Elizabeth Warren takes to the Senate floor to take on Citigroup and condemn the politicians who seemingly work for them. Amazing speech!

Courtesy of MSNBC:  

“You know,” Warren said Friday, “there is a lot of talk lately about how Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect. There is a lot of talk coming from Citigroup about how Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect. So let me say this to anyone who is listening at Citi – I agree with you. Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect. It should have broken you into pieces.”

I cannot remember when the last time was that I wanted to stand up and cheer for a speech on the Senate floor, but I certainly did yesterday.

Elizabeth Warren has now thrown down the gauntlet for her fellow Democrats, and I really don't think they can ignore it. 

And you can tell that Warren really frightens the Republicans by who is coming after her since this speech.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), responding to Sen. Elizabeth's Warren (D-Mass.) criticism of the $1.1 trillion government spending bill's provision that allows banks to take more risk with taxpayer money, on Friday evening went after Warren and other Democrats who sided against the bill. 

"If you follow the lead of the senator of Massachusetts and bring this bill down … people are not going to believe you are mature enough to run the place,” Graham said on the Senate floor. “Don’t follow her lead. She’s the problem." 

"I'm sure on MSNBC you're going to be well thought of, and on the liberal version of talk radio you'll have your moment with that crowd," Graham said, chiding Warren and other Democrats who deplored what has been called a Wall Street giveaway. 

"You're tired, you're frustrated, you're upset about a provision in the bill you don't like," he added of Warren.

Yeah way to talk down to somebody who is clearly your intellectual superior. 

By the way as you may have noticed from the previous post Warren has at least one well known conservative figure essentially agreeing with her about the Cromnibus bill. Sarah Palin.

Gee I guess we can all look forward to an impassioned ghostwritten Facebook post in favor of Senator Warren. Right?

Right?

Not right?

Sarah Palin identifies the threat to America's survival. Americans who voted for President Obama.

Click scowl to release the hatefulness.

So last night I kinda sorta listened to the Wasilla Wendigo's preemptive attack against the President's immigration speech.

In it she vomited forth the same old word salad that we have all heard before ad naseum, and of course added that bit about the President giving Americans the middle finger, which was her typically vulgar way of attacking the President.

I then linked to it in my post on the speech and figured that was probably giving her TOO much attention.

But then this morning MSNBC reported something about her comments that I had missed: 

But every now and then, one of Palin’s tirades stands out as newsworthy. 

The right-wing personality released a new online video today, complaining about President Obama and immigration, offering the usual lines in a style that can charitably be compared to a teenager delivering a report about a book she hasn’t read (via Simon Maloy). 

But then Palin added this: 

“We’ll survive this president. The question is (overdramatic pause) can we survive the people who voted for him, twice?” 

For Palin, this may have been a throwaway line, which probably doesn’t deserve too much scrutiny, but 66 million Americans voted for Obama in 26 states. Only six presidents have ever earned more than 51% of the popular vote twice and Obama is one of them. The president took office thanks to the support of a big chunk of the American electorate. 

In Palin’s mind, these people’s very existence puts the nation’s survival in jeopardy? The biggest threat to America’s future is Americans?

So the woman who is always complaining that the President is not listening to the American people, and in fact is giving them the middle finger, just did that very thing herself.  (Just like her daughter Bristol.)

And she also accused good conscientious Americans who voted for the man they think will serve this nation best, as being something that the country needs to survive. As if it is SHE, and not the majority who voted in 2008 and 2012, who recognize what is best for this country.

To that I say, fuck you lady!

I certainly cannot speak for every American who gave Obama their vote in 2008 and 2012, but I for one I am VERY committed to doing what is right for this country. That's why I worked so hard to reveal who you really are to the American people before the 2008 election.

And I also recognize that it is people who are rigidly partisan, and refuse to compromise in order to solve our problems (You know, like the ones that Sarah Palin keeps endorsing.), who are the real danger to our prosperity and our security. Not the President who has bent over backwards at times in order to get the Republicans who work with him, on anything.

So once again Sarah Palin engages in projection. Giving a rambling speech accusing the President of doing the very thing that she herself does only a few sentences later.

Somehow I doubt that the majority of us would be surprised.

Vladimir Putin gets his feelings hurt during G20 summit and suddenly decides he needs to catch up on his sleep.

Source

Courtesy of Slate:  

If last week Vladimir Putin was 99 percent sure that the West was out to get him, he now knows it with complete certainty. Over the weekend, Western leaders at the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, did their utmost to criticize and ostracize the Russian president over his actions in Ukraine. Fed up, the leader of the world’s ninth largest economy skipped breakfast on Sunday to fly home early. 

Even before the summit, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had vowed to “shirt-front” Putin (i.e., tackle him according to the practice of Australian rules football) over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reluctantly shook Putin’s hand, telling him “to get out of Ukraine.” And President Obama, in a speech to students at the University of Queensland, mentioned the global threats of Ebola and “Russian aggression” in the same sentence. 

“Attack on Putin at G20 Summit” was a headline in the Moscow tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets. The newspaper described a “psychological attack” on Putin that began by assigning him to the ageing Hilton Brisbane, hardly worth its four stars, according to Russian diplomatic sources. When Putin arrived, backed up by four warships from Russia’s Pacific fleet, other participants avoided talking to him at public events and largely left him on his own. For the summit’s family photo, Putin was placed on the far edge, next to South African President Jacob Zuma, Moskovsky Komsomolets sniffed.

After this Putin claimed that he needed to get "at least four or five hours of sleep" before returning home, and left on his private jet to start the 18 hour journey back to Moscow.

This is essentially how you deal with bullies on the playground. You keep them out of your games, you let them sit alone at the lunch table, and you mock and snicker about them behind their backs.  Until they take their toys and run home to their mommies.

So much for that macho image.

And remember this was the same Vladimir Putin who received heaps of praise from Republicans earlier this year, and who one Fox News host claimed she wanted to head the United States for a couple of days in order to deal with ISIS.

And wasn't it our own back porch Russia peeping Tina, who claimed that she had more respect for Putin than our President as well?

Oh yes she did!

He harkens back to the era of the czars, and he wants that Russian empire to grow again.

And when she compared Obama to Putin?  

"Well yes, especially under the Commander-in-Chief that we have today, because Obama's...the perception of him, and his potency...across the world is one of such weakness, you know and I...lookit people are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our President as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates."

Of course it was OUR President who was honored by the other attendees, gave a very well received speech at the University of Queensland, and who got a commitment from the  Chinese government to curb carbon emissions for the first time in history.  

Not bad for a non-bear wrestling equivocator in mom jeans, right?

President Obama makes perfectly reasonable statement about the problems working parents have in finding quality childcare, which gets cherry picked by conservatives as being an attack on stay-at-home moms. Well you know who HAS to weigh in on this!

"Too often parents have no choice but to put their kids in cheaper daycare, that maybe doesn't have the kinds of programming that makes a big difference in a child's development. And sometime there may just not be any slots, or the best programs may be too far away. And sometimes someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that's not a choice want Americans to make."

Clearly the President was talking about the problems facing two income families who are faced with problems finding quality childcare. It was NOT directed at families where the male earns an income which allows his wife to be a stay-at-home mother. 

However THAT is exactly how it is being purposefully misinterpreted by the Right Wing professional outrage machine. And right now the conservatives smell blood in the water and the sharks are beginning to circle.

And if there is any hint of weakness on the President's part, you know who will soon come sniffing around for a taste.

And gee the headline of her Facebook post starts off so reasonably:

Obama Declares Stay-at-Home Moms Aren't Worth a Hill of Beans; Says It's a Choice 'We Don't Want Americans to Make’

I will spare you the entire thing as I think you can already imagine how ugly and fact free it will be. 

However here are a few moosenuggets for your perusal: 

On behalf of former and current stay-at-homers, including my girlfriends who still get together to bake cookies for the bake sale (see photos in my kitchen above), and volunteer to coach kids ball teams, and man the church's food bank, and entertain latchkey kids, and all that other obnoxiously "housewifey" stuff, the President needs to be spanked. 

Number one I think most of her "girlfriends" are on the SarahPAC payroll, and number two waht kind of person suggests that the President of the United States should be "spanked?"

It seems you'd shackle us by your snobbish shunning of one traditional lifestyle choice while taking advantage of power to manifest your liberal view by manipulating public opinion and resources to diminish moms who put career on hold to raise a family. You are really messed up. And you're so 1960's. 

Now she is talking about "shackles?"
 
You really are stuck in a contorted kind of '60s feminism where you obviously don't trust women to make their own decisions, so you're frustrated. 

And now she is suggesting that the President is "frustrated?" Anybody else picking up on a theme here?

Now, I'm sure your star struck female minions in the media will writhe and wiggle in defense of you on this, they always do, even though you just marginalized a most valuable sector of American society while having the gall to admit that, for you, it's only all about the money. 

"Female minions" will "writhe and wiggle?" Well so much more subtlety.

And then Palin goes for the jugular.

Perhaps you never witnessed the benefits a "full-time mom" provides a family, a community, our schools, our nation, but you're a big boy now so figure it out yourself without me lecturing you on the beauty of a homemaker. Suffice it to say "stay-at-home moms" make the world go 'round. 

- Sarah Palin

Okay now that was just uncalled for. Suggesting that the President does not appreciate stay-at-home mothers because his worked out of the home is a low blow even for Palin.

I understand that it undermines Sarah Palin, and the conservatives, sense of outrage to recognize that the President was NOT suggesting that he did not want mothers to stay at home with their children, but the fact is that what he was saying is that he did not want either parent to be forced out of work due to poor childcare choices.

The President was making his speech  at the Rhode Island College in Providence, and the topic was "Women and the Economy."  I think THAT audience had little difficulty understanding that the President was discussing ways in which the government could assist parents and help them to compete financially with their counterparts at work who do not have to worry about also meeting the needs of their children.

Sadly that is a sophisticated message which rings hollow in the ears of the ignorant.

President Obama, the living breathing antidote to the Republican fear mongering over Ebola.

Courtesy of USA Today: 

"The best way to protect Americans from Ebola is to stop the outbreak at its source," Obama said in an East Room ceremony honoring doctors and nurses who have been or are going to West Africa. 

"If we are not dealing with this problem there, it will come here," Obama said. 

The president lauded his guests for their "sense of duty," and of "serving a cause greater than themselves." He called them "shock troops" who should be applauded. 

"And when they come home," Obama said. "they deserve to be treated properly. They deserve to be treated like the heroes that they are." 

Obama and aides have criticized New Jersey, New York and Illinois over quarantine policies for returning workers. 

These doctors and nurses can help explain the challenge of Ebola to Americans, and how to beat it. "We respond with common sense and skill and courage," he said, and not "fear," "hysteria" or "misinformation." 

Obama seemed to nearly choke up as he discussed his frustration with state officials who have called for quarantines of health care workers from Africa. 

"I put those on notice who think that we should hide from these problems," Obama said. "That's not who we are, that's not who I am, that's not who these folks are. This is America, and we do things differently."

I listened to this speech live earlier today during the Alex Wagner show, and I was incredibly proud of my President for standing up to the  Right Wing over this issue.

I especially loved this part:  

"The reason I am so proud of this country is because when there are times when we need to step up and do the right thing, we do the right thing. That's who we are. That's what we do. No other nation is doing as much to help in West Africa as the United States of America. When I hear people talking about American leadership...and then are promoting policies that would avoid leadership...and have us running in the opposite direction...and hiding under the covers, it makes me a little frustrated."

That must be the very definition of an understatement.

His cool, calm, and intellectual response to this issue stands in stark contrast to the fear mongering, the sky is falling, hysterics of those on the Right.