Finally Obama is getting tough with these mo-fos!

2/5/09) President Obama at a House Democrat Retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. Video: CSPAN



It's about freakin' time, too! Enough of this post-partisan crap. Partisanship is not a bad thing, that's why we have multiple political parties. Leave the GOP in the dust and let's get on with it!

Get onboard Senators Reid and Pelosi or move aside and let someone with some guts get this job done!

Spending is stimulus! I love it.

The Tyranny of oil:

NPR Watch: The question of the day.Why aren't cartoonists skewering Obama?

Yes, believe it or not, this is a real piece of political analysis from NPR: "Why it's hard to poke fun at Obama."

Huh?

My response to the piece:

My problem with this story is this bit: "Most pen-and-inksters do not seem to be skewering President Barack Obama in the wicked ways they skewered former President George W. Bush.
Why is that?"

It's like day 16 of Obama's presidency, is this really an issue?

'Why isn't everybody piling on already?????' Gosh, he hasn't got us into a pointless war or ordered torture or lost an American city yet, why isn't he getting the same treatment from those liberal cartoonists!

You can just hear the stirrings of a long somnolent NPR sharpening up its knives to get after this guy.

'Get the GOP Rolodex out, what are the powerless House minorities' latest talking points? Get every obscure GOP House member behind a mike and find that Weakly Standard guy who just got fired from the NYT, what's his name? Oh right, William Kristal! Our listeners really want to hear what he has to say! ---- End

WTF? Seriously, what was the point of that piece?

Here's an interesting study by Fair.org from 2004 on NPR's 'Liberal bias."

" . . . Little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR , and FAIR’s latest study gives it no support. Looking at partisan sources—including government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants—Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent). A majority of Republican sources when the GOP controls the White House and Congress may not be surprising, but Republicans held a similar though slightly smaller edge (57 percent to 42 percent) in 1993, when Clinton was president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. And a lively race for the Democratic presidential nomination was beginning to heat up at the time of the 2003 study . . .

Republicans not only had a substantial partisan edge, individual Republicans were NPR ’s most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance. George Bush led all sources for the month with 36 appearances, followed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (8) and Sen. Pat Roberts (6). Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Secretary of State Colin Powell, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer all tied with five appearances each."

Will the last Democrat to be heard on NPR, please bring the flag

And the beat goes on. Just listen to ATC every day and it won't take long to figure out it's just an endless parade of GOP hacks, GOP members of congress (who are, btw, way out of power) and such neocon luminaries as John Fund, Jonah Gold and Douglas Feith. The one saving grace is they've stopped having the Nation's David Corn on as the token liberal. That used to be so embarrassing.

Obama: Screw-upper in chief.

Yesterday was a rough day for the Obama administration. Just as we were digesting the news of Tom Daschle bowing out as OHB's designate to head HHS for dodgy tax reasons, news came that his pick to head the new WH position of Chief Performance Officer, Nancy Killefer, was also dropping out for dodgy tax reasons.

Who did he get to vet these appointments anyway, the same folks who worked for John McCain? Or is it just that every big shot in Washington with a cushy government-related job tries to avoid paying taxes on their nannies, who always seem to have dubious citizenship status? Too bad we don't get to look into every Senator's tax records while we're at it.

In any event, my concern isn't so much with the vetting or some unpaid taxes-- stuff happens as Rummy once said -- it's the way Obama responded to the dogged questioning of a suddenly inquisitive press.

AFP:

"The twin bombshells overshadowed Obama's bid to showcase his economic stimulus plan in a flurry of television interviews and reflected the potential traps he has set for himself by promising a new era of ethical government.

'I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people, and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes,' Obama said in an interview with CNN.

'I think this was a mistake. I think I screwed up. And, you know, I take responsibility for it and we're going to make sure we fix it so it doesn't happen again,' he said."

He made the rounds of the big media operations saying "I screwed up," over and over. I think it's refreshing -- after 8 years of Bush trying to think of one mistake he'd ever made -- to hear a president finally be honest about something, but when I heard about this I almost hit the ceiling.

The standard political rule of thumb for the past thirty years, at least, is that you never admit a freaking mistake. Whether you're a Republican or a Democratic president you never admit you've done anything wrong. Jimmy Carter's great sin was admitting he, and we, weren't perfect. It's something us Democrats have been suffering for ever since.

That's why W. would never be drawn into that kind of conversation. That's rule # 1. He may have been delusional, but he wasn't suicidal.

There's a reason you never admit you fucked up. And most especially you never say it in the form of a freaking sound bite!!! Because, your enemies can do stuff like play it over and over again just like NPR's Morning Edition is doing right now.

He's just coined the phrase they'll all be using to characterize his administration from here on out. "I screwed up." "I screwed up." "I screwed up." "I screwed up." "I screwed up." "I screwed up." "I screwed up."

He said it, we're just confirming it.

This is the problem with having academics in political office. They know all the theory, they know the history, but they don't have any practical experience or any freaking Goddamn common sense. Jesus!

[Case in point, I searched "I screwed up" and up comes at the top Michelle Malkin writing this: "Screw up, move up, no consequences for the Screwer-Upper-In-Chief. Cue 'I’m Sorry' and let’s talk about my glistening pecs again, shall we?." (Find it yourself, I'm not linking that bitch to my blog.)]