Friday Shakedown

It's Friday, time for another shakedown.

As everyone knows, because the media was obsessed with this story since it broke and not for no reason, the Pope retired yesterday.  Every time any news channel ran a story on this the question was always: "What's next?" We now have an answer to that question.

The President took a little heat today when he violated a huge taboo: confused Star Trek and Star Wars.  He said in a press conference that he is unable to do a Jedi mind meld on Congress to get them to do something on the sequester.  Of course, there is a Jedi mind trick and a Vulcan mind meld.  Two drastically different things on two entirely different planes of nerd-dom.  Twitter exploded because of this, of course.

The White House has rolled with it beautifully, however.  If you go to WH.gov/jedimindmeld it redirects to the President's plan for the sequester.

But seriously, it was good to see him take it too the Republicans.  He pointed out that he had a plan and had submitted it to Congress.  Most people had said that it was a reasonable plan and Congress would rather the arbitrary cuts go into affect ultimately hurting the economy.  I hope Congress as a whole, not just the Senate, can "get off their ass" and solve this problem before too many people are hurt.

Sean Hannity and Congressman Keith Ellison got into it this week, but more on that tomorrow.

President Obama On Republican Obstructionism

The President sat down with The New Republic and this happened during the interview:

Franklin Foer: When you talk about Washington, oftentimes you use it as a way to describe this type of dysfunction. But it’s a very broad brush. It can seem as if you’re apportioning blame not just to one party, but to both parties—

Well, no, let me be clear. There’s not a—there’s no equivalence there. In fact, that’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity. And so the default position for reporting is to say, “A plague on both their houses.” On almost every issue, it’s, “Well, Democrats and Republicans can’t agree”—as opposed to looking at why is it that they can’t agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing?  

And I want to be very clear here that Democrats, we’ve got a lot of warts, and some of the bad habits here in Washington when it comes to lobbyists and money and access really goes to the political system generally. It’s not unique to one party. But when it comes to certain positions on issues, when it comes to trying to do what’s best for the country, when it comes to really trying to make decisions based on fact as opposed to ideology, when it comes to being willing to compromise, the Democrats, not just here in this White House, but I would say in Congress also, have shown themselves consistently to be willing to do tough things even when it’s not convenient, because it’s the right thing to do. And we haven’t seen that same kind of attitude on the other side.

Until Republicans feel that there’s a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you’ll probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it. It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and I think there are those who believe that it can work again. I disagree with them, and I think the cost to the country has been enormous.

He said that much nicer than was really necessary, but he is correct.  

The Facts About The "Liberal" Agenda

Since the election, the right is in a tizzy over how "partisan" President Obama's inauguration speech was.

"One thing is clear from the president's speech: The era of liberalism is back. His unabashedly far-left-of-center inaugural speech certainly brings back memories of the Democratic Party in ages past," McConnell said. "If the president pursued that kind of agenda, obviously it's not designed to bring us together, and certainly not designed to deal with the transcendent issue of our era, which is deficits and debt."

The Senator is correct, these are usually considered more liberal goals but the world is changing.  People in this country do not agree with him anymore and there is polling to prove that.

This shows that the President was not divisive and partisan at all, he was unifying and speaking to the people's issues.  That is what a good president should do, Senator.

Picture courtesy of ThinkProgress

Photo of the Day

This picture really encompasses the entire day.  Four more years.


(Photo POOL/SIPA USA/NEWSCOM)