Like everyone else, we miss The West Wing. But it's okay! Democrats and Republicans are trying to put on their own community-theater version of the television program in Washington right now: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor interrupts the president! President Obama storms out of the meeting! And Donna is the victim of a hilarious misunderstanding!
Jon Stewart opened the Daily Show tonight by observing that President Obama once again had to come out yesterday and hold a press conference to shame Congress into agreeing on a solution to the dispute over the U.S. budget. In the process, Stewart realized that Republicans—and House Speaker John Boehner in particular—are trying to get away with having their cake and eating it, too. Video of the segment is above.
Today is an exciting day, because we've discovered that there is a silver lining to these excruciating debt ceiling negotiations that can serve as a palliative for our fatalist misery and depression.
Barack Obama performed the latest scene in his ongoing "last reasonable man in Washington" reelection act today, during an impromptu White House press conference following the latest semi-failure of a debt ceiling meeting. Democrats need to untwist their panties about cutting entitlements. Republicans need to stop being monsters. John Boehner, though, is a great guy. C'mon, people: let's stop the nonsense and eat some goddamn peas.
The new monthly jobs report is out, and guess what? Unemployment is up to 9.2%, the economy only added 18,000 jobs (one-tenth of the number needed to find jobs for all the poor saps entering the workforce right now), we created 44,000 fewer jobs than we thought in April and May, 14.1 million Americans are out of work, and roving bandit gangs are lighting tire fires in the street outside your house right now.
Multiple senior House Democratic aides tell TPM that caucus members were caught off guard by news stories about President Obama's push for deeper deficit and spending reductions — and particularly about the White House's willingness to cut Social Security as part of a grand bargain to raise the debt limit.
This summer it seems every day brings dire news of a new data breach perpetrated by shadowy hackers. For those prone to panic, it might be enough to end in a hospital visit. But there's no need to freak out about every single attack reported by a hacker-obsessed media.
During President Obama's "Twitter Town Hall" at the White House today, we learned he has more in common with George W. Bush than just the desire to prolong various wars in the Middle East. Because like Bush—who once demanded that "there's Internets" in every classroom—Obama also has a propensity for unnecessary pluralization.
President Obama has a wonderful, versatile voice, and it's a shame that it's wasted on things like convincing Democrats to cut Social Security. Luckily, musician and Something Awful forum poster Dan Warren has spent four years making sure that Obama's voice doesn't go to waste—cutting and editing snippets from the audio recording of his book Dreams From My Father into a... well, we're not sure. Performance piece? Spoken word recording?
The White House released its annual salary report last week, and as usual, it's nice to work for Barack Obama: Most staffers who were there for more than a year got a salary bump. A bigger one than you did.
Few rituals these past couple of years have been more fruitless and illogical than pretending that Barack Obama will pick a new vice presidential candidate for 2012, rested on the notion that such a move would in any way be helpful. Is Joe Biden, in any meaningful sense, a political liability for Barack Obama? Would the switch from one centrist Democrat to another really trick the broad middle of America's electorate into forgetting about our shitty economy?
The Fox News Politics Twitter account was hacked early this morning, and a number of Tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated were sent out. Fox has acknowledged the hack, but apparently still can't access the account—as of this post, the Tweets still haven't been taken down.
Oh good heavens, it looks like we've got some trouble in Mittens Land. The presidential candidate formerly known as Willard Romney has been yapping to anyone who'll listen that President Obama made the recession "worse" since coming into office. This is a defensible line under the loose standards of Republican primary campaign rhetoric; he could argue that Obama's policies on net hampered what would've been a quicker recovery. Could. So is this a line that he egregiously lied about ever saying yesterday? It's tricky!
Mark Halperin was suspended indefinitely by MSNBC yesterday for calling President Obama "a dick" during a live episode of Morning Joe. Schadenfreude at its finest! As Jon Stewart pointed out on last night's Daily Show, though, Halperin's actual comment—which Stewart called "one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life"—paled in comparison to the awkward, Willie Geist-supervised apology that followed it.
Mark Halperin, the always-wrong journopundit who serves as a frequent MSNBC talking head, was on Morning Joe this morning—where, naturally, he was whining about how mean the president was to the simpering DC press corps during his press conference yesterday. "Are we on the seven second delay? I wanted to characterize how I thought the president behaved," said Halperin, setting up what you knew would be one whopper of a funny joke.
Only one protestor showed up outside the Alcoa plant where President Obama was speaking on Tuesday, but he made his appearance count. Meet Richard McCaslin, of California, who wore striped pants and a matching "THOUGHT CRIME" hat, and held a sign that said "REPTOID ROYALTY: NO BLUE BLOODS IN THE WHITE HOUSE." Let him explain that to you:
On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart opened with a segment about President Obama's press conference earlier today and his fight with Congress over its refusal to reach a compromise that would raise the nation's debt ceiling. How much confidence does Stewart have in our elected officials to put their petty differences aside? He ended the segment with "Armageddon, here we come," so, yeah, not much.
During his big press conference today, President Obama was asked about Congress' refusal thus far to raise the nation's debt ceiling. After imploring Republican lawmakers to stop procrastinating and "get this done," Obama took a shot at them by praising his daughters' study habits: "Malia and Sasha generally finish their homework a day ahead of time. Malia's 13, Sasha's 10... they don't wait until the night before!"
