go donna!!!

Updated Link

From Donna Dem:

Happy Sunday TOD’Fam.

Today’s Sunday Menu is Homemade Pizza, Honey Baked Ham, Steamed Cabbage, Roasted Potatoes and Homemade Key Lime Pie. (How blessed I am that my hubby loves to cook)

I’m sharing this meal virtually with all of you in appreciation for all that you do here every day to motivate and inspire each of us to work our hearts out for the President’s re-election.

The Grassroots Fundraising Challenge has a new goal for me this weekend. My goal is to recruit three donors to the campaign this weekend. Will you donate $5.00 to my grassroots fundraising page today?

***** CLICK HERE TO DONATE *****

I remain #1 in number of donations and have climbed to #2 in dollar amount for my opportunity to receive a phone call from President Obama or VP Biden. I owe much of this to your generosity.

****

If you can support Donna’s fundraising drive, please, please, please do, she’s fantastic and a complete inspiration – thank you 😉

the reality of ‘obamacare’ (please send your best to ross in the comments)

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Des Moines Register: After more than five weeks on a ventilator, Amy Ward is finally being weaned off it to breathe on her own. She no longer requires dialysis. But a near-fatal infection resulting from a freak accident has left her with a long road of rehab ahead.

In the time he’s spent at his wife’s bedside in a hospital critical care unit, her husband has been able to do a lot of thinking. Ross Daniels, on unpaid family medical leave from his IT job to tend to his wife, has had to face the real possibility that he would lose her, though she’s just 39….

… Daniels has also thought about what would have happened if portions of the new federal health care law had not been in place. His wife’s insurance had a million dollar lifetime cap on benefits. Her current expenses have already exceeded that. One medication – a potent antifungal agent – costs $1,600 a dose. Without the protection against lifetime limits the new law provides, they would have had to declare bankruptcy.

That law, derisively dubbed “Obamacare” by the president’s opponents, has been portrayed as the essence of evil among Republican presidential candidates. At a tea party-sponsored debate this week, front-runners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney vowed to sign executive orders exempting states from enforcing it. Michele Bachmann bragged of working for its repeal in Congress.

Those attitudes confound Daniels, who says, “It is hard for us to believe that so many of the GOP candidates would have us go back to a time where an illness like this would have forced us, or any other family for that matter, into bankruptcy.” He’s also grateful for the law’s protection against insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

…. by the time the next president is sworn in, enough people will have experienced the protections and benefits it offers that no elected official would risk his or her standing by rescinding it. That’s the value of first-hand experience, painful as it may be. It brings you closer to the truth than all the political platitudes in the world.

Full article here

Thank you JER, this is a brilliant article – make sure you read it all everyone, and spread it far and wide 😉

swimming fool

Steve Benen: Lindsey Graham sure does sound confident about 2012: South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says the 2012 presidential election is the GOP’s to lose. “President Obama has done everything he knows how to do to beat himself,” Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union….

Now, as I recall, Graham’s record of election predictions isn’t exactly sterling. A week before the 2008 election, Graham was in North Carolina touting John McCain’s chances:

“McCain fits North Carolina like a glove…. I’ll beat Michael Phelps in swimming before Barack Obama wins North Carolina.”

A week later, Obama won North Carolina.

Michael Phelps was unavailable for comment…..

Full post here

😆

‘stop whining’

Extreme Liberal: If you haven’t gone to iTunes and subscribed to the Bubble Genius Bob and Chez Show podcast, you are missing out on the best political analysis around and a lot of great laughs. You can find them at their respective blogs, Bob Cesca’s Aweseome Blog! Go! and Deus Ex Malcontent where they consistently tell it like it is.

A few weeks ago, they did a show called “Stop Whining”, which I highly recommend you listen to, after you subscribe to them on iTunes. But in case you prefer reading or are at work and can’t really listen, I took the time to transcribe a large portion of that show for your reading pleasure. I think it exposes the true motivations and agenda of those who have become known as the “Professional Left” or the name I prefer, “Firebaggers”……

See post and transcript here

‘good for him – and for us’

Steve Benen: …. About a month ago, Warren Buffett made a strong case in support of raising taxes on those who enjoy enormous wealth …. It looks President Obama is inclined to agree: “… on Monday he will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers …”

Everything we’ve seen from Obama this month suggests this White House has chosen a new posture when dealing with the GOP. The introduction of the American Jobs Act was a pleasant, progressive surprise; the White House’s reluctance to start making concessions was clearly a step in the right direction; word that Social Security is off the table is just what the left wanted to hear; and support for the “Buffett Rule” suggests Obama and his team aren’t afraid to draw contrasts with unpopular, hard-right congressional Republicans.

…. I’d bet the debt-ceiling fiasco changed Obama’s entire approach rather dramatically. The president very likely assumed that if he worked in good faith, offered reasonable concessions, and demonstrated a commitment to compromise and common ground, Republicans would respond in kind. The summer offered a painful lesson – those assumptions were wrong. GOP officials have rewritten the rules.

With those lessons in mind, the president is now taking a tougher line. Good for him – and for us.

Full post here

the week ahead

President Obama on Monday will deliver his deficit-reduction speech at 10:30 a.m. from the White House’s Rose Garden, according to an administration release.

Later on Monday, the president and First Lady Michelle Obama will travel to New York City for the UN General Assembly and a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings. While in New York, he’ll also deliver remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative. The president is scheduled to return to Washington on Wednesday.

Tuesday: Meeting the chairman of Libya’s governing council, and a high-level meeting on Libya; then, a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, one with Brazil’s president, and a session with Turkey’s prime minister to talk about Syria and Israel

Wednesday: Obama’s speech to the General Assembly to “address dramatic change” since last year’s meeting, like in South Sudan; then a meeting with Japan’s premier, a luncheon with the U.N. secretary general, a speech to the Clinton Global Initiative, a meeting with Britain’s David Cameron and then France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, and possibly a meeting with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.