Oh, sweet, sweet Friday — high overcast with some twinkling stars visible here on California’s north coast this way-early morning as we prepare for the weekend.
Look’s like somebody’s got a case of the Fridays.
One guy who’s got a bad case of a the ‘second term,’ is President Obama — this year has been the shits. Between the IRS, AP reporter-notes, Eddie Snowden and Obamacare roll-out scandals, he needs the assistance of one Olivia Pope to wade through the poop.
However, even she might not be able to fix the ugly, but she’d sure-as-shit try: “Dive in. Own it. Mock your image.”
(Illustration found here).
Yeah, right. In this era of Fox News and the Tea Party, there’s no mocking the mockingbirds, especially after last night’s Obamacare lame ha-ha: And I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me. We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and that we’re going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this. …
The president didn’t say “fuck up,” but he should have. Using some pulp-fiction fancy might have aided in this sideways, lame apology.
Never a cheerleader for Obama, Forbes did say this about the president’s expression of regret:
If the President is sincerely concerned about the fact that vast numbers of Americans will have their existing coverage arrangements disrupted by his health-care law, there is an easy solution: he can encourage Democrats to support, and sign into law, Sen. Ron Johnson’s two-page bill, the “If You Like your Health Care Plan You Can Keep It Act,” that would solve the problem once and for all.
But the President hasn’t done that.
Instead, according to Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, the President is “looking at an administrative fix for the population of people in the individual market who may have an increase in premiums, but don’t get subsidies.”
While the details of such a “fix” have yet to be disclosed, it would not honor the President’s pledge that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” though it may help ameliorate the problem of rate shock with the new plans that Obamacare requires everyone to have.
A major source of the problem is Obama should have ventured more into the economy, such as real-giant push for employment and jobs, then aiming for a ‘flagship’ model for his presidency. Health insurance reform is need, of course, but first the horror of the 2008 financial meltdown had to be taken care of, but…
One news item I spied this morning made me sick — Billy Graham celebrating his birthday. The guy’s an asshole, liar and a huge, humongous hypocrite. One of the horror stories in US history.
The birthday bash via USAToday:
Among the hundreds of guests were North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and New York real-estate magnate Donald Trump.
Singers Ricky Skaggs, Michael W. Smith and others led the audience in two refrains of Happy Birthday.
Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, one of the speakers, jumped off the stage to hold a microphone before Billy Graham as he singled out a few people in the audience for thanks.
“His message transformed my mom’s life,” Palin, one of the dinner’s speakers, said in an interview with USA TODAY.
“In the 70s, she would tune into the Billy Graham crusades, televised. My mom was raised Catholic, and she … was yearning for something more,” she said.
“His invitation for people to know that they could have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ — my mom understood that from the way that he could articulate it.
She became a Christian, led the rest of the family to Christ, and that I believe transformed our family.”
You fuckin’ betcha!
And then what about this?
Bothwell documents that there wasn’t a war the U.S. was involved in that Rev. Graham couldn’t bless.
In fact, he reveals that during the horrific Vietnam conflict, (1959-75), he had urged the then-President, Richard M. Nixon, to bomb North Vietnam!
In a 13-page letter, that Rev. Graham had forwarded to the White House in April, 1969, it was stated: “There are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese defectors to bomb and invade the North. Why should all the fighting be in the South?…Especially let them bomb the dikes which could over night destroy the economy of North Vietnam.”
Mr. Bothwell underscored that such a military action against the dikes, a huge complex of earthworks, would probably “kill a million people and wipe out an already poor nation’s agricultural system”
He added that the advice in Graham’s transmittal “fell on receptive ears. Not longer after, Nixon moved the air war north and west.”
…
Fortunately, not all the presidents bought into Rev. Graham’s bogus act.
One of my favorites, President Harry S. Truman, who was born in Lamar, MO, knew a wide variety of people from political bosses to political hacks.
He had a built in b… s… detector.
This is what President Truman had to say about the war-loving, camera-mugging preacher: “Graham has gone off the beam. He’s…well, I hadn’t ought to say this, but he’s one of those ‘counterfeits’ I was telling you about. He claims he’s a friend of all the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was president. I just don’t go for people like that. All he’s interested in is getting his name in the paper.”
Ted Cruz, anyone?
And the US is so wonderful…
And that’s enough for this week — Friday! And the weekend!