Tag: barack obama

Tweet of the Day, You Won’t Believe Where They Found This Stolen Obama Statue! edition.

Let me start by saying something: do not take things that belong to other people. You may think that a life-sized statue of Barack Obama is incredibly tacky; and you may also think that a life-sized statue of Barack Obama sitting down is just begging to be stolen. Nonetheless, that statue does not belong to you: you should not steal it; and the woman who you stole it from had a rotten week because of what you did. And no, she probably didn’t deserve it. Even if she did, who made you Psychological Vigilante Man/Lady?

 

Continue reading Tweet of the Day, You Won’t Believe Where They Found This Stolen Obama Statue! edition.

New York Times (!) clears throat, uncomfortably remembers ‘Now, watch this drive.’

Goodness gracious. If somebody from the White House isn’t screaming at the New York Times yet for this article…

He had just hung up the telephone with the devastated parents before heading in front of the cameras. Unusually emotional, President Obama declared himself “heartbroken” by the brutal murder of an American journalist, James Foley, and vowed to “be relentless” against Islamic radicals threatening to kill another American.

But as soon as the cameras went off, Mr. Obama headed to his favorite golf course on Martha’s Vineyard, where he is on vacation, seemingly able to put the savagery out of his mind.

…they will be. Come, I will conceal nothing from you: when I did this post last night I merely looked at the tweet and didn’t click through to the article*.  But now that I did… hoo, boy.  The NYT front-loaded the criticism, and stuck the apologia somewhere down where people start to stop reading the article; this probably came as an unpleasant surprise to White House staff, given that they’re not really used to criticism from the NYT at all. Continue reading New York Times (!) clears throat, uncomfortably remembers ‘Now, watch this drive.’

New York Post: Hillary Clinton / Barack Obama feud continues to bubble and froth.

Meanwhile, in lighter news…

Hug it out? Not a chance.

Despite widespread predictions that Hillary Clinton and President Obama would kiss and make up when they sat down at a friend’s birthday party on Martha’s Vineyard last week, sources inside the Clinton camp tell me that instead of a hug-a-thon the meeting turned into a tense, awkward freeze-a-thon.

Continue reading New York Post: Hillary Clinton / Barack Obama feud continues to bubble and froth.

Oh, @ByronYork, you made eye contact.

Never make eye contact.

…hoping to get a better look at Democrats’ small-donor technique, I finally clicked the $5 contribution box on President Obama’s email.

You’d think that would have made them happy. But no — they immediately wanted more.

First they tried to get me to increase my contribution. I declined. Then they asked that I make my contribution an automatic monthly donation. I declined. And then, when it looked like $5 was all they would get, they asked for a “tip” for the pro-Democratic fundraising group ActBlue. “We’re building an army of small dollar donors to defeat the Koch brothers and their fat checkbooks,” they said. “Your tip of 10 percent or more will help us build the next generation of our tools so the Kochs don’t have the final say.”

Continue reading Oh, @ByronYork, you made eye contact.

Tweet of the Day, You Are Not Helping The President Here, @Schultz44 edition.

Really?

Really?

Somebody explain to Eric Schultz when it’s a good time to get your politician boss away from a party. Or… actually, never mind. Heckuva job there, Eric. Keep it up.

Quote of the Day, The Wrong Two Dirty Little Words Being Conjured For The Antiwar Left edition.

The Hill:

The president’s expansion of the U.S. military mission in Iraq is conjuring up two dirty little words for anti-war Democrats: Mission creep.

The actual “two dirty little words” that should be conjured for antiwar Democrats? Shut up. No, not from me*: from President Obama. The antiwar movement still apparently has this ridiculous delusion that their relationship with the mainstream Democratic party is on the usual patron/client model.  Which is to say: Establishment Democrats get the antiwar movement’s monetary and electoral support, and in exchange they give the antiwar movement things.  That’s theoretical, of course: the reality is that the ‘relationship’ is more like You will attack my enemies, curs, or I will whip you.  Always has been, before Barack Obama made the colossal mistake of maybe kinda trying to treat the antiwar movement like they were made up of people who were really real. Continue reading Quote of the Day, The Wrong Two Dirty Little Words Being Conjured For The Antiwar Left edition.

Of *course* Corporate America hasn’t been disrupted! This is the *Obama* administration!

They have no desire to change the system!

Existing, established companies that can be locked into a profitable relationship with government (well, profitable for the government) are to be preferred. The smaller, newer companies don’t know their place. They don’t know how to grease the wheels, show proper respect, and/or come to an understanding. Why, some of their CEOs or owners don’t even rush to give former administration officials cushy jobs! Continue reading Of *course* Corporate America hasn’t been disrupted! This is the *Obama* administration!

Obama administration quietly doing back-channel evisceration of Obamacare’s individual mandate tax.

Point (July 2013):

President Obama on Tuesday threatened to veto a pair of Republican bills in the House which would delay the employer and individual mandates for one year in the Obama health reform laws, as GOP leaders pressed Democrats to break ranks with the White House on the issue.

Another Point (March, 2014):

The White House said Tuesday that President Obama would veto a House GOP bill to delay a contentious part of Obamacare for one year.

The House is set to vote this week on the Simple Fairness Act, which let Americans go without health insurance in 2014 without facing the tax penalty prescribed by the Affordable Care Act.

Counter-point (August 2014)

Almost 90% of the nation’s 30 million uninsured won’t pay a penalty under the Affordable Care Act in 2016 because of a growing batch of exemptions to the health-coverage requirement.

The architects of the health law wanted most Americans to carry insurance or pay a penalty. But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation said most of the uninsured will qualify for one or more exemptions.

Continue reading Obama administration quietly doing back-channel evisceration of Obamacare’s individual mandate tax.

Why it doesn’t matter, electorally speaking, that the public hates Congress more than Barack Obama.

Writing stuff like this actually does no favors for Democrats…

President Obama has hit another low in another poll, but so have many of his critics in Congress.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll gives the president an approval rating of 40%, a record low; Congress has a rating of only 14%, also a low.

…and this is why: it produces a false equivalence.  Democratic incumbents in trouble aren’t going to be happy to see Barack Obama showing up… but Republican incumbents in trouble – yes, there are some – weren’t going to get ‘Congress’ to come out to campaign for them.  They’d get specific (and popular) Republican politicians to do that.  I understand that you can’t really compare Barack Obama’s popularity against every member of Congress and not have the result be utterly cumbersome, but I think framing the discussion this way doesn’t really lead to correct conclusions.

Continue reading Why it doesn’t matter, electorally speaking, that the public hates Congress more than Barack Obama.

Quote of the Day, HAHAHAHAHA Obama Doesn’t Have The Guts To Do That edition.

Carl Cannon (H/T: Hot Air), noting that Barack Obama’s response to the border refugee crisis is pretty much contemptible (well, I think that it’s contemptible), especially considering both a) how his predecessor acted during Hurricane Katrina and b) how then-Senator Obama commented about George Bush at the time (spoiler warning: rudely):

Although Obama probably doesn’t have to go to the border personally to be an effective leader, he may owe George W. Bush an apology.

…Barack Obama would sooner remove one of his own testicles with a rusty spoon than do that.

Moe Lane

PS: I wonder how it feels, knowing that the face of your party is the moral inferior of the man who preceded him.  I wouldn’t know: I’m a Republican.