This country does in fact have a serious deficit problem. But the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars – unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That’s wrong.

Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator (I-VT), Senate Budget Committee, Nov. 18, 2011.

This is pretty flabbergasting. Seriously.

“What’s killing us is all these entitlements, we’ve got to get rid of all of them. All this welfare, food stamps, Medicare, and then big government health care on top of it, it’s all just too much! When do we say enough is enough?”

What do you mean, exactly, I ask him. You say people are suffering under Obama, don’t they need some help?

“No. No more help, enough is enough. People have to pick themselves up, take some responsibility. Why should we be paying for people’s mistakes and bad choices? All these illegitimate families just adding to the population, making all these bad decisions, then asking us to pay for it? It’s time to cut them off.”

I ask for some clarification: what do you mean, just starve them out? What if people can’t find work? Let them starve?

“Look, there’s always something you can do. You telling me people can’t make a choice for a better life? We have to help all of them? No. I’ll tell you what really need to do with these illegitimate families on welfare—give all the kids up for adoption and execute the parents.”

Jeffrey McManus: Things About the US Constitution That Conservatives Do Not Absolutely Adore.

As it happens, our President wrote a couple books.

One of them, a personal memoir called Dreams from my Father, includes a number of anecdotes from Obama’s youth.

There is an audiobook of this book. And the President does the reading. And so…:

The main draw of the audiobook is that it’s actually narrated by Obama. It’s interesting to hear him imitate the voices of some of the people that have been important in his life. Like Ray, for example.

Ray, a former high school classmate, was savvy and streetwise, with a new take on black culture and white America. Best of all, Ray had an extremely colorful manner of self-expression. In other words, he cursed. A lot.

That means the President curses. A lot.

In fact you’re about to hear the POTUS swear like a motherfucker.

Follow the links, and you, too, can download a few choice MP3s. Heh. Get your own damn fries.

WTFU2012.com.

No, not kidding.

The story (at Slate) is on the clickthru, but the money quote from my friend Will’s blog is this:

I’ve been black in Alabama my whole life so, you know, I knew it was racist, but it took a black man being elected president before I realized just =how racist= this entire country really is.

He’s not wrong.

An angry old fuck in Austin lynched a chair in his yard. Madcap hilarity, of course, ensued.

Step 1: Be sisters with a former West Wing actress.

Step 2: Engineer a charming West Wing reunion as a voting PSA.

At the so-called Values Voter summit — sponsored the Family Research Council, a noted hate group — Santorum stated openly that “we will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

Kurt Eichenwald has, including the volumes of Presidential Daily Briefings now public, and it turns out the Bush White House knew way more than has been previously discussed, and chose to ignore those warnings out of a misguided and unsupported belief that the “real” threat was Iraq.

By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

Ah, neocons. Fuck each and every one of them, and then put ’em in jail. Jesus.

You can tell it’s all true, btw, because the right’s response has been to send out professional liar Ari Fleischer to smear Eichenwald as a “truther.” In this segment on AC360, the level of sheer smugtastic douchery from Fleischer is breathtaking.