Take A Walk On The Wild Side

++If you want to know what was up with Obama's blistering attack on the Ryan budget, you might want to consider the President can play mind games with the best of them. With Romney embracing the Ryan budget,Obama is calling him out and almost daring him to run with Ryan as Vice President. By late morning, the Washington Post gave credence to the view that Romney and Ryan have chemistry and the Romney camp is actually thinking about this. They know their candidate has to do something daring--even if suicidal. The Obama camp knows how toxic Ryan's proposals are in public opinion polls.


++Howard Fineman said that Obama was an unhappy warrior when he delivered his Associated Press speech blasting the Ryan budget. I happen to agree that Obama has not gotten into his optimistic future mode he will need to win this election. For the most part, he is better off letting Joe Biden slash and burn on the campaign trail.


++But make no mistake, this is going to be the ugliest campaign you've ever seen. Despite my posts to the contrary, you have to see President Obama as the underdog. He faces a united coalition of all the nation's billionaires and hedge fund managers, the Koch brothers and their oil industry colleagues,the Karl Rove hate machine and dozens of states with restrictive voting laws. On Palm Sunday, the Catholic churches read letters to their parishioners overtly criticizing the President and the health care bill as a danger to religious freedom. As we have seen through the primary season, evangelical Christians and the Mormons are fairly united against the President. Tallying up the loot, the anti-Obama side may throw in $2 billion to defeat him. 


++I am getting the Obama "the Thug" e-mails again from the Right, which range from the resurgence of birther madness to righteous indignation to his remarks about the Supreme Court decision. The best anti-Obama piece was the Fox News anchor who suggested that Obama threatened to kill Chelsea Clinton if the Clintons raised the issue of his eligibility for president.


++The right-wing websites are putting up the line now that the DOJ's refusal to continue to negotiate with Chief Arapaio in Arizona is simply pay-back for his Citizens Posse which "proved" the president's birth certificate was a forgery. Of course, the DOJ investigation of the sheriff began long before he even decided to go the birthed route.


++ But about the Ryan budget, Obama was spot-on. The New York Times editorial captured the essence of it as they applauded the President for calling "radicalism" for what it is. The President said that Ryan's budget was a "radical vision" that "is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity." The president said he would fight to restore a sense of economic security, while giving everyone a fair shot,rather than enabling only a shrinking number of people to do exceedingly well. He also said that the budget was "thinly veiled social Darwinism" and went further in denouncing the Republican presidential field for its cruelty and extremism.  


++To give you some idea of its impact, Medicare payments would be cut to 1 million Americans currently living in nursing homes. 


++ The Republican response is to say that the President was misleading and not factual in his criticism of the plan. Paul Ryan said he was hurt by the criticism. This seems to be a recurrent motif of the GOP. You can call the President and his wife anything under the sun but if President Obama turns it around on you, you whine.


++I don't know whether President Obama's remarks on the Supreme Court were the result of a leak or simply a way of him laying out his argument if healthcare is reversed. The first comments at his press conference with the Mexican and Canadian presidents seemed straight forward and fairly calm. He simply stated he was confident that the Supreme Court would ratify the Affordable Healthcare Act. He of course outlined the millions of Americans who already benefited from it. The remarks the following day went even further, saying that the Supreme Court has not overturned a Congressional act involving economic matters since the New Deal. I found that ominous as it seemed to me he was outlining his campaign strategy. He was, of course, correct and he knows that if the Roberts Court actually invalidates healthcare, then the Roberts" Court or Roberts' Raiders would be the most radical in modern history. However, Joe Biden before the president' comments of the two days said he too believed it would be upheld and said it in a fairly off-hand manner. 


++Judge Edith Jones of the 5th Circuit Court ripped into a federal attorney yesterday demanding that the DOJ submit within 24 hours a three-page statement on the court's right to reverse Congress. The 5th Circuit is the most right-wing of our courts and the Judge was offended that the President appeared to attack the courts. 


++The Southern Poverty Law Center just published its report on the rise of anti-government groups in the last year. It seems whenever we near elections, the radical-right mobilizes. Today, there are 1,274 hate groups in America, compared to the peak of 400 in 1996., when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred.


++Speaking of hate, the Planned Parenthood office in Gran Chute, Wisconsin was fire-bombed. Even Ricky Santorum found it in his heart to condemn it. 


++The sexy Sikh South Carolin Governor Nikki Haley appeared on "The View" to talk about her new biography. She still says she is on Romney's short-list of Vice Presidential candidates. She claimed women were most concerned about the economy and "women don't care about contraceptives."


++Israel's Foreign Minister Lieberman in a trip to China said any confrontation with Iran will have to wait until 2013, suggesting we won't see a summer or October surprise on that issue. The Foreign Minister indicated that the sanctions were having a devastating impact on the economy of that country.