night everyone

A very, very, very big thank you again to Henry VIII (!) for visiting us today (here) – thrilled to have you here, Mr Healy!

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Bye bye Muppets, hello the Living Dead…..

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Worried about Huntsman?

Nate Silver: …. polling worse than Mr. Gingrich was Mr. Huntsman. About half of the views Republicans expressed about Mr. Huntsman were negative, producing an Unacceptably Index of 51 percent.

Thank you Suzanne

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See you tomorrow 😉

“miss? the prez is at the window” “yeah, right.”

A better title: “Winning The Future”.

Thanks LunarSea 😉

President Barack Obama greets children at a day care facility adjacent to daughter Sasha’s school in Bethesda, Md., following her 4th grade closing ceremony, June 9, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

more of this, please

RollCall: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched a round of robocalls targeting 13 Republicans. The calls, according to a sample script released by the DCCC, hammer away at Democrats’ message of criticizing the GOP’s budget plan to dramatically overhaul Medicare.

The calls hit Members for voting in favor of Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget blueprint, noting the GOP’s “plan to end Medicare actually increases the debt by almost $2 trillion because of more tax breaks for millionaires and corporations.”

Democrats believe their Medicare messaging was a key component of their win in New York’s 26th Congressional district, where now-Rep. Kathy Hochul beat Republican Jane Corwin.

The calls target Republican Reps. Ben Quayle (Ariz.), Daniel Webster (Fla.), Steve King (Iowa), Bobby Schilling (Ill.), Charles Bass (N.H.), Jon Runyan (N.J.), Joe Heck (Nev.), Nan Hayworth (N.Y.), Ann Marie Buerkle (N.Y.), Steve Chabot (Ohio), Lou Barletta (Pa.), Kristi Noem (S.D.) and Scott Rigell (Va.).

clara luper (May 3, 1923 – June 8, 2011)

Read about Clara Luper’s life here

January 2009 – NewsOK: Clara Luper clapped and let out a cheer as Barack Obama finished taking the oath of office and became president of the U.S.

The graying matron of Oklahoma City’s civil rights movement was surrounded by about two dozen people at the Freedom Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, for an inauguration watch party.

Though her health has dwindled in recent years, Luper said she never doubted she’d see a black president in her lifetime.

“I hadn’t planned on dying until I saw this day,” she said. “If I die now, I’m OK.”

On the walls of the center, large pictures hung showing Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. Other pictures showed black children staging a sit-in at a lunch counter and Luper being led away from a protest by police.

Luper said the struggles of those days never got her down because she knew today would eventually come. “I came from a family of believers,” Luper said. “We believed in the sun when it didn’t shine. We believed in the rain when it didn’t fall.”

Benetta Williams, Luper’s caretaker, said Obama’s election has re-invigorated the 85-year-old, who organized sit-ins to protest segregation in Oklahoma City beginning in 1958. She was invited to the inauguration, but could not attend because of her health.

“Ms. Luper cannot stand by herself,” Williams said. “The night that Obama was elected, she stood. She got up for the first time in two years and stood by herself.”

Watching Luper as she sat in front of a 12-inch TV and listened to Obama’s speech Tuesday, Williams said she was struck by how much Luper gave for this moment.

“Tears just streamed down my face as I looked at her,” Williams said.

the laughs just keep on coming…..

CBS: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is considering a bid for the Republican nomination for president and could make an announcement soon…The conservative Weekly Standard cites “two reliable sources” who tell editor William Kristol that Giuliani sees parallels between his 1989 mayoral race loss and victory in the next election with his loss in 2008 and the current race.

…Kristol says this time Giuliani would go head to head with New Hampshire front-runner Mitt Romney and then try to garner enough electoral votes in delegate rich states like New York, New Jersey and California. “It seems implausible that Rudy Giuliani could win the nomination. But it’s an implausible year,” Kristol wrote.

newt’s campaign sure is going well

Washington Post: Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign imploded Thursday afternoon with his entire senior staff resigning en masse… “When the campaign and the candidate disagree on the path, they’ve got to part ways,” said Rick Tyler, a longtime Gingrich spokesman who was among those who left the campaign.

Tyler as well as Rob Johnson, Gingrich’s campaign manager, Dave Carney and Katon Dawson, senior strategists to the effort, media consultant Sam Dawson, Iowa strategist Craig Schoenfeld, South Carolina operative Walter Whetsell and Georgia-based adviser Scott Rials have all stepped aside. Much of Gingrich’s early state operation was also headed for the exits…

…Gingrich released a statement via Facebook pledging to continue in the race: “I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring,” Gingrich wrote. “The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles.”

Among the issues leading to the resignations … was the two-week vacation that Gingrich and his wife, Callista, insisted upon taking against the advice of his top political staff. Coming as it did after one of the most disastrous campaign launches in recent memory….

…Carney and Johnson are longtime aides to Texas Gov. Rick Perry who has said in recent days that he is contemplating a run for president himself in 2012. The Carney and Johnson resignations will fuel speculation that Perry is moving toward the race.

More here

special speaker

First lady Michelle Obama speaks at the 40th anniversary of the National Partnership for Women & Families, June 9

‘democratic party affiliation advantage increases in may’

Gallup: In May, 45% of Americans identified as Democrats or said they were independent but leaned Democratic, compared with 39% who identified as Republicans or leaned Republican. The six-percentage-point Democratic advantage represents a slight increase from the four-point advantage Gallup measured in April, which matches the 2011 average to date.

….the current six-point Democratic edge is the largest measured in Gallup Daily tracking since October 2009, when the gap was seven points … the recent increase coincides with Americans’ more positive evaluations of President Obama, who averaged 50% job approval in May, compared with 44% in April.

gop to the half-termer: ‘it’s over’

John Dickerson (Slate): The (Half-Termer) says George Washington is her favorite founder because he was reluctant to serve but answered the call of duty. She likes to think of herself this way, answering the needs of a clamoring electorate. That is part of the cinematic beauty of her bus tour: The crowds that greet her can represent that call to take up their standard and head into presidential battle on their behalf.

There’s only one problem: The call isn’t coming. That’s the clear message in a new CBS News poll of the Republican field. Taken after the (Half-Termer) bus tour started rolling, it asked Republicans whether she should run. By a 20-point margin (54 percent to 34 percent), Republicans said she should not run. Among Tea Party supporters, where she has her strongest following, she is also waved off against a run. Half say she should not run; 38 percent say she should….

…. Some 36 percent of Republican voters have an unfavorable view of her, compared with the 37 percent that have a favorable view. Her favorability rating has declined since April.

…Perhaps the grim developments in the face of her latest public bus tour may only spur her interest in running to prove that she can not only show the pundits she’s right but that she can defy political gravity. Still, if Paul Revere were involved in politics today, he might be ringing those warning bells.

More here

Thank you Loriah

still on track….

Robert Shrum: Forget the noisy declarations about lousy economic news sinking Obama’s re-election. The president is still on track for a second term.

….what will endure after this remarkable week is the emergence of a consensus that Barack Obama could lose next year… First, the unemployment numbers … Second, The Times headlined an analysis, widely repeated, that no incumbent president since FDR has won a second term when unemployment was above 7.2 percent … Third, in the latest Washington Post/ABC poll … nearly 60 percent of people offer a negative verdict on Obama’s stewardship of the economy. Then the clincher: While he defeats most Republicans by a margin of 10 to 17 points, the president is now tied with Mitt Romney….

…..much of the new mood is too instant, too superficial, and too casually ahistorical… …As The Times’ Nate Silver wrote in gently questioning his own paper’s deterministic metric, there is a “maddeningly inexact relationship between unemployment and re-election.”

….the relevant signs suggest that Barack Obama is in a more advantageous position than Ronald Reagan was. In Gallup’s June 1983 numbers, Reagan’s approval was 43 percent; in late May and early June, Obama was five to eight points higher. And of the two presidents in the last four decades who had the highest approval ratings this far out from the election, the first Bush was trounced and the second Bush barely squeaked by. The presidents with middling ratings – Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton – ultimately triumphed; Dole was ahead of Clinton in June of 1995.

…flat earth economics won’t hold with the public if Republicans hold to their present resolve and convert the attractive abstraction of spending cuts into the grim reality of shredding Medicare. There’s the leverage for the president if the GOP refuses to compromise on a reasonable basis – which is probably a remote possibility at best.

…In the week Weiner was roasted, the conventional wisdom included that the 2012 election is not yet baked. But I suspect that by then the economy will finally be seen as moving in the right direction – or that sooner than that, Republican efforts to trash the recovery and repeal the New Deal will become all too transparent and repellant. Either outcome leads to Obama’s second term.

Full article here

Thank you Ladyhawke