“I don’t quit!”

Feisty Obama, way to go Mr. President.

Last night’s State of the Union address was incredible, President Obama showed humor, wisdom, compassion and common sense. It was a great rallying pep talk .. and he held everybody accountable .. including himself.

It was leadership front and center .. he took the blame and laid out the tasks ahead. This is what we were doing wrong, this is what we’re doing to fix it, now let’s get on with it. Some are saying the speech was almost Churchilian.

And the man can even pronounce “nuclear”….

We all needed to be reminded why we supported this very serious, very impressive man. A lot of lefty criticism of Obama centered around the fear that he was abandoning healthcare reform, and that he was letting the GOP cow him .. but I didn’t see any of that.

I loved how he talked about our majestic, resilient American spirit .. how nothing keeps us down, how we’re good neighbors who help each other to make our lives and neighborhoods, cities and country better.

One of my favorite moments was the smackdown of the Supreme Court corporate lackies on that idiotic campaign finance decision. Right to their faces, and they deserved it .. well, 5 of them anyway. I thought Roberts was going to shout out “You lie!”, but he just shook his head and mouthed “No, not true.”

For obvious reasons, traditionally Supreme Court Justices and the Joint Chiefs don’t applaud, but all the Chiefs stood and applauded when the President talked about “taking care of our troops when they come home” .. and proposed the expansion of veterans’ benefits.

I personally cheered when Obama talked about getting rid of tax credits for companies that ship jobs overseas .. and when he said that all of our troops will be out of Iraq by August.

I especially liked his admonishment of the Republicans over the filibuster abuse .. how he mentioned the many already-passed House bills that have stalled in the Senate .. one by one. I’m glad the American people heard that.

I also liked his admonishment of the Democrats — don’t run for the hills, use your historically huge majorities to accomplish some important things for the American people! Like healthcare reform — because people are dying out there without it.

Republican response to Obama’s speech started out like a SNL skit — some snickered, others looked dour, all sitting on their hands — but they must have realized that they looked like a bunch of negative a-holes not applauding things they had always championed, like tax cuts, because they warmed up after a while. Now, what do you want to bet that they’ll ignore his plea to work together to solve the country’s problems, and will resort to their same old tired talking points?

That Governor of Virginia’s rebuttal speech and his invitation-only applauders really got on my last nerve. Who does this guy think he is, giving a mini-parody of a SOTU? Who told him he was mini-president? Since when did the people of Virginia start renting out their capitol to throw partisan political events?

I have never in my life seen this sort of set-up after a SOTU speech. And you could tell he hadn’t listened to President Obama’s speech, or he would’ve known that Obama had just suggested off shore drilling, etc.

That’s when I flipped the channel.

E. Howard Hunt lives!

In what lefty bloggers are calling “Teabuggergate,” James O’Keefe, who posed as a pimp to target ACORN, got busted by the FBI while trying to bug Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office. This time he was secretly filming two friends who were wearing hard hats, tool belts and fluorescent vests, dressed up as guys from the phone company, as they monkeyed with the Senator’s phone.

You remember O’Keefe .. who dressed up like a pimp (in his mother’s old fur coat), and had a girl dress as a prostitute .. and broke some laws while secretly filming ACORN employees. He caused ACORN a world of hurt, lost them some funding after he selectively edited ACORN volunteers responses. Then he was on Fox News about a hundred times bragging about it.

Seems like O’Keefe was trying to outdo his last “gotcha” moment and forgot that there ARE laws against that sort of thing .. especially in a federal office.

Well ACORN is now sipping Schadenfreude tea .. and licking it from their lips.

And, while O’Keefe is certainly amusing, his accomplice Robert Flanagan is very interesting because his father, William Flanagan, is the acting US Attorney for Western Louisiana. Robert Flanagan was also an intern last year for Congresswoman Mary Fallin (R-OK). Fallin and 31 other Representatives co-sponsored a resolution honoring James O’Keefe and his ACORN-filming accomplice, Hannah Giles.

Apparently they’re all thick as thieves in these cozy Republican cliques.

Oh, and speaking of thick and cozy — Flanagan may have had a personal gripe against Landrieu. She proposed a replacement for his father, one Stephanie Finley, and President Obama nominated her. But now Finley is being blocked by LA’s other Senator, David “Diapers” Vitter, because Diapers wants to make sure the US Attorney who will be prosecuting O’Keefe and Flanagan — stays in office for a while longer.

Read more here: NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The four men accused of trying to tamper with Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones share a common experience as young ideologues writing for conservative publications.

…A witness told authorities that O’Keefe was already sitting in the waiting area of the office and appeared to record Basel and Flanagan on his cell phone when they arrived posing as phone workers.

A federal law enforcement official said one of the suspects was picked up in a car a couple of blocks away with a listening device that could pick up transmissions. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not part of the FBI affidavit. Another official said Dai was the suspect arrested outside.

All four suspects were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.[..]“

This is so similar to the Watergate break-in — right down to the ineptitude — it’s downright funny. But this isn’t ‘tricks’ or a ‘prank’ .. if this had been a “liberal” film making activist trying to bug the offices of a Republican Senator, there’d be no end of hell to pay. Hang ’em high!

Imagine if the Teabuggers had been Muslims! Righties would be popping blood vessels!

Seriously, a deliberate act of illegal surveillance of a top government official should mean serious jail time.

WTF-ever .. this is getting soooooo old

I swear, you can’t turn on the TV without seeing some blowhard rightie bloviating about how President Obama has polarized the country .. the same righties who have repeatedly smeared and spread lies about the President and his policies.

The Republicans spend a year screaming that the President isn’t an American, has no birth certificate .. they flood the airwaves with lies about him, call his mother a crack whore and his father her African pimp .. ‘African’ being a code word. They circulate a bunch of crazy crap about how he’s either a fascist on the one hand or a socialist/communist on the other. They do everything they can to demean, criticize and demonize him. They threaten him — carrying signs that say, “Next time we come armed.” They obstruct every single thing he tries to do to help the country .. and then they holler about how he’s polarizing the country!

Now, just exactly WHO is polarizing this country?!

They pulled this same crap in 1993 when they claimed that President Clinton was too polarizing, that he didn’t believe in bipartisanship .. that he was going to take their guns away, that he was personally corrupt, yada yada. Hell, they eventually accused him of drug running and murder .. and they ended up spending millions of taxpayer dollars on an impeachment trial .. because he lied about a blowjob.

They had to smear him because they had no other way to beat him .. and now they’re doing the same exact thing against Obama. Their crass vicious partisan tactics are so easy to spot.

Rightwing crazies are first and foremost organized by a paranoid loathing of their opposition .. and they are becoming more and more radical and hateful. Their party is like a religion to them, and it comes before country.

No, they won’t argue about how Bush destroyed the country .. it’s more important to them to destroy the guy with a D next to his name than see him have any success trying to save our country. That’s exactly what it always boils down to .. talk about polarizing partisanship.