Obama and family in Brazil

From the White House photographer, very cool. Read the rest of this post...

VIDEO: Ridiculously adorable puppy falls asleep standing up, falls

Watch it until the end.


(H/t HuffPost Hill) Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senator threatens to filibuster debt ceiling vote, throwing country into recession and costing us billions for years to come, if Obama and Dems don't cave more

Sadly, the hostage taker knows exactly who he's negotiating with.

A top conservative senator on Thursday indicated he is willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent a vote on raising the debt ceiling, even if it hurts the Republican Party politically.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said on the conservative Laura Ingraham Show he is considering filibustering an upcoming vote to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit if it doesn't contain other fiscal reforms.

Meanwhile, GOP leaders have said they would be open to doing so if serious spending cuts or fiscal reforms are attached to the vote. Some GOP senators have called for their balanced budget amendment to be attached to the vote.

I'm so confused. I thought caving on the stimulus, and health care reform, and the Bush tax cuts was supposed to make the Republicans stop taking hostages because all the Democratic genuflecting would make the GOP's small hearts grow three sizes that day.

And keep in mind, if DeMint and the Republicans succeed in killing the debt ceiling vote, it's over for the economic recovery. The "best case scenario" is another severe recession if this vote fails.

But once the Treasury exhausts this authority, the United States would default on its debt for the first time in its history, which could have consequences like the ones that Mr. Boehner has imagined: a severe global financial crisis (possibly larger in magnitude than the one the world began experiencing in 2007 and 2008), and a significant long-term increase in the United States’ borrowing costs, which could cost it its leadership position in the global economy. Another severe recession would probably be about the best-case scenario if that were to occur. three sizes. Yet, somehow, they just keep taking more hostages, and this time are taking the most dangerous hostage of all.

And just to remind you, another severe recession would be the "best case scenario" if DeMint and the Republicans succeed in killing this vote.

The White House and the Democrats should be running television ads about the Republicans' threat to send the country into another recession. Instead, I'm smelling a ransom payment in the air. Read the rest of this post...

AZ Senate passes "Birther" bill today with an exemption if your, um, little commander in chief is circumcized

See, and you thought Arizona was all about hating Latinos and shooting members of Congress. They're about foreskin too.

They don't call Arizona the "meth lab of Democracy" for nothing -- where else could a lack of foreskin prove citizenship?

The Arizona Senate formally passed the "Birther Bill" today, but not in its original version.

Apparently, requiring presidential candidates to provide a long-form birth certificate before allowing their names on the ballot in Arizona -- despite it already being a federal requirement to run for president -- was a bit too much for a few GOP lawmakers. So they made some amendments: if you can't find your birth certificate, and you have a penis, a document describing your lack of foreskin will suffice.

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Candidate Obama vs. President Obama

Update: In fairness to Krugman (see below), he has also said things like this:

So what we got today was much better than some of the hints and trial balloons; it’s a plan that we could live with. But it’s a center-right plan already; if it’s the starting point for negotiations that move the solution toward lower taxes for the rich and even harsher cuts for the poor, just say no.

So he's not an unreserved Yes. On the other hand, he hasn't reversed the praise quoted in my main post. Looks like we're all working overtime on this one.
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Just a short comment. I don't want to parse Obama's Grand Bargain speech; I just want to bottom-line my reaction to it.

It seems that many on the left were pleased. Here's Krugman (my emphasis):

Substance: Much better than many of us feared. Hardly any Bowles-Simpson — yay!

The actual plan relies on some discretionary spending cuts, this time including defense — good, although I think too much is being cut from domestic spending. It relies on letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire — finally! — plus unspecified reductions in tax expenditures.

Rachel Maddow also likes the plan, along with a great many other lefties. Her tag-line display for much of the program was the Obama quote, "It's not going to happen as long as I'm President." Woo-hoo, as she often ironically says.

Me, I'll go back to my Grand Bargain drinking game. See the part in the Krugman quote about letting the Bush tax cuts expire? Never gonna happen. See those defense cuts? Never gonna happen, not in any non-cosmetic way. He's had two years to do lots of stuff like that, and folded on all of it. Never gonna happen.

I think the target of this speech wasn't the nation — but us, the rebellious left. I think the political geniuses in the White House finally got scared of losing the base. Finally. So they retired President Obama for one inning and brought out Candidate Obama to pinch hit. Candidate Obama can put one over the fence.

So my take-away is two-fold:

▪ We had an effect; I think we changed the speech. Don't forget that. This is one thing we can learn from the Teabags. Finally, a small but noticeable liberal victory. It's been like forever since one of those.

▪ This is just a speech — "Words, words, words" to quote the Bard. We've seen this act before. In fact, it's been the great one-two punch of this administration; Candidate says this, President does that. So stay rebellious until you get what you want, until the action matches the promise. That's the other thing we can learn from the Teabags.

My personal opinion, of course, and no one else's.

GP Read the rest of this post...

100 days and no jobs bill—Rep. Joseph Crowley gives GOP the "silent treatment" on the House floor

Rather clever. Dem House member Joseph Crowley gave the following "speech" on the House floor. Watch:



Very well written; perfect lead-up to his close; nice ironic punch on the last line. Someone's got himself a decent writer on his staff.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Does the Obama plan raise taxes or cut them?

It's not entirely clear:

This should be an easy question to answer. The president’s proposal says it includes “three dollars of spending cuts and interest savings for every one dollar from tax reform.” That’d make the ratio 3:1. But as Ethan Pollack, a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and a former staffer on the Fiscal Commission, points out, another calculation — and one that’s just as valid — suggests it’s 2:1. Or maybe 1:1. Or maybe, in case you’re not sufficiently confused, there’s actually a big tax cut in the plan, and no new revenues whatsoever.

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VA teacher auctions off black students to teach about Civil War

You have to be kind of dense to do something like this. Why not at least auction off a white student, if you're going to do it at all? No, she segregated the class and auctions off the dark kids. Ugh. Read the rest of this post...

New RNC chair does NOT want to discourage birthers

It seems the new RNC chair wants to make it perfectly clear that he is NOT opposed to Donald Trump using birtherism as an election strategy against Obama. Read the rest of this post...

Russia won't allow hunting of polar bears this year

Wow. Russia is doing more to protect polar bears from being killed by hunters than the U.S. We should be proud of that:

Russia has banned the hunting of polar bears this year, thanks to a group with close ties to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a longtime defender of large endangered animals.

A Russian-U.S. commission last year agreed to restrict polar bear hunting to 29 animals per year for each country. But The Polar Bear program, established under Putin's patronage, said this week that Russia had waived its quota for bear hunting.

Although the polar bear is an endangered animal, officials in Russia and the U.S. have said hunting is vital for the indigenous people in Alaska and in far-eastern Russia across the Bering Strait.

The Polar Bear program, which said U.S. officials had long been reluctant to introduce the cap on hunting, said around 100 polar bears a year have been killed in Alaska in recent years.

I'll admit that I have a soft spot for polar bears. Last November, I went to Churchill, Manitoba to see polar bears in the wild. Churchill claims to be the "Polar Bear Capitol of the World." In early November, the bears, who spend the summer on the tundra, head back to the shore in anticipation of Hudson Bay freezing over. They are amazingly impressive animals:
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Toothless Teabaggers? House GOPers ignoring Tea Party threats over budget

In February, the Tea Partier's first successful candidate, Scott Brown, basically quit them in a very public way. He challenged them to primary him in 2012. Part of that, no doubt, was posturing by Brown, who is trying to appear more moderate in Massachusetts. But, it was a blow to the Teabaggers.

Well, it's getting worse for the Teabaggers. Now, members of the GOP freshmen class are dissing the Teabaggers en masse:

Mark Meckler, co-founder of one of the nation’s largest Tea Party groups, said votes in favor of the budget deal and raising the debt ceiling will make for a toxic electoral combination for House Republicans.

“I’m literally getting emails by the hour from people talking about primary challenges,” Meckler, a leader of the Tea Party Patriots, said.

But freshman members of the House don’t appear concerned.

“It’s not that I’m not worried about them. And I would like to be all things to all people, but if you try to do that, you’re nothing to anybody. So I’m more inclined to just vote yes and move this in the right direction,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), a freshman lawmaker who’s a favorite of Tea Party activists back in his home district.

That didn't take long. These freshmen have been in DC for barely four months.

The Hill also reports that the votes are there in the House to pass the budget deal. This will be the first major loss in the House for the teabaggers, who were supposed to be in charge.

Also, if the House GOP freshmen aren't afraid of the Tea Party, why should anyone be? Read the rest of this post...

John Boehner's amateur hour. Meanwhile, Michael Steel wants to destroy the world economy.

HuffPost Hill:

Morning Money reported today that John Boehner has been calling Wall Street executives and asking them how long he can hold out on raising the debt limit before the market gets spooked -- as if he can tease the market with default and then back off at the last second without harming the economy. The executives, according to MM, have been warning him against playing games. Once you threaten to default, that injects a fear of default into the market, and you can't just pump the market's stomach and hope it spits it back up. The result will be higher interest rates for years, which means more expensive debt. "I mean, it really shows amateur hour. The notion that he thinks that's how markets work is just stunning," one House Dem chuckled to HuffPost Hill. Boehner spokesman Michael Steel says the market can blame Obama. "Speaker Boehner has made it clear that the American people will not accept an increase in the debt limit that is not accompanied by real cuts and serious reforms to address Washington's out-of-control spending. He has said that for months. At this point, any delay is the result of the White House refusing to get serious about this issue."

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