Trying to imagine why this utter fool would pick this, of all days, to open his pResidentiual Library, celebrating his “accomplishments”, boggles the mind. However, it does serve to confirm that he is the worst President in US history!
Apr 302013
Nov 042012
I’m rushing to try to finish in time for meditation on the Ellipsoid Orb. I’m current on replies. Tomorrow appears routine.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:44 (average 4:56). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From MoveOn: Isn’t It About Time You Called Your Zeyde?
Amusing as this is, is there anyone you can call?
From The Guardian: Iran has suspended the enrichment of uranium stockpiles to the 20% purity needed to bring it a short step from building a nuclear device, news services in the region have reported.
Kudos to Obama. This would also happen in a Willard Regime, but how many US troops would have to die first?
From Brad Blog: Investigators today arrested a Southern Nevada woman suspected of trying to vote twice this week at two different polling locations.
Roxanne Rubin was taken into custody as she arrived for work at the Riviera hotel-casino, investigators said. Rubin, 56, is a registered Republican who lives in Henderson, according to the Clark County Registrar.
Rubin allegedly cast a vote Monday at the Anthem Community Center in Henderson. Later that day, she tried to vote a second time at an early voting location on Eastern Avenue, investigators said.
Finally a real case of voter fraud, and I don’t have to tell you which party did it.
Cartoon:
Sep 192012
It’s 3 AM, when the phone rings in the oval office. Open conflict has broken out between Israeli and Palestinian forces in both the West Bank and Gaza. Claiming that Iran is supplying the Palestinians with weapons and logistical support, Israel is about to launch a strike against Iran and has their nuclear arsenal at the ready. What will President Willard Romney do to defuse the crisis? The phone in the oval office keeps ringing. There’s nobody home.
No one has ever had any illusions about where Mitt Romney stands on the two hottest disputes in the Middle East: the argument over the creation of a Palestinian state, and the debate over what can be done to assure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon.
In both cases, he has taken positions very close to those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, his friend from their days together as young consultants here in Boston.
But if he is elected president in November and finds himself in negotiations over a future Palestine on Israel’s borders, Mr. Romney may find that his comment at a campaign fund-raiser — captured on video — that “there’s just no way” a separate state can be workable could undermine his effectiveness in bringing the two sides together. And any dealings with the mullahs of Iran may not be facilitated by his description of them, in the same video, as “crazy people.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Publically, Willard’s stances on there issues, have been those of a Neocon war monger. But privately, to his 1% buddies, he is a wimp. Rather than engage the issues, he would kick the can down the road and hope for the best. Ed Schultz discussed Romney and the Middle East with Richard Wolfe.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The difference between Romney’s public war mongering and his private passive incompetence demonstrate that he is totally unprepared for world affairs. But his public and private stances do have two things in common. Both are wrong, and both are dangerous!
Jun 302012
Last night my COPD flared up, so I spent most of the night coughing and had almost no sleep. I’m current with replies, albeit brief. Tomorrow appears routine.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:07 (average 5:02). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From MoveOn: She Is The Reason You Can Even Read This Headline.
Republicans show their gratitude by cutting her pay, laying her off, and taking away her right to bargain collectively.
From TPM: While Colorado burns, conservatives have looked for ways to blame it on President Obama.
Some of the same people who have bashed the president as a big government, big spending liberal now say a wildfire that destroyed hundreds of homes in the conservative stronghold of Colorado Springs can be blamed on the president because he has been too slow to spend money to beef up the federal fleet of air tankers.
The meme began more than a week ago when pundit Michelle Malkin, who lives in Colorado Springs, wrote a piece for the National Review Online titled “Obama Bureaucrats Are Fueling Wildfires.” [win-nuts delinked]
WTF?!!? Thou shalt not commit Teabuggery!
From The Political Freak Show: A wonderful place for Republicans!
GOPers, bon voyage!
Cartoon:
I had just turned 21.
Mar 072012
Yesterday Barack Obama held his first major news conference this year. Answering questions without using a teleprompter even once, Obama stated his positions clearly and straightforwardly, as you will see in the complete video that follows. I was particularly pleased with the way he contrasted his efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution with Iran and Republican warmongering toward that nation.
President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that diplomacy can still resolve the crisis over Iran’s possible pursuit of nuclear weapons, and he accused his Republican critics of "beating the drums of war."
"Those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities," Obama said. "They are not commander in chief."
Tension with Iran, and Obama’s preference for restraint, dominated his first full news conference of the year, held on the same day that Republican Super Tuesday voting was drawing attention as well.
On politics, Obama said that higher gasoline prices as a result of Mideast worries would be a bad idea for any president running for re-election, and he also said he was working to expand America’s energy base.
He called violence in Syria "heartbreaking" but showed no new willingness for military involvement in that Mideast country.
Obama said his critics are forgetting the "cost of war" in their rush to punish Iran and defend Israel, which sees a nuclear Iran as a mortal threat in its Mideast neighborhood.
Rhetoric on the right is "more about politics than about trying to solve a difficult problem," Obama said… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Huffington Post>
I find this approach far more rational than “Bomb, Bomb Iran”.
Obama also offered more help for beleaguered homeowners.
President Obama on Tuesday unveiled two new housing initiatives intended to assist Americans with government-insured loans and members of the military.
In his first major news conference of 2012, Obama announced a new plan to cut refinancing fees for any loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The president also outlined a new agreement with banks to review foreclosures for members of the military that have taken place since 2006 and provide compensation to anyone who wrongfully lost a home.
Neither proposal requires Congress’s approval. But they are also more modest than the $10 billion refinancing plan that Obama asked lawmakers to pass in his January State of the Union address… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Washington Post>
This is a very small deal, but what any President can do singlehandedly in quite limited. The only reason that we do not have far more assistance in place is that Congressional Republicans blocked it.
Here is the complete video of the news conference.
Nobody will ever be satisfied with everything any President says, but Obama’s performance stood out in sharp contrast to the hate and lies his potential opponents are spewing.
Mar 052012
Yesterday my COPD was quite severe, so for the most part, I stayed down. I’m current with replies. Today I have an appointment that I cannot duck, so what I do will depend on how tired I am, when I return.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:48 (average 5:07). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Raw Story: Iran’s parliament looks certain to be dominated by MPs critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to preliminary election results that also showed a big turnover in lawmakers.
The partial results, from elections held last Friday, accounted for two-thirds of the 290 seats in parliament.
However the composition, given by Iranian media, remained obscure and sometimes contradictory — reflecting the country’s complex politics based on individual MPs’ alliances rather than formal political parties.
While I claim no expertise on Iranian politics, I don’t see how they could do worse than Ahmadinejad, so this may be a positive sign.
From Reuters: President Barack Obama warned on Sunday against "loose talk" of a war with Iran ahead of a crucial meeting in which he will urge Israel’s prime minister to avoid a premature strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
On the eve of his talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama used a speech to the pro-Israel U.S. lobbying group AIPAC to pledge his staunch support for the Jewish state and to argue that international sanctions on Iran must given more time to work.
Because AIPAC is the US focus for bigotry against Palestinians, Israeli Terrorism and Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity, Obama’s mere presence there troubles me. J-Street is a far better venue through which to express support for a peaceful Israel and a two state solution. That said, for Republicans, if war is the hammer, even a mild headache is a nail.
From Raw Story: There was no sincerity in Rush Limbaugh’s apology to Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, according to the perspective shared by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) Sunday morning.
Appearing on CBS’ Face The Nation, Paul again called Limbaugh’s comments towards Fluke as “crude” and expressed that the controversial radio host became nervous over losing sponsors, with currently six companies pulling their backing from his show.
OMG! :-O I actually agree with rabid Ronnie the racist?!!? Somebody PLEASE shoot me!!!! 
Cartoon:
Feb 242012
Republican warmongering against Iran is nothing new. Who can forget John McCain singing “Bomb, Bomb Iran” during a Senate committee hearing, when he did not know his microphone was open, wan back in 2008. With their culture wars drawing more and more ire from the general public, Republicans need a new focus to distract voters from improvements in the economy.
Here we go again. With the economy showing faint signs of life and their positions on the social issues alienating most moderates, the leading Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, have returned to the elixir of warmongering to once again sway the gullible masses. The race to the bottom has been set by Newt Gingrich, the most desperate of the lot, who on Tuesday charged that “The president wants to unilaterally weaken the United States,” because his administration has dared question the wisdom of Israel attacking Iran and proposes a slight reduction in the bloated defense budget.
Let the good times roll with a beefed-up military budget justified by plans to invade yet another Muslim country…
…It was an invasion that removed Saddam Hussein, once the U.S. ally in confronting Iran, from power and replaced him with a Shiite leadership long beholden to the ayatollahs of Iran. Of course, as Bush lied, this was not about nation-building aimed at imposing a democracy in our image, but rather, as is the claim now, about preventing radical Muslims from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. In a Where’s Waldo moment, it turned out that the dreaded nukes were not in Iraq, and the leading Republican presidential candidates are convinced that Iran now has such weapons and they need to be taken out.
Not so, say CIA and Pentagon experts in these matters, who insist that Iran is some distance from developing a nuclear weapon, even if that is its intention. In a CNN interview Sunday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that Iran had not yet decided whether to build a nuclear weapon. He also said the U.S. had told Israel that any Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be “destabilizing.”
But such facts are not troubling to the GOP contenders, who seem not to have realized that there is one Muslim country already in possession of scores of such weapons. That would be Pakistan, the country Bush didn’t invade despite its avid support for the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida. Instead, after 9/11, Bush dropped the sanctions his predecessor, Bill Clinton, had imposed on Pakistan as punishment for its developing a nuclear arsenal. Nor did Bush and his fellow Republican hawks get overly exercised by the revelation that Pakistan was giving nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and, yes, Iran. It was also the hiding place for Osama bin Laden when Barack Obama made good on Bush’s pledge to run the al-Qaida leader to ground… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Truthdig>
As much as the naysayers try to deny this, Obama has consistently attempted to resolve the nuclear issues with Iran short of war and to dissuade Israel from attacking that nation. Their threats to invade Iran are responsible for much of the destabilization of US relations with Iran. I have to wonder whether Israel’s preference for Republicans is behind this.
The bottom line is this. Democrats’ terrorism policies resulted in several foiled plots and the death of Osama bin Laden. Republicans’ terrorism policies resulted in death of over 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Republicans have no basis for calling Obama weak.
I suggest that Republicans’ real motivation is that nothing transfers wealth from the poor and middle classes to millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals than war.