First Door on the Left

Today is the day that the millionaires in the tight pants take turns knocking each other down to see who will get the honor of progressing to what is called The Super Bowl (thereby adding a few hundred thousand to their paychecks). How do you think the day will play out?

Of the two games being played today, the first will be the best. The second will be something of a blowout.

My prediction: Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints.

What do I win if I’m right?

UPDATE #1: Indianapolis Colts 30; New York Jets 17.
UPDATE #2: New Orleans Saints 31; Minnesota Vikings 28.

I look for the Colts to win the Super Bowl in Miami in two weeks.
 

From the White House weblog:

In this week’s address, President Barack Obama vowed to continue fighting for the American people to ensure their voices are heard over the special interests and lobbyists in Washington, despite this week’s Supreme Court decision to further empower corporations to use their financial clout to directly influence elections.

Click below to listen to the audio only:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The transcript of the president’s weekly address, as prepared for delivery, is available after the break.

Continue Reading »

Click to make them bigger. Use the icons that will appear at the bottom of your browser window to control a slide show.

As always, our thanks go to the talented and observant cartoonists who, each week, help us smile through the pain.

Saturday additions:

Howard Dean appeared on CBS’ The Early Show to explain to Harry Smith that health care reform is not dead (despite all the reports of its demise).

I don’t know, Dr. Dean. Unless the Democrats grow a pair (which, so far, they have not appeared inclined to do), I think we may have lost the opportunity to get meaningful health care reform in the United States for at least a generation. And the Supreme Court ruling yesterday will probably push it out further than that.

See also: “Do the Right Thing.”

From MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, broadcast January 21, 2009:

Watch and listen. While you still can.

Transcript follows the break.

Continue Reading »

President Obama proposes tighter restrictions and new rules for banks and other financial institutions:

Transcript follows the break.

Continue Reading »

The United States Supreme Court ruled today that corporations are people and therefore are guaranteed the same rights to free speech under the United States Constitution as people. They can spend as much money and exert as much influence as they want on political campaigns. President Obama strongly disagrees. He issued the following statement from the White House following the ruling by the Supremes:

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.

(There’s that ‘bipartisan’ word again. I would have thought that word would be out of his lexicon by now. Bless his heart.)

I wish the President luck. Otherwise, the future leaders of our country will be selected by the huge corporations. The Republicans think they are seeing Fascism now. Just wait.

P.S. The Court ruling was 5-4, with conservative justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy ruling in favor of the corporations.

UPDATE: “The Court’s Blow to Democracy.”
 

A Republican won the special election to fulfill the remainder of the late Ted Kennedy’s term in the United States Senate. (Though I personally refuse to recognize their victory since it was by less than 60% and, as everybody knows, you need at least a 60% majority to get anything done in the United States Senate.) To hear and watch their celebrations today, one would almost think they had reclaimed the majority in both houses of Congress and the White House to boot. Judging from the reactions of a lot of the Democrats, it would seem that they are in agreement. I think the Democrats would do well to heed the advice of their former chairman (the one who led them to victory in 2008)…

The following video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast January 19, 2009.

The opening paragraph of the NYT story linked in the opening paragraph is startling, to say the least…

With Democrats reeling from the Republican victory in the Massachusetts special Senate election, President Obama on Wednesday signaled that he might be willing to set aside his goal of achieving near-universal health coverage for all Americans in favor of a stripped-down measure with bipartisan support.

It amazes me that nobody at the White House has yet figured out that no Republican is ever going to vote in favor of any health care reform bill favored by the Democrats. It does not matter to them in the least that people are out here suffering. Their one and only goal is to defeat the Democrats and see President Obama fail. This pipe dream of bipartisanship that the Democrats seem to want to hang on to simply must go away. It isn’t going to happen.
 

With the apparent victory of Tea Partier and nude model Scott Brown in Massachusetts this evening, the Republicans have retaken control of the United States Senate (with 41 of 100 votes… hardly seems right, does it?). Anything that goes wrong from this point forward… such as the country going to Hell… will be due to the obstructionism of the Republicans and not the ineptitude of the Democrats.

This is indeed a good night for the Democrats! The Republicans now have from now until the midterm elections in November to prove just how badly they can once again screw up the nation. (Thank you, Massachusetts.)

UPDATE: The Village Voice nails it: “Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate.”

The lesson, as always, is that when Democrats win, they lose, and when they lose, they are obliterated.

I seem to remember that we held an election way back in November of 2008. I cannot help but wonder why that one didn’t matter as much as this one seems to.
 

“What we find is that Republicans will forgive you for cheating on your wife as long as you are a Republican. Democrats are not forgiving [John] Edwards.” — Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling.

John and Elizabeth Edwards