First Door on the Left

Medal of Honor for Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta…

“Exports & Earmarks”

From the White House weblog:

The President explains his push for exporting American goods in Asia, and urges Congress to address earmarks as a signal of fiscal reform.

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.

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We present this weeks compilation. Click and enjoy.

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

It has been quite a while since I have posted anything from one of my most favorite columnists – Mark Monford of The San Francisco Chronicle.

(Uh-oh. San Francisco. Home of Nancy Pelosi, all those flaming libruls, the pesky world champion Giants and those little cable cars that climb halfway to the stars. My first job out of college was in San Francisco. Part of my heart is still there.)

Anyway… Mark’s column. He has a message for all you people who voted wrongly in the election just past.

To all of you who either flip-flopped your wishy-washy ideals and switched your vote from bluish to reddish this past election because Obama and the lukewarm Dems failed to solve all world problems in 700 days, or because you got yourself so emotionally riled up/mentally watered down by the sexy caveman grunts of the Tea Party that you actually bought the BS line about being “mad as hell” about nothing even remotely coherent.

Here is your grand message: You are hereby wonderfully, thoroughly screwed.

Oh darling, it’s so very true. The fun-filled news is, despite all the bluster and rhetoric, thinly veiled racism and rampant Islamophobia on display, the new army of jittery, anti-everything GOP bobbleheads that you just voted into office doesn’t care a single iota about you, or your haphazard values, or what you sometimes occasionally stand for. And what’s more, deep down, you secretly know it.

Are you slightly offended? Are you scowling and mistrustful of the notion? I’m delighted to hear it. Also: It doesn’t really matter.

You don’t have to believe me. Just wait until nothing at all is done to service the Tea Party non-agenda, because it’s ridiculous and impossible to service. Just wait until you note how there is no actual shrinking of government, no restoring some bogus sepia-toned idealism that never existed, no saving of your job. There is, of course, but one GOP agenda: furthering their personal stranglehold on all things powermad and avaricious.

Click here — “Dear Tea Party: You will now get yours” — to read the entire column. You should. Really.
 

Thankfully, George W. Bush has seen fit to stay out of the public eye since he departed Washington, D.C. in disgrace a little over twenty-one months ago. I think Matthew Norman of The Independent put it best when he ended his review of Mr. Bush’s book with this (you really should go read the entire review, especially if you have any inclination whatsoever of purchasing this book)…

The process of historical revisionism has, like everything else, speeded alarmingly in the internet age. The emergence of Sarah Palin as an imaginable presidential candidate, allied to the unending travails of Obama, have induced in the amnesiac, the obtuse and the plain bananas a fondness for the memory of George W Bush.

It will not spread. If this great reader of history is concerned for his place in it – and that, needless to say, is why he hired a bright young groupie from Yale to write this memoir in something approximating English – he needn’t fret. In those few lists ranking all the presidents compiled since he left office, W is invariably in the bottom five.

For the two imbecile wars he began, for condoning torture by denying waterboarding was torture at all on the grounds that his lawyers said it was legal; for turning the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton into the crippling deficit that is bringing the age of American hegemony to a startlingly abrupt end; and for being the pitiably Wagnerian fool who stumbled on to the grandest stage without any apparent clue why or for what earthly purpose, there he will forever remain.

But he has a book to hawk now, so he is granting interviews to anybody desperate enough to grant him air time. Here he is telling Oprah Winfrey today that the worst moment in his presidency was when Kanye West called him a racist. Really?

I cannot believe that people are actually buying this crap. Well, actually, I can. They “elected” him twice, right?

Mr. Bush appeared at a book signing at a book store a few miles from our home this morning. It was scheduled to begin at 8:30 this morning. People were actually lining up outside the store at 6:00 yesterday evening. Un-fricking-believable.

The former president told Oprah today that he is done with politics. We should be grateful for small blessings, I guess.
 

In case you missed it (as I did), here is President Obama’s interview with Steve Kroft as it was broadcast on last evening’s 60 minutes…

Transcript available at this link.

UPDATE: Here is full interview, including parts that did not air on the CBS broadcast…

It has been less than one week since the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and already we are turning the clocks back.

Somewhat ironically, it will now start getting dark a lot earlier.
 

“Priorities on Taxes”

From the White House weblog:

President Obama lays out his priorities for the coming discussion about tax cuts, calling for compromise but making clear he cannot accept $700 billion in deficits or an increase in middle class taxes.

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 »

Wow, that was quite a week, wasn’t it? It’ll go down in history as the week that the American electorate got drunk and sent a bunch of tea drinking Republicans to Congress. Gonna be quite a hangover! But, whatever… click and enjoy.

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

BONUS: Once again, the right ring noise machine have all made fools of themselves. Come on, guys, think! The entire war in Iraq costs $190 million per day. The idea that a presidential trip to Asia would cost $200 million per day and involve 34 warships is ridiculous. Think before opening mouth or engaging fingers.
 

Here’s a great letter sent in to The Denver Post by Jane Madden of Colorado Springs, CO…

So, many in this country decided Tuesday that the Democrats had plenty of time to undo the damage caused by the Republicans over eight long years. They have said that 21 months should have been plenty of time to restore the economy, get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and put everyone back to work. Well then, I now give the Republicans in the U.S. House 21 months to undo the damages they initially caused themselves.

In a way, it is nice. Let them use their own methods to get us out of the messes they created. If, by October 2012, we are not all employed, living comfortably, have restored the deficit to where Bill Clinton left it in 2009, and are completely out of all wars in the Middle East, then I challenge those same voters to undo the damage they have done this week and put the Democrats back into office. Twenty-one months. That is all they get. Good luck, may the force be with them, and God help us all.

(I believe President Clinton left office in 2001, though… not 2009. And he left a budget surplus, not a deficit.)

My sentiments exactly. The voters gave the Democrats 21 months to fix everything, so 21 months is all the Republicans should get. Fair is fair, after all. Right?