The Victorious Opposition

See, I can understand not really understanding how liability insurance works when you’re young and dumb.  The trouble is that he still doesn’t get it.  “Acme” would have paid out if Obama had rear-ended somebody else.  This is the guy who’s trying to run the health insurance portion of the economy.  Moments like these are when you go from a facepalm straight to just outright chewing on your own hand.

If Sarah Palin had said this, it would have been regarded as just more proof that she was unqualified to be Vice President (which is pretty easy, actually; according to Biden).  In the meantime, this is what we’re stuck with in the Oval Office.  Next week, the Obama Administration will attack unscrupulous bathtub manufacturers for making defective products that flood his bathroom because he keeps filling the water all the way to the top and then getting in.

H/T: Hot Air

With a title like “Putting Americans In Control Of Their Health Care”, you’d think that maybe some libertarian concepts had actually crept into the White House health care plan.

You’d be wrong.

It’s pure window dressing. Top to bottom. Not a single substantive change from the Senate bill. True, there is no “public option” and there is no single-payer model (there are still exchanges, but they’ve taken the public option out of them). There’s still an individual mandate. The system is still fundamentally employer-centric, rather than individual-centric, making the portability thing a pure fiction. They say:

Nothing in the proposal forces anyone to change the insurance they have.  Period.

Leaving out the entire “as long as you remain with the same employer and the employer doesn’t change the plan”.

There is no attempt at actual Medicare/Medicaid reform. It pretends that elimination of fraud & waste is enough. Even assuming such were possible, that’s a ludicrous concept. They even spend more on Medicare by closing the Part D “donut hole”. Let’s not forget that Medicare Part D is unfunded in the first place.

They pay lip service to including GOP ideas (there’s a “Republican Ideas” page that lists the things they’ve pulled from GOP bills). None of these are remotely substantive. Pure window-dressing.

To make things worse, the Democrats are apparently planning to go the reconciliation route after all:

Democratic officials said the president’s proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

I have, of course, written to the President and my Congress-critters yet again to object to this move, as I’ve done every time it’s come up for the last year. A couple of Democrats have said they’ll oppose reconciliation. We shall see.

A month ago I asked why the GOP wasn’t taking the lead on health care. Seems to me that window has closed. The Democrats are now back on track. And the election of Scott Brown won’t amount to either diddly or squat at the end of this debate.

The most aggressive response to come from the GOP so far has been Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap For America’s Future”, which I discussed previously. Unfortunately, the GOP leadership has hung Ryan out to dry over this:

“Paul Ryan, who’s the ranking member on our budget committee, has done an awful lot of work in putting together his roadmap,” Boehner said. “But it’s his. And I know the Democrats are trying to say that it’s the Republican leadership. But they know that’s not the case.”

(emphasis in the original)

So Thursday’s “televised health care summit” will be exactly the dog-and-pony show that people are predicting. And the Democrats will ramrod some egregious form of health care “reform” through within the next month or so.

While the GOP continues to eat their young and think they can do better.

Politics as usual. Wonderful. Pelosi and Boehner need to be replaced. Maybe Ryan and Cantor can stage a coup; I’m not sure who I’d root for to stage a coup for Pelosi’s job, but pretty much anyone would be better.

As faux pas go, this is way more amusing than damaging, but as for him being a slow learner, you make the call.

Nicely done, Mr. Mayor.

It always amuses me when I hear certain politicians talk about belt tightening, I guess lavish amounts of glue was applied to all the seats in the audience to prevent mass people falling out of their chairs convulsing with laughter.

I wonder if the president thinks that any vacation, anywhere, is a frivolous luxury deserving of derision for it’s execessiveness . Since almost all parents are trying to save for their kid’s college, all leisure activity should be considered wasteful and selfish, OK.

Seriously, should the president get pilloried for this comment? small potatoes, I think, since we all get the sentiment involved.

Discovering that people actually do listen to what he says, some smoothing over was in order.

Perception and reputation are sensitive issues for Sin City as it struggles to find footing amid a two-year meltdown of foreclosures, bankruptcies and unemployment. Tourism is the Silver State’s backbone, and several lawmakers said they were shocked that Obama singled out Las Vegas again after commenting last February that bailed-out banks shouldn’t go to Las Vegas using taxpayer money.

The mayor did give the president a way out, TDS…......Teleprompter Dependency Syndrome:

“He has to step up right away and say, you know, he wasn’t thinking,” Goodman said. “Sometimes when he’s not using his monitors and reading what he says, he doesn’t think. And this is one of those times he didn’t think, and he should straighten out the record because he’s been here, he knows Las Vegas is a great place.”

He shoots, he scores.

I’m not going to shed many tears for Vegas, Sin City has always provided remedies for misery. A lap dance with Bambi or raking in the chips yelling ,“Winner, winner, chicken dinner” can make that pink slip just a passing memory.

Here are some questions that I am posing to the group: Does Obama get to kick that can down the road for as long as he is in office? Will there ever be a time when the mess is his mess? If he keeps mucking up the recovery, either through more onerous government intrusions and regulations and less actual help to the true growth engines (the private sector) and all his efforts fall short, does he merit any responsibility at all? Does Obama get to “test drive” our economy for as long as he is in office, or, is there ever a time when he owns it?

I wonder these things because I still hear apologists still blaming Bush for all of America’s ills.

I think we have established beyond all reasonable doubt that the last president erred in a number of his policies, OK, that is out of the way, but soon or later, we have to look forward and resist the urge to drive viewing only out of the rear view mirror.

We have talked about this before, how in one short year, this president has gone to the well of blame to compensate for his own inadequacies more than the last half a dozen presidents combined, and if we did not have facts that contradict this tact, it might work, for a while.

Now I know some people can’t tell the difference between 450 billion and 1.75 trillion (both are large numbers, I agree) but as a comparison, they are hardly comparable.

We can all agree that Bush owns TARP, (signed on by a Democratic run congress, so they are somewhat complicit but the president is the man). but the lion’s share of these bank loans have either been paid back entirely or in the process, with both capital and interest going back into the people’s coffers. so, some could say that it was a good deal, for everyone involved.

And the country had the same attitude with The Stimulus Bill, if it improves the economy and gets folks back to work, yes it is a lot of money that will balloon the deficit, but they were willing to give the president a chance. But not satisfied with letting it stand on its own merits, Obama tracks its failure back to what the last guy did.

We know what John Adams said about facts

As much as some would like to still place this fact back on Bush, it does not make it any more palatable.

The one thing us Californians know, pointing fingers solves nothing. We are already doing a “Thelma And Louise” off the cliff. The nation is not in as bad a shape, but it will get there in a hurry as long as people are willing to give this administration a pass on everything it does, and not hold their feet to the fire.

Watching Obama stew himself provides no one with schadenfreude, we really are all in this together.

I have little to say about the SOTU. All those talking heads that figured Obama would pivot, had no choice but to pivot, did not factor in his arrogance. He has read all those press clippings. It wasn’t that the people don’t like what he is peddling, they needed it explained to them like they were 5 year olds, after all,  the “Noblesse oblige” crowd knows what’s good for us.

We got the same old BIOB (blame it on Bush) for America’s ills, yet deference was paid when “Stay The Course” became his phrase du jour.

But the SCOTUS smack down was particularly news worthy, not just in its breach of protocol, but in his interpretation of the decision. What an ugly scene. I was surprised Chucky Schumer did not let loose with a ,“Somebody go get a rope”. Too bad Chucky, the president, and all the other mouth foamers can’t grasp the concept that the First Amendment applies to everyone, they are not the arbiter of extending this freedom. Their warped logic being: unions represent “the people” and thus are protected by the First Amendment; corporations do not represent “the people” so they can be shut out of political discourse, their political contributions banned entirely.

First it was Wall Street, then the large money center banks, and now the SCOTUS, Obama’s shit list keeps growing.

Maybe they should just forgo attending these SOTU’s, either that or hire some security. I know some Blackwater guys that would love to “unleash some muscle” on this current crew.

The Democrats have a bizarre notion of the concept of the words “savings”, as we’ve noted before. I saw a blurb on the news this morning, highlighting what’s expected from tomorrow’s State of the Union address, which made me go look to see if they had actually put this latest definition in writing. Yup, they did:

Reporting from Washington - Moving to address rising voter anger over federal deficits and the tattered shape of their own pocketbooks, President Obama will propose a freeze on non-defense-related federal spending as well as expanded aid to middle-class families in his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, White House aides said Monday.

...

The president will propose to keep the freeze in place through 2013 so that, by the middle of the decade, that component of the budget will reach its lowest percentage of gross domestic product in 50 years. The savings from the three-year freeze is expected to amount to $250 billion over the next decade, compared with the baseline set in 2008.

(emphasis added)

Yes, you heard it right. Failing to spend more money than our ludicrous current deficit spending is actually saving money. Well, in a strict, literal, dictionary definition of the word, that’s correct, and you’d think that pedants like me would appreciate the pedantic use of the language.

But here’s a suggestion, folks - how about we “save” by spending less, not just failing to spend more.

I’ll also note that $250B over a decade is purely pissing in the wind when the deficit is currently $1.35T for one year.

Now, I will certainly give Obama and the Democrats props if they actually implement paygo - that’s praise-worthy in and of itself. But to tout this as “savings”? Come on now. More like “the barest minimal requirement of something that might approach fiscal credibility”.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this makes me cringe:

President Obama set a new record last year for getting Congress to vote his way, according to an annual study by Congressional Quarterly.

In his first year in office, Obama won 96.7 percent of the votes on which he had clearly staked a position.

That was a bit less than 4 percentage points higher than the previous record, set by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

...

In the House, Obama won 68 votes and lost four.

...

In the Senate, Obama won 78 votes and lost one.

I don’t care who the President is, what party he is, etc. I didn’t like it when Bush had a rubber-stamp GOP Congress, I didn’t like the idea of Obama having a rubber-stamp Congress, and I sure don’t like the results. I strongly disapprove of single-party rule, and stand by my Vote For Gridlock mantra. The Executive and Legislature are supposed to be checks and balances on each other, not rubber-stamp.

This analysis of the Congressional Quarterly data includes a chart going back 50+ years. Clinton and Bush had 80-90% rubber-stamp from their single-party-rule tenures; Obama looks to be 10 points higher than Bush’s highest (I can’t find the raw data, so that’s from eyeballing the chart).

Given how much of his party disagrees with his positions (he’s too conservative for the far-left wing, too fiscally-free for the “blue dogs”, etc), what we see here is the effect of partisan politics. It’s more important to vote with your party than to vote your own positions, it seems. Such partisan orthodoxy serves the country ill.

In an attempt to prevent future Congresses from overturning provisions of the new health care law, the current bill has some, umm, “interesting” language in Section. 1899A(d) (page 1019 of the 2000 page bill):

(3) LIMITATION ON CHANGES TO THE BOARD RECOMMENDATIONS.—

(A) IN GENERAL.—It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, or amendment, pursuant to this subsection or conference report thereon, that fails to satisfy the requirements of subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) of subsection (c)(2).
(B) LIMITATION ON CHANGES TO THE BOARD RECOMMENDATIONS IN OTHER LEGISLATION.—It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report (other than pursuant to this section) that would repeal or otherwise change the recommendations of the Board if that change would fail to satisfy the requirements of subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) of subsection (c)(2).
(C) LIMITATION ON CHANGES TO THIS SUBSECTION.—It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.
(D) WAIVER.—This paragraph may be waived or suspended in the Senate only by the affirmative vote of three-fifths of the Members, duly chosen and sworn.
(E) APPEALS.—An affirmative vote of three-fifths of the Members of the Senate, duly chosen and sworn, shall be required in the Senate to sustain an appeal of the ruling of the Chair on a point of order raised under this paragraph.

Note the requirement for a 3/5 super-majority for Congress to approve changes. There are interesting questions about whether or not the actions of one Congress are binding on future Congresses (a future Congress could just pass a new law revising this provision, one would think).

But that’s not the truly interesting part. This is:

while cloture to end debate on legislation ordinarily takes “three-fifths of all the Senators duly chosen and sworn” (60 senators when all seats are occupied), cloture on any proposed change to the Senate’s standing rules takes “two-thirds of the Senators present and voting,” or 67 senators if all 100 are on the floor.  (Both of these requirements are in Senate Rule XXII.)  Ironically, the two-thirds rule can be easier to satisfy when the active quorum of senators is smaller; it could take as few as 34 senators when a bare-minimum 51 senators are present.  But any time more than 90 senators are present, it will take more than 60 votes to end debate on any statute that works a change in the Senate’s standing rules.  Thus a good argument can be made that the mere 60 votes obtained in the recent cloture vote were insufficient to end debate on the Reid bill—because it contains at least one change to the Senate’s standing rules.

The problem is, though - the Democrats control the parliamentary procedures, and such there is nothing anyone can really do about it. The Constitution is quite clear that each chamber of the legislature is responsible for its own rules, and there’s no way whatsoever any court is stepping into this.

Interesting times we live in, huh?

H/T: The Volokh Conspiracy

How many people remember this little bit from Candidate Obama:

Good grief:

So one of the central goals of this administration is restoring fiscal responsibility. Even as we have had to spend our way out of this recession in the near term, we’ve begun to make the hard choices necessary to get our country on a more stable fiscal footing in the long run. So let me just be clear here. Despite what some have claimed, the cost of the Recovery Act is only a very small part of our current budget imbalance. In reality, the deficit had been building dramatically over the previous eight years. We have a structural gap between the money going out and the money coming in.

“restoring fiscal responsibility”

“we have had to spend our way out of this recession”

Hah. Hah. Hah. Hah.

Hah hah hah.

Hah… Ouch. My sides hurt from laughing.

OK, so spending money like it’s going out of style is “fiscally responsible”. Like, for example, spending the fictional “savings” from TARP. [Note to the people with the power of the pen: there are no savings to be had from deficit spending, This is like the pretend “savings” from buying something because it was “on sale”.]

Now, if you’re going to go forward with this imaginary “fiscal responsibility”, this isn’t a horrid way to go about it:

Now, these steps will help, but we also have to address the continuing struggle of small businesses to get loans that they need to start up and grow. To that end, we’re proposing to waive fees and increase the guarantees for SBA-backed loans. And I’m asking my Treasury Secretary to continue mobilizing the remaining TARP funds to facilitate lending to small businesses.

SBA loans are not a horrible way to get a business moving, especially in an environment of tight angel/venture financing. But I’d prefer they take money away from some of the other boondoggle ARRA funding and give the TARP money back.

I haven’t gone through the rest of the speech yet to see how much more “fiscally responsible” deficit spending he’s got lined up; I just picked up that quote from a short AP story summary and had to go see for myself.

Update: CNN’s coverage of this story used the term “cash for caulkers” in its subject line. They didn’t coin it; it’s been out there for a while, it seems. But this was the first time I’ve seen it, and being one to never pass up a good pun, I got an actual belly laugh from it. I have no idea if the program is worth a damn, but the name gets a double thumbs up.

I waited until after I had a chance to hear some of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings before I wrote something up about Obama’s Afghanistan strategy/speech. I’d forgotten just how astonishingly dull Congressional hearings actually are, although I think there were some interesting tidbits from Clinton, Gates and Mullen (and wow does Clinton look tired; I think some would accuse her of appearing bored, but I think she appeared utterly exhausted). I would like to hear more from McChrystal, post-speech, though, particularly on the 30k troops vs. the 40k he requested.

I thought Obama gave a very good speech, and for the most part, the strategy he laid out seems right to me. I think the fact that both the left and the right are pissed off about various parts of it actually adds to its credibility. The strategy and positioning seems to be fairly consistent with the positions he’s taken on Afghanistan from the beginning - get out of Iraq, deploy sufficient forces in Afghanistan and keep going after AQ, especially in the Pakistan border regions.

It’s no secret that I feel that Iraq was a foolish distraction from going after AQ and finishing the job in Afghanistan. The job is much harder now, because the Taliban have gathered a lot of their lost momentum, and the public’s patience is already worn out, without achieving the objectives of the post-9/11 military actions. Iraq burned out an extreme amount of political capital, not to mention burning out our forces. Hearing Cheney & Rumsfeld get all defensive over Afghanistan is amusing, because it’s unquestionable that they screwed the pooch by leaving the job unfinished.

A post at The Volokh Conspiracy pointed me to two editorials published last week, one by John Yoo, the other by Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith. These gentlemen know a thing or two about the legalese around the GWoT, having been principal players in the Bush DoJ.

Unsurprisingly, John Yoo thinks the KSM trial will be an unmitigated disaster:

Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal. The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.

Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point. The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism. It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war.

He discusses the Moussaui trial, and its circus-like affair, but doesn’t address the question of how the KSM case is distinguishable from the Moussaoui case.

Comey and Goldsmith take a different tack, one that speaks to the “valid arguments on both sides” points that I made last week:

Reasonable minds can disagree about Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 perpetrators in a Manhattan federal court. But some prominent criticisms are exaggerated, and others place undue faith in military commissions as an alternative to civilian trials.

...

Many of Holder’s critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again.

In terrorist trials over the past 15 years, federal prosecutors and judges have gained extensive experience protecting intelligence sources and methods, limiting a defendant’s ability to raise irrelevant issues and tightly controlling the courtroom. Moussaoui’s trial was challenging because his request for access to terrorists held at “black” sites had to be litigated. Difficulties also arose because Moussaoui acted as his own lawyer, and the judge labored to control him. But it is difficult to imagine a military commission of rudimentary fairness that would not allow a defendant a similar right to represent himself and speak out in court.

In either trial forum, defendants will make an issue of how they were treated and attempt to undermine the trial politically. These efforts are likely to have more traction in a military than a civilian court. No matter how scrupulously fair the commissions are, defendants will criticize their relatively loose rules of evidence, their absence of a civilian jury and their restrictions on the ability to examine classified evidence used against them. Some say it is wrong to give Mohammed trial rights ordinarily conferred on Americans, but a benefit of civilian trials over commissions is that they make it harder for defendants to complain about kangaroo courts or victor’s justice.

Please give both editorials a read-through (Yoo discusses more of the intelligence implications; Comey & Goldsmith also discuss military commisions), and take a look at the comment trail at The Volokh Conspiracy. I still believe that tossing this off as “playing politics” is an oversimplification of a complex analysis. When I read what Comey and Goldsmith have to say, I am more secure in my ambivalence about this issue.

So by now we all know the news about the Justice Department’s intent to prosecute KSM and the 9/11 conspirators in Federal Court in New York City, just blocks from Ground Zero.  What was an important, but fairly low-profile issue (trying the 9/11 conspirators) has now blown into what many are already calling the first “Trial of the Century”.  The issue itself seems to be somewhat of a Rorschach test for people’s worldview when it comes to terrorism.

On the one hand, we have many in the liberal/progressive camp who are applauding the decision.  To them, the 9/11 attacks were heinous, criminal acts.  They believe that justice is served by bringing the terrorists back to the place the crime occurred and that we should use our criminal justice system to prosecute KSM and his ilk.  They believe a fair and public trial will be an important step to restore the rights of due process and the rule of law.

On the other hand, there are many who are critical of this decision, particularly in the conservative camp.  They believe military tribunals are the appropriate forum, since to them, 9/11 was an act of war.  They worry about the implications of trying terrorists in civilian courts, because the terrorists are granted all the rights afforded American citizens.  They worry that KSM’s alleged waterboarding could threaten the ability to reach a guilty verdict, and that the rights of discovery could threaten national security thorough the leaking of classified information.

But beyond the philosophical and partisan divide are some lingering questions.  It’s been reported that the Administration made this decision six months ago, and is only now making it public knowledge.  If this is true, why the long wait?  And how is it going to be possible for the terrorists to get a fair trial?  First of all, is there an unbiased juror in New York City?  The Administration’s also really in a bind because on the one hand it says the trial will be fair, but on the other hand indicates the outcome is all but certain.  And talk about sensationalism—this will be a huge event, and garner a lot of attention that would have been avoided had the trials taken place in Gitmo.

All in all, it looks like a bad play by the Administration, and they’ll certainly take the hit for it.

First thing that pops out at me? There are some college kids at UConn that has way too much time on their hands. I realize hoop season is just kicking off, but why aren’t these kids cracking the books and making their parents proud?

I also realize that Obama blazing his own trail (protocol be damned, I’ll do it my way) is driving some people to drink. Whether it’s that messianic feeling he can’t assuage (all the other guys did this way? I will do it that way) or that his handlers are clueless and not ready for prime time, either way, the president of first’s makes news even when he is not trying.

You would of thought that after the spanking he got from his genuflecting to the Saudi king, that Miss Manners’  book of greeting dignitaries would of been first on his Kindle list. Although some could argue that his lack of etiquette in this area, and in respecting his country in general comes to the fore front much too often:

I guess this is better than having his hands in his pockets. All this patriotic crap can really get in the way of saving us from ourselves.

Commensurate with flag  etiquette that prohibits it from being “dipped to any person or thing” , that one human representative of the flag should not dip himself either, to anyone.

The United States Flag Code outlines certain guidelines for the use, display, and disposal of the flag. For example, the flag should never be dipped to any person or thing, unless it is the ensign responding to a salute from a ship of a foreign nation. (This tradition may come from the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, where countries were asked to dip their flag to King Edward VII: the American flag bearer did not. Team captain Martin Sheridan is famously quoted as saying “this flag dips to no earthly king”,

Ah, but those were the days of American imperialism (?), of Teddy and his big stick, we have evolved from the days of intimidation and fear, now we are all one, and we must act like it. We must not propagate the notion of super powers, it only makes the rest of the world hate us and there is no “hate” in “Hope and Change”.

So now, we must re asses our priorities and our motives, and learn to love the president that throws like a girl:

Willful obeisance will never replace the threat of a good left hook when it comes to the global scale of playing well with others.

We all like to “cut to the chase”, but trampling on the Constitution may not be the best way to get there. Proving yet once again that Obama is OJTing his position.

President Obama began his weekly Internet and radio address on Saturday with these words: “This past Thursday, on a clear Texas afternoon, an Army psychiatrist walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, and began shooting his fellow soldiers.”

Did the president, speaking directly about the man suspected in the killings, prejudice any jury that might be called to hear the case? At the least, he appeared to fall afoul of a lesson that every journalism student—and law student—learns early: The safest way to avoid yourself some trouble is to couch such a flat assertion of guilt.

Hey, I like his directness, legalese shmegalese, we all know what happened, why dance around the facts semantically? Well, an ex lawyer and law professor should of known better, even Army Psychiatrists get the presumption of innocence, Burbank cops? not so much.

What I find interesting is the ping pong balls approach our president takes as to how he approaches rushing to judgment. He took some pretty pointed and correct flak for his rush to condemning Officer James Crowley, but to his credit, he saw the error of his ways and recanted. Smart people learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them. So right after the Ft. Hood shooting incident we were all encouraged by Obama’s sage like advice of not jumping to conclusions ahead of time and waiting for events to play out and facts to be gathered. Now he is pinging his pong and going the other way, I guess he has all the facts he needs.

A more magnanimous audience could counter all this by reiterating that we are all human and make mistakes, that we all misspeak from time to time and I am all for going that route, up to a point. How many times have we seen over the last 10 months this guy stepping on his dick without the assistance of his beloved teleprompter?

We saw just the other day another misspeak. I realize that there are news organizations and reporters out there (MediaMatters comes directly to mind) who’s soul purpose is to trip up prominent media figures with their gaffes. Some reporters made a good living telling us how stupid Bush was, and had the sound bites to prove it. Although I see that Obama’s screw ups get reported, as they should be, I never see the other dot connecting, and that because he makes mistakes, he must therefor be synapsed challenged, and be dumber than dirt.

I would expect anyone to make mistakes from time to time, and certainly the president, who is under the spotlight more than anyone, is not immune, so many of these so called gaffes I will provide a high tolerance for. Let those without sin cast the first stone, sort of speak. So, many of these boners cause me little constipation, but I will bet that when all is said and done and Obama is out of office, that the Obama book of boners will put Bush’s to shame when comparing sheer tonnage.

Well, shenanigans are in play, The House has ordered in pizza, unplugged the phones, brought their toothbrushes, and has hunkered down for some dastardly business. It’s not just Obama, but Pelosi has put her chestnuts in the fire as well. And markers must be called in, so here’s some of the usual Hollywood mouth pieces.

Hey, wait a minute, didn’t those guys play a president and a first lady on TV? OK, now I feel better, it’s not like they don’t know what they are talking about, right?

Sheen has come a long way, from his rogue Colonel killing days.

I know Charlie don’t surf, but does he ever get sick and need a doctor?

Alright Blue Dogs, it is now time to put up or shut up.