According to the Bible, the answer to a nation in such crisis is to gather in humility and repentance and ask God to intervene. The Response will be a historic gathering of people from across the nation to pray and fast for America.
Actually, it’s sounding more like a historic gathering of people from across Sugar Land since the event is Saturday and only around 8,000 (1.1 11%) tickets have been reserved.
Oh well. They say the Lord answers every prayer. Sometimes the Lord says “yes.” Sometimes the Lord says “no.” And sometimes the Lord says “wah-wah-wah-wahhhhhh.”
The Movement to Primary Obama began well before the smell of his socks had even begun to infuse the Resolute Desk. (See here and here, and note my own call-to-arms last December, as well as this stirring guest-post from May.) But lately the chorus is swelling:
It will challenge him, bring the best out of him and there’s nothing worse for a candidate in terms of lessening the enthusiastic level for him than to go through an unchallenged routine of repetitious primaries.
So my suggestion is, I think one of the reasons the president has been able to move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing. [...] So I would say to Ryan [sic] discouragement is not an option. I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.
...we recognize that a Primary challenge will, in fact raise debate on important issues without risking the ability to mobilize and energize the base of the Democratic Party to elect a triumphant leader to counter the far-right agenda.
Therefore, be it resolved, to make our views heard, the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party will begin the process of contacting other Democratic organizations, Democratic Party members and public organizations that share our views and which seek to change the course of history by exploring other steps necessary to effect a necessary change, including a possible primary challenge against President Obama.
Since the only conceivable challengers are loons, lightweights or current employees of the President, I don’t see much of a future in this. Neither does this guy at the Washington Post. However, Progressive angst being what it is, I have no doubt we’ll be up to our ass in twirling pony-parasols for the next month or two, anyway.
The biggest single difference is that the Clinton administration simply refused on principle to get jacked up on the debt ceiling:
Still, even though Clinton enjoyed political and economic advantages that Obama does not, his no-compromises strategy had some clear advantages. Unlike Obama, he refused to let the threat of default set the national agenda. Because he would not enter into negotiations over the debt ceiling, the issue barely roused the public consciousness. On November 9, 1995, a senior administration official told the Washington Post, “Our position is it does not matter what they put on this legislation, we are not going to accept anything but clean bills because we will not be blackmailed over default. Get it? No extortion. No blackmail. What you hear are their screams of complaint as they realize we are not, not, not budging on this.”
Kind of hard to imagine somebody from this administration talking like that.
At least he concedes that the Republicans of 1994 were not the Teathuglicans of 2011. Although I think he’s underestimating the situation a great deal when he says “they weren’t that much less destructive and crazy.” You think? Even Republican presidential candidates (every one except Huntsman) this time were saying that the debt ceiling absolutely should not be raised.
Anyway, everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Now I’m just waiting to hear how Clinton was so much more effective at getting health care reform passed, kept children from being thrown off of Medicaid rolls and SCHIP and never agreed to pass DADT or DOMA. Oh. Wait.
Nothing raises my hackles like a political conversation that starts with “both sides do…” because 999 times out of a thousand, what follows is pure, unadulterated bullshit. But here’s that one in a thousand case of true equivalency: Both sides do contain way more than their fair share of puling infants.
First there’s the right-wing freak-out over the identification of self-proclaimed Christian Anders Behring Breivik as a “Christian” and a fan of anti-Islam hate sites like Atlas Shrugs. Sorry, but that’s what he calls himself. And if you’ve spent the last decade shrieking “GLOBAL JIHAD” every time a Muslim jaywalks, you don’t get to yell “BLOOD LIBEL” when one of your fans takes your eliminationist rhetoric to its logical conclusion.
No country on earth, including Uzbekistan, will ever elect this woman President.
This is a clip from a longer (14:00) interview wherein Sarah countered the “Tea Party = Terrorists” meme with her usual Truck-Stop Tillie repartee:
If we were really domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us wouldn’t he? I mean he didn’t have a problem with palling around with Bill Ayers back in the day when he kicked off his political career in Bill Ayer’s apartment, and shaking hands with Chavez and saying he doesn’t need any preconditions with meeting dictators or wanting to read US Miranda rights to alleged suspected foreign terrorists. No if we were real domestic terrorists I think President Obama wouldn’t have a problem with us.
She also slammed the GOP for supporting the Debt Ceiling compromise bill, because — gosh darn it — you don’t give a Crazy Socialist Black Man $3 trillion to blow on pimp hats and sequined harem pants, for goodness sake!
Highlights in the Mediaite excerpt include Sarah shitting all over Mitt Romney, praising Michele Bachmann for sticking to her guns…and doing the equivalent of a dry spit-take at the very end when Sean says “That means you’re getting in? You just announced?”
Palin hasn’t had a lot of media visibility lately, and I’m beginning to think that’s the best thing for her.
“It’s OK, I’m still under warranty,” quipped Russia’s mechanical Prime Minister after an 8-pound saucepan launched from a vendor’s display and adhesed to his chest. “Lucky for me this isn’t some enormous global parasite, like America’s economy.”
The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was expected Monday to announce new guidelines that would require health insurance companies to cover women’s health care services, including birth control and breast exams, without a co-pays or deductibles.
The new rules, made possible by President Obama’s Affordable Care act, would begin Aug. 1, 2012.
“We know that half of women, according to studies, forego or delay preventive care because they can’t afford it and under the affordable care act that all changes,” White House advisor Stephanie Cutter told ABC News.
Services covered will include well-woman exams, screening for gestational diabetes, breastfeeding support, domestic violence screenings, and all FDA-approved birth control methods — including emergency contraception like the morning-after pill.
Not everyone is happy about this. Last month, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly commented on the recommendation that prompted the policy change:
“Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex, and they’re not going to use birth control anyway.”
True. However, many aging, splotchy bullies who sexually harass their subordinates confuse falafels for loofahs, but there’s no movement afoot to restrict the use of those items.
Despite having the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate, its second-highest rate of people without insurance and a $3.7 billion budget gap this year, [Florida] has turned away scores of millions of dollars in grants made available under the Affordable Care Act. And it is not pursuing grants worth many millions more.
In recent months, either Gov. Rick Scott’s administration or the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected grants aimed at moving long-term care patients into their homes, curbing child abuse through in-home counseling and strengthening state regulation of health premiums. They have shunned money to help sign up eligible recipients for Medicare, educate teenagers on preventing pregnancy and plan for the health insurance exchanges that the law requires by 2014.
[snip]
In distancing itself from the (Affordable Care Act] law, Florida declined to participate in a Medicaid pilot program that would have authorized up to $2 million in reimbursement to providers using a new hospice model for severely ill children. The state insurance commissioner applied to the Obama administration for a waiver from this year’s requirement that health insurers spend at least 80 percent of premium revenue on medical care.
Okay, so (P)Rick Scott refuses money to keep grandma at home, help abused kids, prevent teenage pregnancy, assist terminally ill children and force insurers to spend 80% of premiums on medical care. Is there anything he does want to spend money on? Sure—a celebration for fetus fetishists:
Gov. Rick Scott held a celebration at the governor’s mansion this weekend in honor of the four anti-abortion bills he signed into law.
Partygoers celebrated the new laws requiring ultrasounds, redirecting license-plate funds to anti-abortion groups, blocking state or federal health insurance funds from going toward abortions, and sending letters to parents whose children received abortions.
You know, as a general rule, I try not to wish for harm to come to others—even horrible people. I make an exception for Scott, who should go jump in the nearest forest fire.
Deaniac at The People’s View has a pretty good discussion of the basics. Starting to see why Limbaugh’s so upset. ;-)
(Obviously a clean vote on the ceiling would have been far preferable to the insanity we’ve been put through the last couple of weeks but Obama seems to have played a decent waiting game and pulled out, if not exactly a plum, at least not a shit sausage.)
"[W]e wholeheartedly endorse the excellent Rumproast blog" -- Jim Newell, Wonkette
"Mind you, don’t let yourself be trapped dialoging with these guys: truth is their enemy; pyschological warfare and misinformation dissemination is their profession." -- TeaParty.org
