No big news from Beer Summit

4 comments July 30th, 2009

 They talked. They drank. They smiled.

 That was about it, according to INITIAL REPORTS.

A snarky put-down of Politico.com! I love it!

Add comment July 30th, 2009

 I’ve always had mixed feelings about Politico.com. On the one hand, it is sometimes a good source of news and insider stuff. But on the other, it often displays incredibly lax reporting standards (HERE, for example) and is forever trying to come up with Drudge bait.

 Lots of liberal blogs have been beating up on Politico lately, and with plenty of good cause. But I was especially amused by THIS PUT-DOWN by John Amato at Crooks and Liars, which includes several links to other snarky stuff.

They broke it but won’t fix it

7 comments July 30th, 2009

Fox News poll says most Americans view Palin negatively; few see her as presidential timber

10 comments July 30th, 2009

 Fox News Channel, that citadel of political liberalism, is out with a new poll SHOWING that 51 percent of Americans have a negative view of Sarah Palin.

 A plurality of poll respondents say Palin is best suited to be a homemaker.

 Reporting on its own poll, Fox says:

Palin’s personal ratings have slipped and most people think the best job for her now that she has resigned as governor is away from the world of politics.

About a third of Americans think the best job for Palin is homemaker (32 percent), while nearly one in five see her as a television talk show host (17 percent). Vice president of the United States comes in third (14 percent), followed closely by college professor (10 percent), with president coming last (6 percent).

This is outrageous. When are those damned libs at Fox going to cut our Sarah a little slack, huh?

 UPDATE: For more on this Fox poll, see Nos. 2 and 4 in the comments section, wherein a reader gets a little snarky with me and I respond in characteristically devastating style. You’ll love it.

Some Freeporters seem to think it’s funny to joke about assassination of President Obama

14 comments July 30th, 2009

 I received a copy this morning of an especially ugly e-mail that’s been making the rounds in the Freeport area. It’s a joke about the possible assassination of President Obama.

 To avoid revealing my source of this garbage (a friend who finds it disgusting), I’m providing THIS LINK from elsewhere. (Warning: The e-mail includes a crude sexual reference.)

 Incidentally, I’m reliably informed that the Freeport resident who’s been circulating this particular e-mail among his friends regularly peddles blatantly racist stuff about Obama.

Goldberg says Obama camp promotes birther controversy to make conservatives look bad

1 comment July 30th, 2009

 Mainstream-journalist-turned-wingnut Bernard Goldberg (above) has an INTERESTING THEORY regarding the birther issue:

 ”[T]he Chicago Mafia inside the White House want to keep this crazy controversy going. Because the longer it goes, the better the chance that they will conflate the crazy right-wing fringe with regular conservatives and regular Republicans.”

 Actually, that theory is not too far from the truth. We libs have, in fact,  been riding the birther thing with great enthusiasm. But the net effect has been to separate respectable conservatives from the lunatic fringe. Republicans who can walk upright and breathe through their noses have been disavowing the birther crap all over the place.

 And if there’s an ancillary political benefit for us libs in driving a wedge between the wings of the GOP — well, so much the better.

 Hey, as someone once observed, politics ain’t beanbag.

Why don’t Repubs try to repeal Medicare?

14 comments July 30th, 2009

 Back in the 1960s, conservative Republicans of that time WARNED that Medicare was a socialistic scheme that would ruin America — the same kind of alarmism that their ideological progeny are employing today in arguing against health-care reform.

 So, a question arises: If those right-wingers of the ’60s were correct, why don’t today’s Republicans seek to repeal Medicare?

 Answer: Such a move would be political suicide. Americans don’t want Medicare repealed.

 In other words, those right-wingers of yore were wrong. And their ideological descendants of today are wrong, too.

 POSTSCRIPT: Silly as it seems, some folks apparently don’t understand that Medicare is a government program.

 Witness the guy at a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina who admonished his representative in Congress to  “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” (Read about it HERE.)

 Oh, and then there was the time nine years ago when George W. Bush, while campaigning for president, warned against Democrats who “want the federal government controlling the Social Security like it’s some sort of federal program.” (Read about it HERE.)

 UPDATE: Nate Silver has a FEW THOUGHTS of his own regarding Medicare and health-care reform, including this observation:

To compare the President’s current reform efforts to Medicare is for all intents and purposes a Democratic talking point. That Republicans saw fit to include it in what was surely supposed to be a boffo editorial outlining their new plan suggests that they may talk their way out of stopping health care reform yet.