Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Reference to sexual violence.]

"Obama can sit there and let all the [Bush tax cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he's gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He's made no effort to work with Congress."—Grover Norquist.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By way of reminder, Grover Norquist is the fuckbrain who once famously said: "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."

Now he's complaining that BARACK OBAMA isn't bipartisan enough. LOL. Okay, player.

[H/T to Mustang Bobby.]

So the President Gave a Speech Last Night...

And I really hoped you watched it, because, if you didn't, you sure missed some exciting stuff! Like Speaker of the House John Boehner projectile vomiting chunks of half-digested star-spangled bald eagle at the OUTRAGEOUS suggestion that "shared responsibility" is an American Value. It was quite an alarming night.


Ha ha just kidding. It was a very routine evening of our Democratic president sounding more encouragingly populist than he'll ever actually be, Republicans being stony-faced monuments of contempt at the mere mention of raising taxes or federal spending to generate jobs for the working classes, and heaps of despair slowly engulfing every vaguely progressive viewer at the thought that even the President's discouragingly milquetoast proposals will be obstructed by the Republicans.

Yay for America!

The text of the President's address is here, and the text of my garbage governor's rebuttal address is here. Below are my Executive Summaries.

President Barack Obama: I killed Osama bin Laden! The American Dream is so dead, but I'm going to spend a long time now pretending with a straight face that I can revive it, if only the Republicans will behave like grown-ups and cooperate, because the one dream that ISN'T dead is my pipe-dream about radically changing the way our profoundly broken government works by scolding Congressional Republicans as if they have any shame, integrity, or decency. Taxes. Outsourcing. We'll stop outsourcing with MORE CORPORATE TAX CUTS! We'll fix unemployment with MORE EDUCATION, because the problem is definitely a lack of education and not that jobs which paid livable wages have been decimated by outsourcing, deregulation, the erosion of workers' rights to enable exploitation of skeleton staffs, and Wal-Mart running out of towns all over the nation any employer in manufacturing, production, distribution, or retail that prioritized community sustainability over ginormous profits. Teachers, amirite? Boots on the border! Clean energy. Let's do some nation-building at home. No more irresponsible homeowners! Oh, and irresponsible lenders, but DEFINITELY irresponsible homeowners. Freedom. I killed Osama bin Laden! Jesus.

Executive Notes: Barack Obama is definitely running for president! He also definitely does not think that a record number of restrictions on reproductive rights affecting more than half the nation's population is worthy of mention in a STATE OF THE UNION address. Does President Obama know that women are part of the union? I'm pretty sure he does, because I distinctly remember him noting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is "a woman who ran against me for President." (GOOD DESCRIPTION!) See also: End Summary.

Governor Mitch Daniels: Welp, at least President Obama hasn't abandoned his wife and kids! I'm racist! President Obama is divisive! I am such a liar! "The plain truth" is something I would not recognize if knocked on my door begging to be privatized. Everything President Obama does is stupid, and I am obviously a genius because JUST LOOK AT INDIANA. President Obama stinks the end. Jesus.

Executive Notes: Mitch Daniels is a jerk.

I think Herman Cain also gave a rebuttal? On behalf of the Tea Party? Ha ha they are not a real party. And unlike CNN et. al., I'm not going to pretend like they are.

In Summation: It is very obvious, and disappointing, that the President still has not learned that Republicans cannot be reasoned with and convinced to do what is right for the country; he still believes they care about the quality of life of this nation's people (men) and just have good faith differences of opinion about how to achieve that goal. This is not the case. They exist only in service to profit-making corporations, and the nation's people (men) only matter insofar as they can be exploited to do the work from which their employers can reap profit.

A memo from the last election was revealed this week, in which Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod wrote of then-opponent Hillary Clinton: "She embodies trench warfare vs Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it."

That was, of course, meant as A Terrible Thing, rather than evidence of her understanding a reality about the US government that its current president still has yet to embrace three years into his first term.

I don't know if Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than Barack Obama is, but, in some alternate universe where she is, it's probably because she is "consumed with beating them" instead of being consumed with a consensus that will never, ever, be built.

I can't be funny about this: If President Barack Obama is reelected, he has to give up the ghost of bipartisan dreams. He must instead consume himself with beating them, because this country, the people of this country, need him desperately to stop negotiating and start winning.

Quote of the Day

"Tonight, the President will do what he does best. He will give a nice speech with a lot of memorable phrases. ... We'll also be treated to more divisive rhetoric from a desperate campaigner-in-chief. It's shameful for a President to use the State of the Union to divide our nation."—GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who definitely did not pay taxes on a crystal ball last year, so I guess he's just psychic.

I myself am not able to predict the future, but I'm nonetheless going to go out on a limb and assert that Romney's prognosticator is broken.

Unless, of course, President Obama, who can hardly be said to be desperately campaigning, if the words "desperate" and "campaigning" still mean the same things they meant yesterday, breaks wildly from tradition and replaces his (frankly rather tiresome) rhetoric of unity, bipartisanship, and transcending ideological differences with "divisive rhetoric...to divide our nation."

It could happen!

Spoiler Alert: It won't.

US Politics Rulezzz

Headline of the Day: "Gingrich: Mitt Romney is a liar." LOL! Perfect. But wait—it gets even better!

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose support in Iowa has withered after riding on top of the polls, on Tuesday called former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney a liar who would mislead the American people if elected to the White House - but added that he would still vote for him if Romney won the GOP nomination.

On CBS' "The Early Show" this morning, CBS News chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell asked Gingrich about comments he had previously made about his chief rival and the Super PAC whose negative campaign ads have hurt his campaign: "You scolded Mitt Romney, his friends who are running this Super PAC that has funded that, and you said of Mitt Romney, 'Someone who will lie to you to get to be president will lie to you when they are president. I have to ask you, are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?"

"Yes," Gingrich replied.

"You're calling Mitt Romney a liar?"

"Well, you seem shocked by it!" said Gingrich. "This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC - it's baloney. He's not telling the American people the truth.

"It's just like this pretense that he's a conservative. Here's a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in 'Romneycare,' puts Planned Parenthood in 'Romneycare,' raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he's magically a conservative.

"I just think he ought to be honest with the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points, and I think he ought to be candid. I don't think he's being candid and that will be a major issue. From here on out from the rest of this campaign, the country has to decide: Do you really want a Massachusetts moderate who won't level with you to run against Barack Obama who, frankly, will just tear him apart? He will not survive against the Obama machine."

Yet, when pressed by CBS News' chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer on whether he could support Romney if the "Massachusetts moderate" became the Republican nominee, Gingrich replied, "Sure."

LOL FOREVERRRRRRR!!!

"Mitt Romney is a snake-oil salesman. I mean, dude's a shady operator, a deceitful double-crosser, a villainous hoodwinker, a master of chicanery, and a flimflam aficionado of the highest order. I wouldn't trust that prevaricating fabulist any further than my butler could throw him! What I'm saying is that the guy is real lying sack of shit. GOD I HATE HIM. I am also endorsing him for President of the United States of America. I am Newt Gingrich and I approve this message."

Gingrich explained that he would support any Republican candidate "because I think Barack Obama is tearing the country apart."

It's a fair point. If there's one criticism I have of Obama, it's that he should really try reaching across the aisle a little bit more and stop alienating the Republicans with his rigid adherence to leftist principles.

By the way, I love the breathless coverage of Newt Gingrich stating the demonstrable fact that Mitt Romney is a liar. Congratulations on your continued dominance in the field of manufactured controversy, US Media.