Results tagged “Barack Obama” from Fun with Politics

The folks on the news desk forwarded me an e-mail today from a local resident. He raises a pretty interesting point.

I recently interviewed local Congressman Todd Platts, who told me he disapproves of the people shouting about proposed health care changes at public meetings, and he believes differences of opinion on the issue should be voiced in a "mannerly, respectful way."

Yet Platts, like his fellow Republicans, voted against a House resolution rebuking U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson for his now famous (infamous?) shout of "You lie!" during President Obama's address on health care.

Yeah, you could argue that it's contradictory. But I'm willing to cut Platts some slack on this one.

To use an analogy, I could honestly say that I disapprove of a colleague's snide comment to another co-worker during an office meeting. Yet I could still believe the colleague who made the comment doesn't deserve an official letter of reprimand from the boss -- particularly if he already apologized, as Wilson has done repeatedly.

So what do you think? Am I being too lenient? Feel free to weigh in with comments.

Here's a video I made to explore the controversy surrounding end of life counseling. Is it me, or are sock puppets a sorely underutilized tool for political discourse?

OK, it's not the most substantive political protest I've ever seen. But what the hell, it's cute.

By the way, when I picked up the embed coding on Youtube, this was the first comment -- reproduced exactly:

thats so dam fake the lady probably taught him that barack obama means "no" or "off"

So apparently the dog isn't really rejecting the treats over its ideological objections to Barack Obama's policies. Wow. The Internet's just chock full of geniuses, isn't it?

Hawaii's health director has reiterated the fact that she's personally seen Barack Obama's birth certificate in the Health Department archives.

I doubt that will make any difference to the "birthers," the group of people that insists Obama wasn't born in the U.S., and thus doesn't meet the Constitutional requirements to be president.

One thing I've learned in my years as a reporter is that it's impossible to argue with a hardcore conspiracy theorist.

Before starting my first year at Penn State, I attended an orientation session with other students who had been accepted at the university. One of the topics they addressed was how academically and intellectually advanced we were over the country's general high school population.

I wasn't sure whether to be skeptical or alarmed about that information in subsequent years, when I encountered some real dumb asses at that school.

One episode comes to mind immediately. I was at a party where a young woman was talking about a friend of mine whom she considered "hot." But she wasn't sure if she could hook up with him, because he was a "foreigner."

Love or hate Barack Obama, ya gotta hand it to him. The guy's pretty good at maintaining his composure.

Did you ever get an e-mail from someone purporting to be an exiled Nigerian government official, offering to cut you in on a deal to transport a vast sum of money out of the country if you'd only be kind enough to provide some personal information?

Before you hit the delete key, did you ever take a minute to wonder: "Who the hell would actually respond to something like this?"

I'm guessing it's the kind of people who would forward an e-mail that actually ended up in my inbox this morning.

My assignment today was to get people's comments on President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

My editor asked me to talk to some regular folks -- not just the politicans and legal experts. She said it would be particularly good if I could get some Hispanic people on record.

This cracked me up. I got an e-mail yesterday from the National Republican Senate Committee with a link to a YouTube video showcasing a robo-call they're sending out to Pennsylvania Democrats.

Here it is:

Think about the implications here. They're basically saying: "Hey, this guy is so bad, the last Republican president approved of him!"

It doesn't seem so long ago that Republicans were the unquestionably dominant party in the hearts and minds of the American people. How did it get to this point?