‘rage and sadness’ – baratunde thurston

Thank you ‘theboysisters’ – this is just incredible, it broke my heart.

Please show your support to this man, Baratunde Thurston, by leaving a comment under the video – here

Read Baratunde’s post at Jack & Jill Politics here – thank you Rikyrah

night everyone (second video added)

New York, April 27

“In 2008 I didn’t have all this gray hair. I was kind of fresh and new. Everybody had all these nice posters. It was cool to back Obama. Now I’m older, distinguished, that’s the word, distinguished, and we’ve had some setbacks, some things haven’t happened as fast as some people wanted. … But … when I stood that night in Grant Park, I didn’t say change you can have tomorrow. … I said change you can believe in.”

President Obama speaks at a campaign fundraising event at The Town Hall in New York, April 27

the end

Thanks Fred

Meanwhile…

heads up – president speaking soon

Try CNN live stream here

‘there are still questions’

Warning: Don’t watch this if you have a weak stomach.

Excuse my language, but this ‘report’ on CNN tonight was simply beyond ****ing belief – what is this, Birther ****ing TV?

“Some of the people who are still very concerned about the authenticity of this….”

Like you, Tom Foreman?

“If this is genuine….”

If? So CNN is now officially – as opposed to implicitly – calling the President a liar?

**** you, CNN

Contact The Situation Room here

‘an ugly strain of racism’

****

There’s a great post at The Atlantic here about the issue – thank you Hank.

***

The day America took leave of its senses

Rupert Cornwell (UK Independent): Has there ever been a more absurdly surreal moment, even in US politics, that unchallengeable theatre of the absurd and the surreal? One moment, we were watching a property magnate, with one eye on the presidency, the other on his reality TV show ratings, and puffed up like a bullfrog, rejoicing on an airport tarmac in New Hampshire that America’s President of two years had finally made public his birth certificate.

The next, America’s TV networks interrupted their schedules to cut to the White House, where that self-same President appeared to confirm the momentous fact: not that Barack Obama had indeed been born, but that the happy event indeed took place, as no sane person has ever doubted, on the unimpeachably American soil of Hawaii, one August evening in 1961…..

…..Of late, however, America has seemed to be taking leave of its senses … At moments like yesterday, you could believe that everyone’s gone nutty.

Full article here

enough’s enough

Anne E. Kornblut (Washington Post): After his major address on the deficit two weeks ago, President Obama sat down for an interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos expecting a conversation about fiscal issues.

Instead, Obama faced repeated questions about the controversy surrounding his place of birth … the interview added to the growing sense within the White House that the mainstream media was perpetuating a dangerous myth.

Obama had grown incredulous at the overall debate. He had watched as even Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan had been sucked into the discussion of his birthplace, aides said … on April 19, in a meeting with White House counsel Bob Bauer, the president asked about the feasibility of getting his long-form birth certificate at last …..Last week, it was Obama who made the call to proceed. “He was the driving force,” the official said.

…the process began early in the week of April 18, after Obama raised the subject. White House counsel Bauer reviewed the legal steps necessary to obtain the long-form document, which is not routinely released by authorities in Hawaii …..When administration officials released the paperwork on Wednesday morning shortly after 9 a.m., it came as a shock to the political establishment….

….Aides acknowledged that there would have been a potential upside to keeping the obviously outrageous myth alive. “He did that despite the fact that it probably was…probably in his long-term political interests to allow this birther debate to dominate discussion in the Republican Party for months to come,” Pfeiffer said. “But he thought even though it might have been good politics, he thought it was bad for the country. And so he asked counsel to look into this.”

Full article here

‘republicans will rue their birther backing’

Paul Harris (The Guardian): The timing of the release of Barack Obama’s birth certificate expertly made a fool of Donald Trump – and the GOP with him.

….to the surprise of no one with two brain cells to rub together, the document proved that, yes, in fact, Obama was indeed born on American soil.

Yet Obama seemed barely in chiding mode at having to deal with this idiocy. Instead, he appeared relaxed. He told reporters that he had “watched with amusement” as the rumours spread and been surprised they refused to go away….

…The fact is that the Obama administration has played the recent spasm of birther attention remarkably well. They have let Trump rise up on a balloon of inflated birther nonsense – getting near the top of Republican polls for the 2012 nomination – and then promptly popped it underneath him.

…the White House timed the release so that Trump would be right in the media’s glare when the birther bubble burst. Not surprisingly, he looked like an idiot. At a news conference, he blustered about his proud achievement in forcing the release of the birth certificate, then attempted to cast a little doubt on it and finally made up a CNN poll that he claimed showed him neck-and-neck with Obama in the race (CNN promptly reported no such poll exists).

No one needed any more proof to understand that Trump is a joke in very poor taste. But he provided it anyway – in long form….

Which is why Obama has played this well. His team waited for Trump to have enough rope to hang himself on the birther issue, and in doing so, have helped him toxify the Republican brand – just as he tried to debut his serious side.

…. the sheer and increasing madness of the issue – especially now that the long form birth certificate has been released – must be offputting for the independents and moderates who are often so crucial in American elections.

…It is a sad indictment of the Republican party that its own leaders took the attitude of not dismissing birtherism and its followers without qualifying their stance or hinting at closet sympathies.

Come 2012, they may yet pay at the polls for that cynicism and moral cowardice. It is going to be an easy task for Democrats to paint the Republicans as extremists with little grasp of reality and many Republicans will have only themselves to blame.

Full article here

magnificent

The Onion

Thank you so much Fred 😉

‘i was there, i knew i had been born’

CBS