I was still sleeping in because I’m sick as a dog, but Chris told me Joe Scarborough was comparing the stimulation package to the Iraq War this morning.

Yes, he really was doing that.

I watched Obama on the evening news APOLOGIZING because the three Cabinet members chosen were tax cheats. He admitted that he had screwed up. Bush NEVER admitted to any poor decisions or mistakes he made the entire time he was in office. Obama didn’t come across as weak, but rather as someone with a lot of tough decisions who was failed by the people who should have known better.

Face it, the media has been in the Republican’s pocket for so long, they don’t remember how to do objective, honest reporting. I expect a shovel and bucket team working overtime to get dirt on anyone affiliated with Obama and the Dems for the next four years, just like they did with the Clintons.

I’d like to see Obama squash the crap out of people like Mitch the Wattle, but he’s going to have to finesse his way through these desperate times. Iron fist in a velvet glove, whatever.

LOL, Allan, that’s perfect. And that’s just the VDH fail on Obama. If you factor in the heaping piles of fail on every other topic, VDH’s fail rises to Kristolian heights.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh is telling everyone that the economy isn’t so bad—not nearly as bad as in the early 80s. I predict that line will come back to haunt him like a drug-induced doctor shopping spree. And Joe the Idiot Plunger Jockey is actually advising congress to “kick ass.” Yep, we should all be panicking about Obama though, right?

Did you guys see/hear Obama’s speech at the prayer breakfast this morning? Did you see the tears in his eyes when he talked about his mom? Heck, I had tears in my eyes. It was a GREAT speech, an inspirational speech, a speech that I want to watch/hear again, which is saying a lot. I can’t find a link on MSNBC, but it is worth Googling and watching.

What an amazing thing to have an intelligent, articulate, thoughtful human being in the White House.

I don’t know if there is a hell, but if there is, I’d say Darth Cheney and his Republican Stormtroopers are heading that way.

Just saw your latest comment, Betty. If I was as rich and effed up on drugs and living in a plastic bubble as Limbaugh, I might be inclined to say the same. But as Senator Al Franken once said, “Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot.”

Oh and Kevin K., I hope you feel better soon!

our “liberal’ friend over at Salon has already declared that Obama lost the Stimulus war against the Republicans. This after Obama beat her preferred candidate in the primaries. Seriously I know this sounds cliche, but with friends like these, who really needs the Republicans. Joan just cant wait to say “i told you so” at any hint of perceived defeat for Obama

MoDo’s column yesterday was a polished turd - without the polish. Did you know Obama is “arrogant” and that the “cascade” of appointees with tax problems has taken him down many pegs? (Three equals “cascade” in MoDo Math.) And that somehow all the execs using the bailout money for private planes and hookers is his fault, even though her own damn paper reported his plan to cap exec compensation at 500K in the same damn issue of the Times!

I think Ole Girl is pouty because her whole “Obambi” thing didn’t fly. Maybe she should go back to her lurid musings about Bill Clinton’s penis. The organ to which she owes her Pulitzer and probably her career.

Maureen Dowd. One in an exhaustive list of reasons why I won’t subscribe to the Times.

Joan Walsh can suck my grundel. It’s a testament to her unalloyed crappiness that the most interesting article on Salon right now has the subhed, “Underemployed women pull themselves up by their strap-ons.”

It angers me that this cooze makes me nostalgic for David Talbot.

(plz forgive my incivility. I’ve spent way too much time in the Wonkette comments section.)

i have to slightly disagree with you Kerry, on MoDo. I have a little bit of soft spot for MoDo because skewered Hillary in the primaries just as much, if not more, as she did to Obama. She and Frank Rich exposed the Clintons for who they really were, their constant braying on recognizing the FL and MI votes and Hillary’s playing the white working class card. She was enemy #1 in the Joan’s, Taylor Marsh and PUMA world. Now granted she doesnt always represnt Obama fairly, but I cant honestly say she is out to get Obama. She did also skewer the CEO’s and fat cats retreats and bonus packages while they were being bailed out by us. And Im not trying to make Obama look bad, but seriously, did anyone think that pretty much hiring ex-Congress people and ex-Clintonistas and ex-bankers was not going to present ANY problems for Obama? Alot of us could have foreseen that but not Obama? These people like Geithener and Daschle have been in Washington, legalized sleaze and corruption has become a way of life for all of them. I mean, couldnt Obama have hired a talented economist from some good University? did he have to hire someone who was partly responsible in some ways for loosening the regulations that were a precursor to the crisis. I think Obama got screwed by Daschle but I think when he meant clean slate, he should have demonstrated that by action. So in all fairness, I have to say that while I dont LOVE her columns, I cant say I hate her columns either.

Topical post, Betty.  I am getting so sick of hearing that Obama’s presidency has already tanked that I’m about to scream.  And these are the same old “pundits” that were shrieking all through the primaries and general election that Obama was doing everything wrong that he possibly could.  We need to put those plastic bubbles on their typing hands that moms used to put on kids so they wouldn’t suck their thumbs.  And don’t take them off until they learn to take a deep breath, say “the sky is not falling” 500 times and CHECK THEIR IN BOXES!

Periodically, MoDo goes through changes, and her mood swings where Obama is concerned.  If you wait for the angry flashes currently visited upon her to ebb and flow, she’ll get on the rag for which she writes and bloody some other target at that time of the month.

Any sexist woman-lynching in the prior paragraph was entirely unintentional…I swear.  I even forgot that MoDo was a woman until you brought it up.

jeez Allan cut down on the explicit feminine bashing talk….i mean rant about MoDo all you want, but without the talk of hot flashes and blood. seriously.

I think what got my goat the most was “arrogant.” She has said it, so therefore it is reality! Though how someone who is APOLOGIZING for mistakes is arrogant in the same way as Bush doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m not MoDo the Moron. Also, I don’t think MoDo has firm convictions on anything. Whatever will allow her to snark like a Mean Girl is what she’s in favor of - hence her attacks on the Clintons, because she had a lot of material there. She doesn’t hate the Clintons. She doesn’t have enough passion to hate or love anyone outside what she sees in her mirror. Someone made a comment about whether or not she was trying to set the groundwork for President Palin, which I wouldn’t put past her. So much more material there to delight Her Dismissive Ladyship! And it’s all about MoDo’s Amusement, after all.

I agree with the diary in Kos linked to by Allan in his comment above: the kneejerk tendency on the part of some frankly naive and ill-informed folks on the left to paint all “insiders” as “evil” and not “change we can believe in” or whatever-the-fuck doesn’t do anybody any good, and it also represents a total failure to understand what Obama is about, and what he has always SAID he is about.

I’m not a huge fan of Daschle or of Geithner, but particularly for the latter, I understand why he was chosen—sometimes, the person who was around while the disaster happened is the one who can help figure out how to work your way out of it, not a theoretician in the ivory tower. Obama never said he wasn’t going to hire Washington insiders, and if that’s what you thought, Bimbo, that’s your mistake for not reading him or listening to him closely enough. He has ALWAYS said he’ll work with whoever he thinks has the best ideas from whatever segment they may come from—private sector, academia, GOP, Democratic, whatever. So getting away from entrenched ideological tests in hiring is already a big “change I can believe in” (no more Dominionists running DoJ, for example). The real change is in the POLICIES he hopes to enact, not with the people he’s using to get them enacted.

Lefties need to realize that NO administration is ever going to put Larry Tribe on the Supreme Court or someone from Food Not Bombs at HHS. University professors may not be the best choices for running huge bureaucratic agencies, after all. (Though I’m still totally stoked about Steven Chu.) For that, sometimes you need a motherfucker who knows the lay of the land and how to whack a few people upside the skull. (Which is why I didn’t like the Daschle pick—most of my memories of him as Senate Majority Leader are as a guy who couldn’t capitulate enough to the Bushies, but perhaps being in the Cabinet would have been a sufficiently different post so that past record wouldn’t make a difference).

Remember that Jimmy Carter got screwed by bringing in “outsiders” who couldn’t work the system. How many terms did he serve? Who did we get afterward? Yeah. Think about it before you start whinging about how Obama is letting us down by bringing in people who have been in DC a long time.

So I don’t give a shit if someone passes the Sweet Polly Purebread test for Bleeding-Heart Idealists. I didn’t vote for and volunteer for Obama because he’s an idealist. I did that because I think he can get shit done!

And lord, is there ever a lot of shit that needs to get done!

I agree with just about everything Kerry just posted @12:32.  I have more of background in protest movements(groups like FNB) and union organizing than electoral politics.  I’m not doing cartwheels over single cabinet appointment,I will(and have already)been critical of some of his actions(just as I was about Clinton sometimes).  And it’s good to have people like Maddow & Greenwald keeping the administration on its toes.

Sorry bimbo slice (I can call you “bimbo” without it being evidence of my woman-lynching, right?).  Others here recognize my allusion to how Obama woman-lynched Hillary when he said

“I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.”

Perhaps I should have mocked her by invoking a Tracy-Hepburn flick, which remain to MoDo the sine qua non of gender politics.

God, Jason, I’d forgotten about that heinous attack on the Drs. Dean. MoDo is a tool. And nowhere near as cute and clever as she thinks she is (which reminds me of Palin as well).

And yeah, by no means do I think we shouldn’t be criticizing Obama—he used to be my senator and I gave him an earful plenty of times. But I think to make large sweeping pronouncements about what a particular appointment (or failed appointment as the case may be) symbolizes about his whole administration or political outlook is just specious. Do other countries do that, or is this just an American thing—“OMG you let me down on this thing and now it’s no longer perfect and I can never trust you again and I’m so betrayed and I’m gonna go home and bite my pillow!”

Not saying anyone here is doing that. But I’d like to toss in another vote for chilling the fuck out, while remaining ever-watchful.

Great post, Betty Cracker!  I too am sick of the over-analyzing, hand-wringing “chicken little” syndrome going on.  It seems like people don’t know how to take a deep breath and get some broader, longer-term perspective.

Oh, and I sooo totally agree with what Kerry Reid said:

So I don’t give a shit if someone passes the Sweet Polly Purebread test for Bleeding-Heart Idealists. I didn’t vote for and volunteer for Obama because he’s an idealist. I did that because I think he can get shit done!

And lord, is there ever a lot of shit that needs to get done!

You know, if I weren’t totally gay, and gay married and all, I’d probably have a crush on Kerry.  Kerry is so righteous.

I guess I have whatever is the gay equivalent of a “bromance” for Kerry.

Considering that I usually seem to turn men gay, I’m totally flattered, Allan!

If you have the general impression that MoDo is not a nice person, you would be right.  I had the occasion to meet her once last year and she is a very unlikeable sort.  Sorta sneery and righteous.

MoDo seems to epitomize one of my best friend’s summations about a guy I used to (unhappily) date: “Smug and self-satisfied, with no discernible reason for being either.”

That was extremely well said, Betty.  I’m with you 100%.  Clenched fist salute.

OT

Here is the first Christian Bale, Barack Obama mash-up. By yours truly of course.

Two words and a vowel:

rope-a-dope

(For those not familiar with this effective Muhammad Ali tactic, the Republicans are the dopes.)

Allan, late commenting on this, but I just wanted to add that your parody of Obama’s remarks reminded me of the point when I realized that I could ignore the more virulently pro-Hillary sections of the “feminist” blogosophere without losing any sleep or helpful insights.

Namely, that Obama’s use of the word “periodically” CLEARLY was code for “she’s on the rag” and everyone knew it or they were just denying it, whereas Hillary Clinton’s laundry list of guilt-by-association tactics and “misspeakings” (“hardworking Americans, white Americans,” landing under sniper fire in Bosnia) were perfectly legitimate, or the result of the “stress” of the campaign. (Notice that no such benefit of the doubt vis a vis stress could be extended to the “inadequate black male.”)

So it was okay for Clinton to try to pin Farrakhan on Obama, but any attempt to hold Hillary Clinton responsible for decisions of the Bill Clinton administration, even policies she obviously fully and publicly endorsed at the time (see: NAFTA) was just horribly sexist—because she was her own woman, not her husband! Even though she was basing her “35 years of experience” claim in such a way as to obviously be including her ceremonial role as First Lady as legitimate policy/executive experience.

In many ways, I have to say the bloody primary battles freed me from any lingering sense of obligation I may have felt to some of the old-guard feminist institutions. I can be a good feminist without giving the time of day to Robin Morgan, Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem, or NOW ever again.