Did anyone else notice in the WaPo article that Obama’s advisors believe that drone killings have a self-perpetuating design flaw such that we cannot ever stop killing people with drones? The article quotes an Obama advisor as saying that “The problem with the drone is it’s like your lawn mower. You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.” This also suggests that Obama’s advisors view drone killings as pedestrian chores to be performed at regular intervals.

Thanks for the post. Keep up the good work.

I might have arrived here sooner, but I currently suffer from audacity fatigue brought on by the last four years, and am still trying to catch my breath.

P.S. As I perpetually like to point out when pay equity issues come up, the Lilly Ledbetter Act did not alter the pay equity gap at all, and legislation that may have made a difference was not taken up.

To me, the P.S. to this stupid binders meme is that the mainstream left apparently thinks it is a bigger deal than two women leading an opposition party being handcuffed to chairs for eight hours in a warehouse for crashing the rich people’s debate.

David, this reads like a Greg Sargent article.

Glenn Kessler put together a comprehensive timeline in the Washington Post a few weeks ago (link) outlining the Obama administration’s ambiguous, heavily nuanced and contradictory statements on Benghazi.

As your economic-policy posts have pointed out for some time, this has been Obama’s m.o. on many position statements over the last four years. He then leaves it to his “Truth Team” and left-wing media hacks to tweeze out those parts deemed later on to be complimentary to the preferred narrative, ignore the uncomplimentary parts, and say things like “the facts are the facts.”

Leave it to the Greg Sargents of the world to shrug their shoulders at Obama’s intentional obfuscations and then say its a big fu*king deal when Romney runs the “wrong” way with it.

Romney can be criticized for plenty without resort to this shtick.

I think the constant updating to his kill list hurt Obama in the first debate. I hear that Obama has let Biden make the tweaks to it this week, which has allowed him to free up more debate prep time. Expect a major come-back tonight.

Regardless of whether the rigged system makes it possible for them to win or not, they should not be excluded. Secret contracts have no place in any society claiming to have fair elections. And, the CPD—which is a symptom of the bipartisan racket that is US elections—should be dissolved. It does not encourage open, free and fair politics but rather exists to protect the status quo or current order that benefits the richest one percent and the guardians of the national security state.

Agreed Kevin. I am going third party for the first time this year. I really hope that neither Obama nor Romney wins a majority of the vote. Obviously one of them will likely win a plurality of the vote, but I really hope enough people go third party this year to spoil any chance at a majority.

Thanks for the update David. Love the 1% get of jail free card image. Pretty fitting here.

This will be an interesting case. Good for the ACLU. I would have liked to have seen some criminal action from the feds, but since none is coming, I will gladly take a civil action.

I have to imagine one of the defenses here will be that there can be no fraud, since the plaintiffs knew about and engaged in the activities in the complaint (i.e., they filled out forms with false/inaccurate information). That has been the line from the feds on why some people should not expect any federal help; they bought more house than they could afford and they knew or should have known better.

The Presidential race in the Colorado is currently very close and features several minor candidates.

Fyi, I read that Colorado has 16 candidates on the ballot for president this year.

Good news on the legalization initiative.

That’s some pretty ridiculous self-scrubbing. Thanks for filling in the omission.

Thanks for the post Kevin.

So many flies to brush away on this thread. Obama is planning to cut Social Security and Medicare, so what? If you don’t vote for him because of that, then you are saying that you prefer Che Guevara to give you a spa pedicure. Don’t you all see that Obama is the pony you’ve been waiting for? Instead of thanking Obama, you are picking on him for not being radical enough until he weeps big, sad, hot pony tears.

Update from my previous post courtesy of Yahoo:

The state did report weekly jobless claims but did not process and report its quarterly claims number (when many people have to reapply for benefits for technical reasons as opposed to being newly laid off). As a result, there wasn’t the expected spike in claims that normally happens at the start of the quarter.

It is unclear why that happened or how unusual that is. What is clear is that the expected spike in claims around the start of each quarter was smaller this time than usual. Coupled with the seasonal adjustment (that expected a bigger increase), that pushed down the headline figure.

In other words, the drop of 30,000 last week had more to do with the lack of expected re-filings at the start of the fourth quarter than with any particular improvement in labor market conditions.

That also means that the decline which usually follows the spike won’t be as pronounced this time around, so the headline tally of jobless claims is likely to rebound next week.

All told, these two weeks’ worth of jobless claims will end up being more noise than signal. That may frustrate those who follow the series closely for clues into the health of the U.S. labor market. Coupled with last week’s payrolls report, it is also likely to fuel perception that labor market figures in general can’t be trusted.

The Labor Department appears to have had little choice in this matter, however; it couldn’t estimate what the one large state would or should have reported. Still, it may have been able to avoid more confusion had it more clearly articulated that in its weekly press release.

And now, there is one state’s labor department with plenty of explaining to do.

So, some state screwed up in its reporting, and the BLS was less than forthcoming about it in its press release. Stir in an upcoming presidential election, and you get a crazy cocktail.

Maybe Issa can add first-time unemployment claims into his hearing: they fell last week to the lowest level in four years.

David, from I’ve heard today, the initial claims numbers run contra to the idea that the data is good. The WSJ and other financial outlets are saying that the numbers went down because California did not report their claims. Evidently BLS has acknowledged that one “large” state did not report, and the financial outlets think it’s California. Seems odd considering the BLS release has some California figures included. Anyway, today’s major fall is likely to be corrected significantly next week.

Thanks for the post. With the labor market being generally soft, I imagine that replacements for a few hundred strikers wouldn’t be too hard to come by. Hopefully their numbers grow.

This situation seems to be headed south quickly. Not good.

it is just one of over 8,000 stop-and-frisks that are believed to occur every day in New York.

That statistic is just nuts!

Not to pile on or anything, and taking other people’s comments at face value, I agree with your premise that Obama has been anything but a champion for women’s reproductive rights. As a bargaining chip to help pass the ACA, Obama signed an executive order making the Hyde Amendment – which bans government funding of most abortions – into a permanent law when it had previously been subject to annual renewal. Jane Hamsher wrote a post about it here on FDL when it happened (link).