News

Obama Approval Rating Hits New Low: The Cost Of Winning

Alex Moore :: Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 11:15 am

The Washington Post today reports that this month marks the one year anniversary of Barack Obama’s decline in approval ratings. The Post reports, “In the [last] 12 months, he has had legislative victories that appear – especially in the case of health care – to have cost him large amounts of both political capital and political support.”

I can’t help but scratch my head at the notion that legislative victories have cost the president support. Those likeliest to support him in 2008 were supporting a reform candidate. The man ran on a platform of change. The two big legislative victories of the last year, health care reform and financial reform, all about change—that’s why they’re called “reform.” Wtf? MORE »

Obama’s Ratings Plummet With Oil Issues

Robin Bacior :: Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 2:00 pm

In a recent Nationwide-poll conducted by CBS News and New York Times, numbers reflect significant animosity towards Obama’s recent choices regarding environmental decisions.

Many Americans are concerned with the financial burden being created by the spill. According to poll statistics 59 percent of Americans think Obama’s plan for handling the spill has been weak, 54 percent think he lacks a clear enough plan for creating new jobs for those affected by the BP spill, and 48 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy in general. Eek. MORE »

Fuck Atkins, I’m On The Clinton Diet

Nick Nicoludis :: Thursday, May 27th, 2010 2:40 pm

In a move not seen since Father Of The Bride, Chelsea Clinton instructed her father, Bill “Slick Willy” Clinton, to lose 15 pounds before her wedding sometime this summer. Apparently Chelsea’s only request for her father is that he “look good” walking down the aisle, and that means drop the flab. Kind of a bitchy request if you ask me, but that’s beside the point. As all men of great integrity do, Clinton stepped up to the plate and is now about “2 pounds” away from his goal. Good for you Bill, now I’m just wondering what his weight loss secret is. MORE »

Just When You Thought Obama Was Hip…

Johnny Sanford :: Monday, May 10th, 2010 2:00 pm

It turns out he doesn’t even know how to use an iPod.
According to his keynote speech at Hampton University, the President had this to say to the class of 2010, “[Y]ou’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — (laughter) — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.”
Really, President Obama? What about that nifty little blackberry that you were so adamant to keep? MORE »

Nick Nicoludis :: Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 3:50 pm

“A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is what happened too often in the years leading up to the crisis.”

- President Obama

Kelsey Grammer & The Right Network: Let The Slander Begin

Nick Nicoludis :: Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 4:00 pm

Major media too liberal for you? Fox News not have enough Obama bashing or staunch right-wing banter? Well, Kelsey Grammer has the solution: Right Network. The website, soon to become TV channel (most likely to be hosted on-demand or on mobile phones) boasts its ‘for the people’ stance, which really means it’s for people who even Dick Cheney would say are taking neo-conservatisim a little too far. The TV channel/website clearly tries to align itself with the sentiments of Tea Partiers across America, and Kelsey Grammer within the promo video (view after the jump) catalogs a confusing and seemingly random list of “things that just aren’t right” according to the “pro-America”, “pro-military” network. MORE »

World Leaders Curb Nuclear Threat

Gray Hurlburt :: Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 7:40 pm

While the world economy continues its dribbling climb towards normative behavior, political leaders have spent the past few days in Washington, DC, convening on agreements to fix up our other prolonged global problem: the threat of a-typical nuclear violence. (You know, the radioactive briefcase kind.) This is the new fear, because it seems that now, at least for the Western world, the days of mutually assured destruction have reached their terminus. However, what the Cold War left behind dormant stockpiles of nuclear weapons and rogue states with belated recourse for penis envy. The uranium and plutonium available and produced from these sources—Ukraine, Georgia; Iran, North Korea—are dangerously open to pilfering or swindling, and could wind up in the hands of terrorists who want to kill lots of innocent people. So, with this reality in mind, President Obama called together leaders from 47 countries to the Nuclear Security Summit (which is the largest international meeting hosted in the US since the founding of the United Nations), and it has opened up the age of post-nuclear-era diplomacy.

Shortly prior to this, our workhorse leader met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Prague on Thursday, where the two world powers signed an arms control treaty to halt the enhancement of each’s weapons arsenals. Both the US and Russia have enough anyway. Also, Obama and Medvedev presented a firm stance against Iran’s thick-headed uranium enrichment program, which threatens stability in the Mideast, if not everywhere else. Their renewed efforts to stall the fundamentalist state from going nuclear are critically necessary, because Iran is just not ethically nor maturely prepared to handle such a high-impact responsibility.

The elephant in the room when it comes to corralling Iran is oil, which they have plenty of and China can’t disparage, because the growing Asian nation already receives about twelve-percent of its supply from their wells. The double knot here is that international petrodollars fund Ahmadinejad’s energy and military programs, and there are only limited options for buyers to turn to. But in our capital on Monday, Obama was able to convince Chinese President Hu Jintao to rejoin dialogue on sanctioning efforts by gaining assurance from Saudi Arabia that they would make up for any supply lost to China from Iran. With Russia and now China in rank with the United States to pressure Iran out of producing enriched uranium, it would greatly undermine efforts of terrorists wanting to acquire and use dirty bombs from that part of the world.

But, as can be assumed, the most vulnerable access to enriched nuclear materials are the Soviet leftovers in bloc countries. On Monday at the Nuclear Security Summit, Ukraine, Canada and Malaysia agreed to reduce their nuclear stockpiles. Ukraine was the world’s third-largest nuclear power after the fall of the USSR and, as we know today, their government is a leaky ship in shallow water, so their promise to give up most of their enriched uranium stockpile by 2012 (most of it this year) should be taken as a huge relief to everyone except weapons peddlers and aspiring mass murderers.

The big takeaway from this week’s Summit and last week’s agreement between Obama and Medvedev is that we, as a global community, have graduated from hostile posturing to renegotiating our diplomatic ties for future global security. Sure, our grip on deterrent weapons likely won’t vanish within our lifetime, but at least the image of arching ICBMs won’t have to keep us awake at night. Now we can focus on the present threat of dirty bombs, the volatile dregs of the last century, which now it appears we can actually make good on snuffing out.

While the world economy continues its dribbling climb towards normative behavior, political leaders have spent the past few days in Washington, DC, convening on agreements to fix up our other prolonged global problem: the threat of a-typical nuclear violence. (You know, the radioactive briefcase kind.) This is the new fear, because it seems that now, at least for the Western world, the days of mutually assured destruction have reached their terminus. However, what the Cold War left behind are dormant stockpiles of nuclear weapons and rogue states with belated recourses for penis envy. The uranium and plutonium available and produced from these sources—Ukraine, Georgia; Iran, North Korea—are dangerously open to pilfering or swindling, and could wind up in the hands of terrorists who want to kill lots of innocent people. So, with this reality in mind, President Obama called together leaders from 47 countries to the Nuclear Security Summit (which is the largest international meeting hosted in the US since the founding of the United Nations), and it has opened up the age of post-nuclear-era diplomacy.

When Biden Swears, Why Is It Such A Big Fucking Deal?

Amy Rose Spiegel :: Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 12:55 pm

Joe Biden was probably pretty preoccupied yesterday, what with the passage of the “historic!” health care reform and all (seriously, every news source ever, can’t you think of even one other word besides ‘historic’ to describe Obamacare? Work on this, please). So it was pretty understandable when his excitement got the better of him and he accidentally used some dirty language when congratulating President Obama as he signed the bill into law. As he went to embrace Obama at the end of a celebratory speech, he murmured, “This is a big fucking deal,” and the crowd went, and continues to go, wild. MORE »

Are You A Bad American For Not Liking Olympics?

Andrew Belonsky :: Friday, February 12th, 2010 3:20 pm

The Olympics officially kick off this evening, and millions of people plan on tuning in tonight and over the next few weeks. An estimated fifty-three percent, actually. Although that number’s down a bit from the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, it’s still a significant amount. Yet, unlike these people, I can’t bring myself to give a damn…not about the stats and scores, anyway. I don’t much care whether we win in figure skating, the most popular sport, or bobsledding, the gayest. Nor does roughly forty-seven percent of the nation. I wonder: Does that make us bad American, or good ones?

Google Commits Music Blogocide Over MP3s

Shannon Hassett :: Thursday, February 11th, 2010 11:00 am

Had you been up early and browsing for some mp3s this morning, you would have been hard pressed to find the usual suspects. A number of the web’s most highly trafficked music blogs were shut down over the past day and a half, including: I Rock Cleveland, It’s A Rap, LivingEars, Masalacism, Pop Tarts Suck Toasted and To Die By Your Side. In addition to the release of mp3s, the sites share another common bond in their blogging platforms, as all are hosted by Google’s Blogger. Not a huge surprise, then, when overnight the creators all received a similar message from Google alerting them to their apparent copyright infringement and the immediate shutdown of their blogs. MORE »

For Roe, Woe is Me

Shannon Hassett :: Friday, January 22nd, 2010 5:30 pm

Today marks the anniversary of the decision in landmark supreme court case Roe v. Wade, which came to a close on this date in 1973. Headlining the festivities is the March for Life, sponsored by none other than the March for Life Fund, an organization created for the sole purpose of petitioning Roe v. Wade. Pro-life’s capture of the date for its own purposes, despite the Roe decision’s pro-choice leanings, is nothing short of impressive marketing, and it says a lot about the current state of U.S. abortion policies 37 years after Roe.

Abortion laws experienced a rebirth in the media throughout W’s White House residency as he expertly attempted to reverse (and largely succeeded) much of what Roe v. Wade had accomplished in the fight for women’s reproductive rights. The case mandated that a woman be permitted to abort her pregnancy until the “point at which the fetus becomes viable,” the job of defining “viable” also falling on the court as part of the decision. By the time Bush left office, there was a ban on federal funding for international family planning groups and stem cell research, not to mention a whole lot more abstinence only education. Despite those defeats, the pro-choice movement benefited heavily from the Bush backlash in terms of gaining support, but Obama’s reign has steered the issue back into murky water. MORE »

Interview: Clare & The Reasons

Isaac Lekach :: Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 12:00 pm

Clare & The Reasons is the name of Clare and Olivier Manchon’s musical project. The two met at college in Boston and now call Brooklyn home. Arrow, their recently released second album, is a remarkable record. The songs are buoyant and melodic, but shrouded in proficiently arranged orchestration-complete with whistling, strings, horns, swells of vocal oohs and a Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) contribution on the track “This Is The Story.” Clare and The Reasons have tour dates posted here (including a show with Israeli/French songstress Keren Ann and a bunch of dates with the venerable Van Dyke Parks). Go find them! And do read our interview with Clare Manchon, in which she reveals a love for Stevie Wonder, tells us what Van Dyke Parks listens to and weighs in on our current administration, after the jump.

Today In Music

Brenna Ehrlich :: Monday, November 23rd, 2009 3:50 pm

For some reason I thought he’s be into dancier stuff: The Presidential iPod

Out of the woods and onto the runway?: Let The Joanna Newsom 2010 Rumor Mill Begins

You hearing this, Edward Droste?: The Justin Bieber Example: Use Twitter or Incite a Riot and Get Arrested (via The Daily What)

Guys like crazy chicks. We get it: 15 (Female) Literary Characters We’d Totally Sleep With

Seriously? There’s no nap couch?: The Pop-Up Cardboard Office