Category Archives: White House

If things were reversed, would Katrina have been Bush’s Gulf oil spill?

As I see it, and I am interested in hearing other’s takes, the answer is a clear “no.” If Bush had succeeded Obama, instead of the other way around, and Katrina had occurred after the oil spill, there is simply no way that we would be screaming at Bush to stop the hurricane.

Because that is essentially what we want Obama to do. We want Obama to raise his staff and stop the damn hurricane. Perhaps we have forgotten that the tragedy of governmental incompetence during Katrina was not related to the government’s inability to halt a natural disaster, something we clearly should not expect of our elected officials, but rather to their total inability to handle the clean-up, the humanitarian crisis, etc. With the oil spill not yet plugged, Obama’s part in this hasn’t even really started yet.

And that’s the problem. It is literally unfathomable to a very large part of the country, many of whom are generally quite cynical, that a company of the size and stature of BP could a) have allowed this to happen in the first place thanks to total negligence, or b) that they could begin such a risky undertaking without having a legitimate plan for how to stop a leak if one started. Clearly corporations lie, cheat, and steal, but those are the banks on Wall Street, not the big companies that provide thousands of jobs across the country. Thus, though it is undoubtedly a tragedy caused by BP (but perhaps not one that is their fault, per se), it is clearly the government’s fault that this is happening. For some reason. Bottom line: these companies are perfectly capable of regulating themselves, thank you very much, but the fact that the government regulations I didn’t want didn’t keep this from happening is just appalling. You need to do more (do less)!

And Obama’s inability to figure out how to stop an oil spill (something which his law degree clearly qualifies him to do) is more proof that he is a presidential failure. That, plus the failure to pass healthcare reform, a jobs bill, a stimulus package, financial reform, etc. Oh, wait…

(You can hate his policies and pray for repeal, but recognize a winner when you see one. This is the approach I’ve had to take with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers…In fact, in many ways Obama is to the presidency what Bryant is to pro basketball. Even when Bryant, who I admittedly dislike in a surprisingly visceral way, scores 40 points and puts on an absurd performance, everybody derides it as selfish playing and any other number of negative descriptions. One has to wonder, were Kobe to have a personality transplant and finally look like he actually wants to be on the court and isn’t, in fact, looking to strangle his own teammates, would we all revere him as a virtual god instead of somebody who is unfortunately fantastic?)

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Media, Politics, Television, White House

The Flotilla and Helen Thomas

I have more to say about the Israeli flotilla debacle than can be written in a mere blog post. Suffice it, I am of the belief that Israel would be best served by ending the blockade, but recognize that this is an incredibly important issue on which both sides have truly valid and compelling points. I also believe that Israel had every right to board the Mavi Marmara under international law (San Remo) in order to maintain an internationally sanctioned blockade. Now, if the issue is that the international community now believes that blockades are an inevitable means of collective punishment that should not be a legal tool of war, then that is something that the international community should address, but to act like this blockade was a rogue move by a crazy nation is frankly factually disingenuous.

Israel has spent the last 20 years learning how to rule, and it is now past time to learn how to govern, but let’s be perfectly clear: Turkey’s absurd behavior (which really has much more to do with global positioning than it ever had to do with Israel), the apparent sudden incompetencies of the Israeli navy, and the deaths of the activists that all contributed to this event can be decried (and they should be!) while simultaneously supporting both Israel and its right to keep its citizens safe and an end to the Gaza blockade and better, legitimate lives for its citizens. Free Gaza does not have a monopoly on this idea by a long shot, though many of the rest of us are not especially supportive (understatement of the year) of Gaza’s incredibly repressive government, also known as Hamas. But then, there are very few repressive governments I support when their people are the ones who are suffering…

On the other hand, liberals who rally to the pro-Palestinian side need to be careful about the way in which they talk about Israel. Not the “Israel is an apartheid state,” “Israelis are Nazis,” etc crap, but this sense that often comes across that they perceive Israel as something temporary and experimental and thus able to be dismantled if necessary. Let me be perfectly clear, Israel is not going anywhere. Period. It’s kind of like how the LGBT community says “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Israel is a sovereign nation with nuclear weapons, not the Tea Party…

Of course, this is an incredibly contentious and emotional issue on both sides, and a brief comment does not even count as scratching the surface. In fact, it is so emotional that the Israeli-Palestinian issue makes some liberals look like Deep South Republicans of the 1950s-60s. No, really:

Apparently this is how Helen Thomas chose to help celebrate Jewish Heritage Week at the White House. In some ways, I’m still so shocked that anybody would say this (and on camera!) that I have yet to decide how I personally believe this should be responded to. Should Thomas  be fired? Moved to the back of the room? In the same way that elephant ivory from Africa is now essentially valueless thanks to its enforced illegality and the lack of any kind of even underground market, so too had I imagined blatantly racist or anti-semitic comments by members of the press now existed. Or at least when it came to highly respected members of the press.

Clearly, I was wrong.

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics, White House

Goldman Sachs and the politics of financial reform

Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep so I ended up mulling over the fraud case against Goldman Sachs (GS) for about 3 hours. Here’s my (totally uneducated) take:

Bottom line, this case against GS is not a gamble by the government. The administration wants financial reform much more than they want to “get” GS, but because midterm elections are around the corner and Democrats are already expected to lose a fair number of Congressional seats, the administration really can’t afford to have Republicans running around telling people that financial reform is Maoism in disguise (or in the best interest of the banks…with the Republicans still auditioning opposition strategies, it’s like amateur hour on the Hill). So. What is to be done? How do you pass real financial reform in this political climate without more than a mock brawl? Apparently if you’re particularly savvy, you bring a charge against the most loathed bank on Wall Street based on a disclosure issue that may not actually be technically illegal, but that very clearly sounds like something that should be. The ambiguity of the law is the SEC/administration’s ace in the hole. Either GS settles or loses and financial reform happens because the issue is very clearly illustrated for the public by one great example, or GS wins and financial reform happens because the entire country is incensed that whatever GS did isn’t illegal. Either way, financial reform passes.

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Election 2010, Media, Politics, White House

Jon Stewart Discusses Health Care Reform- Pt. 1

Republican scare tactics filter into the real debate on health care reform, taking their toll on President Obama’s sales pitch.

HILARIOUS!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Jon Stewart Discusses Health Care Ref…“, posted with vodpod

1 Comment

Filed under Birthers, Congress, Health Care, Media, Politics, Television, White House

Rachel Maddow Discusses the Deathers and Other Anti-Reform Conspiracies

Here’s what I now know about the proposed government takeover of health care:

1. The government wants to kill my grandparents. They will be “put on a list and forced to die early”….by being sent out into the ocean on ice floes…

2. The government is going to use the takeover of health care to promote abortion. The more abortions people have the more the government benefits because (fill in the blank).

Did I miss anything?

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Rachel Maddow Discusses the Birthers …“, posted with vodpod

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Deathers, Health Care, Media, Politics, White House

Stephen Colbert Takes a Tough Look at Racism (and explains why nobody wants to talk about it)

 

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Stephen Colbert Takes a Tough Look at…“, posted with vodpod

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics, White House

National Review Online Editorial Board Debunks the Birther Claims

This article by the editorial board at NRO is absolutely worth reading. It simultaneously bashes Obama and liberals while doing a great job of trying to put the Birthers to rest. NRO has spoken: Obama was born in the U.S.A.

Pres. Barack Obama has a birthday coming up, a week from Tuesday. We hope he takes the day off—or even the whole week, the briefest of respites from his busy schedule of truncating our liberties while exhausting both the public coffers and our patience. The president’s birthday comes to mind because we recently spent some time looking at a photograph of his birth certificate, being held by Joe Miller of Factcheck.org, who took the time to examine it. President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641. Baby Barack’s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded by the Honolulu Star, as well as the Honolulu Advertiser, each of which published birth announcements for young Mr. Obama.

Much foolishness has become attached to the question of President Obama’s place of birth, and a few misguided souls among the Right have indulged it. The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. We are used to seeing conspiracy theories from the Left, for instance among the one in three Democrats who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted with the foreknowledge of the Bush administration. We’ve seen everything under the sun blamed on Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and Rosie O’Donnell has given us much mirth with her metallurgical expertise, while Andrew Sullivan has beclowned himself and tarnished the good name of The Atlantic with his investigation into the “real” parentage of Trig Palin. Most notable, the Iraq War summoned the craziness in a big way, and there are those who still shudder over their espressos at the mention of the Carlyle Group. And there is a fair amount of crossover between those fixated on Obama’s birth certificate and the 9/11 “truthers” — lawyer Phil Berg, for instance, is a player in both worlds. There is nothing that President Obama’s coterie would enjoy more than to see the responsible Right become a mirror image of the loopy Left circa 2003. 

Read the rest here.

Leave a comment

Filed under Birthers, Congress, Deathers, Health Care, Media, Morning Reads, Politics, Television, White House

Glenn Beck: Obama a “Racist”

I find this completely astounding. I don’t even know where to begin…

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “POLITICO 44 | A Living Diary of the O…“, posted with vodpod

1 Comment

Filed under Media, Politics, Television, White House

GOP: The First 50 Days

Craig Crawford over at CQ’s Trail Mix put together this great video highlighting the GOP’s first 50 days of the new political term:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

 

more about “GOP: The First 50 Days“, posted with vodpod

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Media, Politics, Television, White House

Jack Cafferty Woos Michelle Obama Via Web Blog

Jack "The Jacktor" Cafferty

Jack "The Jacktor" Cafferty

Jack Cafferty seems like a pretty dry fellow. His commentaries are generally fairly interesting but always slightly “Droopy the Dog,” which isn’t necessarily bad when you have Campbell Brown running around. But his piece today entitled “My Crush on Michelle Obama” is just plain bizarre. Has he been exposed to the same Love Potion no. 9 as Chris Matthews? WARNING: the essay, nay, poetry below is practically Shakespearian and may thus make children and small animals swoon:

I think I am developing a crush on America’s first lady. Michelle Obama is more compelling than her husband. He’s good, but she’s utterly fascinating.

Mrs. Obama has blown away the stale air in a White House musty from eight years of the Bushes. It’s like the sun came out and a fresh spring breeze began wafting through the open windows.

It’s the people’s house, and Michelle Obama totally gets it. So much so that she has taken to inviting people in from the streets to see her home. Nice touch — one completely lacking in her recent predecessors.

Watch her when she visits a local school and you see the warmth and affection she instantly triggers in people. Kids are pretty much totally honest with very good BS-detectors. If they sense you’re a phony, forget it. But around the first lady, they want to hug her and laugh with her and tell her stories.

You can see the same qualities these kids recognize in her daughters. She is the consummate mother as evidenced by the poised, polite smiling children she and her husband are raising. I have four daughters, and trust me — they don’t turn out like the Obama children without devoted parents.

New to the Washington neighborhood, Michelle Obama has taken it upon herself to go around and introduce herself to the people in the various agencies of government. When’s the last time a first lady did that? I don’t ever remember it before. And during her visits she listens rather than lectures. And people respond to her.

She was raised on the south side of Chicago by blue-collar parents. She went to Princeton University, and Harvard Law School. But in many ways she’s still a kid from the south side of Chicago, and that’s what makes her special. She knows exactly who she is.

The Obamas bring a humanity and humility to their tasks which sets them far apart from the run-of-the mill phonies who populate Washington. It’s exactly what the doctor ordered for this wounded nation.

Michelle Obama’s unassuming, but dead-on, sense of style has the fashion press gushing all over itself.

Her arms are becoming the stuff of legend. Who appears sleeveless on the cover of Vogue, let alone in front of a joint session of Congress while her husband delivers one of the most important speeches of his life? And the reviews were rave.

Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour magazine gushed, “Oh my god! The first lady has bare arms in Congress in February at night!” If she keeps it up, Seventh Avenue will soon stop making women’s clothes with sleeves.

Ok, I admit it. When it comes to the first lady, I’m smitten.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jack Cafferty.

Her arms? Really? You, Jack Cafferty, think that’s newsworthy?


Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics, Television, White House

What Happened to Tom DeLay? (Or Have I Been Missing Out On Crazy For Years?)

A couple of days ago I happened to catch Harold Ford Jr. and Tom DeLay on Hardball discussing President Obama’s un-SOTU and Governor Bobby Jindal’s response. I expected the discourse to be a bit nasty with the likes of Chris Matthews (Obama Fan Club Treasurer) and The Hammer on the same show, but what I was not ready for was the sheer absurdity that was Tom DeLay. I admit that I thought a lot of what he had to say was a bit nutso and meant simply to garner attention, but the manner in which The Hammer addressed Harold Ford Jr. and Chris Matthews was, as we say in North Carolina, CRAZY, bless his heart. I was sort of expecting DeLay to start referring to the ever-eloquent Harold Ford Jr. as “boy.” Yikes. 

So for your viewing pleasure:

Hardball: Are Republicans the party of no?.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Media, Politics, Television, White House

Romney-Palin-Huckabee: Now THAT’S the ticket!

Tom Bevan over at RealClearPolitics reports:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted on February 18-19 among 429 Republicans shows Sarah Palin with a slight edge over Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney as the preferred GOP nominee for 2012:

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin 29%
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee 26%
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney 21%
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal 9%
Someone else 10%
None/no one 4%
No opinion 2%

Republican men split more or less evenly among the top three choices, but Palin has a double digit lead among GOP women, winning 32% to Huckabee’s 22% and 20% for Romney.

Let’s get in the time machine and take a little trip back, back, back:

Unmonitored Volcano

Unmonitored Volcano

PALIN/UNMONITORED VOLCANO 2012!

1 Comment

Filed under Media, Politics, White House

It’s Official!

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has FINALLY been tapped for HHS Secretary. Of course, now we’re unlikely to see a Senator Sebelius anytime soon, but one has to make sacrifices, I suppose…Rumor had it that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), now well known for his frienemy-esque relationship with former Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, was being considered for the position but good authority has it that he did not think giving up his Senate seat was worth it. The Modern Major General absolutely concurs but wishes Governor Sebelius the best of luck!

Leave a comment

Filed under Politics, White House

Welcome to The Modern Major General!

This is the latest incarnation of my ever-moving blog/website about politics and the odd world news or entertainment item. This is obviously a work in progress, so please bear with me as I get all of the bugs worked out.

In the meantime, I see CPAC but where’s Big Dub? WATCH HERE  (Thanks Politico)

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Media, Politics, White House

Pelosi Vs Biden: The Official Clap-Off (VIDEO)

Pelosi Vs Biden: The Official Clap-Off (VIDEO)

Here’s just a small morsel of political goodness. Thanks HuffPo for this fantastic montage from the un-SOTU. Nancy Pelosi is more excited than anybody has ever been. Ever.

Though…she should watch out for Carl Levin. He looked rather sprightly that night during the standing ovations…

Posted using ShareThis

Leave a comment

Filed under Congress, Media, Politics, Television, White House