Showing posts with label beltway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beltway. Show all posts

Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Uppity Stranger ~ Chuck Todd's Book Slams President Obama

 photo ChuckToddBook.png


Previous Related Posts:
Chuck Todd Admits That Truth Isn't Part of His Job Description
Chuck Todd Shills for Mitch McConnell after Slamming Alison Grimes
Jealous Clown Todd Wonders Why Obama Isn't an Alpha Dog

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chuckles the Todd, who was recently chosen as the new host of NBC's flagship "Meet the Press," has written a poison-pen screed against President Obama. The so-called journalist who famously said it "wasn't his job" to truth-check the GOP on Obamacare now thinks it IS his job to 'splain all of the Obama-fail.

It's enough to make a Tea Partier weep with joy. And those are Chuck Todd's people. He has done them proud.

Let him tell you something about The Negro, just like Cliven Bundy.

 photo 51hXYRee5LL.jpg


. . . if The Stranger is revelatory, it’s not in the way Todd intended. For all his strengths (and they are myriad), Todd has written a disappointing book, a slab of pedestrian punditry marbled with occasional insight. The Stranger purports to tell the story of a president who couldn’t transcend his environment. The story it ultimately—and unwittingly—tells is of the perceptive political geek who couldn’t escape Beltway groupthink.
~ Elbert Ventura, Columbia Journalism Review

Six years in, our 44th president remains a cipher, someone “everyone is still trying to get to know,” as Mr. Todd writes. Particularly vexing is a basic irony that this book seeks to address: “How does one of the most successful politicians in American history . . . appear to be so bad at practicing the basics of politics in the backrooms of Washington, whether on Capitol Hill, on K Street, or at the Pentagon?”
. . . To that nagging question about how someone so intellectually advanced could be so politically stunted, the author’s final answer is that Barack Obama’s “arrogance got the better of him.” As a novel twist on this familiar theme, Mr. Todd theorizes that Mr. Obama’s happy experience as editor of the Harvard Law Review “gave him a false self-confidence that burns in him—and burns him—to this day.”
~ via Wall Street Journal Book Review

Todd’s attempts to peer deep inside Obama as an individual don’t take us far. “As is the case for many Americans, the president’s unusual upbringing shaped him to be the person he is today,” is not an encouraging start. Todd makes much of the fact that Obama’s mother was an anthropologist, which somehow transmitted to her only son “instinctive observational skills that allowed him to read and understand folks better than most politicians.” At the same time, being biracial “infused in him the temperament and patience that have marked his presidency both positively and negatively.” As a politician, Obama is described as “passive and arrogant,” and at times he is “all telescope and zero microscope.”
. . . As befitting a political junkie chronicle, the book is generous with political cliches. Throughout “The Stranger,” field days are had, rocky shoals are navigated, skies pose limits, writing appears on walls, fuel is added to fires, dies are cast, and collective sighs of relief are breathed. And there are sentences like this one: “Early on, there were signs the Republicans wouldn’t follow the presidential Pied Piper to postpartisanship.”
~ Washington Post Review of The Stranger
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~













Friday, August 22, 2014

Media Obsession with Obama's Golf Game

 photo aaaaf699-fcbd-469c-9cf4-16e51b51b8ff.jpg

Previous Related Posts:
Optics Delusion: Twitter Erupts Over Obama Jeans
Michele Bachmann Gripes About Cost of Obama's Dog, Air Force One
Conservatives Tripping About Obama's Vacation
Obama's New Scandal Umbrellagate

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The media is obsessed with the fact that President Obama, like many of his presidential predecessors, is able to take vacations and (horrors) play golf whenever he feels like it. Because, you know, Obama can't possibly golf and THINK at the same time. Or maybe the press can't watch golf and think at the same time. Today they criticized him for taking a hike, because walking and thinking don't go hand in hand either. I think Henry David Thoreau and Gandhi might disagree with them. Surely Martin Luther King and every person who marched for Civil Rights would disagree that physical activity rules out thinking or pondering.

Anyway, it's all about "Optics" because there are BIG things going on in the world, and Obama should be solving them all NOW. How dare the President try to relax so he can deal with them when the time comes. How dare he recharge his batteries like every other President before him. Funny that no one cared when the Elder Bush was watching "Curly Sue" in the theater at the White House, or relaxing at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. Funny they never said this when President W. Bush was down in Texas at the BBQ ranch or choking on Fritos and then falling asleep on the couch in front of football at the White House. How many hours of sleep did W. need a night? Something like 14?

But the Optics of Golf meme is way to fire up the right-wing, or white-wing, readers, so some media outlets keep tweeting and reporting on what the black President is doing up in (usually white) Martha's Vineyard. And after the reporters tweet about golf, the trolls jump on the bandwagon.





























~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~















~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~








Friday, March 21, 2014

GOP Reaching Out With Fake Hipster-Doofus

 photo fark_9RrvjifqlGBatpgDkuLirzN4xOY.png

The GOP has decided to their "outreach" needs to aim at Millenials in the 20-30-something age group, and in their infinite wisdom decided the defining trait of that generation is their ability to whine about every little thing. No really. Let's make a video about whiny self-absorbed and especially MONEY-absorbed hipster dude-bros and win people back into the Republican fold, because "we need the young." Epic Fail.

From Gawker:
Enter Scott Greenberg, a 30-year-old ad guy with a cool shirt, the sort of shirt Adam might wear on Girls. Scott is a hipster. Scott is young. Scott is concerned about paying for things. That's why Scott is a Republican, the face of a new GOP-sponsored ad campaign...
. . . likely, an old donor wants to see some youth outreach, and the RNC finds Scott, a young Beltway acolyte to provide them with a simulacrum of youth culture for a couple of shekels. We have the horn-rimmed glasses! The pomaded hair! A brick tenement across a city street! Talk of money problems and friends!






Parody from PriceOfOil.com



Parody from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver






No matter what your political persuasion, we think you'll agree that the ad is easily mockable. The man, Scott Greenberg, is dressed to the nines in hipster gear, oversize glasses, and a stubble beard. He also comes prepared with indignation and an inability to read cue cards with any amount of subtlety.
~ Yahoo News

Hipster republicans. You couldn't make someone easier for New Yorkers to hate unless you spliced DNA from Leona Helmsley and Carrot Top.
~ Nalano635 on Gothamist

Ok cupid date from hell
~ Ihuffglue91 on Gothamist

He looks like Waldo.
~ sunshine999 on Gothamist

I fuel my hybrid Tesla on kitten tears & racist poems. Take that, Obama!!! #TrumpPalin2016
~ UnfamousChris on YouTube

The Republicans tossed a hanging curveball to the satirists.
~ Garth H. on YouTube

DC has excellent public transport and bike lanes. There's even a bikeshare program all over the city.
~ Process613 on YouTube

This is like an SNL skit poking fun of an RNC ad targeting millenials.
~ IDontWantAChannel on YouTube 

The GOP doesn't realize most millennials, myself included, want to smack the smug off every hipster we see.
~ Edward M. on YouTube

I congratulate you, GOP, on this embarrasingly bad attempt to ingratiate yourself to hipsters. Or is this supposed to be "ironically awful?"
~ Patrick D. on YouTube

C'mon, at least try to make it less obvious that he isn't reading from a teleprompter right off-screen.
~ Blarghalt on YouTube

I can see the teleprompter shining in his glasses.
~ Noah T. on YouTube

I just realized that this is Mitt Romney's illegitimate son.
~ PacificCoast82 on YouTube

If you're spending soooo much of your paycheck on gas, maybe you should make a few sacrifices and take the bus. You seem to live in a busy city. What do you need a car for?
~ Draco Lupus on YouTube

The solution to the oil crisis is in that guy's hair.
~ Draco Lupus on YouTube

Hahaha! GOP thinks they can win over hipsters with a fake hipster! No wonder they most of that "party" hasn't seen the ball since kickoff.....
~ NeutronStar73 on National Journal

Don't hold your breath for an ad in which Scott helps his hipster cohort navigate the GOP position on marriage equality.
~ pdavidcATL on National Journal