Way To Fail

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Somebody had to say it:

Sarah Palin on Barack Obama speech: ‘WTF’

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday night that President Barack Obama’s call for “winning the future” during his State of the Union address is best framed by the acronym it shares with a much different phrase — “wtf.”

“That was a tough speech to sit through and try to stomach,” Palin said during an interview with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren.

“His theme last night was wtf, winning the future,” she continued. “I thought, okay, that acronym – spot on. There were a lot of wtf moments throughout that speech.”

Palin, seemingly pleased with her joke, repeated the line later in the interview while poking Obama for referencing Sputnik in another section of his address.

“That was another wtf moment,” she said.

You think the White House would have learned after the WikiLeaks Task Force. The worst part is “Winning the Future” isn’t even original:

The phrase that President Barack Obama used 10 times in his State of the Union address, and at least five more times during a visit to Wisconsin on Wednesday, is also the title of a 2005 book by Newt Gingrich. Wherever they are on the political spectrum, it seems great minds agree that America must “win the future.”

Gingrich, the former House speaker and habitual Republican presidential prospect, published “Winning the Future” in January 2005. He subtitled it “A 21st Century Contract With America” and laid out his remedies for terrorism, godlessness, flagging patriotism, too much spending and not enough math and science education.

In two days Obama has made the phrase his own and used it to promote his own solutions to the problems he sees. “We weren’t aware at first of the Gingrich tie, but it wasn’t a concern,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told me in an e-mail. He said it wasn’t a concern because the phrase is a common one. The White House became aware of the Gingrich connection “recently,” Pfeiffer said. Before the speech? Yes.

Consider the SOTU message train officially off the rails.

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In other WTF news:

Dennis Kucinich Sues Congressional Cafeteria Over Olive Pit

Congressman Dennis Kucinich bought a sandwich from the Longworth House Office Building cafeteria in April 2008, and bit into it only to find an unpitted olive that cracked a tooth. This month, he sued the cafeteria for selling “dangerous” sandwiches.

This is what they call “bad optics.” Yeah, it might be a legit lawsuit but it just looks bad for a congressman to be filing a case like this.

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Now for some real news:

Medicare official doubts health care law savings

Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare’s independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.

The landmark legislation probably won’t hold costs down, and it won’t let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it, Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee. His office is responsible for independent long-range cost estimates.

[…]

Foster was a thorn in the side to the administration throughout the health care debate, doubting that Medicare cuts would prove to be politically sustainable and raising other questions. An equal opportunity skeptic, he was also a bane to the George W. Bush administration during the debate that led to creation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003.

Telling the truth is the kind of nasty habit that makes a person unpopular.

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Washington Post:

Loughner researched lethal injection before Tucson shooting, sources say

In the days and weeks before the shooting rampage in Tucson, Jared Lee Loughner surfed the Internet on his home computer in what investigators believe was preparation for his alleged assassination attempt, law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said.

The suspect’s focus on several Web sites – covering lethal injection, solitary confinement and political assassinations – could have dramatic implications as prosecutors build their case against him on federal murder charges that could carry the death penalty. They hope to use the computer information, along with notes seized in Loughner’s home, to show that his acts were premeditated and that he knew right from wrong, the sources said.

I blame Sarah Palin

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Bad reporting dot com:

Senate Democrats Forfeit 50-Vote Option For Rules Changes

The window to change the Senate rules during this session through a simple majority vote ended without action last night as lawmakers in the chamber agreed to adjourn the first day of the 112th Congress.

“They adjourned last night,” said a top GOP aide. “We’re no longer in the first legislative day.”

A senior Democratic aide confirmed last night’s adjournment, a formal end to the “first day” of the legislative session, which had actually been prolonged since early January. With it went the chance for Democrats to exercise what’s known as the “constitutional option” — a maneuver that rules-reform advocates said would have allowed members to present their procedural changes with 51 votes.

I know what a filibuster is and I’m still not sure what Sam Stein is talking about. Compare that article to this one at Firedoglake:

After Failing to Change Senate Rules, Democrats Lose Right to Blame Mitch McConnell

Senate Democrats had an opportunity to get together and make the Senate a working, majority-rule-based chamber. They could have recently used the “Constitutional Option” at the start of this new Congress to rewrite the Senate rules to either eliminate the filibuster outright or at least make staging a filibuster more difficult. Yet, due to a combination of a greedy refusal to give up any individual power, and a pitiful cowardice about a potential future in which the voters reject them, Senate Democrats collectively chose to throw away this opportunity. By doing nothing, they effectively voted to give Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell total veto power over everything.

Currently, McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans have the ability to kill any legislation, stop any nominee from getting confirmed, or hold any bill hostage until their demands were met. Democrats spent the past two years complaining endlessly about how horrible it was that Republicans used the filibuster to kill popular legislation that had majority support. It was the 60-vote threshold for cloture, and McConnell’s ability to hold his party united in opposition, on which Democrats placed almost all the blame for their many legislative failures over the past two years.

All these awful problems could have been eliminated yesterday in roughly 20 minutes. Democrats could have simply changed the rules and completely taken away McConnell’s power to obstruct. Senate Democrats could have freed themselves to govern as a majority party. They could have made it possible to pass whatever bills they wanted to and no longer be forced to submit to the legislative hostage-taking of a minority. Instead, though, they chose to leave themselves helpless, controlled by the whims of Sen. McConnell.

There is a good argument for keeping the filibuster – during the Bush years it (allegedly) enabled Democrats to block some of the worst excesses of the GOP and the Republicans may regain control of the Senate in two years. But then again, if the GOP takes over the Senate after the 2012 election what’s to stop them from abolishing the filibuster then?

Actually the best reason for keeping it is the fact that the GOP now controls the House of Representatives. The Republicans would only need a handful of Senate blue-dogs to cross the aisle to pass legislation, and if that happens we can’t count on Obama to veto it.

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This looks like an excellent movie:

Sundance Report: ‘Missrepresentation’ Explores Treatment of Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton by Mainstream Media

The documentary “Missrepresentation,” directed by Lieutenant Governor of California Gavin Newsom’s wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom, explores how mainstream media undermines American women in influential positions, and the impact this makes on young girls.

It also challenges what it says is the media’s often disparaging portrayal of women. In particular, “Missrepresentation” devotes quite a bit of time to how Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were covered by mainstream media in the 2008 presidential elections.

“The idea for the film came to me as I watched the 2008 presidential campaign and saw this sexism and double standard that was directed towards Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin, and some of the wives whose husbands were running for office. It really upset and affected me,” Siebel Newsom told FOX411’s Pop Tarts at the premiere in Park City, Utah over the weekend. “I knew I wanted to have children someday (she now has a two-year-old daughter and is pregnant with a son) and I was worried about raising a daughter in a world that objectifies women to such an extreme.”

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(h/t kc)

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