Obama finds his balls, makes recess appointments to NLRB and CFPB.
But having done this, I'm sure he re-pawned his balls to Joe's Pawn Shop, where they'd been sitting in a back room since his inauguration in January 2009. We'll see, though.
-- Badtux the Baffled(*) Penguin
(*) Baffled by a Democrat showing more courage than a limp waffle, that is, since this is an event that happens perhaps once per decade.
It will be read and acted on by White House staffers if we obtain sufficient signatures. Please, this is a very important issue, and if you truly care about your nation, you should sign it ASAP.
-- Badtux the Tongue-in-beak Penguin
The above was basically the unofficial campaign slogan when Edwin Edwards (D-Crowley) was running against David Duke (R-KKK) for Governor of Louisiana. Edwards, a notoriously crooked former governor, won his 5th term of office as governor in a blowout. Edwards was only recently released from Club Fed, in case you're wondering.
I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes the ideal is the enemy of the good. What brings this to mind is this editorial cartoon:
I may think the President coddles criminals too much. But he is at least an intelligent adult. The same cannot be said about the Republicans (though I must admit neither Romney nor Huntsman is crazy -- but they do not have a snowball's chance in hell of being the Republican nominee either).
Come November 2012, vote for the crook. It's important.
-- Badtux the Pragmatist Penguin
President Obama said that Rep. Weiner should resign. Err... forgive me for thinking this, but I thought we no longer had kings or rulers deciding such things in America? I thought that the folks who decide whether a politician should stay or go are the voters, not unelected pundits of the media or the President? The voters in Rep. Weiner's district, not GOP pundits or the President, are in charge. If they want Weiner gone, it will happen -- maybe not today, or tomorrow, but by the end of the primary season next year Weiner will either be gone or will be the Democratic nominee for his house seat. It's called DEMOCRACY, and it's not only a good idea, it's the law.
I swear, between the GOP's hatred of democracy (true democracy -- rule of the majority, for the benefit of the majority -- scares them shitless, thus why they do so much voter caging to prevent people from voting) and the Democrats's hatred of democracy, it's a wonder we're not living in Stalinist Russia.
-- Badtux the Unsurprised (but still disappointed) Penguin
Preznit Hopey-Changey talks about bullying. It's bad, he says. Lots of people agree it's bad, he says. Missing, however, from all that wishy-washy feel good talk in his speech is anything that even vaguely smells of effective action. Coat drives and values education aren't going to change the fact that there are some children who are just plain mean and vicious, and who will viciously bully anybody who they feel they can get away with bullying, just because they can.
I'll listen to Obama speak about bullying once he starts dealing effectively with the Republican bullies that have been bullying him ever since his election. His strategy thus far for dealing with Republican bullies appears to be to surrender and meekly hand over his lunch money, then mouth wishy-washy platitudes about hope and change. Yeah right. Like that's ever worked to stop bullies from bullying...
-- Badtux the Practical Penguin
From October 2008: If Obama is elected, as seems likely, there is little he can do to stop this long hard slide to the bottom. It was created by our own choices over these past twenty-eight years, and most Americans aren't willing yet to admit they chose wrong. Only complete and utter national disaster will manage to do that, and the first casualty of any utter national disaster is always the President who presided over it. My prediction: Like Jimmy Carter, Obama will similarly be a one-term President. And then another follower of Reaganism will take power after Obama. And if, ten years from now, I am not squatting one of those abandoned McMansions growing food in the vast back yard and going hunting for the deer and rabbits that have moved into the neighborhood, I will be very surprised, because I'm not seeing much other than disaster ahead. Obama might delay the day of reckoning, while McCain would make it faster... but the collapse is coming, and it's coming hard, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it other than wait for the bottom and hopefully a return to sanity on the part of the American people.
Since then, things have gotten even crazier, with teabaggers, crazies proposing "nullification" of federal laws they don't agree with, the works. As I predicted, the long hard slide to the bottom continues, and the majority of the American people *still* aren't willing to admit that they chose wrong when they chose to believe all that Reaganist crap about something for nothing, low regulation, you know, all that Republican bullshit that says that tax cuts are good and government is evil. (And BTW, if you haven't been over to Jazzbumpa's place, go there, he has pretty pictures and shit showing just how the economy has hollowed out and wealth has been redistributed since Reagan took office).
To repeat JzB's favorite phrase: WASF.
-- Badtux the Archive-diggin' Penguin
Didn't post yesterday because of the State of the Union drinking game. You know the one. Every time Preznit Hopey Changey says the word "hope", drink a shot. "Change", two shots. Proposes a right-wing policy, three shots. Repeats right-wing talking points as if they were actual facts, four shots. By the end of the speech, a penguin is in no state to comment on *anything*, and the next day can't remember where his head is, much less use it to post.
Preznit Hopey Changey is about as disappointing as they come. His SOTU address had nothing in it that would actually help real Americans, who need jobs, who need protection against corporations intent upon outsourcing their jobs to China, who need help protecting themselves against banks that have plundered their retirement savings with fraudulent "mortgage-backed securities" and health insurers who continue to refuse to provide the contracted-for health care without repercussion, and... and... instead, he repeats the same right-wing talking points that have become "conventional wisdom" in the constrained bubble of the Washington elites.
I wasn't particularly enamored of Bill Clinton. Clinton was, as Alan Greenspan put it, "the best Republican president of the past thirty years". But at least Clinton had a plan, a strategy, a clue for escaping the bubble that Obama is encased in. It reminds me of a story that Richard Clark says about when Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks against Iraq. So he has to go on to television to justify these attacks... but did the missiles actually hit targets in Baghdad like they were supposed to? Is he going to make an idiot of himself by talking about an attack that never happened due to technical problems with the missile that caused it to hit, say, Saudi Arabia instead? He call in the generals and they say, "We don't know, it's night there, we won't be able to really tell until the morning when we can send a surveillance flight over." He calls in the CIA and they say, "we don't know, our agents in Baghdad report in on a schedule and their next scheduled reporting time isn't going to be until later this week." Bill thinks a few minutes, pulls out his rolodex, shuffles through it... and calls a Friend Of Bill who works for a major newspaper that he knows has a reporter in Baghdad and asks him if that reporter has seen or heard anything unusual like explosions or such. And gets the satellite phone number for that reporter, which he then uses to call that reporter, who says "Yes, air raid sirens went off and there was a huge explosion in the direction of one of the Presidential palaces." And, satisfied, goes on television and makes the speech. But there don't seem to be a collection of Friends Of Obama accumulated over the years who Obama can use to escape the bubble. Clinton famously loved to say "I feel your pain" but largely got away with it because people felt he really *did* feel their pain, on a personal and emotional level. Obama, on the other hand, does not seem to understand the pain ordinary people are feeling right now on anything other than an intellectual level. He makes stirring oratory about it, certainly. But the perception of Obama as out-of-touch on a personal level with the pain that ordinary Americans are feeling, and isolated in an intellectual bubble that leaves him incapable of touching Americans on a personal level where they live, is growing -- and if he doesn't do something about escaping that bubble, his one-term Presidency is going to make that of Jimmy Carter look like a rousing success.
-- Badtux the Political Penguin
... supposedly will propose cuts in Social Security in his State of the Union address.
Now, granted, this is from The Politico, which is run by a GOP political consultant. The fact that even they say that the notion is entirely nuts, however, is telling. If Orange Boner and Jim McDumber aren't jumping up and down with glee at the very notion of Obama doing their work for them, it's only because they're dumber than a stump.
Meanwhile, as a public service for tomorrow's retirees, who will be so impoverished by Obama's Catfood Commission that they can't even afford catfood as a source of high quality protein, another recipe....
Rat Etoufee
You'll need about two rats per person.
Get a large stock pot. Clean and skin the rats and rub them down with a seasoning mix of salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper, thyme, and a dash of cumin. Put them inside the pot. Cut up a couple of carrots and thow them in. Quarter an onion and slice a full bulb of garlic (7 or 8 cloves) in half, germ and all, and put them in the pot. Now pour enough Bock beer into the pot to go about half way up the sides of the rats. Bring to a boil and reduce to a slow simmer. Cover pot and cook, turning the rats and refilling the beer about every 20 minutes. You will know the rats are done when the meat comes off the bones without too much effort.
Take the rats out and pick the meat from the bones. Return the *bones* to the pot and cover with water. Simmer for 2 hours, then remove and strain the liquid into a container. Finely chop a small onion, a stalk of celery and a bell pepper. Now take a large cast iron skillet and heat a cup of peanut oil to medium high heat. With a wire wisk, slowly wisk in 1 cup of flour. Continue wisking, without stopping, until the roux turns a dark reddish brown color (if you burn it, start over). Add the chopped veggies and mix in until soft. Add the rat stock (about a cup per person) and stir well until somewhat thick (like a glaze). Chop up the rat meat and add it to the skillet. Cook for a few minues longer and serve on top of rice. Garnish with Louisiana Hot Sauce.
-- Badtux the Culinary Futurist Penguin
Preznit Hopey Changey is shocked, shocked I say, that his base hates his giveaway to the rich. Looking at the graph above (courtesy of DKos), I have NO idea why he would be so shocked....
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Been watching the Wikileaks freakout by the tighty righties and the U.S. government with amusement. Especially amusing is the fact that this latest document dump has even led a few journalists to, well, commit acts of actual journalism (gasp!). For example, this evening on NPR News, NPR's correspondent in Baghdad asked around quietly about the Iranian influence upon the current Iraqi government and... err... found that this part of the document dump was, well, true (duh!). Which even Poppy Bush coulda told you, that's why he didn't depose Saddam in the first place back in '93, 'cause it'd turn the place into Iran West, but WTF, you gotta lead today's "journalists" to stories by the nose and stick it into the story nostril-deep before they can see what's been in front of their face all along...
Meanwhile, watching the tighty righties and Obama administration fulminate about how they want to have Wikileaks declared a terrorist group (yeah, their document dumps are a terror alright, but only a terror to liars who don't want the truth to come out), about how Julian Assange should be charged with the crime of espionage (he's not in the United States, he's not a U.S. citizen, he's not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, about the only way you could do that would be to invade Sweden and kidnap him like we did Noriega, and that's unlikely), etc., just goes to show that the term "freedom of the press" is a foreign term to both the tighty righties and to the Obama administration, which continues its authoritarian ways. The person who gave Wikileaks the documents could be charged with espionage, but committing an act of journalism by, well, actually publishing them, that's called "journalism" a.k.a. "the press" and in case you haven't figured it out, you can't legally go after folks for publishing government documents here in the United States because said documents are public domain.
Next up, Assange is going to publish some documents from one of the big banks (rumor says BofA) showing that they knew they were issuing fraudulent mortgages, and engaged in many other sketchy activities, but didn't care. Unfortunately, this *will* open up Wikileaks to legal challenges that the current document dumps didn't address. Those documents are copyrighted by BofA, and publishing them outright is a violation of numerous copyright laws. Assange is probably going to argue that there is a public interest exception for documents of this nature, but that exception allows you to publish only the minimum amount needed in order to illustrate your commentary, it doesn't allow you to just verbatim publish copyright documents without any surrounding commentary for each excerpt published. Maybe Assange *should* be accepting that refuge in Ecuador (whose leftist President, an acolyte of Hugo Chavez, has offered said refuge)... on the other hand, Ecuador's tiny military would be hopeless if the U.S. decided to do a Noriega on him. Decisions, decisions...
-- Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin
So combat operations are over in Iraq, Obama said in his "Mission Accomplished" speech? Err, not so fast. Apparently combat missions are happening, just labeled "training missions". Huh, who could have predicted?
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Yeppers, Crazy Joe Farrah, the loonie tunes behind World Nut Daily ("we're batshit crazy like Orly Taitz and our readers are too!"), sent out an email blast proclaiming "I rule Obama is ineligible." Erm, okay. And I rule that Joe Farrah is a unicorn. So let's all wait for him to trot out at his next press conference on four hooves with a horn sticking out of the middle of his forehead, right?
BTW, under the Constitution the House of Representatives decides whether someone is eligible to be President or not, and lays out that the House decides this prior to January 20 of the year the President is supposed to take office. The House decided to seat President Obama back in January 2009, and under the Constitution there are no redos on that decision. But oh wait, I forget, according to Crazy Joe that doesn't count because the House was comprised of Democrats in January 2009, and nothing done by Democrats counts because, well, because. Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Back during the Democratic primaries I was pretty much an "Anybody but Barack" guy because looking at his actual policy proposals, rather than at the color of his skin or the excesses of his rhetoric, it was pretty much clear that he was just another conservative politician and we needed some real change, some real hope, not just more of the same conservative policies that have driven this country into the ground over the past 30 years. The sole thing he had going for him over the nominal Republicans in the 2008 race is that he wasn't batshit crazy or delusional. The results so far haven't contradicted my opinion then... the "stimulus" was the minimum needed to keep the entire world economy from collapsing, but not enough to bring the economy back from the edge -- i.e., a conservative stimulus. The health care reform was basically the right-wing Heritage Foundation's healthcare reform proposals from 1994, brought up to date with world events since then. The catfood commission is still out there threatening to gut Social Security and Medicare. And so on and so forth. Not a single one of these are liberal policies, which would have created a new WPA, poured stimulus money into temporary bumps in SSI and unemployment compensation amounts and food stamps, single-payer health care, and so forth.
But one of the few things Obama did appear to promise, as a constitutional law professor, was to bring back rule of law rather than rule by imperial fiat as the modus operandi of the administration. Alas, it is not to be. The Obama Administration, in their successful squashing of a lawsuit over the extraordinary rendition program that makes a mockery of the Constitution's prohibition against torture in the 8th Amendment, successfully argued that only the Emperor of the United States of America is qualified to judge whether a lawsuit by a private citizen (Binyam Mohammed) against a private corporation (Boeing) should be allowed to continue.
The most hilarious thing is that the United Kingdom is nominally an imperial state under Queen Elizabeth II, and has no Constitution or bill of rights... yet even their courts disagreed with the notion that these lawsuits should not be heard in the courts. As is proper -- rule of law requires that courts, not the Emperor, make these kinds of judgements. And rule of law is the only alternative to rule of gun. Without rule of law, nations inevitably become either ungovernable as people withdraw their support from a government that they feel does not represent them, or become tyrannies as governments compel their support. Your guess as to which route I believe the United States is slowly sliding down right now...
-- Badtux the Law Penguin
Just sayin'.
Anybody who thinks we're really leaving Iraq anytime soon is crazier than Weepy Beck. After all, there's oil in them thare sands... and Halliburton ain't finished suckin' it out.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
And... hell freezing over here folks... agree with Ann Coulter.
The subject? Afghanistan as "Obama's war", which we're losing. The fact of the matter is that Obama ran on a platform of expanding U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and has in fact done so. Steel is right -- Obama now owns Afghanistan, even if the Chimperor got us there. And we're losing, for the simple reason that we have no achievable objective in Afghanistan and thus nothing to win.
The fact of the matter is that invading Afghanistan makes sense only if your intent is to make it part of your own empire, with your own people in charge. The last man to successfully conquer Afghanistan was Tamerlane, who succeeded in 1370 via the simple expedient of genocide of any areas that resisted and then putting his own governor in place to rule it as part of his own Timur Empire. Tamerlane had two advantages: 1) He didn't give a shit about the locals and had no problems slaughtering them to the last man, and 2) He didn't have supply lines. None. His army fed itself by seizing the food from the conquered folks, after all they didn't need it anymore (since they were dead, mostly). Every attempt to invade Afghanistan since has been to put a more pliant local leader into power, and every one of them has been a disaster, up to and including the current one.
In other words, unless we want to make Afghanistan the 51st state, there's nothing to "win" there, and thus by definition we're losing. Michael Steele was right. And Ann Coulter is right when in today's World Nut Daily she points out that Michael Steele was right. Hope is not a plan, and change is not a strategy, but those are pretty much the only two things Obama has deployed in Afghanistan that the Soviets and British didn't deploy before him. Will they make a difference? Not bloody well likely...
-- Badtux the Tongue-biting Penguin
Oil now spewing unhindered into Gulf.
While I'm not expecting Preznit ObamaMan to swim down to the oil leak and plug it up personally with his mighty powers of HopeyChangey, it would be nice if he'd get someone besides BP to work out ways to collect oil and stop the leak, because BP (because they're paying for it) has every incentive to cheap out. The notion that BP is the only people with the expertise to do this is nonsense -- BP relies on the same contractors as everybody else, BP has geologists on staff but that's about it, everything else is contracted out to people like Halliburton and Schlumberger who do the same work for Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, etc. All it would take would be a contract (and a bill to BP to pay for it)...
-- Badtux the Oil Penguin
Obama administration still approving drilling plans that promise to protect walruses in the Gulf of Mexico -- despite the fact that there hasn't been any walrus in the Gulf in over 2 million years.
If we had a President, rather than an empty suit making speeches, maybe there'd be a real moratorium on Gulf drilling until the industry could provide real response capabilities for dealing with blowouts -- the most important of which is the drilling of a relief well to bottom-kill depth *before* it's needed, rather than requiring 6 months to do the job *after* a blowout. Oh wait, that would cost money and be bad for business, thus can't be done, despite the fact that the Canadians and Norwegians require exactly that. So I guess we have to be satisfied with protecting the rare Gulf of Mexico walrus. Koo koo kachoo.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
... it must be time for another speech by Preznit Obama proclaiming that he's Mr. Commander Guy and that the devastation on the Gulf Coast isn't really *that* bad, why, the redfish even come pre-oiled so you don't need to oil your pan anymore!
No action, of course. But the Preznit does give pretty speech, yo. Why, if BP keeps misbehaving they better watch out, because... because... Preznit Commander Guy will give another speech about it! The horror, oh the horror! Why, I'm sure the corporate thugs at BP are just a'shudderin' in their wingtip shoes about that possibility, yessiree...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
If BP was responsible for cleaning up a coffee spill:
Siiiiiiiiigh!
Has someone else like, say, Halliburton or Schlumberger, been given a contract by the government to be prime contractor yet to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill, with BP being handed the bill? No?
Leadership. It's more than just giving good speech, President Obama. Just sayin'. SIIIIIIIIIGH!
-- Badtux the Bumfuddled Penguin
I had to bite my tongue, but I have to admit it: Rush Limbaugh was right. Almost. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about when, on May 2, Rush Limpdick said that the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill was "Obama's Katrina". As the days go by, it becomes increasingly clear that Rush was right.
First, let's put one thing aside. The biggest failure of the Bush Administration with Katrina was not the levees. The levees were defective, but that long-predated the Bush Administration's tenure in office. Similarly, regulation of offshore oil drilling and BP's safety precautions in the Gulf were inadequate, but again, that long-predated the Obama Administration's tenure in office.
No, the biggest failure of the Bush Administration was its inept and incompetent response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- its emphasis upon PR rather than upon actually, like, doing something to help America and Americans, its use of armed Federal force to keep first responders, assistance, and the media out of the crisis area whenever possible, and its continual stream of lies and false reassurances about how everything possible was being done for the people of New Orleans at the exact same time that nothing was being done, lies that delayed help for the people of New Orleans to the point where the Governor of Louisiana had to evacuate New Orleans herself by calling every FEMA contractor herself and begging for buses (the usual response she got was, "we have the buses, we've been waiting for FEMA to call us, why didn't they call us? Well, we'll send the buses anyhow and bill FEMA even though we'll probably never see our money.")
Now, read the above, and tell me that the Obama administration has done anything different about the Gulf oil spill from what the Bush Administration did? We have the obligatory government forces keeping the media out stories. We have the first responders turned away and lies told about the severity of the problem stories. We have the emphasis upon PR rather than actually doing something.
So look: Rush Limbaugh was right. Well, almost. Rush Limbaugh said that this oil spill was "Obama's Katrina". But he was wrong, because the Obama administration's reaction to this oil spill has been worse than Katrina. At least the Bush Administration was being incompetent and venal simply because they were incompetent and venal. But the Obama administration appears to be collaborating with a BRITISH company, BP, to cover up the extent of the oil spill. Regardless of what Bush did or didn't do in Katrina, at least he was not doing it for the profit of the British.
-- Badtux the Tongue-biting Penguin
