My President’s Badass

May 6, 2011 in 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Osama bin Laden

by LesleyLotto

3 years ago Senator Barack Obama was little known by most people.  He was a U.S. Senator from Illinois who gave a kick-ass speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, so Hillary Clinton told us.  I was comfortably on the John Edwards bus back then, that face, that message, the hair.  Be still my bleeding, liberal heart.  Hillary was shrill and arrogant with her “It’s 3 A-M” message.  And who remembers the other 9 candidates in the Democratic Party anyway.  But who’s this Barack Obama?  What do we know about him after all?  What audacity he has thinking that after only 2 years-ish in office he could become President of the United States (POTUS).  I always kind of admired John McCain as the Maverick, you know – the guy from the Republican party who walked the talk.  Mitt Romney looked like he was a waffler before we knew he was a waffler.  C’mon, who admits they hunt grouse as a sport anyway?  Mike Huckabee, likable enough, but a tad too Christian for this Jew. I literally forgot all of the other candidates because they were so dull.  Well John Edwards turned out to be a big fat lying disappointment that the National Enquirer outed for sexing it up with, well, words cannot express.  Hillary Clinton – still shrill, now add lying to that, and her husband, oh Bill, really, where to begin.  Then there’s the Maverick, who’s not a Maverick anymore, he’s a meandering, near-senile man hanging onto his glory days that he can barely remember, who slides in a Vice Presidential candidate, a hot mess of a woman, nobody know,s but we all want to take to bed with a nice tourniquet outfitted snugly around her mouth.  Maybe even camouflage in color?  Barack Obama came out of nowhere, with the “Hope”, the “Change”, and the “Yes We Can”.  But still, we know nothing about him.  Where was he born with that name?  And so it begins…

After McCain imploded in 2008 during the worst economic crisis in modern history, Obama slid into victory.  The first Black man to be elected to the highest office in the land.  Tears flowed freely around the world when he was elected.  But then he took office and his first order of business as POTUS was to put together a decent administration (slim pickins round here, might as well find me some old Clinton hangerson),  create jobs and fix the reputation of the United States, which had been so badly tarnished by the administration before. And oh yeah, maybe fix the economy while you’re at it.  The first few little bits of business were okay, passing some equal pay legislation, which has done exactly nothing, passing a massive Healthcare Reform Bill and another Bailout or two for whoever cares to further screw with our economy and announce the closure of the notorious Guantanamo Bay Prison.  Little did poor POTUS know the mean ol’ Republican party would stand at every door putting their palm up to anything remotely  Bi-partisan while crying “Oh, No you di-n’t”.  They also cried, wait, “where were you born again”? or “No, the American people didn’t vote for THAT kind of change”.  The Liberals were also crying, what happened to Single Payer Health Insurance, what happened to my 401k, what happened to the war in Iraq, wait, what, you’re putting more troops in Afghanistan? Then all the independents and liberals ran screaming from the room and took another look at the Republicans, maybe they’re not so bad or maybe they just plugged their noses and voted them back in to take the ever-incompetent, weenie of a Democratic party off their throne in the House of Reps.

What’s a poor liberal to do?  The mean ol’ Republicans are creating (well not really creating, but fomenting) a frustrating, lying, cheating, brickwall of a party who are doing exactly nothing for the American people and the POTUS seems to be cowering in the corner, shivering under the mist of I told you so’s.  Time to bring in David Plouffe to save the day!  He’ll make the President’s message more Badass.   But Plouffe doesn’t do that at all, he hides in the corner with the POTUS devising a plan to walk tall and maintain his lackluster ratings.  Hey, at least they didn’t fall to where “W” was when he left office.  Some of those way over on the left were already holding caucuses to find a contender to run against Obama in 2012, then it happened, something to really make them bleed, ANOTHER war.  Oh my!  After several uprisings in the Middle East, the attacks on civilians, the murder and public rape of journalists and the toppling of a leader or two, the POTUS does the unfathomable, he jumps into a war with Libya, but claims we’re not at war, really.  The blood-thirsty leader of that country now has a rag-tag team of “Rebels” fighting against him and they’re not so far removed from the 2002 “insurgents” in Iraq.  John McCain calls the Rebels his heroes and all is right in the world.  So POTUS with his big, bad multi-kazillion dollar army blasts into Libya to oust Colonel Ghaddafi, but only for two days, “then we’re gone”.  All the while the Republicans, while weeks earlier chided the President for not intervening in Libya, now complain, it’s too late, and oh my yes, “where’s that birth certificate?”.

Then walks in the savior for an entire country, the host of an NBC Reality Show who says, he’ll be the best damn president this country has ever seen, says he too wants to see that missing birth certificate and oh wait, does anybody have a comb?  He spouts off all kinds of foreign policy expertise like he once talked to the Colonel in Libya about a real estate deal on a 6 bedroom tent.

Meanwhile the country people are sufficiently confused because a majority of them say they might just vote for the Reality Show star instead of Mr. Hope and Change.  Then it happens, out of nowhere the President pulls his “long-form” birth certificate out from under his hat, swoops into Libya and kills the Colonel’s son and 3 grandchildren, visits the Tornado decimated south, delivers a hilarious speech at this years “Geek Prom” that makes the Reality Star’s crazy comb-over hair blow back onto his wife’s botoxed forehead with a grin, then coolly let’s his people know the most notorious terrorist the world has probably ever known has been murdered on his order, following his death plan, WAIT, WHAAAA? Back up, yo!

I’m still happily back in March wondering why I voted for this guy when all of the sudden his Hope and Change steel balls descend and the angels start singing and the butterflies of spring are flying and I’m all slathered up in his Hope and Change juice again. Then the POTUS sends an email to all important News organizations who still deliver fair, accurate, truthful, objective and impartial news telling them to get to work and not to worry about the who, what, where, when and why.  His balls descend further as he interrupts the Reality Star’s Show to make the Steel Bally announcement that Osama Bin Laden has been killed.  A picture surfaces of the bloody room where the dirty deed happened and another of the POTUS and his National Security team where Obama’s determined and Hillary looks like she might puke (it might have been about 3 A-M in Pakistan when it all ended Ms. Clinton ;)).  The Republicans limply praise our leader’s moves, then go on Fox News demanding pictures and death certificates and videos and first borns and pieces of helicopters and DNA samples.

But after all he’s been through in this one silly weekend, the POTUS maintains the cool character that is he and of which we’ve been disdaining and tells them all to go back to work before he sends the newly minted head of the Democratic Party Debbie Wasserman-Schultz down to ruin their 2012 dreams.  So I admit I’ve been waffling, but now “I’m In”.  My President’s badass.

More BS from Governor Brian Schweitzer on Eminent Domain HB198

May 6, 2011 in 2011 Legislative session, Brian Schweitzer, Crony Capitalism, Montana, Private Property Rights

by jhwygirl

HB198, the eminent domain bill, is ugly folks.

Governor Schweitzer knows it, having promised the day a majority in the Senate was fooled (having been heavily lobbied by not only NWE and Tonbridge, but by the Governor’s office) into voting for the thing.

This is a bill that was pushed through the legislature with the help of the thugs of NWE. A bill that was tabled in Senate committee.

On the floor of the Senate just 8 days before the close of the session the beast was blasted onto the floor with lobbyists having worked the Senators the night before with drinks and dinner. Amendments to HB198 were offered that even proponents of agreed were worthy and needed to protect private property right, but they failed because there wasn’t enough time to get the thing back through the House.

Apparently though Governor Schweitzer has forgotten the legislative process…or he’s telling us something over and over in the hopes that we will start to believe it (like I said in an earlier post on this subject)…..but when Schweitzer bloviated about his successes to the press on Thursday, he included his “amendment” to HB198, the eminent domain bill:

The Democratic governor also talked up successes like the passage of a business equipment tax cut, workers’ compensation reform and revisions to Montana’s eminent domain laws, which he called the most important “job creator” of the session.

Schweitzer said his recent amendment to House Bill 198, which addresses eminent domain, will terminate the law in two years. The amendment ensures the 2013 Legislature must take another look at landowner issues, while allowing job-related development to flourish in the meantime; without passage of HB198, Schweitzer said badly needed energy development projects would have been jeopardized.

“That energy bill did not consider the rights of landowners, and they were worked up. So it was a balancing act for legislators to say, ‘We need to develop Montana and we need to develop our resources,’ ” Schweitzer said, commending lawmakers for meeting in the middle.

Now – that’s not just Schweitzer saying something in passing about his successes – this is the Governor going on for quite a bit about how he fixed the bill and what it does and what it doesn’t do…along with his own version of the bill’s benefits that many dispute.

Trouble is, Schweitzer started complaining that the bill needed amended – as I pointed out at the top of this post – and that he was going to amendatory veto the thing before the sun had gone down the day of the vote’s successful second reading vote in the Senate which gave the bill the necessary approval in both houses.

So the Republicans, in control, decided to hold back on the thing, not handing it up to him until last Friday, April 29th. A tactical move on their part.

Governor Schweitzer can not amendatory veto the bill – the session is closed.

His choices are two: He has until Sunday to veto the thing or sign it into law. He can also let it lapse into law, but the effect is the same as approving the thing. Letting lapse into law is a choice of the Governor’s, and is equal to signing it into law.

And when it does become law, it will not have a sunset clause.

Look – I know this stuff is boring for you folks but realize this – the effects of handing over eminent domain authority to any private transmission business that comes into this state under the major facilities siting act should be utterly offensive to you.

It is the rise of the ghosts of the Copper Kings. It will be a turning point in our history, just as the sale of Montana Power.

If you have questions, I encourage you to ask – we’ve had some very informed people on this issue, including Kate Orr and John Vincent, who sits on the Montana Public Service Commission (so how’s that for expert, huh?). That’s me kinda openly soliciting his help there, too.

It’s that important.

Please stand up for your fellow Montanan ranchers and property owners out in the eastern and central part of this state that are fighting this thing and contact the governor by email governor@mt.gov and tell him that working solutions to this issue require full analysis which fully weighs the concerns of Montana’s citizens.

In the meantime, Tonbridge can play fairly. Is that asking too much?

Friday Night Playlist

May 6, 2011 in Montana

by lizard

As I mentioned in CFS’s post, I dj’d at KBGA for years. So to continue the fun from the previous thread, I’m going to be building a playlist and adding to it through out the night.

Friday Fun Post: The Situation is in the Situation Room Edition

May 6, 2011 in Montana

By CFS

The now infamous famous photo of Obama and his peeps in the Situation Room watching our favorite terrorist get one in the head has become a viral meme.  Over @ Wired.com they have a great gallery of Photoshoped pics for your enjoyment.

Happy Friday!