Monday, March 2, 2009

This and that, plus major BS Newsweek article...

I didn't write about the State of the Union Address last week because it was pretty much what I expected: bunch of give-away program nonsense that the Congressional crowd(and apparently, most of the American people) ate up. Standard Democratic boilerplate. I was disappointed in Bobby Jindal's response. He looked and sounded like a goober talking to a bunch of inbred retarded children ("Americans can do anything" was repeated at least a half dozen times).

The stock market dropped another 300 points today. I can see that Unicornucopia of pure goodness is just around the corner...it's truly change that we can believe in.

I liked Rush Limbaugh's speech at CPAC (watched most of it on Fox). It was pretty fiery, but it would be nice if the Republican leadership would show similar backbone. RNC Chair Michael Steele then proceeded to go onto the D.L Hughley show on CNN (who the hell is this person, and is this even a legitimate political show?) and make an ass out of himself. I watched two numbnuts run rings around Steele (Hughley the dipshit and some hip-hop numbnut) and overall made him look like a tool. It's nice to know that Steele essentially agreed with these two mental giants on, well, everything from Limbaugh being a big meanie to the fact that Republicans are essentially Nazis. Lovely...Looks like Steele is shaping up to be a gutless wonder a la McCain. Yeah, like we need more of those twits at the helm.

I decided to concentrate on this Newsweek article (Obama's Pelosi problem) just because I feel the need to stomach more intellectual dishonesty from the mainstream media.

" Charlie Dent wanted to vote for Barack Obama's stimulus package. Obama really wanted Dent to vote for it. Nancy Pelosi? Not so much. Dent is a Republican congressman from Allentown, Pa., an old steel town that was in bad shape even before the recession. Most of the people Dent represents are Democrats who voted for Obama; the GOPcongressman has held on to their support in part by positioning himself as the kind of guy who listens to his conscience, and his constituents, not his party's bosses. Throughout the years, he's irritated GOP leaders by siding with Democrats on issues like stem cells and education funding."

I'm kinda curious how a district with what seems like Obama Democratic voters is "centrist." While I understand that congressmen and women need to listen to their constituents, my question is why they bother calling themselves Republican when they could just as easily be Democrats without all the fuss (let's face it Pennsylvania is and should be considered a blue state, not battleground). It sounds like Dent's the Representative equivalent of Arlen Specter (and same state too...who woulda thunk it?). And we can't ignore the little dig by Ms. Bailey about those pesky Republican party bosses. If only those conservatives would just abandon their principles and be like Democrats, everything would be hunky dory, right?

"But in the end, it wasn't enough to win Dent's support. Along with every other Republican in the House, he voted no on the stimulus. He thought the plan was too expensive and weighed down with pet projects. But still, he might have been persuaded to go along—if it weren't for Nancy Pelosi."

Yeah, good ole' Nancy. Psst...Dent...if you just switched parties, you wouldn't have the problem. You should look into that...The project was too expensive, but with a little greasing of the palms, he might have considered it. I have to admit though, that he at least listened to the "evil" party bosses this time, unlike a few Senators that come to mind...

"Obama and his aides, the official says, were upset over press leaks—which they believe came from Pelosi's office—suggesting Obama was "naive" to reach out to Republicans. Obama gets that Democrats in Congress still harbor resentment over the way GOP leaders treated them when Democrats were in the minority. Pelosi's allies say they wanted to work with Republicans on the stimulus and sought their input last fall. They accuse the GOP of trying to embarrass Obama by voting en masse against the stimulus. No doubt there's truth to that: Republican leader John Boehner muscled his members not to break ranks."

Yeah, he was really reaching out to them when he told them "I won," and that they needed to stop "listening to Rush Limbaugh." I felt the unity then. Apparently Ms. Bailey chose not to add that little tidbit into the story (though admittedly it would have brought her logic and the entire premise of the story crashing down around her ears since the Chosen One had no intention of getting real Republican support).

And why is it so awful that the GOP is trying to embarrass Obama? The two parties have different ideologies. Is it really so surprising that they wouldn't? Of course the Republicans are going to try to make him look stupid. But let's be honest while we're on the "truth" thing: Obama didn't need Republicans to pass it (the three senators don't count).

"But Obama's campaign was all about putting an end to this kind of petty sniping between the parties. By snubbing Republicans, Pelosi was very publicly undercutting the president. Obama wants that to stop. In recent weeks, the Obama official says, the White House has had "many candid conversations" with Pelosi and other Democratic leaders about the importance of winning over—or at least not openly antagonizing—Republicans."

Is this woman serious? It was nothing of the sort. The whole premise of the Messiah's campaign was to try to break apart the Republican Party by trying to act conciliatory while actually doing exactly the opposite. Let's be clear about this: The Democrats, for all of the "candid" talk, need the Republicans for nothing more than political cover, and the Republicans would be stupid for playing into that. Pelosi and Obama are attempting to play "good cop/bad cop" and very clumsily at that.

"For now, Pelosi may need Obama more than he needs her, but Obama knows he won't always be as popular as he is today, and he will count on her support in the coming budget and health-care fights. At last week's White House fiscal responsibility summit, Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, stood and told Obama that if he really wanted bipartisanship, he would tell Pelosi to have a more 'open process.' "

I doubt that this will ever happen. The fact is that the House is entirely decided on by a simple majority vote. Anything else is pure cosmetics (although it's nice when Republicans actually do vote exclusively to avoid looking clueless). True bipartisanship would occur if the Republicans did have control of one of the Houses. Obama would be forced to negotiate. However, given the current climate the Democrats, unfortunately, have virtual control of everything until 2010. The reality is that there is little to nothing that the Republicans can do to change that dynamic. Although Ms. Bailey would like to think that Pelosi's entirely to blame, Obama is the Party's head. It's up to him to decide what goes and what doesn't. Ultimately, the One has as much, if not more to blame for what's happening now.

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