Strange Fruit

Hats off to the late, great Doghouse Riley:  I heart Charles Pierce.

And also too.

Fired up and ready to go!

Having Obama campaigning for her should fry the brain pans of a whole lot of Republicans.

Obama, the Musical

Who knew John Kerry could spit like this?

Blue Monday, Barack Obama edition

Full eulogy here.

What is it about the guy?

From the start -- whether it was the economy, Republican intransigence and a preference for power over the country, or the Affordable Care Act -- Democrats allowed Republicans to frame the "debate."  I realize many people are still damaged by the catastrophe of 2008, but even as ACA has proven a success and the economy (on the brink of the abyss when Obama took office, you may remember) is on a halting but steady roll, Democrats continue to campaign in what can only be described as a cringe.

Maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t heard any of the Democratic Senate candidates talking about that, or putting it into their ads. None of them mention that the budget is in far better shape largely because taxes went up on the rich, and because health care costs are falling. It’s unusual even to hear that unemployment is down to 5.9 percent, or that 5.5 million jobs have been added since 2009, which is four times more than under all eight years of George W. Bush. (If there are candidates who are exceptions to this, let me know and I’ll mention them here.)

Mr. Obama, at least, talks about this all the time. “Deficits have come down,” he said today in Providence. “Health care inflation has come down. There’s almost no economic measure by which we haven’t made substantial progress over this period of time. We’re better off than we were.”

But those comments aren’t echoed, and it’s probably because those statistics are so closely associated with the White House line that the candidates don’t want to mention them, for fear of being linked to an unpopular figure. Many voters simply assume that Mr. Obama, or for that matter any Democrat, is incapable of handling the budget responsibly. A recent Gallup survey shows that voters give Republicans a 20-point advantage over Democrats in dealing with the deficit, even though it was President Bush who ran up the deficit sky-high through tax cuts and wars, and President Obama who brought it back under control.

As the columnist Jill Lawrence wrote yesterday in The National Memo, it’s hard to expect the public to be impressed by the Obama administration’s achievements if his own party’s candidates won’t talk about them. She quoted the longtime Democratic strategist Robert Weiner complaining about this absence: “His presidency has been Rooseveltian, but the Republicans would have you believe the guy is inept. The silence is deafening from our side.”

When they lose control of the Senate, perhaps they'll realize their mistake.  More likely, though, the cringe will remain the default setting.

 

The most consequential president of my lifetime...yes, I've said it.

Even K-thug's come around.

But now the shoe is on the other foot: Obama faces trash talk left, right and center – literally – and doesn’t deserve it. Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it’s working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it’s much more effective than you’d think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy…

 Emphasis B-Juice

"Only Nemesis remains, stronger than ever."

In the words of the late, lamented Doghouse Riley, I heart Charles P. Pierce.

"There is no crack in our pies"

The inauguration speech

Transcript.

You are welcome.

A big #$%ing deal

Krugman is making sense.

On the day President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, an exuberant Vice President Biden famously pronounced the reform a “big something deal” — except that he didn’t use the word “something.” And he was right.

In fact, I’d suggest using this phrase to describe the Obama administration as a whole. F.D.R. had his New Deal; well, Mr. Obama has his Big Deal. He hasn’t delivered everything his supporters wanted, and at times the survival of his achievements seemed very much in doubt. But if progressives look at where we are as the second term begins, they’ll find grounds for a lot of (qualified) satisfaction.

Consider, in particular, three areas: health care, inequality and financial reform. 

Read the whole thing, as they say on the internets.

The last race

Now, get back to work so we can avoid another thrashing in the mid-terms!

Race, Obama, and the politics of a dying demographic

Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a powerful essay.  I urge you to read the whole thing, but here's a taste of his insight:

After Obama won, the longed-for post-­racial moment did not arrive; on the contrary, racism intensified. At rallies for the nascent Tea Party, people held signs saying things like Obama Plans White Slavery. Steve King, an Iowa congressman and Tea Party favorite, complained that Obama “favors the black person.” In 2009, Rush Limbaugh, bard of white decline, called Obama’s presidency a time when “the white kids now get beat up, with the black kids cheering ‘Yeah, right on, right on, right on.’ And of course everybody says the white kid deserved it—he was born a racist, he’s white.” On Fox & Friends, Glenn Beck asserted that Obama had exposed himself as a guy “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture … This guy is, I believe, a racist.” Beck later said he was wrong to call Obama a racist. That same week he also called the president’s health-care plan “reparations.”

One possible retort to this pattern of racial paranoia is to cite the Clinton years, when an ideological fever drove the right wing to derangement, inspiring militia movements and accusations that the president had conspired to murder his own lawyer, Vince Foster. The upshot, by this logic, is that Obama is experiencing run-of-the-mill political opposition in which race is but a minor factor among much larger ones, such as party affiliation. But the argument assumes that party affiliation itself is unconnected to race. It pretends that only Toni Morrison took note of Clinton’s particular appeal to black voters. It forgets that Clinton felt compelled to attack Sister Souljah. It forgets that whatever ignoble labels the right wing pinned on Clinton’s health-care plan, “reparations” did not rank among them.

Obama apologizes to Romney

Brilliant.

The capitalists' complaint

In graphic form.

Obamacrow

They had me at "Imagine a small American town..."

A big fucking deal

I wish they'd included Joe Biden's famous reaction to the signing of ACA, but still, pretty good.  I found it interesting that they included scenes of angry protests against health care reform -- another risk and challenge not shied away from.



It certainly paints a different America than the one Romney wants "restored."

MOT Humor

Jeffrey Goldberg exams what sort of Jew Barack Obama really is.

After he cracked wise about Maxwell House, I told the president -- this is the part the Times left out -- that, as commander-in-chief, he could use whatever Haggadah he liked, though it seemed to me that our Haggadah might add some depth and meaning and aesthetic charm to his seder, as it would to any seder. I knew, of course, that he would stick with the Maxwell House Haggadah -- tradition! -- but it didn't strike me until later exactly why he would stick with it. The reason he's sticking with Maxwell House is the same reason he spoke at the AIPAC convention, and is once again not speaking at the upcoming convention of J Street, the left-leaning pro-Israel group.

Read the whole thing if for no other reason then to get the headline of this post.

DEVELOPING: OBAMA GUARANTEES BULLS CHAMPS, 5 MORE YEARS. CLAIMS CREDIT FOR 'LINSANITY.' MUST CREDIT VEGACURA

As Jesse Singal asks, can you imagine any of the GOP candidates, and especially Mittbot, speaking so casually and comfortably with Bill Simmons?

Singing in code

A sure sign of Obama's Chicago-style politics, the thug.

Pretty sure Mittens can't do this