News Roundup for 12/29/10

Pres. Obama to GOP: "You suck"

-Headline of the day-
"Obama calls out GOP hypocrisy for going to 'ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against.'"

President Obama was invited to speak at the House GOP retreat today and he brought news cameras with him. "Hahaha!" thought Republicans. "What a libtard! He's gonna sit up there in front of us and squirm on national teevee!" So they agreed to have the whole thing sent out to cable news.

"Republicans immediately agreed to the request," Politico reports, "but they may be regretting it now."

See, the president didn't do any squirming. What he did was tell them the truth, which made Republicans squirm.

"And then the last portion of [the stimulus package] was infrastructure," Obama told them, "which as I’ve said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against. Now I say all this not to re-litigate past, but it’s simply to state that the component parts of the stimulus are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do -- rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in."

Yeah, see it kind of undercuts your argument that the stimulus was runaway communism when you're out there calling stimulus projects the best thing ever and trying to take all the credit for them. Think Progress calls this "hypocrisy," but I don't think that really captures the dishonesty and the attempt to hoodwink the voters in your districts. Let's just go ahead and call it lying.

Anyhoo, you can bet the GOPers in attendance didn't like that and no two ways about it. But what are they going to do? This whole fiasco was their idea. They had to sit there and take it, for the most part. He also told them that they were making bipartisanship impossible, by digging the grave for it as a rhetorical device. "You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion," he said. "Because, what you’ve been telling your constituents is: this guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America." Seriously, where do you go from there?

MSNBC's Luke Russert got a chance to talk to an unnamed Republican, who told him they'd fucked up big time; "It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that."

Yeah, that was your big mistake. Not all the BS the president called you on. If you hadn't been so dishonest and hypocritical and just plain dickish about everything, those cameras would've done nothing to hurt you. So the big screw up was the cameras, not the dishonesty and the hypocrisy and the dickishness.

Way to get the moral of this story, Aesop. (Think Progress)


-OBAMA CAVES ON NYC TERROR TRIAL!!!!!!!!!!!-
You may have heard that the Obama administration has given up on trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorist suspects in the City of New York. In general, the stories go this way; the president realizes that Republicans are right -- terrorists are magical beings with laserbeam eyes and the ability to kill anyone who so much as looks at them -- so he's going to hold the trial on the moon or someplace. You know, where it's safe. Under the ocean maybe. Using robot judges. Who knows?

Anyway, it's the opinion of a lot of not very observant people that a trial in NYC would make the city a terrorist target. These people apparently are unaware of 9/11, when the city became a terrorist target. Maybe they slept through it.

The problem with this whole story is that it isn't exactly true. "Conversations have occurred within the administration to discuss contingency options should the possibility of a trial in Lower Manhattan be foreclosed upon by Congress or locally," an administration official says. So, the White House isn't considering moving the trial, they just don't want to get caught with their pants down if the panicky grandmas who are against it get their way. It's called "being prepared."

So stop celebrating. This is no time for dry pants and courage. It's time to heed the Republicans, crawl under your bed, and cry. (Huffington Post)


-Bonus HotD-
"Palin On Whether She Will Still Speak At 'Scammy' Tea Party Convention: 'You Betcha!'"

Boy howdy yes she will. That $115,000 speaking fee is a whole lotta money there, doncha know? (Think Progress)