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[Shinra]

Genealogists prove theres a family tie between Obama and Scott Brown (10th Cousins), as well as George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison, Brad Pitt, Waren Buffett.....

there's a family tie between everyone. We're probably all 10th cousins with those people too. they do this shit with every presidential candidate or president every two years, it's gotten pretty old.

[Büge]

Geometry teacher uses assassinating Obama as geometry lesson example

[Spaco]

What the hell is Obama doing these days? He's completely disappeared from the news, it seems.

[SCD]

He's still kicking around with the human interest and such.  The media just got bored, that's all. 

[McDohl]

Bored?  With screaming how much of a socialist he is?

...I don't know you anymore, Fox News.  I think we need to start seeing other people.

[Thad]

...so okay, just in case there's anyone here who hasn't paid any attention to the current news cycle (and who can blame you?), Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack decided to fire an employee because a right-wing blogger posted a video of her saying she didn't want to help a white farmer 24 years ago.  (To the surprise of complete dumbshits like Tom Vilsack, the right-wing blogger omitted the part of the video where she explained that she was wrong and it was a learning experience.)

I've summed up my feelings on my blog, but suffice it to say that this single act wonderfully encapsulates everything I hate about the Democratic Party: they will do anything, absolutely ANYTHING, to try and prevent crazy assholes from saying mean things about them.

[Royal☭]

The "right-wing blogger" who posted the video is Andrew Breitbart, the man who popularized those infamous ACORN videos that were actually faked.  Man has got a great track record.

I don't think the administration or the Democrats need to be let off the hook, but the rest of the media deserves their share of derision as well.  Not only are people not dragging out Breitbart's connection and seeming willingness to go along with this bit of libel, but almost all of them swallowed the two-minute video hook, line and sinker.  None of the traditional media bothered to investigate at all, instead they just followed Breitbart's lead and condemned Sherrod.  Hell, even the NAACP condemned remarks, despite being from a speech she gave to them. 

[Thad]

My opinions on the media don't really need to be restated, but the media reaction is fucking irrelevant.  The White House shouldn't have given this story any more credence than the where's-his-birth-certificate meme that refuses to die.  They're supposed to be the fucking grownups here.

[McDohl]

http://www.examiner.com/x-27052-Rochester-Unemployment-Examiner~y2010m4d16-Unemployment-extension-legislation-President-Obama-signs-UI-eligibility-extension-to-June-2

Obama signs unemployment benefit extension bill in to law.  Conservative media will actively ignore this, choosing to screech about the USDA thing and RACISM RACISM RACISM.

...and the right accuses the left of leaping straight for the race card all the time?

[Brentai]

I think that news story has started to slip off the radar after it became "MSM and White House takes Tea Party blogger's claim seriously, are genuinely surprised when it turns out to be a straight-up lie."

[SCD]

That and the radio shows have already vented about the unemployment benefit extension as a sign.

[Thad]

I think that news story has started to slip off the radar after it became "MSM and White House takes Tea Party blogger's claim seriously, are genuinely surprised when it turns out to be a straight-up lie."

Point being, the White House threw fucking gasoline on it and now nobody noticed the very fucking important (and very politically beneficial) thing they did when they weren't being massive fucking dumbshits.

[Brentai]

Queue link to any number of Tom Tomorrow strips with the Dems saying "We can fuck up in any situation!"

[Shinra]

I love how we bent over backwards to avoid Fox News calling democrats racists, only to stumble into the position of Fox News demonizing us for firing employees on a whim whenever they say something racist. I get the whole free speech thing and all, but shouldn't there be laws about calling yourself a news network when you do this kind of shit? You can't call hydrogenated soy oil modified cocoa chocolate, after all. Maybe they could call themselves The Fox Media Network... Now With News! Like cans of dog food, where you only have to have 2% of something to say 'with X!'.

[clutch]

Coming back after more than a year and a half, I was surprised to find that most of the current Death Panel threads started well before I left. I guess it's easy for me to delude myself that the state of things is improving, but our economy still sucks, Arizona is still racist, banking reform never happened, we're involved in the same two wars, alternative energy research is still just a bad investment, gays can't marry here or in most states, and healthcare remains 90% broken. Forgive me if I'm retreading old ground, but it was absolutely jarring to realize just how little the world has changed.

I'm going to go cry into my lunch now. (Thad, I understand this is not specifically Obama-related. Please feel free to move it to a more appropriate thread or spin it off into a new one with an insulting title.)

[McDohl]

No, I think it's relevant.

The issue is that this administration will be looked at by historians as one of the most polarizing in American history, where the country either deals with its political sectionalism and finally throws it aside, or (the more likely scenario) the wedge between the left and the right is driven even further in.


EDIT: More thoughts:


The sectionalism of the nation is growing to a point that is very close to the way it was prior to the Civil War, but I don't think that history will repeat itself unless someone gets his ass beat on the Senate floor by another senator.

[Thad]

NPR had quite a good bit on the Sherrod story today, with Tony Cox and Ted Koppel.

The best bit is where Cox asked Koppel how he would have presented the story if he were still doing Nightline.  Koppel responds that they'd have tried to get ahold of Sherrod to hear her side of the story, and if they couldn't, they would have WAITED UNTIL THE NEXT DAY TO DO THE STORY.

How the fuck have we reached a point where somebody actually has to say, OUT LOUD, that you should WAIT UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BEFORE YOU DO A NEWS STORY?  And that it's like some sort of goddamn EPIPHANY when he does?

[Cthulhu-chan]

Pssh, ain't no time in this modern media to wait around for facts!  Sit on a story and some blogger will just bust it all over the internet and then you just get to limp in later with the truth, like that's worth anything.

[Brentai]

The internet hasn't made us any stupider but it had made us a lot more misinformed.

[Classic]

Speak for yourself Rogerts, if that is your real name!