Guess What the President DIDN'T Say?

Honest to God, I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or get insanely angry at the week-long outcry over President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren earlier today. The President of the United States of America wants to give a pep talk to returning students at the start of the school year, and some idiots have a problem with that?? Hmmm, could it be that it's not just, as they claim, their fears of what he might say, but of who's saying it?

<SNARK>

Bill in Portland Maine @ DailyKos:

[...]some parents, sensing something was amiss, kept their children away from this president and his "innocent message" on that day. No, they hadn't bothered to read his words. They didn’t have to. They were protecting their brood out of raw animal instinct; the way a mother sea turtle gathers its younglings under her shell and pre-emptively sets up a mortar emplacement when she senses danger.

Despite the mockery towards them---the taunts and eye-rolls and grocery baggers deliberately putting gallon milk jugs on top of their egg cartons at Piggly Wiggly---these moms and dads stuck to their guns and kept their children home. And they turned out to be wise indeed. For the president did have a nefarious trick up his sleeve, which he revealed suddenly and without warning at the end of his speech:

So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Now, when I snap my fingers, you will immediately begin operation America Belongs To Kenya Now, Beeyotch. Activation code: six six niner delta roger omega fluffy tango niner eighter later gator. [SNAP!] Go! Go!! Go!!!

</SNARK>

I know some of the wingnuts were expecting Pres. Obama to say exactly that, but they were disappointed. Instead, he told kids to work hard, be responsible, stay in school, be persistent, work hard to succeed, and not grow up to be ignorant, inbred mouthbreathers like some of their parents. But, once again demonstrating that a license is not required to breed, these morons made their children stay at home, and denied them the inspiring opportunity to hear the President address them directly.

We can also thank FAUX News for blowing this issue up far out of proportion, as they have so many other worries of the ignorant and small-minded this summer.

The Rude Pundit:

But the parents are the best. Between the weeping tools (watch the video and see if you can pinpoint the moment the husband realizes what a horrible mistake he's made) and the almost-open racists (like the woman on Fox "news" who admitted that she just "trusted" Ronald Reagan more and would have let her daughter hear him speak), it was a parade of ignorance expressed as reasonable discourse, like listening to a particularly talented chimp try to jabber a manifesto of shit throwing.

C'mon, this is the Leader of the Free World we're talking about! Whatever happened to that line about "if you don't support the President, you're a traitor"? Oh, yeah, that only applied to old, neoconservative white men. If instead the President doesn't look like the guys on the currency, he's a secret Muslim Kenyan socialist fascist racist dictator, you're suddenly upset about a war that started eight years ago, and they want their America back--and we're not talking about Native Americans here, either.

Free-Spirited Ruminations:

When I was a kid I would have been really honored that the President of the United States would even think to speak to me and other kids. I'm getting really irritated at the fact that no matter what our president does, he is disrespected and looked at in a negative light by these people. Education is important for all kids' futures. To have the leader of our country emphasize that can only be good - and this is true whether you agree with him on other subjects or not.

Let's hope that those kids who were kept home today manage to see and hear the president online tonight or over the next few days, despite what their wingnut parents might want. And I'd make a bet that those parents won't even know how to stop them from doing that on the intertubes!


EXTRA CREDIT:

In 1988, what President did use his address to schoolchildren to promote "his anti-government, low-tax ideology, adding that he had supported 'Negro' educational institutions"?

Labor Day Edition: The Party of No

Watch this video, and then try to tell me that the Repugs are serious about "bipartisan health care reform":

80% of the American people support a public option, yet these fatcats--every one of whom is currently receiving government-run health care--is against a public option. The final bill will have a public option, or there will be no bill--and thank the spirits that Nancy Pelosi, Keith Ellison, and others will see to that. The Repugs don't care about reform, they want to kill the idea of health care reform, just like they did in 1994. They want to see Pres. Obama fail, and the Democrats lose their majority. They don't care about reform, about the will of the electorate, about choosing the morally or fiscally responsible thing to do; they don't care about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or the general welfare of the people. They don't care about anything except power.

A pox on all their houses. 

And hey, Pawlenty: if you want to run for president so badly, give up your day job. You suck at it, anyway.

Give 'Em Hell, Al!

Appearing the Minnesota State Fair, Sen. Al Franken shows how to deal with idiot teabaggers:



Now that's how you deal with these fools--dazzle 'em with the facts, display far-ranging powers of logical reasoning, and don't give in to their delusions. Franken isn't just a "comedian," as the MSM would have you believe--he's a Harvard-educated policy wonk with several best-selling books to his credit. His grasp of the subject and breadth of knowledge is impressive, and far surpasses that last guy (what was his name, anyway? Coleslaw? Headcold? something like that...), who was a joke. That's my senator!

Another First in the Annals of African-American History

TPM:

Barack Obama (is) definitely the first black man to get attacked by the right for telling kids to work hard and stay in school.

I swear, if he gave away free ice cream to everyone in the country, the wingnuts would find fault with that, too.

Bachmann to Wingnuts: Slit Our Wrists, Be "Blood Brothers" Against Health Care Reform, Or Michelle Bachmann Is a Stupid & Crazy Bitch, Part 1,981

The wingnuttiest wingnut of them all rides again! Congresscritter Michele Bachmann (R-Cloud Cuckoo Land) was in Colorado yesterday telling fellow reactionaries to give their all to oppose health care reform:

"What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing," said Bachmann. "This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass."

[...]Bachmann also denounced a system under which some Americans pay half their income in taxes: "It's nothing more than slavery."

Notwithstanding the offensiveness of Bachmann's comparison of tax rates on the richest Americans with slavery, I have only this to say about her "slit our wrists" comment:

PLEASE!--I'll even lend you a knife.

Thanks also to TPM.

Exposing the Health Care Reform Lies

Seems that there's a really crazy email going around conservative circles that's full of lies about health care reform. MNPublius's Jeff Rosenberg summarizes the debunking of its lies:

FactCheck.org has been really busy poring through conservative claims about the house health care bill, particularly a chain email claiming to summarize the bill:

The chain e-mail purports to give “a few highlights” from the first half of the bill, but the list of 48 assertions is filled with falsehoods, exaggerations and misinterpretations. We examined each of the e-mail’s claims, finding 26 of them to be false and 18 to be misleading, only partly true or half true. Only four are accurate.

Conservatives keep coming back to the same old bogeymen, even when they don’t make sense:

[The chain email] claims that a section about “Community-based Home Medical Services” means “more payoffs for ACORN.” ACORN does not provide medical home services. The e-mail interprets any reference to the word “community” to be some kind of payoff for ACORN. That’s nonsense.

Damn, the lies just keep on comin'. The Republicans just don't want health care reform to happen, period; seeing it (rightly) as the start of another forty-year stretch of Democratic ascendency, just like what happened after FDR pushed through Social Security. I say it's time to give up on "bipartisanship" and forge ahead with a Democrats-only health care bill. The Repugs will never agree to anything on this issue, so let's tell those Congressional wingnuts to go straight to hell, and pass real health care reform with a public option! So what if they bitch & moan, they all have that "socialist" federal health care coverage for themselves, anyway.

Ted Kennedy Has Died

The Boston Globe:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who carried aloft the torch of a Massachusetts dynasty and a liberal ideology to the citadel of Senate power, but whose personal and political failings may have prevented him from realizing the ultimate prize of the presidency, died at his home in Hyannis Port last night after a battle with brain cancer. He was 77.

The family's statement:

“Edward M. Kennedy – the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply – died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port. We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever. We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all. He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it. He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it’s hard to imagine any of them without him.”

MeteorBlades at DailyKos:

Kennedy was a liberal fighter in the old mold. The plethora of legislation he helped pass made life better for children, for the poor, for African-Americans, for immigrants, for workers. He didn't just give lip service to the rights of workers, he stood in their corner. He fought for access to health care and for quality education. And he opposed the likes of Robert Bork and others who wanted to trash the gains American women, workers and minorities had made over the years.

He will be sorely missed.

Ted Kennedy lived through Shakespearean extremes of tragedy and triumph that would have crushed anyone, yet he never forgot the less-fortunate among us. He left this world a better place; who can ask for more from one life?



The New York Times:

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

In putting together this post, I've noticed that the viciousness and hatred the wingnuts have for Ted Kennedy has already begun to boil over. As always, their hatred overwhelms any shred of human decency that they may have left within them. But you know what?--to hell with them. The last prince has died....but "the dream lives on."