I loathe Dick Cheney

By Richard K. Barry

Oh, isn't that special, and utterly surprising that Dick Cheney thinks Barack Obama the "worst president" ever, or at least since little Dick first slithered onto the planet.

Said Dick in a new Playboy interview:

I look at Barack Obama and I see the worst president of my lifetime, without question. I used to have significant criticism of Jimmy Carter, but compared to Barack Obama and the damage he is doing to the nation — it’s a tragedy.

[...]

The way Obama is functioning now, he’s crippling the capacity of future presidents to deal with future crises.

I don't generally speak in terms of pure evil, but Cheney's existence does suggest the possibility.

Franklin Graham is an idiot

By Richard K. Barry

Nothing brings my blood to a boil quicker than so-called "men of God" peddling hatred. 

As Right Wing Watch reports:

Franklin Graham was a guest on the Family Research Council's "Washington Watch" radio program  . . . where he asserted that President Obama is refusing to fight ISIS because he wants to protect Islam since even his mother was a Muslim.

Ignoring the fact that Obama's father was an atheist and his mother agnostic, Graham told FRC head Tony Perkins that "one of the problems we have [is that Obama's] father was a Muslim, and his step-father was a Muslim. [He] lived in Indonesia and went to Muslim schools. His mother must have been a Muslim — we don't know that, but she married two Muslim men, so there must have been something there. And the framework that the president has growing up, his influences in his life was that of Islam."

"My influences growing up, as many in this country, were under the Christian influence and the biblical influence," he continued. "But our president did not have that, it was Islam and many feel that he's protecting Islam. I don't know that, but it certainly seems that way":

Forgetting for a moment that the facts of the matter are of no interest to Graham, the suggestion that the only way one can possibly act in a moral manner is if one uses Christian and biblical influences as a guide is nauseating. 

Jackass.

An olive twig to Tehran

By Mustang Bobby

It wasn’t exactly a kum-by-yah moment, and there was no pre-planned spontaneous back-room handshake, but President Obama, speaking to the U.N. yesterday, at least offered a glimmer of easing tensions with Iran.

The United States and Iran have been isolated from one another since the Islamic revolution of 1979. This mistrust has deep roots. Iranians have long complained of a history of U.S. interference in their affairs and of America’s role in overthrowing the Iranian government during the Cold War. On the other hand, Americans see an Iranian government that has declared the United States an enemy and directly or through proxies taken American hostages, killed U.S. troops and civilians, and threatened our ally Israel with destruction.

“I don’t believe this difficult history can be overcome overnight. The suspicions run too deep. But I do believe that if we can resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, that can serve as a major step down a long road toward a different relationship, one based on mutual interests and mutual respect.

It’s a small step and may lead not much further than that, but it sure beats the hell out of “bomb bomb bomb Iran.”

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Oh, dry up

By Mustang Bobby

The mantra for the GOP is that whatever Barack Obama is for, they’re against. The same goes for Michelle Obama. She tells America to exercise more and eat healthy foods, and the Republicans defend couch potatoes and deep-fried Twinkies.

So I wonder how they’ll deal with this latest campaign:

First lady Michelle Obama led Wisconsin high school students in a toast to “the best drink in town” Thursday as she launched a campaign to encourage people to drink more water — something she said was the single best thing Americans could do to improve their health.

“Water is so basic, and because it is so plentiful, sometimes we just forget about it amid all the ads we watch on television and all the messages we receive every day about what to eat and drink,” Mrs. Obama said. “The truth is, water just gets drowned out.”

As Charles Johnson wonders, how long before conservatives die of dehydration?

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Plan B for Plan B

By Mustang Bobby

After several court battles, the Obama administration and the Department of Health and Human Services has dropped their opposition to imposing age limits on emergency contraception, aka Plan B.

The government’s decision means that any woman or girl will soon be able to walk into a drugstore and buy the pill, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription.

The Justice Department had been fighting to prevent that outcome, but said late Monday afternoon that it would accept its losses in recent court rulings and begin putting into effect a judge’s order to have the Food and Drug Administration certify the drug for nonprescription use. In a letter to Judge Edward R. Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the administration said it would comply with his demands.

The Justice Department appears to have concluded that it might lose its case with the appeals court and would have to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. That would drastically elevate the debate over the politically delicate issue for Mr. Obama.

I think Booman is on to something: President Obama was really in favor of letting anyone have access to Plan B, but he knew that if he said he supported it, that would galvanize the opposition simply because he’s in favor of it. He also knew that it would infuriate his base among pro-choice voters. But he also knew that if he put up a fight and then gave up after making an adequate attempt, he would have cover on an issue that could have been used against Democrats in the mid-terms. Got it?

It’s exasperating, but that’s how the game is played. The worst part of it is that time, money, and political capital was wasted on a fight that was fixed from the start.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Michael Steele may run for governor of Maryland

By Richard K. Barry

I do understand that former RNC Chairman Michael Steele has tried to rehabilitate his image by appearing somewhat reasonable on the occasional MSNBC broadcast. Rachel Maddow talks to him like he's an individual of some integrity and we're suppose to buy that.

Now we hear that he is thinking about running for governor in his home state of Maryland.

The Hill:

"We're looking at it," Steele told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on Monday. "You're going to take a look at the numbers. Maryland's a tough state, there are a lot of challenges there."

Martin O'Malley, the current governor, is having his own look at the presidency in 2016, but has to move on in 2014 due to term limits.

Steele had a rocky term as RNC chairman, with the organization frequently producing negative headlines about lavish spending. He lost his chairmanship to Reince Priebus in 2011, despite overseeing massive Republican gains in the 2010 election cycle.

My favourite Michael Steele moment has to be his claim that Afghanistan was a "war of Obama's choosing." Yes, there's a man I want to see leading a state government. 



(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Have another scandal, please

By Mustang Bobby

If the game plan of the righties was to bog down the Obama administration with claims of scandal and thereby turn the country against him so that he had no choice but to either resign or go back to Kenya, it’s not working out like that.

President Obama’s approval ratings have increased since a trio of controversies involving his administration began dominating the news cycle.

Fifty percent of those surveyed in Gallup’s three-day tracking poll released Wednesday say they approve of the job the president is doing, compared to 43 percent who said they disapprove.

The 7-percentage point positive margin is better than where the president stood in the poll over the two weeks before the IRS and Department of Justice scandals broke, and is near Obama’s rating over the waning days of the 2012 campaign when voters convincingly elected him to a second term in office.

Obama’s Gallup numbers are up three percentage points since the pollster’s May 23-25 survey and suggest Obama’s approval ratings held steady, even as the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups made headlines.

It looks like things actually get better for the president the more they hound him. Hmm… Not to get all conspiracy-theorist, but maybe that was his plan all along: come up with these fake scandals to trap the GOP into being the assholes that they are to generate sympathy for the President and therefore get his way….

Hey, it’s not that far out there. After all, this is the guy with the parents who planned way back in 1961 to plant a story in the Honolulu classifieds about his “birth” in Oahu just so 45 years later he could run for president and take over the world.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The war must be over

By Mustang Bobby

President Obama’s speech on ending the open-ended GWOT:

In a much-anticipated speech at the National Defense University, Mr. Obama sought to turn the page on the era that began on Sept. 11, 2001, when the imperative of preventing terrorist attacks became both the priority and the preoccupation. Instead, the president suggested that the United States had returned to the state of affairs that existed before Al Qaeda toppled the World Trade Center, when terrorism was a persistent but not existential danger. With Al Qaeda’s core now “on the path to defeat,” he argued, the nation must adapt.

“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” Mr. Obama said. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”

The politics of this perpetual war may be the hardest part. We have become so used to the drumbeat of invade and occupy from the neocons and the armchair generals who never wore the uniform or picked up anything more than a cigar that moving in any other direction sounds like retreat to them. But for the sake of our country, our treasure, and the lives of the people who are the ones who will have to fight, the war that we were whooped into and then lied to in order to perpetuate it must end, and the speech Mr. Obama gave yesterday was the first indication that it will.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Another Obama failure

By Mustang Bobby

We’ve already determined that Barack Obama is not very good at being a socialist, what with the stock market soaring to giddy heights, the unemployment rate falling, and corporate profits going through the roof. Now, according to Steve M, he’s not any good at being a tyrant.

The Obama “scandals” are: a pre-election “cover-up” of the truth about the Benghazi attack in which the administration acknowledged every fact said to have been covered up within less than two weeks after the attack (and more than a month and a half before the election); heightened scrutiny of the tax-exempt status of right-wing groups by the IRS that led to no revocations of tax-exempt status and happened while a Republican ran the agency; all of this following a “gun grab” that has led to exactly zero federal gun control because no bill could even pass the Democrat-controlled upper chamber of Congress; and a further “gun grab” said to be in the works in conjunction with the UN that involves a treaty that can’t possibly be ratified in the Senate, and wouldn’t do what the opponents say it does anyway, even if it did pass.

Can’t this guy do anything right?

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Nothing else matters

By Mustang Bobby

If you’ve been paying attention to the latest end-game going on with the budget (the fiscal cliff is so 2012), you’ve heard the Republicans blaming everything on President Obama. He was the one who came up with the horrible idea to cut the budget by draconian measures if the White House and the Republicans couldn’t come up with an agreement, and he was the one who got it through the House and the Senate the same way he rammed healthcare down our throats and turned us into a socialist state. He did it.

Yeah, except as we’re being reminded by anyone with a search engine, Speaker John Boehner was very happy to sign on to the sequester, telling anyone who would listen that he got 98% of what he wanted in the deal hammered out in the summer of 2011 in Debt Ceiling Crisis #1.

So why are all the Republicans suddenly blaming President Obama for something they whooped through and are willing to let those cuts that will result in yet another cliffhanger moment happen? Because when you’re a Republican, there are more important things in this world than the economic stability of the nation. The most important thing is doing whatever they can to humiliate Barack Obama.

Once you know that, nothing else matters.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The consequences of ignoring polls

By Richard K. Barry

All politicians claim that they don't govern according to public opinion polls, but few successful politicians are stupid enough to disregard them completely. 

According to Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama enters the latest budget showdown with Congress with his highest job- approval rating in three years and public support for his economic message, while his Republican opponents’ popularity stands at a record low.

Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance in office, his strongest level of support since September 2009, according to a Bloomberg National poll conducted Feb. 15-18. Only 35 percent of the country has a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest rating in a survey that began in September 2009. The party’s brand slipped six percentage points in the last six months, the poll shows.

As I sit hear writing this, MSNBC's Chuck Todd just whispered in my right hear that it looks as though President Obama is in a good position and most Americans aren't yet really paying attention. When they do, things could get much words for the GOP. 

Or, as the Bloomberg piece continues:

Obama’s positive standing with the public provides him with political leverage as Americans assess blame for any furloughs, disruption of government services or damage to the economy if the spending cuts aren’t averted. The repercussions also could help shape the battleground for the 2014 midterm congressional elections.

Go ahead, you GOP knuckleheads. Ignore the polls. Be "ideological purists," all the way to a new round of electoral disaster. That'll really piss off the Democrats.

Is President Obama getting ready to pick Rice to succeed Clinton?

By Richard K. Barry

Both Bloomberg and MSNBC's First Read are speculating that President Obama's strong defence of UN Ambassador Susan Rice might bode well for her eventually being named to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

According to Bloomberg:

Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, administration officials said Obama's unusually blunt language was part political calculation, part trial balloon and part loyalty.

They also suggest there is a political calculation at work:

Said Democratic Party strategist Joe Trippi, Obama's ultimatum to Republicans may reflect confidence he could garner the 60 Senate votes necessary to move Rice to a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate -- as well as a political calculation that Republicans are further marginalizing themselves by targeting her.

And First Read's take:

If you thought that Obama might decide to pass on nominating Susan Rice to be the next Secretary of State, think again. [Wednesday's] confrontation might have been the best thing to happen to her chances of being nominated. The president is a pragmatist and is usually someone who likes to avoid confirmation fights for his appointees. But the more the GOP attacks Rice, the more dug in the White House and president might get.

It would be a grand thing if McCain's and Graham's baseless attacks actually help bring about the thing they claim not to want. Also nothing like a strong election win to shake a few votes loose from the other side. 

President Obama: "I bet on American workers"

By Richard K. Barry

At a rally in Dayton, Ohio today, President Obama reminded voters that if it had been up to Mitt Romney a million jobs in the auto sector would be gone and an industry that helps to support one in eight jobs in Ohio would no long exist.



(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

President Obama's weekly address - the auto sector recovery

By Richard K. Barry

Let's give credit where credit is due, and President Obama deserves credit for having the courage to save the auto industry. Here's his weekly address talking about it and what it means for America. This is what leadership looks like.



(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Now it's Romney's turn to manage debate expectations

By Richard K. Barry 

Why do they bother? Why do they waste energy saying that big bad President Obama is such a great talker that Mitt Romney will be lucky to finish the debate without soiling himself? I know. That's what they all do. I just wish they wouldn't.

Here's the latest from longtime Romney advisor Beth Myers, as reported by CNN, in a memo she sent to the network:

President Obama is "widely regarded as one of the most talented political communicators in modern history."  

"This will be the eighth one-on-one presidential debate of his political career. For Mitt Romney, it will be his first."

"Four years ago, Barack Obama faced John McCain on the debate stage. According to Gallup, voters judged him the winner of each debate by double-digit margins, and their polling showed he won one debate by an astounding 33-point margin."

Myers argues that Obama will "use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end: attacking Mitt Romney."

"We fully expect a 90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent," she writes in the memo.

Pushing back against emerging conventional wisdom, Myers concludes that the debates will not, in fact, decide the election: "It will be decided by the American people," she says.

One of the reasons the debates won't decide anything is that, I suspect, this bear is already decided.

My guess is that the debates will be a big yawn. Obama won't give Romney a chance for anything close to a knockout blow and, even if he did, Romney is too plodding to take advantage of it. How's that for a boxing metaphor?

Another guess is that the best Romney can do, and maybe this is the point of managing expectations, is that some voters will come away thinkings Mitt didn't entirely suck. But I'll bet you $10,000 the debates won't change a thing.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Close to the end (double entendre intended)

By Richard K. Barry

Despite the fact that Obama didn't hit the ball out of the park with his convention speech, and a middling jobs report, all three tracking polls show he is expanding his lead over Mitt Romney.

Man, nothing is easy.

Gallup: Obama 49%, Romney 45%

Reuters/Ipsos: Obama 47%, Romney 43%

Rasmussen: Obama 46%, Romney 44%

According to Political Wire, it should be noted that much of this data was compiled before the key speeches at the DNC, which suggests to Nate Silver that "Obama has been running about 7-9 points ahead of Romney since the Clinton speech to have gained ground so quickly."

In related news, Politico is reporting that top Romney advisors are conceding that:

President Barack Obama heads out of the national political conventions with a much clearer path to winning.

The Romney campaign, while pleasantly surprised by Obama’s lackluster prime-time performance, said the post-convention bounce they hoped for fell well short of expectations and privately lament that state-by-state polling numbers — most glaringly in Ohio — are working in the president’s favor.

Maybe the most interesting comment of the past few days comes from Obama advisor David Axelrod in an interview with the Washington Post, who said this:

[C]onditions in the country militate against any major movement in the polls. While predicting that Obama would win a second term, he said, “I don’t think the structure of the race allows for a big breakthrough.

It looks like everything will limp along to election day in time for a close finnish, just like we always thought.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Will "more of the same" from Romney change anything?

By Richard K. Barry

Nate Silver makes an interesting point that Mitt Romney has never taken the lead over President Obama by a substantive margin in the polls.

That makes this an extremely odd election. You would figure that at some point over the past year, Mr. Romney would have pulled into the lead in the polls, given how close it has usually been. John McCain held occasional leads in 2008; John Kerry led for much of the summer in 2004; and Michael Dukakis had moments where he was well ahead of George H.W. Bush in the spring and summer of 1988. But Mr. Romney, if there have been moments when his polls were ever-so-slightly stronger or weaker, has never really had his moment in the sun.

He cites other presidential races in which one candidate led from beginning to end, notably Clinton in 1996, Reagan in 1984, Nixon in 1972, and Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. All of these elections ended in a landslide, though Silver is quick to add that no one expects that here.

Still, it does seem like a bad trend for Romney.

If even at his high-water mark, [Romney] can only pull the race into a rough tie, what pitch can he come up with in October or November to suddenly put him over the top?

It really does beg the question. What can Romney say that persuadable voters have not heard before? What could possibly change between now and November?

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

For Mitt Romney, Barack Obama just doesn't belong

By Richard K. Barry

I have no doubt Mitt Romney knows Barack Obama was born in the United States, which is what makes his silly little joke at a rally in Michigan that much more disturbing. His campaign team sees it for what it is, a gaffe, and have been trying to suggest this had nothing to do with the birther nonsense, but was simply Romney's attempt at humour to do with the Romney's "coming home" to Michigan. Well, that's ridiculous.

As Greg Sargent writes:

Of course Romney fully believes Obama was born in the United States. But in a way, that’s the point — he’s still willing to dabble in birther humor, either to rev up his base by proving that he’s willing to take it to Obama or whatever, or for a cheap laugh, or for some combination of the two.

Sargent continues by making the point that on the heels of Todd Akin "legitimate rape" controversy, this is a "reminder of the extreme voices in the GOP, which Romney has at times been slow to denounce."

The fact that uncomfortably large numbers still believe Obama has perpetrated an elaborate plot to fake his birthplace and ascend to the presidency illegitimately is a pretty damn big deal. 

It will be easy for the Obama campaign to seize on this to raise questions about Romney’s judgment, temperament, and character. Wow.

I think that's all true, but I also think it's true that Romney's silly little joke betrays something he does believe, along with a disturbingly high percentage of conservative voters, and that is that Barack Obama's presidency is not legitimate. The birther controversy has always been short-hand for this perspective. Birtherism is short-hand for those who think this election is about "taking their country back." Why else would it continue to have legs long after it has been debunked by virtually anyone with a half a brain?

It wouldn't take long to find a series of clips in which Romney claims Obama's political positions are "foreign," or that he doesn't understand the way the American economy works, or the way the American people think, and other such nonsense.

You don't have to be a Freudian scholar to understand that jokes are frequently a passive-aggressive way to assert things we actually believe but that are too dangerous to say outright. Again, I don't think Romney believes President Obama was born anywhere but in the U.S., but I do believe he thinks Obama's presidency is illegitimate. Birtherism is a continuing bad joke to make that case.

Final comment: I found the youthful "indiscretion" of Mitt Romney holding down a fellow student who was "different," and violently cutting his hair, very instructive. Romney clearly has always had strong ideas about what it means to "belong," to be the "right kind of person," to be acceptable. From his earliest days, he has been more than a little annoyed by those who have failed to understand what is expected of them, who, perhaps, don't know their place.

No, these comments about Obama's birthplace and his foreign understanding shouldn't be taken literally, but their metaphorical sense is just as disturbing.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Behind the Ad: Obama goes positive

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: Unknown.

What's going on: After the shooting in Colorado, it appears the Obama campaign wants to change the tone of things. First Read noted last week "how small the presidential campaign has become," and, they say, "apparently President Obama now agrees."

In this new 60-second TV ad, called "The Choice," Obama says this:

Over the next four months, you have a choice to make. Not just between two political parties, or even two people. It’s a choice between two very different plans for our country.

And then he fills in the blanks about the differences in vision and finishes by saying, “Sometimes politics can seem very small. But the choice you face, it couldn’t be bigger.”

Mostly Joe Scarborough annoys me, but I think he has a point about this ad, saying:

Barack Obama coming out and showing the Barack Obama that excited so many people in 2008 and won over independent voters — that's the guy, right there. "Forward," that's the message.

Some people, like Scarborough, haven't liked the attack strategy on Romney, though I think it is both necessary and will work in the longer term when people start to make their final decisions. Still, Obama's strength is in his big personality, as much as that is Romney's weakness. This ad reminds us of that.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

President Obama and Mitt Romney comment on the Aurora, Colorado shooting