Barack Obama, January 11, 2009:

I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards… My general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.

Barack Obama, October 29, 2010:

The GOP agenda, charged Obama, is “cutting taxes mostly for millionaires and billionaires… We tried it for eight years. It didn’t work. And so I bring all this up not because I want to re-argue the past. I just don’t want to relive the past.”

Nice line, Mr. President. Wish we had thought of it 22 months ago.

By the way, Mr. President, could you cave to the left just once? KTHXBAI.

White House Signals Intent To Cave To GOP On Bush Tax Cuts [TPM]

What in the fuck has Obama done so far? [via Greenwald]

Our guest columnist this morning is celebrated political columnist Dave Weigel.

So it’s possible that, on the west coast, the greatest GOP wave since the 1940s will have only produced one Republican gain in Washington state. If you cheat and count Hawaii as part of the “west,” the net Democratic loss is, so far, zero, because the party gained back the House seat in Honolulu. Not enough to worry Republicans about their huge gains in the Midwest, but a weird mystery irregardless.

Dave Weigel is from Delaware.

The Democrats’ Western Firewall [Slate]

Image: Roadside America

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VqZf0Etnjc

We interrupt this Premise to bring you a commercial that also appeared on the show last night, for a product we’ve never seen advertised. Or a product category we’ve never seen advertised.

Of course, over time we’ll get used to pitches for replacement body parts, just as we’re used to pitches for prescription boner pills with a significant risk of chronic turgidity, or pitches for prescription happy pills with only a minor risk of suicide.

And then we’ll be shocked — shocked! — at the first pitch we see for discount brain transplants.

And now, back to our hilarious letters to Keith from five-year-olds Billy, Sean, and Gle— oh, we’re sorry, our producer is telling us we’re out of time. But before we go, our humble appreciation for the 350,000 people who completely ignored us the past five days. You may now update your Twitter avatars to the next moral fad.

• Convenience-store car-crash video: 1:2
• Declares himself a shame to his profession, demands own resignation: 100:1
• Launches leveraged buyout of MSNBC: 30:1

Read more »

Every Hero needs a villain. And for Markos Moulitsas, the Villain of the Olbermann Window Closing is MSNBC President Phil Griffin:

Remember how I told you about Phil Griffin, and how he’s done everything possible to keep MSNBC from going the full liberal?

I rest my case. MSNBC has suspended Olbermann indefinitely without pay for giving political contributions to several candidates this cycle.

The Kos Case — repeated ad infinitum across the Web — goes something like this: Griffin is a Joe Scarborough partisan who grudgingly puts up with Olbermann because Keith made MSNBC a (relative) success, after years of failure. But Griffin undermines the left-leaning nature of that success every chance he gets, because it chaps his ass.

This should be easy to document.

Except for one problem: It isn’t.

Read more »

So: Talibunny puts out a stroke job that would get her banned from Chatroulette and shunned by Christine O’Donnell, and the lamestream media responds like a litter of Cubby Grizzlies in a suckling frenzy.

We understand that Will She Or Won’t She has a practical consequence for her potential primary opponents: If you’re gaming a race, you can’t count her out until she definitively rules herself out. You also have to prepare for the possibility that she sucks all the money out of the room. If we were a political consultant, it would be dereliction of duty to arbitrarily remove her from the board.

But we are, instead, merely a Humble Citizen of These United States, and we think the chatter about her running is, and has long been, utter bullshit.

Sarah Palin is not running for President. She is building her fortune. And doing quite well at it.

Read more »

“Just now, in a rousing victory speech, Kentucky’s newest senator, Rand Paul, announced, ‘Thomas Jefferson wrote, “That government is best that governs least.”’ Except, no. He didn’t. Henry David Thoreau did.” [Time]

• “Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.”
• “Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.”
• “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”

Read more »