Hank III now second-best Williams

By Dan Brooks in Baby Boomers, Uncategorized 10 Comments

Hank Williams, Jr. comports himself with the dignity of his office.

Hank Williams, Jr. appeared on Fox and Friends yesterday morning to offer his opinion of the 2012 GOP field and managed to compare President Obama to Hitler within the first 90 seconds. To be fair, he was explaining why it was a bad idea for John Boehner and Obama to play golf together—a move he called “the biggest political mistake of all time.” Those of you familiar with his hit song “Don’t Talk to Me About FDR’s 1937 Court-Packing Plan” know that it’s futile to argue with Bocephus about such matters. Hank Jr. did not directly compare Obama to Hitler; he merely said that the joint outing between the Speaker of the House and the President was like “Netanyahu playing golf with Hitler.” Then he added that “they’re the enemy.” When asked who, exactly, he shouted “Obama!” and then immediately endorsed Herman Cain. It makes sense that Hank Williams, Jr. is a Republican. His dad did make him a millionaire. Video after the jump.

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The gloves come off re: class warfare

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 6 Comments

Rep. Paul Ryan (R–WI,) still perched on the line between good-looking and evil-looking

For the last several months it’s been showing up in Facebook comments and Boehner aides, but you almost never heard it from an actual congressman’s actual mouth until this weekend: class warfare. That’s what the Republican Party is calling Obama’s new jobs/deficit plan, with terrifying synchronization. “Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” Paul Ryan said on Fox News this weekend. “We don’t need a system that seeks to prey on people’s fear, envy and anxiety.” You can tell the GOP is scared about this, because Paul Ryan is talking. He’s the guy they get to tell the American people stuff we won’t want to hear, and they picked him the same way a carload of drunk frat boys decides who’s going to go knock on the door after they run over a dog. He’s handsome, at least by GOP standards. That’s good, because in this analogy, about 65% of America is the dog.

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Friday links: Let’s be real edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments

Skin tone comparison! President Obama v. John Boehner v. leather chair (control group at left)

If you accidentally turned on football early, you might have seen President Obama rocking a joint session of Congress with his jobs speech last night. Here I should point out that I am not a trained economist. I am not even a gifted amateur. But regardless of whether the President’s jobs plan will actually create jobs, he finally put it in terms America needs to hear. Speaking of his, um, differences with the Republican party:

Maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box. But know this: the next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here—the people who hired us to work for them—they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months.

Shit just got real. The rhetorical centerpiece of last night’s speech was “you should pass this bill right away.” It’s no Yes We Can—it’s not even a Win the Future—but it challenges the House and Senate in a way that foregrounds their intransigence. It also maybe acknowledged Obama’s willingness to be a one-term President. I’m still here for another year, he said like Dad when you are seventeen. The implicit threat was that, with less and less to lose, he is going to become a meaner adversary. And Boehner wept held his face completely motionless.

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President: dick?

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 1 Comment

Yesterday, President Obama announced that he would address a joint session of Congress regarding jobs and the economy on September 7—the same night, it turns out, as a Republican presidential debate. Exactly how it turned out is a matter of conjecture. Press secretary Jay Carney insisted that the date was not chosen to conflict with the debate, noting that there were going to be 20 of those things and that “one debate of many was no reason not to have a speech when we wanted to have it.” Still, I bet they have a big calendar in the White House, and Obama’s move seemed like a deliberate provocation. Fortunately for everyone, he was provoking John Boehner, which is like trying to get a fish to gasp. “As the majority leader announced more than a month ago, the House will not be in session until Wednesday, Sept. 7, with votes at 6:30 that evening,” Boehner wrote, asking the President to move the speech to September 8. Guess which date they compromised on!

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Now everything is fine

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 0 Comment

Both kinds of white dudes

Remember on Friday when we declared American politics too selfishly broken to address the basic management of the United States? It turns out we were wrong, because the President and congressional leaders reached a deal on the national debt ceiling last night. The package still needs the support of both houses—including several notoriously intransigent members—but tentatively, maybe even presumably, the lights are going to stay on. “Sausage making is not pretty,” Diane Feinstein told the Times. “But the sausage we have, I think, is a very different sausage from when we started.” And in the end, isn’t that what we all what from our food? Different?

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