The Daily Show makes fun of President Obama's “I didn't know about this until I heard it on the news” explanations for recent scandals.

WASHINGTON — More tough talk from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers today.

The House Republican Conference chairwoman disputed any suggestion the GOP was engaging in irresponsible threats by acknowledging its willingness to shut down the government over federal spending policies. Instead, she said it’s President Barack Obama’s position that should be seen as troubling.

“He said it would be irresponsible and absurd to shut down,” McMorris Rodgers said in a phone interview. “I would say that it’s irresponsible and absurd for the president to want another blank check.”

McMorris Rodgers hinted over the weekend a shutdown might be needed to force Obama to consider cuts to federal programs. She said Tuesday no one in Washington wants to see that happen, but “we need to get serious about cutting spending, and the president says we don't have a spending problem.”

The congresswoman said she hadn't seen the president's news conference Monday, in which he said he would not permit House Republicans to charge a “ransom” in refusing to raise debt ceiling in an attempt to address spending cuts.

But McMorris Rodgers, who represents Spokane and much of Eastern Washington, said the time has come to address America's mounting debt.

“What got us to this point is too much spending by both parties,” McMorris Rodgers said. “But especially in recent years we've seen record deficits, and we need to be rolling back Obama's spending increases.”

The Treasury Department reported a federal deficit of $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2012, the fourth straight year with a deficit higher than $1 trillion. However, the deficit shrunk $207 billion, or roughly 16 percent, from the year prior, thanks in part to higher corporate tax receipts and decreased spending as a share of GDP.

At a White House press conference today, President Barack Obama announced a group of high-level federal officials, headed by Vice President Joe Biden, will look at ways to reduce gun violence. 

The White House press corps mainly asked about negotiations on the “fiscal cliff”, but in for the last question, Jake Tapper managed to rile Obama by bringing the focus back to a possible assault weapon ban, and what the president has — or hasn't — done about it.

From the official White House transcript:

Q    It seems to a lot of observers that you made the political calculation in 2008 in your first term and in 2012 not to talk about gun violence.  You had your position on renewing the ban on semiautomatic rifles that then-Senator Biden put into place, but you didn’t do much about it.  This is not the first issue — the first incident of horrific gun violence of your four years.  Where have you been?

     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, here’s where I’ve been, Jake.  I’ve been President of the United States dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an auto industry on the verge of collapse, two wars.  I don’t think I’ve been on vacation. . . 

To read the rest of the reply, or to comment, click here to go inside the blog.

Rick Lloyd of Spokane Valley, center, and other members of Washington's Electoral College sign paperwork to cast the state's electoral votes for Barack Obama.

OLYMPIA – Forget what the news media told you six weeks ago. Barack Obama was elected to his second term as president Monday in a process that the Founding Fathers dreamed up in 1787 and has confounded Americans pretty regularly since.

The Electoral College – which doesn’t have a mascot, a fight song or even a campus – met at noon Monday in state capitals around the nation and awarded votes to Obama or Mitt Romney based on the general election results.

Each state gets one elector for each member of the U.S. House of Representatives and senator, so in Idaho, the four votes were cast for Republican Mitt Romney, even though the former Massachusetts governor has no chance of moving into the White House.

In Washington, where a majority of votes were cast for Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, 12 men and women selected by Democratic activists gathered in the Capitol’s marble-walled Reception Room to do the official work of casting the Evergreen State’s ballots, which mostly involved signing their names to multiple sheets of paper with official writing and seals.

A bit tedious to watch, maybe, but exciting to be part of, electors said. . . 

OLYMPIA — The next president of the United States will be elected today.

Barring some real skullduggery so remote it can't be mapped out here, that will be Barack Obama.

What? You thought Obama was re-elected more than a month ago? It was in all the papers, and on all the cable news networks — even Fox News after Karl Rove calmed down?

Not exactly. That was the general election, but the president, as you will recall from junior high civics, is elected by the Electoral College.

The EC, as its closest friends call it, meets today. Not in one place, but in state capitals all over the nation. In Washington, they will meet in the State Reception Room at noon, where they are expected to cast the state's 12 votes for Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Senate Democrats may decry the filibuster now, but in 2005, when they were in the minority, they were all for it. 

Note the young guy speaking in favor of it at the start. Sen. Patty Murray shows up about 1:40 in.

An Arizona woman got so angry that President Obama won another term that she ran down her husband, who neglected to vote.

Either she really took to heart the old saying that “Every Vote Counts” but skipped the class in Civics that explained the Electoral College, or she was just close to the edge and this tipped her over it.

OLYMPIA — President Obama gave a thumbs up to Referendum 74, the ballot measure in Washington that would legalize same-sex marriage, supporters said today.

Not a huge surprise, considering Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage earlier this year, a few months after the Legislature passed the law behind Ref. 74 and Gov. Chris Gregoire signed it. So it was generally known he favors the concept.

Thursday he went a step further. Obama campaign spokesman Paul Bell said the president doesn't weigh in on every state ballot measure, but will on this one: “Washington’s same-sex marriage law would treat all Washington couples equally, and that is why the President supports a vote to approve Referendum 74.”
  

Both candidates appeared at the Al Smith dinner, and practiced their comic delivery.

Mitt Romney went first:

Followed by Barack Obama:

If you missed Wednesday's presidential debate (and let's face it, some of us had other things to do last night) you can get enough of it to join in today's water cooler and coffee break discussions with a video from BuzzFeed.

Sorry, but the embed coding has problems, and won't load for all browsers. It seems to be working fine on the BuzzFeed site, however, If you don't see it below, it can be found here.

The pre-debate debate continues:

President Obama on Letterman last night talked about Mitt Romney's “47 percent” comments.

Romney, in a guest column in USA Today, criticized Obama's policies as creating dependency. Read the column here.

Not sure what all this is about? See the original post here.

In case you're wondering what exactly GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said at a fundraiser in May about Barack Obama's supporters, here is the video clip, courtesy of Mother Jones:

Here is his explanation Monday night of how he could've used better words in his “off the cuff remarks”, but sticks by the message.

Feel free to weigh in, in the comments section.

Democrat Jay Inslee's gubernatorial campaign is all aglow today with President Barack Obama's endorsement of their guy.

Wait a minute. Hasn't Obama been a fan of Inslee's all along. Didn't he wish him well last spring in marking Inslee's departure from Congress to campaign full-time? Didn't he say nice things about Inslee during his May stop at the Paramount Theater in Seattle? 

Yes, but -

“He's been supportive but hasn't officially endorsed,” Inslee campaign spokeswoman Jaime Smith said. “Obama is a very popular figure here, so obviously we're excited to use this.”

The most recent statewide poll we could find, which was the SurveyUSA poll from the beginning of August, had Obama over Romney 54 percent to 37 percent.

In ticket-splitting Washington, some of that popularity might not carry down the ballot into the governor's race. In 2008, Obama beat John McCain by 17 points, but incumbent Gov. Chris Gregoire beat Republican Dino Rossi by 6.5 points. In 2004, John Kerry beat President George W. Bush by 7 points, but Gregoire beat Rossi by .0047 points, after two recounts and a court case.

Loyal Washington Democrats who didn't get to go to Charlotte for their National Convention, but are dying to watch President Obama accept the nomination and make a speech Thursday, are planning parties around the state to make it a shared experience anyway.

Some will have special guests, like Gov. Chris Gregoire, who will be at a Seattle pizza parlor with U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott.

In Spokane, the setting is more business-like. They'll meet at the party Field Office, 239 W. Main, at 6 p.m. Congressional candidate Rich Cowan will be the special guest.

OLYMPIA — Here's Thurston County Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee's ruling on the challenge to Barack Obama's eligibility to be on the ballot that's mentioned in Sunday's Spin Control column.

Documents:

OLYMPIA — A trial judge quickly rejected an effort to keep President Barack Obama off Washington's general election ballot, saying such “birther” allegations have been around for years, and rejected for years as well.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee dismissed the challenge brought Monday by Linda Jordan of Seattle, who tried to block Secretary of State Sam Reed from putting Obama on the ballot, in part because she challenged the validity of his birth certificate. Jordan claimed Obama wasn't a “natural born citizen” as required by the U.S. Constitution.

McPhee devoted six pages of his opinion to dismantling Jordan's claims based on findings in other courts that rejected similar challenges. “I do not usually devote so much time quoting the decisions of other courts in other cases. I do so here to make the point that just as all thhe so-called evidcence offered by (Jordan) has been in the blogosphere for years, in one form or another, so too has all the law rejecting plaintiff's allegations. I can conceive of no reason why this lawsuit was brought, except to join the chorus of noise in that blogosphere.”

OLYMPIA — Barack Obama makes jokes about people who question his birth certificate, and his campaign even is selling a coffee mug with the presidential face on one side and a reproduction of the certificate on the other.

Mitt Romney tried to make a joke about birth certificates in Michigan last week. Some people laughed, some people didn't.

But Linda Jordan of Seattle apparently is not joking in court action filed this week in Thurston County Superior Court against the Washington secretary of state, asking the court to keep Obama off the November ballot because, she contends, his birth certificate is forged and he is not a “natural born citizen.”

The state Attorney General's office was also serious in its reply today that Jordan's lawsuit is flawed for several reasons, all of which could lead to its dismissal: It doesn't name Obama as a plaintiff; it's a federal issue, involving the U.S. Constitution; the secretary of state doesn't have the authority to check on the eligibility of candidates and toss one off if he or she doesn't measure up.

Beyond that, Deputy Solicitor General Jeff Even says in a court filing, Jordan doesn't provide any proof that Obama isn't a natural born citizen. “She merely claims to have offered evidence of a forged birth certificate — a birth certificate that has never been requested by or submitted to, the secretary of state — and to have offered additional suspicions regarding a social security number.”

Hearing tomorrow afternoon before Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee. Some pertinent documents are “submitted for your approval,” as Rod Serling used to say.

Documents:

This is a very unusual political video.

It's pro-Romney, although not from the Romney campaign. In fact, the Obama campaign might send it out on their Twitter feed for a few grins.

But the guy really likes Romney, and really doesn't like Obama. That, and he seems to be standing in the middle of a stream while playing his keyboard…

President Barack Obama is scheduled to stop in Seattle next week, the third time in seven months he will visit the state's largest city to raise money.
His re-election campaign hasn't released many details of the trip yet. It’s a stop with two campaign fundraisers at the end of a Western swing that includes Nevada, California and Portland, Ore., then heads for New Orleans.
But if the pattern of previous trips holds, he can expect to rake in more than $1 million . . 

To read the rest of this post, or to comment, click here to go inside the blog.

A poll purports to be able to tell whether you're likely to support Barack Obama or Mitt Romney by your preferences to things like movies, cars or pets.

Of course, it could just ask who you plan to vote for. But that wouldn't  be any fun, would it?

Click here to see the list of questions.