Would you buy someone's memoir all because you hated the person?So Bush's unpopularity is the reason his book is so successful--yeah, that makes sense.
That's the reason a Salon political writer gave MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell Friday for why George W. Bush's book is selling better than Bill Clinton's:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie blasted Democratic political opponents Friday for criticizing his absence from the state during the snowstorm that pounded the Northeast over the Christmas holiday.
He also took a shot at the media for giving what he characterized as excessive attention to the controversy during what is typically a slow news week.
Both Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, first-term Republicans, were away on vacation during the storm, which dumped up to three feet of snow throughout the region.
State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat, briefly took the reins of power Sunday, becoming acting governor before declaring a state of emergency.
Some top Democrats, in turn, questioned why the state legislature had bothered to create an office of lieutenant governor in 2005.
Christie, who returned to New Jersey on Thursday, said the state had competent leadership during his absence. He said he would not break a long-held promise to his children to bring them to Disney World over the holiday and noted that Guadagno had made plans months before to take a two-week cruise with her severely ill father.
"My first and most important responsibility, in my view, is as a husband and a father," Christie said.
"I think I made that pretty clear to the people of New Jersey when I was running. ... And I was not going to rescind my child's Christmas gift, especially when I was convinced that we had a plan in place."
Christie also said he had constantly been in touch from Florida during the storm.
"This is not like in the 1800s when, you know, nobody would be able to get me," he said. "Believe me, my cell phone was ringing ... much more than I would have preferred it to under normal circumstances when I'm away on a family vacation."
There is "able leadership in the executive branch of this government, (and) I was talking to them on a regular basis."
"All this carping and craziness" about leaving the state "stranded" is "just partisanship," Christie argued.
Democratic critics in the state legislature "took shots ... without knowing the full story." They should "learn this is a responsible government."
This was a great segment and honestly I was proud to be in Barron’s corner. While I disagree with his lifestyle choices, I thought he did a great job defending both the Republican Party and the conservative movement against Cenk’s accusations – especially that the Republican Party ‘doesn’t like him’.
Rush has tried to make this point over and over, that conservatives are much more tolerant than are liberals. You remember how much flack Elton John got from the Left for singing at Rush’s wedding. It’s just par for the course with the Left and we’ve seen it over and over.
Look, as long as someone from GOProud is ok with me disagreeing with their lifestyle choices and perhaps even their gay agenda (if they have one), then I don’t have a problem going to CPAC. I’m certainly not going to try and humiliate them like Ryan Sorba from last year, but I’m not going to pass out pamphlets for them either. But if an organization wants to boycott, that’s ok too. I’m sympathetic to them but I’m not sure I agree with them.
Longing for the early years of the Bush administration, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been consumed by anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, convinced American officials are now working against him, according to a diplomatic cable from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.Americans made a statement about their feelings on the direction Barack Obama is taking this country in back in November, now foreign leaders are following their lead.
The cable was sent in July 2009, which would become the deadliest month for foreign troops since the 2001 invasion. The surge in casualties resulted from an offensive to oust the Taliban in opium-rich Helmand Province, as well as the increasing power of roadside bombs. On July 7, when Amb. Karl Eikenberry met with Karzai, the Afghan president was looking backward rather than forward, wistfully longing for the early days of the Bush administration, which he referred to as a "golden age."
"Karzai then returned to a familiar theme, his wish for Afghan-U.S. relations to recover the spirit of 2002-04 -- a period Karzai sees as a 'golden age' in the relationship," wrote Eikenberry in a July 16 cable obtained by WikiLeaks and published by The New York Times. "He would like for U.S. forces to again be able to drive their humvees through villages, greeted warmly by villagers who would shout, 'Good morning, Sergeant Thompson.' Karzai claimed, as he has many times, that his concern over the erosion of public trust in the U.S. was a driving factor in his increasingly strident criticism regarding civilian casualties, night raids and detentions."
The bad news keeps coming for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. The 2010 ratings data is starting to trickle in, and the news is not so great for the Countdown host. In a down year for cable news where all three networks registered a decline in viewers, Keith Olbermann lost 11% of his total audience, but what is most troubling is that among the coveted age 25-54 demographic Olbermann lost 25% of his audience.
In terms of total viewers all three of the cable networks suffered. Fox News declined 5% in 2010 from a Monday-Friday average of 2.568 million viewers in 2009 to 2.426 million in 2010. MSNBC was down 9% in 2010 from 953,000 viewers in 2009 to 870,000 viewers in 2010. CNN suffered a stunning 36% drop in total viewers from 1 million viewers in 2009 to 636,000 viewers in 2010. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News suffered only a 6% drop, because almost 70% + of the audience is older than 54. MSNBC declined by 18% in the demo, and CNN fell by a whopping 37%.
Keith Olbermann’s total drop in viewership was 2% higher than MSNBC’s network average, (11% vs 9%). In contrast, Rachel Maddow lost less of her audience than MSNBC as a whole. Maddow only declined by 6% compared to the network’s 11%. Maddow’s total loss was almost half of her lead in Olbermann, (6% compared to 11%). Olbermann also lost a higher than network percentage of those viewers age 25-54. MSNBC lost 18%. Olbermann lost 25%. Maddow only lost 14%.
Olberman is still MSNBC’s most watched host. Overall, he is the 11th most watched cable news program, but Rachel Maddow was right behind him at 13th, and Lawrence O’Donnell was 14th. The gap between Olbermann and his MSNBC primetime colleagues is shrinking, which is good for the network. The point is that Olbermann’s audience is getting older, and he is working on a network that is trying to target younger viewers. This isn’t to say that Olbermann is doomed at MSNBC, far from it actually, but that 2010 was not a good year for him.
After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means, and Republicans are ready to put up a fight.
On Jan. 2, new carbon emissions limits will be put forward as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations that would force companies to get permits to release greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Critics say the new rules are a backdoor effort to enact the president's agenda on global warming without the support of Congress, and would hurt the economy and put jobs in jeopardy by forcing companies to pay for expensive new equipment.
"They are job killers. Regulations, period -- any kind of regulation is a weight on economy. It requires people to comply with the law, which takes work hours and time, which reduces the profitability of firms. Therefore, they grow more slowly and you create less jobs," said environmental scientist Ken Green of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie wants to find a way to release more information about President Barack Obama's birth and dispel conspiracy theories that he was born elsewhere.The good folks at Hot Air have more on why this is just stupid.
Abercrombie was a friend of Obama's parents and knew him as a child, and is deeply troubled by the effort to cast doubt on the president's citizenship.
The newly elected Democrat will ask the state attorney general's office and health officials about how he can make public more of Obama's birth documentation from Aug. 4, 1961, spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Tuesday.
"He had a friendship with Mr. Obama's parents, and so there is a personal issue at hand," Dela Cruz said. "Is it going to be done immediately? No, the first thing on our list is the economy."
It's unclear what Abercrombie could do because Hawaii's privacy laws have long barred the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who doesn't have a tangible interest.
Hawaii's health director said last year and in 2008 that she had seen and verified Obama's original vital records, and birth notices in two Honolulu newspapers were published within days of Obama's birth at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu.
So-called "birthers" claim Obama is ineligible to be president because they say there's no proof he was born in the United States, with many of the skeptics questioning whether he was actually born in Kenya, his father's home country.
"What bothers me is that some people who should know better are trying to use this for political reasons," Abercrombie told the Los Angeles Times last week. "Maybe I'm the only one in the country that could look you right in the eye right now and tell you, 'I was here when that baby was born.'"
Looks like Dana Perino wasn’t the only one to impugn Sarah Palin’s intellect on yesterday’s Fox News Sunday. While the panel was predicting (or failing to predict) the 2012 Republican candidate, Juan Williams pointed out that none of the prospects named so far could compete with Barack Obama charisma-wise except for Sarah Palin then adding, offhand, that she wouldn’t be able to compete with him intellect-wise. Ouch. Someone is totally gonna get chainsaw massacred.
“It’s telling to me, again, you’re talking about Mike Pence from Indiana, you talk about a charisma gap, y’know, charisma-challenged people. There’s nobody out there except for Sarah Palin who could absolutely dominate the stage and she can’t stand on the intellectual stage with Obama.”
Everyone reacted audibly with Chris Wallace giving a smiling “Oooookay” as if to say “Man, this clip is absolutely going to be on every website in the world tomorrow.” Yes, Chris. Yes it is.
Alvin Greene, the unemployed Army veteran who suggested during his failed U.S. Senate bid that making action figures of himself would help create jobs, is running for office again.
Greene paid the $165 filing fee on Christmas Eve to run in a special election for a South Carolina House seat made vacant by the death this month of Rep. Cathy Harvin.
Cal Land, the chairman of the Clarendon County Democratic Party, said Greene entered the race five minutes after the filing period opened. A primary will be held Feb. 15 with the special election set for April 5.
Greene said Monday he would wait to see who else filed before commenting on the race. He was handily defeated in November by incumbent U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.
President Barack Obama and his family took a break from their Hawaiian vacation to attend Sunday church services, a rare occurrence for a president who prefers to worship in private.Keep in mind that Barry's "evolving" on stuff like "gay marriage" so he shouldn't be faulted for taking his time going back to church.
The first family arrived at a chapel at Marine Corps Base Hawaii mid-morning for a multi-denominational service. The Obamas were greeted by about 100 clapping parishioners and a band playing "Joy to the World" as they were led to their seats in the front row.
In his sermon, chaplain Steve Moses asked worshippers to recommit to God in the new year. He also joked that the reason God put him through a heart surgery was so he wouldn't suffer a heart attack while preaching before the president.
Obama was the first worshipper to take communion, dipping the wafer in wine before placing it in his mouth.
Though Obama speaks frequently about his Christian faith, his family rarely attends church services in Washington. The White House says the president hasn't joined a parish because his appearances would be disruptive to the rest of the congregation, though he does attend private services when he spends weekends at Camp David, the presidential retreat.
Obama last attended church in September, shortly after a poll was released indicating that a majority of Americans had doubts about the president's religious beliefs.
Posts
All Comments
