...when I think about elected officials as moronic as Sen. Chuck Grassley having a say in how our government works... or doesn't work as the case may be.
One thing in particular that I didn't miss this time around in the GOP Bullshit Memes Edition of 2012 was the blood boiling ridiculousness that is the teleprompter jab. Obama's soooo dumb.... HOW DUMB IS HE?! He's sooo dumb he can't give a speech without a teleprompter. If he can't read it, he doesn't know what to say. HAR! HAR! HAR!! (This insult brought to you by some GOP idiot reading a teleprompter.)
I know it shouldn't bother me because it's obvious crap, but maybe what bugs me the most is that it's been repeated so often, most of the GOP lemmings take it as fact. They believe this while watching their political leaders READ OFF A TELEPROMPTER! So this time around, I was glad they retired this silly notion. Or so I thought.
Seriously?! What. The. FUCK?! This waste of carbon is a sitting fucking senator in Congress who has watched every President since Lyndon Fucking Johnson use a teleprompter, but obviously the reason President Obama uses it is because he's dumb, right?
And the topper is his comparison to the Romneybot-3000 who apparently is so much smarter, he doesn't need a teleprompter. That Mitt's so quick on his feet that he came up with this little gem while defending his omission of our military troops during this speech at the RNC in what was the biggest night of his political life:
Responding to an inquiry from Fox News reporter Brett Baier, Romney claimed, “When you give a speech, you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important.”
Yeah, Mitt wants to talk about the important things. Why waste time giving a little shout out to the troops the GOP always loves to use as a backdrop when you can spend that valuable time letting Clint Eastwood upstage the Republican presidential nominee with an empty fucking chair?
Man, I don't know how President Obama is going to deal with such a razor sharp wit as Mitt Romney during the upcoming debates without a teleprompter.
The Forrest Gump of the GOP, Sarah Palin had yet another speaking engagement at a California State University campus. One in which credentials were not distributed to the school newspaper's student reporters. And one in which an open mic caught many critical statements of Palin, allegedly uttered by the reporters who were present and completely dumbfounded by The Sarah Palin Experience.
“Now I know the dumbness doesn’t just come from sound bites.”
“She didn’t finish a statement.”
“I don’t know how you’re gonna make a story out of that.” “Well, that’s the story.”
“Did she even make a point?”
You'd think by now, realizing the success she had in her VP nomination acceptance speech, she would have realized she should hire a speech writer. Maybe she could use the same person who writes her Facebook entries. Or her book ghostwriter.
No wonder Palin continues to criticize President Obama for using a teleprompter. He hasn't mastered the fine art of scribbling on his body. I guess because he never had to.
Even in my sleep I can tell you that "Drill, Baby, Drill!", tax cuts and smaller government are the cornerstone talking points of the GOP and conservatives. But Sarah Palin needs to write them down on the palm of her hand like a high schooler with crib notes to get through an hour with an adoring crowd. She's eventually going to get sent to the Principal's office.
Update (1:45pm): A commenter at another blog posted the following regarding this story: "I honest-to-God do not get what the big deal is about this. You folks MAKE her a big deal with all the attention you pay her." ...to which I felt a response was needed.
You've got to be kidding. The "big deal" is that [Sarah Palin] is who the wingnuts have chosen to be their leader, and while she criticizes the president for using a teleprompter that presidents have been using for the last 30+ yearsincluding [Ronald] Reagan, who she mentioned at least a dozen times last night, [Palin]'s acting like a high school cheerleader writing down talking points on the palm of her hand (that everyone else can recite in their sleep) so she doesn't fail her pop quiz even though she knew the questions beforehand.
You don't think that hypocrisy has to be called out?!
Adding... Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News bet wrong in her last Countdown appearance when she said of the whole "retarded" issue, "I'm gonna go out on a limb here - I think because it is a matter of the heart for her, I don't think she wears this child on her sleeve... I bet that Rush Limbaugh quickly apologizes himself knowing that she will have to treat him the same way."
President Obama: "Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses, but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don't hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am President, we will never hand them that victory. We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children."
A Message of Hope and Responsibility for America’s Students September 8th, 2009
Now I know why the wingnuts were freaked out at the prospect of their children listening to this speech. Their kids would finally figure out their parents are complete morons.
Circumstances prevented me from watching President Obama's address to joint Congress live last night. I was about an hour behind so I purposely stayed away from the Internets until I watched the full speech for fear of spoilers. As usual, I was not disappointed in another Obama speech full of The Awesomeness™.
Then I waited with trepidation for the Republican Party response from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the "rising star" of the GOP and one being touted for a presidential run in 2012. Jindal was on Meet The Press the previous Sunday and although he typically regurgitated Republican talking points, he seemed well put together, able to speak off the cuff and is obviously an intelligent individual. What I witnessed last night however, was a completely different Bobby Jindal. I include the entire speech for those who missed it.
Who is this man and what did they do with Bobby Jindal? Surely, this isn't the rising star with the hopes of the GOP squarely on his shoulders in 2012, is it? ...Really?
His sing-song approach was a little disconcerting - was he trying to sell me a used car recovered from the 9th Ward? I was inadvertently shot back to my youth and half expected Jindal to break into song and take us to the Magic Kingdom where Republicans know what they're talking about, but then I realized there were no hand puppets... at least within camera shot. Or maybe Jindal is a hand puppet...
Then my jaw hit the floor when I heard the following line:
"Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us. Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina -- we have our doubts."
Wait... did I hear that right? Was Jindal telling us we can't trust government and using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the incompetence of the Bush administration's rescue efforts as a gauge? Was he telling us, by using Hurricane Fucking Katrina as an example, that citizens have to deal with disaster on their own? And in seemingly the next breath, asking us to trust the Republican Party? Government shouldn't be trusted and that is why the GOP is the correct choice for 2010 - we don't give you hope. With us, you know you'll be fucked from the beginning, so there'll be no surprises!
Then he told us a story about Sheriff Harry Lee and the volunteer rescue boat operation, featuring the evil government bureaucrat who insisted on seeing the insurance and registration for the boats before allowing them to rescue New Orleans' drowning victims. I found this story a little hard to believe until I realized that, yeah, maybe it was true - after all, who was running the government back in 2005? After hearing that story, do you think RNC Chairman Michael Steele was staring blankly at his television in a "What the fuck?" haze? Yeah, me neither. He was probably pumping his fist, Arsenio Hall style, and barking up a storm, thinking this speech was "off the hook!"
But this childish, pathetic excuse for a speech turned sour in my book when Jindal insisted on using the latest GOP talking points of an imaginary "'magnetic levitation' line from Las Vegas to Disneyland," categorized as wasteful spending the replacement of the government fleet of cars, which would create manufacturing jobs to produce the energy efficient cars and reduce our oil dependence, and pointed to "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'" Well, perhaps down by the bayou, volcano monitoring may be thought of as wasteful spending, but I'm sure citizens of Hawaii and Washington state appreciate it. Had the shoe been on the other foot and a GOP led country was blindsided by a volcano eruption that turned a Hawaiian town into a 21st century Pompeii, they could just pull out the Katrina textbook and say, "Well, no one could have anticipated the eruption of the volcano." Not to mention the fact that Jindal was pointing to 0.00018% of the entire plan, the very thing President Obama warned against in his address to the nation's governors as well as during the Fiscal Responsibility Summit.
So this is what we have to deal with in 2012? We've seen what we're going to get with Sarah "Position Flexible Also" Palin. And the latest Michael Steele Foot in Mouth Disease moment regarding civil unions makes me wonder what the GOP was thinking. But for the time being until this all dies down, Bobby Jindal has to take the gumbo. The Republican Party's sad attempt to show that they're inclusionary and exotic with the choices of Palin, Steele and Jindal as a substitute for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Oscar winners for Slumdog Millionaire don't mean a thing if their ideology is skewing further right than ever.
Heh. Slumdog Millionaire. Yeah, that's right! I said it.
I'm still gathering my thoughts for a longer post about last night's speech by President Obama, but in the meantime I wanted to parachute in here with a couple of quick thoughts:
1. Did our President kick some Republican ass last night or what? and
2. As far as Bobby Jindal is concerned, I for one was quite impressed with his performance, in that, as a public speaker, he makes Sarah Palin look positively eloquent. If this chicken-fried dipshit represents the best of the Republican party, they are beyond hosed. They are DONE. I can't wait to see this guy run for VP on the ticket with Palin. Go Bobby go!
I just tuned in to MSNBC and it looks like everyone's waiting on the egde of their seats for President-elect Obama to give "a major speech on the economy." Chris Matthews is wondering why Obama can give a great written speech but isn't as articulate when answering questions in a news conference setting.
Really. Tweety? As compared to whom? Need I say more?
I'll update as I get more.
11:32am - Here's the speech in a nutshell. We know we're going to spend more money and we'll increase the deficit in the short term, but if we don't do anything, we'll continue to lose jobs and precious time.
Obama then laid out the list of programs to rebuild jobs in the private sector.
He also said it's time for Congress to stop dragging their feet. They'll need to work long hours, night and even weekends to get this package done. And there was a reiteration of downplaying adding earmarks to this bill. This bill is not the time for pork.
12:08PM - Motherfuckin' Mitch McConnell with his "mob museums and water slides" bullshit line again. God, I hate that asshole. And he'd like to see the stimulus package be given to the states as LOANS. I don't claim know anything about economics, but if most states are working in deficits already, what the fuck good does that do?! I really wish these fuckwads had been a little more concerned about budget deficits these last 8 years and not just the last two months.
Here's John Kerry's speech from the Democratic National Convention... no, not 2004's speech, this year's speech, in DENVER! If Kerry had spoken like this in 2004, we'd most likely be re-electing him today.
H/T to Bob Cesca for putting up this video so soon after his awesome liveblogging, which you should partake of tomorrow if you can. Lots of fun and great lines in the comments section.
It's amazing how this guy just gets it, spells it out for everyone to understand but is considered too "crazy" for the mainstream. Dennis Kucinich: One of the few things Ohio gets right.
UPDATE (6:50pm): Apparently the Obama campaign thought this line was a little over the top in Kucinich's speech and asked him to omit it: "They’re asking for another four years — in a just world, they’d get 10 to 20."
Fucking brilliant! It's too bad the Obama campaign doesn't think it necessary for that kind of talk. Wait til they hear what the Rethugs will say next week.
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