Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[hedge]

I'd like to pick up a seat and pummel you with it...

[Professor Tiger]

So the Dem's have a shot at KS? I guess that (and maybe GA) will be their KY jelly for this election.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The tables will turn in 2016. That year there will be a lot of R Senators in purple/blue states that will be up for reelection...in a Presidential year where the Dem (Hillary?) is likely to be the favorite and have a down ticket bounce.

[sardis]

Especially when all those illegals are doled out voter cards.

[10ac]

EFZ.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I wonder how it is that Republicans think voter fraud is rampant? Probably because they listen to a certain news channel.

http://www.9news.com/story/news/politic ... /17749603/

[Toemeesleather]

Too funny....the MSM slurps the Obola knob for 5 years, gives him a pass on every lie/prevarication and just now starts complaining??? Too late, karma wins.


At some point, a compendium of condemnations against the Obama administration’s record of media transparency (actually, opacity) must be assembled. Notable quotations in this vein come from former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”

USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to this set of knives. Speaking Saturday at a White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) seminar, Page called the current White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history, a clear reference to the Obama administration’s leak investigations and its naming of Fox News’s James Rosen as a possible “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act.

[Toemeesleather]

[bluetick]

The heart of toe's article is the fact that only still photographers were given access to the Obama-Pham meeting at the White House (Pham is the recovered nurse who had Ebola). The author interviewed a USAToday reporter, in a snit because she and the usual media circus wasn't accommodated to her satisfaction. Boo hoo. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/eri ... n-history/

More from this whine-fest (npi) - check out this 'major transgression' by the WH:

Bloomberg White House correspondent Margaret Talev noted how the White House stopped giving details on the fine wines served at state dinners, an opaque measure that she exposed in this story. In pursuing the piece, said Talev, she got the runaround from White House press officials, making her "so mad at them." Over the course of a few weeks, she had to become, in essence, a wine correspondent.

LOL good find, toe

[sardis]

I'm sure that DSL and tick would not want to watch the Obama hit piece airing tonight on the ultra right wing Public Broadcast Service.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-white-house ... 53988.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

I'm sure that DSL and tick would not want to watch the Obama hit piece airing tonight on the ultra right wing Public Broadcast Service.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-white-house ... 53988.html

They did do very little. Nothing to really deny there. Republicans wanted us to do something; they wanted us to flood the region with weapons

[bluetick]

I don't know what oprama was thinking when he invaded Iraq aka Pottery Barn in the first place. Bin Laden wasn't there, Al Qaeda wasn't there...but sure enough, we broke it, we bought it....we dismantled their army, then equipped and 'trained' a bunch of Nathan Lanes who run from their own shadow.

Oprama deserves scorn for all of that for sure. And if that region's armies, backed by the best air force in the known universe, can't hold up against an amateur gang of thugs then can we please elect another bush or maybe Ted Cruze in order to put things right over there?

[bluetick]

Not sure you can make the same claim with ISIS...has she been married 3 times?

[Toemeesleather]

I don't know what oprama was thinking when he invaded Iraq aka Pottery Barn in the first place. Bin Laden wasn't there, Al Qaeda wasn't there...but sure enough, we broke it, we bought it....we dismantled their army, then equipped and 'trained' a bunch of Nathan Lanes who run from their own shadow.

Oprama deserves scorn for all of that for sure. And if that region's armies, backed by the best air force in the known universe, can't hold up against an amateur gang of thugs then can we please elect another bush or maybe Ted Cruze in order to put things right over there?

Uber-piling on for unmaintained/decrepit levees and democratic mayor/gubner miscues come back and bite you on the ass, karma's a bitch!!111

[bluetick]

Uber-piling on for unmaintained/decrepit levees and democratic mayor/gubner miscues come back and bite you on the ass, karma's a bitch!!111

God help me, I deciphered that gibberish WAYYYY too quick.

[Toemeesleather]

Speaking of gibberish...

[Toemeesleather]

Krauthammer nails it.....


The president is upset. Very upset. Frustrated and angry. Seething about the government’s handling of Ebola, said the front-page headline in the New York Times last Saturday.

There’s only one problem with this pose, so obligingly transcribed for him by the Times. It’s his government. He’s president. Has been for six years. Yet Barack Obama reflexively insists on playing the shocked outsider when something goes wrong within his own administration.


The IRS? “It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” he thundered in May 2013 when the story broke of the agency targeting conservative groups. “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS.”

Except that within nine months, Obama had grown far more tolerant, retroactively declaring this to be a phony scandal without “a smidgen of corruption.”

Obamacare rollout? “Nobody is more frustrated by that than I am,” said an aggrieved Obama about the botching of the central element of his signature legislative achievement. “Nobody is madder than me.”

Veterans Affairs scandal? Presidential chief of staff Denis McDonough explained: “Secretary [Eric] Shinseki said yesterday . . . that he’s mad as hell and the president is madder than hell.” A nice touch — taking anger to the next level.

The president himself declared: “I will not stand for it.” But since the administration itself said the problem was long-standing, indeed predating Obama, this means he had stood for it for 5½ years.

The one scandal where you could credit the president with genuine anger and obliviousness involves the recent breaches of White House Secret Service protection. The Washington Post described the first lady and president as “angry and upset,” and no doubt they were. But the first Secret Service scandal — the hookers of Cartagena — evinced this from the president: “If it turns out that some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I’ll be angry.” An innovation in ostentatious distancing: future conditional indignation.

These shows of calculated outrage — and thus distance — are becoming not just unconvincing but unamusing. In our system, the president is both head of state and head of government. Obama seems to enjoy the monarchial parts, but when it comes to the actual business of running government, he shows little interest and even less aptitude.

His principal job, after all, is to administer the government and to get the right people to do it. (That’s why we typically send governors rather than senators to the White House.) That’s called management. Obama had never managed anything before running for the biggest management job on earth. It shows.

What makes the problem even more acute is that Obama represents not just the party of government but a grandiose conception of government as the prime mover of social and economic life. The very theme of his presidency is that government can and should be trusted to do great things. And therefore society should be prepared to hand over large chunks of its operations — from health care (one-sixth of the economy) to carbon regulation down to free contraception — to the central administrative state.

But this presupposes a Leviathan not just benign but competent. When it then turns out that vast, faceless bureaucracies tend to be incapable, inadequate, hopelessly inefficient and often corrupt, Obama resorts to expressions of angry surprise.

He must. He’s not simply protecting his own political fortunes. He’s trying to protect faith in the entitlement state by portraying its repeated failures as shocking anomalies.

Unfortunately, the pretense has the opposite effect. It produces not reassurance but anxiety. Obama’s determined detachment conveys the feeling that nobody’s home. No one leading. Not even from behind.

[bluetick]

Other things Krauthammer has "nailed":

• Clinton's intervention in Kosovo is a 'huge mistake' and will lead to 'an epic quagmire'
  Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction are our defense's number one priority
  (Most famous of all) Our conflict in Iraq will amount to a "Three Week War"
  Mitt Romney will win the presidency
  Global warming is junk science and based on Old Testament and Native American superstition

[hedge]

Technically, Mitt Romney could still win the presidency...

[bluetick]

U.S. Economy Up 3.5% in 3rd Quarter, Capping Best 6 Months in Over a Decade - Bloomberg

The economy in the U.S. expanded more than forecast in the third quarter, capping its strongest six months in more than a decade, as gains in government spending and a shrinking trade deficit made up for a slowdown in household purchases.

Gross domestic product grew at a 3.5 percent annualized rate in the three months ended September after a 4.6 percent gain in the second quarter, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. It marked the strongest back-to-back readings since the last six months of 2003. The median forecast of 87 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 3 percent advance.

Growing oil production is limiting imports and contributing to a pickup in manufacturing, allowing the economy to overcome slowing growth in overseas markets from Europe to China. At the same time, job gains and cheaper gasoline are giving American consumers the confidence and the means to spend, brightening the outlook for the holiday-shopping season and helping to explain why the Federal Reserve ended it bond-buying program yesterday.

"The fundamentals behind the consumer are improving as job growth gains traction," Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. in Detroit, said before the report. "And with consumer confidence rising, that is a clear indicator that consumers are feeling better about the economy."