After weeks of howling from not-yet-a-republican-presidential-candidate Donald "The Donald" Trump, President Obama made the incomprehensibly idiotic move of releasing his long form birth certificate. I'm not sure how old Jim Messina (Obama's 2012 Campaign Manager) is, but someone should check his birth certificate to make sure he wasn't born yesterday. At the very least, they should take a lesson from Leslie Knope and make a "pros" and "cons" list the next time they make a big campaign decision. Here's what one might have looked like if they had.
Releasing President Obama's Birth Certificate
Pros:
uhm...we'll come back to this one
Oh, I know, it will put the issue to rest once and for all (how did that go dummy?)
Cons:
It's not going to change anyone's mind
-Birthers will be birthers. A PDF of a birth certificate is only going to give them more things to talk about
-People who claim Obama is an illegitimate president aren't going to vote for him even if a video is released showing the live birth taking place on the steps of the Hawaii State Capitol
It gives new life to the story
It shows Obama gave in to Trump's public pressure which
a) Makes Obama look weak
b) Gives Trump's demands appear legitimate
It opens the Administration up to criticism for spending money to fly someone to and from Hawaii to get the document
The GOP look like a bunch of lunatics calling for his birth certificate...any of them that are serious rivals for the general election will suffer in the primaries if they denounce the birthers.
Had his advisors taken a few moments to look at the pros and cons, I don't understand how they could possibly have agreed to do this. It simply shows, once again, that Democrats have the worst strategists. It's a really good thing that the GOP field is so full of unelectable candidates or the White House would probably go back to them in 2012.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
From The Answer Sheet
By Kathie Marshall
In May 2005, I wrote an op-ed for one of our Los Angeles newspapers, in which I vented my frustrations about the state of education in my community. Here’s some of what I said:
“I’ve been an educator in the Los Angeles area for more than 30 years in grades two through eight, including general education, second-language learner, gifted, special-education and intervention students. I’ve taught some of the wealthiest families to some of the poorest, in both private and public schools. For the past four years I have been a literacy coach at a middle school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, working with teachers and students to improve instruction and learning. And I have to tell you, many things that have taken place in education over the last decade have me mad!”
Read the rest at The Answer Sheet.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Why are Democrats so stupid?
To progressive Americans, this comes as no surprise as we have been yelling as loud and as often as we could for the past 10 years. Americans are sick and tired of seeing massive tax cuts benefiting the likes of Warren Buffet, Steve Forbes, and the Walton Family, while the middle class sees its wages frozen and its benefits being chipped away.
As much as it pains me to borrow from the GOP talking points, this really does highlight a massive failure of leadership from President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the previous Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. All three of them had the means to cut out the tax cuts for the richest 1% at any point in time between January 2009 and December 2010. This could have been their big election issue going into last Fall. They could have forced Republicans to vote NO on tax cuts for the middle class and held their feet to the fire...but instead they blinked as they always do.
The excuses that have come out of the Democratic party since the Fall elections have been that they had to act to save tax relief for the middle class. But that's only because they failed to act on it sooner. The first day back after the summer recess Democrats should have been hammering away at the GOP to pass tax relief for the middle class and the middle class only. Leave out the estate tax breaks that will save the Walton family over $34 billion. Forget about the keeping the marginal tax rates for the richest 1% lower than it's ever been since the creation of the income tax (it's not like any of them pay that rate anyway http://bit.ly/dL6mer).
But no, that's not what they did. Instead, Obama, Reid and Pelosi tried to hang on by moving to the center. And we saw how well that worked out for the Donkey. One would think after the "shellacking" Obama and the Dems took in 2010 they would find some new vocabulary and really hammer home to people the importance of getting tax rates back to at least where they were under Clinton, if not pushing them back to where they were under the great Conservative himself, Ronald Reagan. As Anthony Weiner said to Mike Huckabee "why should the guy working 70 hours a week on a construction job pay a bigger percentage in taxes than the do-nothing child of a millionaire who inherits a massive fortune?" (It's a really great clip: Anthony Weiner vs Mike Huckabee)
Monday, April 18, 2011
Look who's begging for a Federal handout now
Almost two years to the day since Governor Rick Perry of Texas pandered to an anti-tax Tea Party rally, by suggesting that Texas might need to seceded from the Union due to Federal spending, he is now begging the Obama administration for that same Federal spending to fight the wild fires raging across his state. Like Bobby Jindal before him, Governor Perry is against a strong Federal government and spending...until his state is facing an emergency and suddenly needs a bailout. Like Jindal in Louisiana, this makes Rick Perry a hypocrite.
April 2009 - Texas could secede
April 2011 - Mr. President help!
Can US handle historic Texas wildfires? - CSMonitor.com
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
There's Gold in them thar hills!
As the rhetoric in support of Charter Schools and Vouchers continues to grow louder, more and more MBA graduates are seeking out education. The business community is already sensing that a big faucet of public money is about to get turned on so these educational entrepreneurs are jockeying for position to rake in those tax dollars.
I can't wait for the business school crowd to join the fight against all those "selfish and greedy" teachers.
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