The last days of the Obama presidency.

Another day, another misstep by Obama. This morning the President once again inserted himself smack in the middle of the debt reduction talks. Once again, he spouted nonsense about bipartisanship. As more than one political pundit reminded us, the only thing Obama can do is either sign or veto a bill put before him. He has no business getting involved in the adult process of getting a bill passed in Congress. Mr. President – leave it to the professionals.

Let’s go through a short list of his failures to get a debt deal done.

Simpson-Bowles. Did he sign it into law? Nope. Never got through Congress, as it was met with disapproval from both parties.

A clean debt ceiling bill. Never got through the House.

The Biden Plan. Talks broke down after Obama tried to finesse the deal through “compromise”.

The Grand Bargain. Speaker Boehner had to literally walk out on the President upon indications the Tea Party wouldn’t march in lock-step with the President and his “balanced approach”.

Cut, Cap and Balance. Didn’t make it through the Senate after Obama threatened to veto it.

And now a last-ditch effort by Speaker Boehner to get a deal done by asking the Tea Party to make huge sacrifices to Obama seems perilously close to failure.

Throughout the debate, the President has failed to lead every time he let congressional leaders battle over the details. Throughout the debate, the President has acted like a dictator, summoning congressional leaders to the White House.

Mr. President, let me remind you, it was Bush who was The Decider – not you.

It is still possible to save the country from economic collapse. All we need to do is get Obama and Biden to resign in disgrace, and have John Boehner assume the Presidency. Eric Cantor would then take over as Speaker. Then we’d see Washington back on track. After all, it’s important to note that if John McCain were President, this debt ceiling nonsense would have cleared Congress not in a matter of months, but in a matter of hours.

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I did not have sexual relations with that dolphin

I have no one to blame but myself. See, I was bored and there was nothing on TV, so as I was flipping through the channels, I saw Keith Olbermann’s Countdown show was on Al Gore’s network. I’ll admit I was curious. I thought, what the hell, I’ll give it a shot.

Olbermann spent the better part of the hour ripping President Obama mercilessly over what he said, and didn’t say, at his press conference earlier that day.

On Libya: He sarcastically muttered, no, we’re not at war, we’re just dropping care packages that explode…

On dealing with Congress: First, he complained Obama was giving away too much in the negotiations, then he complained Obama was stupid to think the Republicans were going to come to any kind of agreement after the Sasha and Malia do their homework line.

On gay marriage: Obama wasn’t going to make news on that front today. If not now, when?!?

I guess Olbermann thinks stopping a madman from killing hundreds of thousands of his own people is a bad idea. I guess Olbermann thinks the President can just wave the Fourteenth Amendment in front of the GOP and Darrell Issa won’t begin impeachment proceedings immediately. I guess Olbermann thinks the issue of gay marriage should trump discussion of how to avoid financial Armageddon. Apparently, gays don’t need jobs…

The State of New York did a wonderful thing passing gay marriage legislation last Friday. But do you really want the main story over the next week to be about Santorum’s man-on-dog sexual fantasy, or Bill O’Reilly’s slippery-slope argument that people will start marrying dolphins?

Here’s hoping Olbermann’s tenure at Current TV is very, very brief…

“Kiss My Ass”

“That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.” – Michele Bachmann

Bachmann, the GOP’s prohibitive front-runner in Iowa, recently stated: “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.”

Well, the actor John Wayne was born nearly 150 miles away in Winterset, Iowa. John Wayne Gacy, Jr. – the serial killer – was born in Chicago, but later moved to Waterloo. Gacy,  also known as the Killer Clown, committed the rape and murder of 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. Twenty-six of Gacy’s victims were buried in the crawlspace of his home, three others elsewhere on his property and four victims were discarded in a nearby river. At his execution, Gacy’s last words were: “Kiss my ass.”

To her credit, Bachmann actually admitted she was wrong – something quite rare for a politician. The parents of John Wayne the actor lived in Waterloo for a time, she pointed out. But the technicalities were beside the point, she added.

“Of course, the main point I was making are the sensibilities of John Wayne, which is patriotism, love of country, standing up for our nation, that positive enthusiasm is what America’s all about,” Bachmann said.

She still rejects evolution, denies Climate Change, and refuses to even consider ending the Bush tax cuts for the extremely wealthy. So while she’s more credible than Sarah Palin, she’s far from the best choice to lead our country.