Big news!! What a shocker!!

Naturally, many people thought this was baked into the cake from the beginning. Donald Trump is a publicity whore. We all knew that. What we didn’t know was how stupid he could sound when he opened his mouth about topics other than real estate, reality TV or beauty pageants.

He completely embarrassed himself, probably doing great damage to his brand along the way. He also did some damage to the Republican Party, showing how gullible many GOP voters can be when it comes to topics like the birther issue. We saw how a carnival barker could shoot up in the polls just by running his mouth, and the rest of the field came across as very weak in the process.

Fortunately, Trump was humiliated by President Obama before he made his inevitable announcement that he wasn’t running. Even prospective GOP voters finally saw through his bullshit as his poll numbers plummeted after Obama released his long-form birth certificate and then had Osama bin Laden killed.

Good riddance . . .

Enjoy the weekend:

“In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden President Obama’s approval rating jumped to 56 percent, his highest in two years. Which shows there is literally nothing he can do to please the other 44 percent.”
––Seth Meyers
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“Conspiracy theorists who are claiming that we didn’t really kill bin Laden must be reminded that they didn’t think he did the crime in the first place. Come on, nut jobs, keep your bullshit straight: The towers were brought down in a controlled demolition by George W. Bush to distract attention from Hawaii, where CIA operatives were planting phony birth records so that a Kenyan named Barack Obama could someday rise to power and pretend to take out the guy we pretended took out the towers. And I know that’s true because I just got it in an email from Trump.”
—Bill Maher

I just watched one of the worst interviews I’ve ever seen. Piers Morgan interviewed Rudy Giuliani, who took his expected shots at President Obama’s Libya policy, and Morgan didn’t ask a single question challenging anything Giuliani had to say.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. First, few “journalists” ever challenge Giuliani. Like Michael Moore, Giuliani usually peddles his bullshit without any worry that he’ll be challenged by his interviewer.

I looked up Morgan on Wikipedia and discovered that he’s a former host of Britain’s Got Talent and a host of America’s Got Talent. He also won Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. What a surprise. Maybe he can invite Trump to his show and let him howl about Obama’s birth certificate without any tough questions.

Somehow, the geniuses at CNN gave this guy Larry King’s time slot. Besides being a tremendous bore, Morgan manages to make Larry King look like Bill O’Reilly. He didn’t even pretend to ask Giuliani a tough question. When Giuliani proclaimed that Obama and the United States should have insisted on regime change in Libya and led Britain, France and the United Nations to achieve that goal, it didn’t dawn on Morgan to ask Giuliani how that could happen given that the Chinese and Russians would have certainly vetoed any resolution that went as far as regime change.

He’s just the latest CNN fail . . . .

With characters like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, we’ve been referring to the lunatic fringe of the potential Republican primary field as the confederacy of dunces. Many conservatives seem to have lost their mind when it comes to President Obama, so much so that they will rally around buffoons like Palin and Bachmann.

In order to appeal to the growing lunatic fringe, you have otherwise sensible candidates like Mike Huckabee joining in with idiotic comments about Kenya. We expect this garbage from bomb-throwers like Newt Gingrich, but hearing Huckabee go off the deep end is further evidence that the right wing has serious problems.

Now we have Donald Trump joining in on the idiocy. He’s now gone full birther, saying that he’s very “concerned” over whether President Obama was born in this country. Trump has always been a self-promoting charlatan despite his obvious success as a real estate mogul, but this is truly embarrassing.

The GOP establishment is rightfully terrified by the prospect of any of these dunces drawing real support in the primaries. It will be hilarious to watch, and these GOP “leaders” are getting what they deserved, as they embraced Sarah Palin and her anti-intellectual gibberish when it suited them, and now they have to live with the mass hysteria she and her ilk have whipped up on the right.

Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker are all threatening to derail the START treaty, which they have all supported in the past, over votes scheduled by Harry Reid for “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the DREAM Act. Every living former Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense supports the treaty, and these Senators have also supported it as it’s critical to monitoring Russian nukes and keeping loose nukes out of the hands of terrorists. It’s also critical in connection with Russian support for sanctions against Iran.

Frankly, it’s disgusting. They’re all claiming they’re upset with partisan politics when they have all been playing the political game for the past two years.

Now they’re willing to risk national security in the name of petty politics. They have no shame. If they blow this for political reasons, Obama and the Dems need to bludgeon them with this over and over again.

UPDATE:The reaction to these threats has been swift.

“What some Republicans like Corker seem to be saying is, ‘We will let nuclear weapons proliferate if you let gays serve,’ “ said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.

Hopefully these Senators have painted themselves in a corner here. If the treaty goes down, they will be blamed for sacrificing our nuclear security for their petty grievances.

Everyone seems to have an opinion about President Obama’s press conference yesterday. It depends of course, on how one views his tax cut deal. I think he made the best possible deal, and he left enough time for a real push for START and DADT.

Liberals are furious, and we’re getting the usual hysteria from many on the left. The usual suspects like Olbermann, Maddow and Schultz funneled the anger as usual, though others like Chris Matthews and Lawrence O’Donnell argued that the President struck a good deal.

I liked seeing Obama take on his critics, particularly those who consistently let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Here are some of the highlights:

So this notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. So I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats had been fighting for, for a hundred years – but because there was a provision in there that they didn’t get, that would have affected maybe a couple million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people, and the potential for lower premiums for a hundred million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise.

Now, if that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves, and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are. And in the meantime the American people are still seeing themselves not able to get health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out. That can’t be the measure of how we think about our public service. That can’t be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat.
***

“This country was founded on compromise. I couldn’t go through the front door of this country’s founding,” he later added. “And you know, if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn’t have a Union.

Towards the end, he declared: “I don’t think there’s a single Democrat out there, who if they looked at where we started when I came into office and look at where we are now, would say that somehow we have not moved in the direction that I promised. Take a tally, look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I have not gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.”

The left needs a wake-up call. Of course we can have heated debate, but name-calling and silly calls for a primary challenge are ridiculous.

Liberals are attacking President Obama on many fronts regarding the tax cut deal. They don’t like the deal itself, and many are also alleging that it’s stupid politics – he should have held out for a better deal.

Andrew Sullivan has a different take, explaining how a fight with his liberal critics actually helps him. Also, the deal itself will likely stimulate the economy, and a better economy helps his re-election prospects. I agree with Andrew.

President Obama and the Republicans have struck a deal on taxes and unemployment benefits. The question now is whether liberals like Nancy Pelosi will really try to kill the deal.

Here’s the most important fact that angry liberals are ignoring – President Obama wanted to have this fight BEFORE the elections. The House could have passed a tax cut for those below $250,000, and then dared the Republicans in the Senate to filibuster it. This would have been the ideal issue for a dramatic filibuster showdown and would have drawn clear lines between the parties heading into the election.

But the Democrats chickened out. Pelosi listened to terrified Dems who are afraid of their own shadow when it comes to taxes, and they punted until after the election.

It was a huge mistake on every front. None of us know how it would have played out, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario in November worse than the beat-down they received.

Now these liberal Dems have the nerve to criticize Obama for cutting a deal, when it’s clear he has no choice but to strike a deal if he wants unemployment benefits extended and possible votes on START and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The criticism is totally ridiculous.

The primary races are in full gear, but we’re starting to see themes emerge for the fall mid-term elections.

President Obama looks like he’s itching for a fight, and that’s good news. George W. Bush did a great job helping Republicans in the 2002 mid-terms, and Obama seems determined to nationalize the elections and get the Democratic base energized for a tough 2010 cycle. He had some great lines:

“After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No. You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.”

The President also used his old mopping metaphor, saying that Democrats were busy cleaning up the GOP’s mess, only to have Republicans criticize: “Hold the broom better. That’s not how you mop.”

“Don’t tell me how to mop,” Obama said.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

It’s been a long year since President Obama and the Democrats began the process to reform our health care system and provide relief to the million of Americans, mostly working families, who didn’t have access to affordable health insurance. Last night, victory was finally achieved.

The process was brutal. Passing legislation is rarely an easy process. It’s usually messy, and with an initiative this big and controversial, it was bound to be a difficult process. But it was made even worse by the strategic decision by the GOP to do everything possible to kill the bill. Obama tried to strike a bipartisan deal, and the GOP happily strung him along while they whipped up opposition from the angry right and the Tea Party crazies. The process became the story, hurting the popularity of Obama and the Democrats.

Despite all these challenges, the Democrats were poised to pass health care when Scott Brown won a stunning win in Massachusetts. Most assumed that Obama would fold and that his presidency was permanently wounded. Pundits on the right and the left had a field day questioning Obama’s effectiveness and his toughness.

Yet Obama doubled down, and he had a tough ally in Nancy Pelosi. The right loves to hate her, and now they have another reason, as she pushed this through the House when most assumed she’d never pull it off.

There were many ups and downs in the process, but I think that Obama’s visit to the Republican House retreat will be remembered as one of the turning points. The GOP was feeling cocky after Brown’s victory, and they were believing their own talking points. Obama eviscerated one Republican congressman after another on live national television. It was like a professor schooling a bunch of obnoxious high school kids.

I think the White House realized that it was time to fight and take on the GOP. Obama was back on his game, and the overconfident GOP wasn’t up to the fight.

This is a huge victory for Obama, the Democrats and the country. Health care is the signature issue of this presidency, and failure here was not an option.