gnome problem arose. They didn’t dissolve parliament and call for a snap election. Eric Cantor said “no” and once he said “no,” (1) collided with (3) and the White House dropped (3). Once you’re there, how is the deal not going to be bad?

And in conclusion:

I actually think that whatever the contours of the deal, at this point the biggest damage is to the overall system of government. Obama has successfully transformed massive debt ceiling hostage taking from an act of breathtakingly irresponsible brinksmanship into a proven effective negotiating tactic.

Many thanks to the Compromiser-in-Chief. Many, many thanks.

President Obama, Moderate Conservative?

You guys know Ed, right?

He blogs over at Cognitive Dissonance and he's doing a stand up job every week (far more than I am at this point, by the way) at countering Jack Kelly's conservative drivel over at the P-G. If you're not reading his blog, you should. It's pretty darn good. The bastard.

Anyhoo, he sent me a link to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman linking to Regan economic advisor Bruce Bartlett who's asserting:

Liberals hoped that Obama would overturn conservative policies and launch a new era of government activism. Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.

The rest of Bartlett's piece is evidence of Obama's non-Liberalness for example:

• His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
• He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
• He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
• He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
• And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.

And so on. Not sure I buy the whole argument but perhaps my political paradigm requires some shifting. If anything this shows that we live in a political universe that's profoundly relativistic.

There's no absolute space, no absolute rest. Everything is moving relative to everything else and what it means to be "liberal" or "conservative" has to be viewed through the relative frame of reference of the person using each term.

Revenue and the Debt Ceiling

As regards revenue, we don't have it! Via Think Progress:

As of July 13, 29 public companies had more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury Department, according to the site Zero Hedge based on numbers from Capital IQ. It’s a stark reminder that if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the government won’t have nearly enough money to continue funding essential services and programs.

Regarding the debt ceiling:

Sabotaging the President By Sabotaging the Economy

Club For Growth To Republicans: Trigger A Default, Or Else!

[sigh]
.

Bachmann: Obama has a lot of "choot-spa"

Yiddish Fail LOL Alert!

Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann tries to say that President Obama has a lot of "chutzpah" with predictable results. (Apparently while a friend of Israel, she doesn't have any Jewish friends.)


(h/t to Think Progress)
.

Councilwoman Rudiak to Meet President Obama at the White House

Speaking of Rudiak, via press release:

Pittsburgh – City Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak will travel to Washington, D.C. Friday to meet with members of the Obama administration and attend an intimate reception with the President to discuss important issues facing states and cities across the country.

“The President has been a steadfast ally of cities in America, but our main streets need help and Republicans in Congress have done nothing but force cut after cut to cities like Pittsburgh,” said Rudiak.

“We’ve seen cuts to programs that help Pittsburgh with our police protection, street paving, building demolition, youth job programs, economic development, the capital budget, and much more, and I’m looking forward to speaking with the President about how we can restore these programs.”

The Councilwoman will speak with the President about Pittsburgh’s support for public safety grant programs, the Community Development Block Grant program, renewing the Build America Bonds program, and speeding up federal reimbursements to the City. All of these issues have a significant impact on the City’s operations.

Rudiak is meeting with Obama as a member of People for the American Way Foundation’s Young Elected Officials Network.
.

Looks like someone's reputation preceded them

Via New York Magazine:


Dominique Strauss-Kahn, President Obama
and First Lady Michelle Obama in 2009.
The caption says this meeting took place during the 2009 G-20, so, yes, Pittsburgh. Maybe those riot troops should have been keeping tabs on DSK instead of the students...
.

The Real "Mission Accomplished"

Osama bin Laden Dead Eight Years to the Day of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" Banner

Via Wikipedia:

"Mission Accomplished" refers to a banner titled "Mission Accomplished" that was displayed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln during a televised address by United States President George W. Bush on May 1, 2003 and the controversy that followed. The speech was not actually titled "Mission Accomplished".

Osama bin Laden is dead

Just waiting for President Bush OBAMA (bitchez!) to say so officially.

UPDATE: Just to make that perfectly clear: Obama did in two years what Bush could never do in eight.

It will never end

If anyone thinks that President Obama's release of his long form certificate of birth will stop the birthers, think again. Twenty percent of the hits we got on this blog yesterday and so far today are people going to a post we wrote back in August of 2009. How did they get there? Apparently, when you google "obama birth certificate fake" and hit "Images" this comes up as the second image on that search:


It's a fake Kenyan Obama birth certificate -- one that Queen Birther Orly Taitz was shopping around in 2009.

Needless to say, the visitors who come to 2pj from that image don't stick around too long.

The Rancid Racism of Donald Trump

While Donald Trump was crowing that he is somehow the winner (in being proved wrong?), he couldn't help but let out more racist dog-whistles and code:

The Donald wants to know how it could be possible that President Obama went to Harvard. [How could a black man go to Harvard?! Must be affirmative action!]

The Donald tells President Obama to "get off his basketball court." [Forty years ago, he would have demanded that Obama "put down the watermelon."]

Donald, it's a wonder that that thing on your head doesn't scurry away in embarrassment.

No other president has ever had to prove that he was an American. The birthers will never be satisfied by anything like facts because they can't stand that someone named Barack Hussein Obama, who looks like Barack Hussein Obama is president.
.

President Obama Releases Long Form Birth Certificate

For the birthers:


(Click to enlarge)


(Please hold on to your heads)
UPDATE: Jesus H Christ, Trump is on my teevee taking credit for this. Douchebag. Oh, God! He's saying we have to look at it and see if it's really "real" and now we can get back to the issues. Fucking douchebag. He's saying it's "amazing" that it's "finally materialized." He keeps saying he's honored.

UPDATE 2: Good Lord! Now Trump is pimping his teevee show.

(h/t to Talking Points Memo)

Ah, Yes...The War On Easter.

In today's Tribune-Review we read:

The White House this year did not release its traditional Easter proclamation. A spokesman dismissed questions about the lapse and subsequent criticism. Hey, the first family went to a Baptist church on Sunday, said Jay Carney.

And there was that Easter breakfast last week for Christian ministers -- where Mr. Obama professed his Christian faith, it's reported.

Traditional Easter Proclamation?

So the appropriately "Christian" (and please note my irony quotation marks. WWJD? He certainly wouldn't allow torture or kill innocent civilians, that's for damn sure.) George W. Bush issued an Easter proclamation, right?

Nope. Not one.

In fact Little Green Footballs goes further. There hasn't been an official Easter proclamation since at least 1980. None from either Bush, none from Clinton and none from Reagan, either.

And yet the Trib says they're "traditional" and that the lack of one this year is somehow an anomaly.

But then the braintrust at the Trib takes an extra step into dishonesty:

Let's see, there have been proclamations about major Muslim holidays. Last year, Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha each received one. And, by golly, there was an Easter proclamation last year -- one that included mentions of a variety of other religions and even the nonreligious.

Really?

Last year Easter was on April 4 and according to this list at the American Presidency Project, there was no Easter Proclamation on or before April 4, 2010. Or indeed anywhere in that year.

It isn't there. Doesn't Scaife's braintrust even bother to check these things?

How about Ramadan? Was there a Ramadan proclamation in 2010 like the braintrust says?

Uh, no.

Ramadan 2010 took place between August 11 and September 9. Look at the list. No proclamation for Ramadan.

Usually we can trust Scaife's braintrust to give us an early morning chuckle. Usually they spin the facts rightward and usually that's funny. But today they got so many facts absolutely wrong it's difficult to laugh.

No War on Easter. No Ramadan proclamations. No facts getting in the way of a cheap smear. That's the Trib editorial board today.

In Case You Missed This

From the AP:

Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face an international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.

And:

ElBaradei cites examples, including the conclusion by his inspectors inside Iraq that certain aluminum tubes were designed for artillery rockets, not for uranium enrichment equipment to build nuclear bombs, as Washington asserted.

The IAEA chief reported this conclusion to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27, 2003, and yet on the next day Bush — in a "remarkable" response — delivered a State of the Union address in which he repeated the unfounded claim about aluminum tubes, ElBaradei notes.

Similar contradictions of expert findings occurred with the claim, based on a forgery, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, and an Iraqi exile's fabrication that "mobile labs" were producing biological weapons.

"I was aghast at what I was witnessing," ElBaradei writes of the official U.S. attitude before the March 2003 invasion, which he calls "aggression where there was no imminent threat," a war in which he accepts estimates that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.

In such a case, he suggests, the World Court should be asked to rule on whether the war was illegal. And, if so, "should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a `war crime' and determine who is accountable?"

No immanent threat. Hundreds of thousands dead. An illegal war based on lies (and at least one forgery). War Crimes.

The book, The Age of Deception, is to be published this week by MacMillan. Here's an excerpt:

In the years since, multiple sources have confirmed that the premise for the March 2003 invasion—the charge by the United States and the United Kingdom that Saddam Hussein's WMD programs represented an imminent threat—was groundless. The U.S.-appointed Iraq Survey Group would later spend billions of dollars to verify that the international inspectors were correct: Iraq had not revived its WMD programs. Nor, apparently, was the alleged WMD threat the real motivation for the U.S. and U.K. aggression. The famously leaked "Downing Street" memo from July 2002 was one of several sources indicating that the decision to go to war had been taken well before the inspections ever began.

To this day, I cannot read such accounts without reflecting on the thousands of soldiers who have died, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, the millions maimed or displaced, the families disrupted, the lives ruined—and I am astonished that there has not been more self-examination, more introspection on the part of the principal players. The shame of this needless war obliges us all to consider what went wrong in the case of Iraq and to reflect on how the lessons of this tragedy might be applied to future crises.

And while in 2008, candidate Obama said this:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

We've seen nothing from President Obama even remotely similar.

Happy Easter, my friends. Happy Easter.

The GOP is The Birther Party

As much as I heartily employ some local conservative republicans' outright rejection of the birther conspiracy theory, I have to point out that the theory, such as it is, is going mainstream GOP.

From Chris Matthews:



He said:

A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States.

The numbers come from this CBS/NYTimes poll (though it's actually 45% and not 47% who "know" Obama wasn't born in the US).

That's still very close to 7 out of 10 republicans who don't know that the President of the United States was born in Hawaii.

Here's a thought: any Republican you meet on the street you should ask them if they're a birther, because chances are, they are.

Any of my Republican friends want to chime in here?

What a sad state of affairs for a once great political party.

Of Squirmishes and Turd Sandwiches

"Squirmish"

Half-Governor Sarah Palin is at it again. The Shakespeare of Wasilla has created another new word. While criticizing President Obama on our action in Libya, she said the following:

“[D]o we use the term intervention, do we use war, do we use squirmish?”

Uh, Sarah. May I call you Sarah? I guarantee you that Obama doesn't call it a "squirmish." And, personally, I get all "squirmish" whenever you speak:

"Turd Sandwich"

Besides, apparently he's calling it a "turd sandwich":

Another Obama Disappointment

First, no prosecution of his predecessor's admitted torture and now:

President Barack Obama announced Monday his decision to abandon for the moment, perhaps for good, his pledge to voters in the 2008 elections to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

And:

Mr. Obama apparently gave up, believing that he could not persuade Congress to agree either to trials in civilian courts or to imprisonment in America. It is easy to see how he could have reached that conclusion and decided to make the best of a situation that is discouraging, in terms of Americans' perception of U.S. justice, and of how it is seen by the rest of the world.

Even Ronald Reagan was against waterboarding and the use of military tribunals for terrorists. From a Harper's Magazine interview with Will Bunch:

Q: Ronald Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture, and his Justice Department indicted and prosecuted a Texas sheriff for waterboarding. How can his views about torture be reconciled with the current Republican pro-torture dogma?

A: It’s important not to nominate Reagan for sainthood in the arena of human rights. His “Reagan Doctrine” in Central America, leaving the fight to anti-Communist thugs and death squads that the then-president called “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers,” is arguably the gravest moral failing of his tenure. That said, back on U.S. soil, Reagan was far to the left of the 2010 Republican Party on issues such as torture. The convention that he signed in 1988 holds that there is no circumstance of any kind that permits torture, which certainly would include the 9/11 aftermath and related anti-terror efforts today.

But it goes even deeper than that. As I noted in an early 2010 blog post: “Reagan would not have approved of drone-fired missile attacks aimed at killing terrorists; as president, he several times rejected anti-terrorism operations for the sole reason that civilians would have been killed by collateral damage. In 1985, he surprised aides such as Pat Buchanan by ruling out a military response to a Beirut hijacking for fear of civilian casualties; Lou Cannon reported then in the Washington Post that Reagan called retaliation in which innocent civilians are killed “itself a terrorist act.” And the idea of trying terrorists in military tribunals as opposed to a civilian court of law? The Reagan administration was completely against that. Paul Bremer (yes, that Paul Bremer) said in 1987, “a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them.”

Another Obama disappointment.

O'Reilly Vs. Obama