Bill Maher “Listen to this, as part of the outreach program to the young people, Obama is trying to get the student loan thing down to an affordable rate.  Obama asked Congress to pass a bill to keep interest rates on students low, because they’re going to go up.  So, Republicans said OK.  They said OK, but they’re going to pay for it by gutting the part of Obamacare that pays for women’s cancer screenings.  They said this is consistent with their policy for women, that if you find a lump, you shouldn’t have been touching yourself in the first place.  Wow, that is quite a strategy the Republicans have.  If we can’t win the women’s vote, we’ll have to do the second best thing and kill them.”

Excerpts from Obama’s remarks at the White House Correspondents dinner 4-28-12

Obama “Good evening, everybody.  Good evening.  I could not be more thrilled to be here tonight — (laughter) — at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.  This is great crowd.

In 2009, I took office in the face of some enormous challenges.  Now, some have said I blame too many problems on my predecessor, but let’s not forget that’s a practice that was initiated by George W. Bush.  Since then, Congress and I have certainly had our differences; yet, I’ve tried to be civil, to not take any cheap shots.  And that’s why I want to especially thank all the members who took a break from their exhausting schedule of not passing any laws to be here tonight.  Let’s give them a big round of applause.

Anyway, it’s great to be here this evening in the vast, magnificent Hilton ballroom — or what Mitt Romney would call a little fixer-upper.  I mean, look at this party.  We’ve got men in tuxes, women in gowns, fine wine, first-class entertainment.  I was just relieved to learn this was not a GSA conference. Unbelievable.  Not even the mind reader knew what they were thinking.

And plenty of journalists are here tonight.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t congratulate the Huffington Post on their Pulitzer Prize.  You deserve it, Arianna.  There’s no one else out there linking to the kinds of hard-hitting journalism that HuffPo is linking to every single day.  Give them a round of applause.  And you don’t pay them — it’s a great business model

Now, I know at this point many of you are expecting me to go after my likely opponent, Newt Gingrich.  Newt, there’s still time, man.  But I’m not going to do that — I’m not going to attack any of the Republican candidates.  Take Mitt Romney — he and I actually have a lot in common.  We both think of our wives as our better halves, and polls show, to a alarmingly insulting extent, the American people agree.  We also both have degrees from Harvard; I have one, he has two.  What a snob.

Of course, we’ve also had our differences.  Recently, his campaign criticized me for slow jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon.  In fact, I understand Governor Romney was so incensed he asked his staff if he could get some equal time on The Merv Griffin Show.  Still, I guess Governor Romney is feeling pretty good about things because he took a few hours off the other day to see The Hunger Games — some of you have seen it.  It’s a movie about people who court wealthy sponsors and then brutally savage each other until only one contestant is left standing.  I’m sure this was a really good change of pace for him.  I have not seen The Hunger Games; not enough class warfare for me.

Now, if I do win a second term as President, let me just say something to all the  — let me just say something to all my conspiracy-oriented friends on the right who think I’m planning to unleash some secret agenda:  You’re absolutely right.  So allow me to close with a quick preview of the secret agenda you can expect in a second Obama administration.

In my first term, I sang Al Green; in my second term, I’m going with Young Jeezy.   Michelle said, yeah.  I sing that to her sometimes.

In my first term, we ended the war in Iraq; in my second term, I will win the war on Christmas.  In my first term, we repealed the policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell”  — wait, though; in my second term, we will replace it with a policy known as, it’s raining men.  In my first term, we passed health care reform; in my second term, I guess I’ll pass it again.

And just to set the record straight, I really do enjoy attending these dinners.  In fact, I had a lot more material prepared, but I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew.

Full transcript is here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/04/29/transcript-of-obamas-remarks-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner/

Video is here.  It’s worth watching as some of the jokes need the video:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/305607-2

Barack Obama 4-27-12

“Last year, more than 20 million women received expanded access to preventive services like mammograms and cervical cancer screening at no additional cost.  Nearly 2 million women enrolled in Medicare received a 50 percent discount on the medicine that they needed.  Over one million more young women are insured because they can now stay on their parent’s plan.

Soon, insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions like breast cancer, or charge women more just because they’re women.  And this year, women will receive new access to recommended preventive care like domestic violence screening and contraception at no additional cost.  That’s going to be happening.  (Applause.)

This contraception fight in particular was illuminating.  It was like being in a time machine.  (Laughter.)  Republicans in Congress were going so far as to say an employer should be able to have a say in the health care decisions of its female employees.  And I’m always puzzled by this.  This is a party that says it prides itself on being rabidly anti-regulation.  These are folks who claim to believe in freedom from government interference and meddling.  But it doesn’t seem to bother them when it comes to women’s health.

Now we’ve got governors and legislatures across the river in Virginia, up the road in Pennsylvania, all across the country saying that women can’t be trusted to make your own decisions.  They’re pushing and passing bills forcing women to get ultrasounds, even if they don’t want one.  If you don’t like it, the governor of Pennsylvania said you can “close your eyes.”  It’s a quote.

It’s appalling.  It’s offensive.  It’s out of touch.  And when it comes to what’s going on out there, you’re not going to close your eyes.  Women across America aren’t closing their eyes.  As long as I’m President, I won’t either.  (Applause.)  The days of male politicians controlling the health care decisions of our wives and our mothers, and our daughters and our sisters, that needs to come to an end.”

 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/27/1087054/-Remarks-by-President-Obama-at-Washington-DC-campaign-event-April-27-2012

Stewart speaking of whom Romney will choose for Vice President “Obviously the Vice Presidential nomination, an enormous honor.  Politicians are clamoring to…

Reporter “If he asks you to be Vice President?”

Nikki Haley Governor (R-SC) “I would say no.”

Reporter “That’s an absolute no?”

Haley “I’d say thank you, but no.”

Stewart “OK, all right, that’s fine.  She’s a seated Governor.  What about Pawlenty?  Two term former Minnesota Governor.  He’s not doing anything.”

Tim Pawlenty (2-24-12) “The answer is I’m not going to be considering that.  I’ve taken myself off the list.”

Stewart “OK, all right, that’s fine.  You don’t need to be on the list.   You know what, they don’t want you.  They’ll go old school.”

Condoleeza Rice 3-20-12 “How many ways can I say it?  Not me.”

Stewart “There’s a lot of ways you can get out of it.  You could say, I don’t know, I support a woman’s right to choose.  That would get you out of it.”

Bill Maher “This week we voted, the Senate did, on the Buffett rule, it failed in the Senate, the Buffett rule, of course, that secretaries should not pay more than their millionaire bosses in taxes, failed 51, I love this, another one that failed got 51 votes.  That used to win in the Senate.  We’ll leave that for another day.  Now you need 60.  I forget why, it’s something to do with a black President.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Sunday refused to explain how a potential Romney administration would be different from George W. Bush’s administration, but insisted that the last Republican president “did a fantastic job” and his brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), would be a “fantastic vice president.”

“I haven’t gone through the comparison,” Rubio told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “I think that presidents serve in different times with different challenges. And so I think that George W. Bush, in my opinion, did a fantastic job as president over eight years, facing a set of circumstances during those eight years that are different from the circumstances that a President Romney would face.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/22/rubio-george-w-bush-did-a-fantastic-job-as-president/

Bill Maher “Yes pink slime, because you can’t spell ammonia without mmm.  Now, I bring up pink slime, because it’s typical of the strange pathology that we see on the right.  When most Americans found out that there was pink slime in their hamburgers, they were repulsed.  And Republicans should have been too.  But once they found out that liberals were against pink slime, then by God, they had to save it.  Which may be why this month three Republican Governors went to a pink slime factory and ate it on purpose.  Take that book learnin’… Now you might say, but Bill, I’m sure those Governors had a perfectly good reason to eat pink slime.  Maybe they lost a bet with Mitt Romney…but I think the answer is worse than that.  I think the Republican party is at war with common sense.  I think if the Democrats came out against eating yellow snow, Rick Perry would eat yellow snow.  I do.  I think Republicans live in a world, now, where whatever a liberal says, no matter how sensible, is automatically evil, wrong and needs to be fought with the fervor of a starving raccoon on crystal meth.  If Michelle Obama says it’s good to eat vegetables and take a walk, then I’m going to sit in my garage with the car running and eat bacon grease out of a coffee can.  When the Pennsylvania board of Education last year, tried to serve less candy to students, in a good faith effort to stop our children from becoming completely spherical, Sarah Palin literally rushed to Pennsylvania with a plate of sugar cookies.  Here you go fat kids, have a big ole face full of freedom.  Oh yes, Sarah Palin, the Rosa Parks of dessert.  I mean, why, why?  Because not having diabetes is a liberal plot?  If you can see your shoes, then you hate America?

What is it with the pushing back on the formerly unpushbackable?  Newt Gingrich attacking child labor laws, Ron Paul saying it’s socialist to help people after tornadoes, arguing about paying our bills, and college?  Santorum called Obama a snob for wanting kids to go to college, and Romney said he spent too much time at Harvard.  Right, ’cause what America needs is a President who dropped out of massage school.  And, as it is Earth Day Sunday, let me add this to the list, the environment, another area that didn’t used to be partisan.  When Richard Nixon created the EPA, yea, both parties agreed.that rivers shouldn’t catch on fire, and the air shouldn’t make pigeons cough.  But then Al Gore embraced it, and now when the EPA wants to reduce the level of arsenic in the drinking water, you half expect to see Mich McConnell making appearances with Archie the Arsenic Molecule.  You don’t have to make everything political.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/21/maher-republicans-have-declared-war-on-common-sense/

MSNBC host Martin Bashir on Thursday read from the Book of Mormon to make the point that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney might win the White House by lying but he would be condemned to “eternal damnation.”

“Mr. Romney seems to be having some trouble telling the truth,” Bashir explained. “In fact, yesterday Mitt the mendacious offered a hat trick of falsehoods.”

The MSNBC host pointed to disputed claims that Romney’s campaign had not sought the endorsement of Ted Nugent, that there was a “vast left-wing conspiracy” by the media to defeat him and that President Barack Obama promised to keep unemployment “below 8 percent.”

“It is something that the president had never written or said,” Bashir pointed out. “Mitt Romney prefers to tell lies, which brings us the moral codes of Mormonism that Mr. Romney claims to live by.”

According to Section 63, in verse 17, of The Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, “[T]he fearful, and the unbelieving, and all liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

And the Book of Mormon’s 2 Nephi 9:34 says, “Wo unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell.”

Bashir concluded: “Given what the Book of Mormon is clearly saying, Mr. Romney has but two choices. He can’t either keep lying and potentially win the White House, but bring eternal damnation upon himself or he can start telling the truth. The question for him, I guess, is which is more important?”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/20/bashir-book-of-mormon-promises-eternal-damnation-for-romneys-lies/

Where did today come from?

What was the name of the butterfly

Who’s slight flight deviation

caused it’s world’s away wing flaps

that create the reality

I see unfolding

In front of me?

 

Beyond understanding of the concept,

what knowledge is available?

Can we understand who the life force is

that lies behind the name of the butterfly?

Can we understand the butterfly’s deviation?

 

Because our hurricane

could not be the result

of normal happy butterfly flappings.

Something must have gone horribly wrong

for such a gentle creature

to cause such a storm.

We love the butterfly

like the butterfly loves us

so why does the one we love

lash us so hard with wind and rain?

 

The thought does cause me pain

I’ll think not of it again

and return to the cliff

of such ignorant bliss

and see butterflies dancing through air

I’ll appreciate the beauty, then just move on.

 

Into the life pattern I’ve carved out

It’s so safe in here

no one close enough

to cause any fear

 

But it’s then,

when I feel safe from harm

My mind starts to wander

and question what I know

Could I understand

that such a creature

as a butterfly

could flap it’s wings

and create havoc in my life?

Do I just know the concept

or do I want to know

the name of the butterfly

who creates interest in my life

and asks me, where did today come from?

 

 

 

Stewart speaking about Mitt Romney “So now, it’s time for the GOP party to rally around his candidacy.  I take you to footage of Tuesday’s conversations with conservatives GOP Congressmen panel…Here’s their response to the question, are you excited about Mitt Romney?”

4-17-12  Rep Raul Labrador (R-ID) “I’m actually excited, I have not endorsed any candidate, I’m excited that the process is over.  I’m excited that we have, potentially, a nominee who’s going to be taking it to Obama.”

Rep Joe Walsh (R-IL) “The excitement, the passion in this race, as Jim Jordan said, will come from getting Barack Obama out of the White House.”

Rep Louie Gohmert (R-TX) “If you’re not sure about wanting to support Mitt Romney, whether you’re liberal or whether you’re very conservative, you ought to be excited, because he’s been on your side at one time or another”

Panel Laughs!!

 

In January, Romney touted his proposal as governor of Massachusetts to raise the amount of work required of parents on welfare so that they could “have the dignity of work.”

The comment was uncovered and aired on MSNBC’s “Up w/Chris Hayes,” Sunday morning.

“I wanted to increase the work requirement,” said Romney in New Hampshire. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’”

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/as-governor-romney-pushed-mothers-to-get-jobs-to-have-the-dignity-of-work.php?ref=fpnewsfeed%22

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

The so-called war on women escalated Thursday onto a new front, after a Democratic strategist and cable-television pundit declared that Ann Romney, the stay-at-home, mother-of-five wife of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, had “never worked a day in her life.”

Within two hours of Rosen’s comment, Ann Romney had issued her first tweet ever: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”

The Romney campaign also organized a conference call in which some of its prominent female backers used Rosen’s comments as an opening to denounce the president.

“This administration would do well to stop disrespecting stay-at-home moms and listen to them,” said Penny Nance, president of the conservative organization Concerned Women for America. But when pressed by reporters for examples of the president or his administration showing disrespect for mothers who work at home, the Romney surrogates did not provide any specific examples.

Rosen made several attempts to defend her comments on Twitter, saying that she admired Ann Romney but was trying to point out that the candidate’s wife — often cited by Mitt Romney as his sounding board on women’s concerns — has not experienced the economic struggles that many working mothers face.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ann-romney-defends-role-as-stay-at-home-mom-after-democratic-pundits-remarks/2012/04/12/gIQACeopDT_story.html