mayor ****ing rahm!!!

For old times’ sake (2005)….

President Obama salutes his former staffer on his victory Tuesday in Chicago’s mayoral election: “I want to extend my congratulations to Rahm Emanuel on a well-deserved victory tonight. As a Chicagoan and a friend, I couldn’t be prouder. Rahm will be a terrific mayor for all the people of Chicago.

“I’ve also just talked to President Obama,” Emanuel said in his victory speech, to which the crowd broke out in cheers. “He sends you his love and affection for his hometown.”

eye to eye

President Barack Obama drops by the Youth Engagement Roundtable at the Winning the Future Forum on Small Business at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 22, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

home run

President Barack Obama returns to the White House after a trip to Ohio, Feb. 22

okay class, i’m here – let’s get down to work

President Obama arrives with Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling during a Winning the Future Forum on Small Business in Cleveland, Ohio, February 22

Information here

“….Norma is CEO of Ashlawn Energy up in Painesville, and it’s a company that provides multi-megawatt energy storage solutions using — and I have no idea what this is — vanadium redox fuel cells. That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever said out loud.”

61%

USA Today: The public strongly opposes laws taking away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions as a way to ease state financial troubles, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.

The poll found that 61% would oppose a law in their state similar to one being considered in Wisconsin, compared with 33% who would favor such a law.

Ohio and several other states that have new Republican governors and legislative majorities are considering laws that would reduce the power of government employee unions to bargain over benefits and work rules.

‘the billionaire koch brothers’ war against obama’

I thought I knew a lot about the Koch brothers until I read this (very long) New Yorker article – it’s just staggering to read the scale of their interference in democracy. These are just a few extracts, but if you have the time it’s worth reading it all:

New Yorker: …David and Charles Koch … longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.

In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts .. named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial”.

….from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies — from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program — that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

….Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

….the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (started by David Koch in 2004) has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception..….The Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity gave its Blogger of the Year Award to a young woman named Sibyl West who (on her site) described Obama as the “cokehead in chief”.

…The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement….

….In 1977, the Kochs provided the funds to launch the nation’s first libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. … its experts and policy papers are widely quoted and respected by the mainstream media … When President Obama, in a 2008 speech, described the science on global warming as “beyond dispute,” the Cato Institute took out a full-page ad in the Times to contradict him….

…Soon after Obama assumed office, Americans for Prosperity launched “Porkulus” rallies against Obama’s stimulus-spending measures … also created an offshoot, Patients United Now, which organized more than three hundred rallies against health-care reform. At one rally, an effigy of a Democratic congressman was hung; at another, protesters unfurled a banner depicting corpses from Dachau. The group also helped organize the “Kill the Bill” protests outside the Capitol, in March, where Democratic supporters of health-care reform alleged that they were spat on and cursed at.

…last summer’s raucous rallies were pivotal in undermining Obama’s agenda … they discouraged deal-makers — Republicans who might otherwise have worked constructively with Obama…

…Charles Koch, in a newsletter sent to his seventy thousand employees, compared the Obama Administration to the regime of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez….

Full article here

This Mother Jones article is also worth reading (here): ‘Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Funded by the Koch Bros’

‘young adults, get covered’

Now, this is more like it – fighting back with plain old facts, truth and information. You gotta love David Plouffe 😉

***

More of this, please. Look at this from today:

…..It appears the administration’s communication problems are far from solved. At a small business breakout session with SBA Administrator Karen Mills, one small-business owner had no idea that President Obama had changed his tax policy to encourage investment in small businesses.

Phillip Davis spoke up about his microwave business’s difficulty gaining “access to capital” and asked for small business investment to be exempt from capital gains taxes.

There was only one small problem with that suggestion.

“That is such a good idea, we implemented it last year,” Obama said, smiling.

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tuesday’s quiz question – and it’s a tough one

This was one of the reasons our mystery person listed for missing a fundraiser:

“Plus, I had nothing to wear, and God knew that too.”

If you want to cheat – and it’ll be very disappointing if you do – the answer is here

Hint: It’s not President Obama

oasis

This January 2011 artist’s rendering, courtesy of Landscape Architect Ken Smith, shows an aerial view looking at Legume Plaza of the Planters Grove project in New Orleans. A grove of trees and flowers that will soon be built is anchoring hopes of transforming a down-on-its-heels New Orleans neighborhood that’s been plagued by crime and poverty.

New York City architect Smith is taking the concept of urban oases to four cities in a public-corporate project that’s won the blessing of the Obama administration. The first of the groves will be built over the next month in New Orleans. Similar groves will be planted in San Francisco, New York City and Washington, D.C.

rooting for rahm

NPR: For the first time in more than two decades, voters in Chicago go to the polls Tuesday to elect a mayor who is not named Richard Daley. Last year, Daley announced he would not seek a record seventh term.

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is one of the candidates hoping to replace Daley. Although Emanuel leads in both polls and fundraising, the other candidates predict there will be no clear-cut winner and a runoff is likely.

At the end of the day, here’s what all the candidates running for mayor of Chicago want to do: get 50 percent plus one more vote. That’s what it will take to claim outright victory.

Full article here