I’m willing to bet you guys a million dollars, Barack Obama loves his family and country too. Pass that on to Ann Romney. It seems like she repeat the same old thing.
Anniebella, you stated so beautifully here the fact that we have seen and watched a man who has presented himself with his family to be the most loving and respected husband and father for his family. As far as country, POB is the best example in my lifetime of showing his love for his country and the people who make up this country, The American People.
I totally concur with you, Ann Romney needs to watch and speak less about the President’s love for his family and country. These ugly and divisive comments about POB needs to stop.
We here have NO doubt that POB loves his family and his country. I am so sick of these very white ladies thinking that their old white husbands are the only ones capable of loving their wives, children and country. Enought of this crap. We have greater things to do, and we get them done, BUT we will not stand by silently allowing these old farts continiously bad mouthing untruths about Presiden Barack Obama. That maybe too much honesty for some to hear, but I never keep my true feelings on these matters go silently. I have been wounded too much and seen the results of these type of comments that being thrown around carelessly by Ms. Romney and other. These are destractions. But they are are slimy and ugly and hateful. HZ
Good Afternoon JB, your comment just melted my heart. I love it as well. There is nothing like a father’s love during the life of all children, but especially the girls. Oh, I would give anything to have had the look, words of encouragement, coming to my musical recital, debates, and homecoming queen crowing, and my graduations. But most of all, just being able to talk with him more and having those hugs from him.
I am sixty-five plus, and I still tear up when I think of my father and what we missed together. I am not blaming him, because he was very passive in his role as my father and allowed a very strong sister take over his role rather than stand up to her and allow him to be what his role should have been. And to this day, it hurts like hell (but I have forgiven) but one never forgets these feelings.
So, I love seeing the most powerful man of the free world making it a very high priority to give those hugs, talks, smiles, and touches as the beautiful father to his two beautiful daughters. And I am sure that Malia and Sasha will Never forget these moments. Thank Almighty for wonderful fathers like POB and your son, Jachquelineoboomer!!!!!HZ
I can understand what you’re feeling, HZ. My father died when I was 5 years old. What the president is giving to his daughters is precious beyond any measure.
I know exaclty what you mean. My father was 48 when I was born (I’m an only child) and wasn’t really interested. He loved me as much as he could; that just wasn’t very much. I love to see fathers so involved with their children. I love to see the Obamas’ interaction.
OK, just unsubscribed from the ACLU email list. One more hit job on Obama over the NDAA, saying it provides for indefinite detention with no limits as to who falls under its purview. Done with them.
That’s a lie. They know it. They haven’t bothered to read the bill or the changes made by Obama or to take into account the jackals running the Republican party.
This is irresponsible. I hate to think what I’m thinking: do they think they will fare better financially if the real boogey men are actually in office in order to do damage?
Did the President storm into Congress with Team 6 behind him, and demand that Congress pass that NDAA bill? And then go to the Oval Office to issue a signing statement that he objected to the language and potential civil violations in the bill? He’s a tricky one, that one.
I’ve been tracking this issue to see how it would fare as the deadline approached…. and…it’s a wrap!~
After Three Decades, Tax Credit for Ethanol Expires
By ROBERT PEAR| Published: January 1, 2012
A federal tax credit for ethanol expired on Saturday, ending an era in which the federal government provided more than $20 billion in subsidies for use of the product. The tax break, created more than 30 years ago, had long seemed untouchable. But in the last year, during which Congress was preoccupied with deficits and debt, it became a symbol of corporate welfare. Fiscal conservatives joined liberal environmentalists to kill it, with help from a diverse coalition of outside groups. In the United States, most ethanol is produced from corn. The demise of the subsidy is all the more remarkable because it comes at the peak of the political season in Iowa, where corn is king.
DOHA, Qatar (AP)—David Beckham is set to stay with the Los Angeles Galaxy after turning down a chance to join Paris Saint-Germain, the French club said Tuesday.
After weeks of negotiations with PSG, the 36-year-old midfielder and former England captain decided he doesn’t want to move his family from the United States.
“David Beckham is not coming,” PSG President Nasser al-Khelaifi said at the Qatar Open tennis tournament. “We feel a little disappointed. But both sides agreed it would be better that we not do the deal … maybe in the future.”
Beckham’s five-year contract with the Galaxy ended after he won his first MLS Cup in November. He was wooed by several clubs across Europe.
“David Beckham is (with) Los Angeles,” al-Khelaifi said. “And he’s going to stay there.”
Beckham will try to finalize a new, rolling one-year contract this week with the Galaxy, which was paying him an annual base salary of $6.5 million.
That’s getting up there. Strikers usually retire the earliest, around 33 or 34. Midfielders like Beckham can last until mid to late 30’s. Goalkeepers can keep going on into their early 40s.
OMG Chips, I had to look twice to make sure that I was really seeing our ad. I also like the posts on the right and left hand side of the site. I hate to quote Perry but I say “BRING IT”. 🙂
How Christian Right-Wing Voters in Iowa Make Abortion a Central Issue in the Caucuses
By: Amanda Marcotte| January 2, 2012
After what is the most protracted, ridiculous run-up to a primary season I’ve seen in the couple of decades I’ve closely followed politics, we’re finally going to actually begin the Republican primaries, a mere three months after everyone is completely exhausted of them. The entire situation is particularly frustrating, because the majority of the focus, from the media and the candidates, has been on Iowa, even though the state has been known repeatedly to give far more weight—and even victories—to candidates that have literally no chance of winning the Republican nomination, because these candidates hit a bunch of buttons for Christian conservatives but have little appeal outside of those circles.
To really understand Iowa, you need to understand the primacy of abortion as an issue to the Christian right. It’s baffling how little attention this gets, considering the tendency of all the candidates—and especially those whose numbers in Iowa, like Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, eclipse what they can get in most other states—to make frequent statements about how they consider banning abortion to be a number one priority and the big issue of our time. But abortion is a nice, simple issue, and the candidates by and large seem to get what the media doesn’t: The more you pound the table and stereotype women who get abortions as heartless slatterns, the better you do in the polls.
Ah, I think (hope?) I’ve rescued Des Moines – there were two Fire/Teabaggers in the blocked list, one with ‘moi’ in their name, another with ‘Des’. 😆 That might have been it – we’ll see!!
Speaking of—-I see she had 4 of her 5 children coming to her aid today—-altho she said she is relying on a miracle from you know who to save her and give her the edge—-we’ll see how that plan works out. And I still find it strange that if there were 23 foster children that none ever stepped forward to say how lifesaving and marvelous it was to live with Marcus and Michele.
Maybe a counteroffensive strategy is in order, by way of sending links to various media outlets and/or talking heads that show the POTUS with his family and crowd shots of events where THOUSANDS of people have lined up for hours to hear him speak.
Remember too that the “media” has consciously chosen not to air these events so we don’t want people to even begin to entertain the idea that this false meme is true. Imo, this would go a long way in shutting down the lie that President Obama doesn’t “relate” to average Americans and strip them of that particular talking point!~
Chips, have I told you lately how much I appreciate you and love how classy you run your beautiful site. You do not take any mess, my dear one, and we all appreciate you for keeping this a wonderful site.
I love you our Beloved Chipsticks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much!!!!! HZ.
Forget Iowa: GOP Always Nominates ‘Next in Line’
By Rick Perlstein| January 03, 2012 08:00 AM
It’s a curious thing. I study Republicans for a living—I’ve done so for almost 15 years. I write books about their history; I write articles about their present. But these days, you probably couldn’t find a political junky in America less interested to the supposedly hotly contested race for the Republican nomination. I called it for Willard “Mitt” Romney well over three years ago—the day he finished second to John McCain in 2008. That made him “next in line;” and our modern Republican Party pretty much always nominates the next in line, or at the very least The Logical Choice Of The Party Establishment. In 1968, it was Nixon, the former vice president. In ’76 it was the accidental president, Gerald Ford. The guy who came in second in ’76, Ronald Reagan, was nominated in 1980; Vice President Bush, the man who finished second in ’80, in ’88. Old Man Dole in ’96. Son of Bush in 2000. Mighty McCain in 2008.
Reality Check: Breaking Down Obama’s NDAA Signing Statement
By sarah Jones| January 2, 2012
The President issued a signing statement when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. Conservatives are freaking out over the alleged hypocrisy of Obama’s usage of a signing statement and the less hysterical are still confused as to what it really means, if indeed, it means anything. So, let’s break it down. The NDAA signing statement does not change the law; but it does direct the executive agencies, including the Department of Justice, as to how this administration will interpret the law. To wit, according to this administration, it will not apply to US citizens.
The more pertinent question is not will this apply to US citizens as it will not under the Obama administration, but why the Senate Armed Services Committee is ignoring the very effective defense and security tactics of the Obama administration, and still pushing for a McCain approach. There was way too much of the “give up your freedoms for security” flavor to this law in its original form; and we should be asking why, when the Obama administration’s approach has been more than effective.
I posted this earlier and it deserves to be posted again. In light of the dishonest ACLU’s disregard for the truth (TPV has been on top of this as well), the truth about the NDAA needs to be spread.
I’m sure many of you received this email from Speaker-for-Life Pelosi, on behalf of the DCCC:
Jacqueline —
Because of generous and committed supporters like you, we made history.
For the first time ever, we are entering the election year with 500,000 grassroots contributors standing behind us.
It’s clear that Democrats are more united and determined than ever before in our fight to win the House Majority, re-elect President Obama, and respond to House Republicans’ extreme and reckless agenda.
Your generous contributions helped us shatter our year-end $1 million Republican Accountability Fund goal. We will put your dollars to work immediately in our effort to hold Republicans accountable with targeted advertising, rapid response research, and grassroots organizing.
Thank you for your generous, record-breaking support. Onward to more Democratic victories in 2012!
It’s actually not misogyny, it’s racism. He’s trying to emasculate the President by calling him a girl. Juvenile and ultimately ineffective because the President will not stoop to this kind of high school tactics.
Today was the day that legal experts and many aides in both parties thought President Obama would provide a recess appointment to Richard Cordray, his nominee to administer the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The rationale is quite technical, but here’s the bottom line: one reading of the Constitution and of executive branch administrative law suggest that today is Obama’s last day to recess appoint any of his languishing nominees, at least until the next time the Senate leaves town several weeks from now.
But a senior administration official who would not be quoted told reporters at a White House background briefing Tuesday that Obama will not take advantage of that opening.
The “mistake” is this stuff getting into the mainstream of twitter and blogs. I knew this morning when I was reading these reports that this was just hyped up leftist reporting. I don’t believe any of this stuff until I hear it directly from the WH and I’m sure they have their reasons if they have decided not to do this. Let the emoprog complaining begin. Sigh!!!
My guess? The WH would rather, in an election year, highlight Senate GOP obstructionism, and Obama’s pragmatism of wanting to work with the Senate. Recess appointments would be a tactical win, but possibly at the expense of a grander strategy.
I agree but something is going to have to be done about the Consumer Protection Agency head because they cannot implement some of the policy without the administrator in place. We on the left (especially the so-called OWS) should be furious about this.
Raj Date is currently leading the Bureau’s day-to-day operations in his capacity as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On July 18, 2011, President Obama nominated Richard Cordray, the head of the Bureau’s Enforcement Division, to be the first Director of the CFPB. This nomination is currently pending before the Senate.
So CFPB and NLRB are toothless and nullified because Pres. Obama wants to highlight obstruction when he had the tools to break this obstruction and didn’t? Sorry, but that’s BS.
It makes the President complaining about GOP obstruction disingenuous and he’s playing us for fools with this kind of stuff.
Wow! saintroscoe, did you not read this: “Raj Date is currently leading the Bureau’s day-to-day operations in his capacity as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.” And in fact much of the groundwork HAS been laid by the the CFPB which is why credit card companies have to explain in excruciating detail the lending terms and how long it will take to pay off a bill.
“It makes the President complaining about GOP obstruction disingenuous and he’s playing us for fools with this kind of stuff.”
Really? So, in other words the GOP hasn’t been, and isn’t, obstructing Richard Cordray’s nomination…is that what you’re saying? And the President could make it happen if he wanted to?
While Raj Date is running “day to day” operations, I’ve read that without an actual head of the Agency, certain important reforms and initiatives cannot be implemented. So, it appears Date is like a manager, but he’s not the leader with the power to implement things.
I agree with you, creole. To say that one act from President Obama, (not yet verified and for reasons which may not be entirely obvious to the casual observer), would nullify the GOP obstruction is ludicrous. GOP have been obstructing since Day 1. The President’s administration has been operating at well-reduced capacity, for no really good reason, other than obstruction. And the refusal of Congress to recess is the complete fault of Congress – including the Dems who have gone along with it. When the President brings up this latest act of obstruction, we should all be right behind him amplifying his message, and pointing out to OWS and naysayers alike, that the full effect of protecting the middle class of America (including those below the poverty line who Romney has now designated as middle class) has been dulled by the GOP and their wish to protect the rich instead of the people who elected them. That is the truth.
I didn’t say it would nullify the GOP obstruction. I said it would make complaints about specific obstruction disingenuous. Of course he can’t recess appoint the 110 or so nominees currently blocked, but he can’t preach on about how important Cordray is and how important he is to be confirmed and then chooses not to recess appoint him because he wants to use his blocked confirmation as a political tool rather than getting him in place to protect the consumer like the reform spelled out.
President Obama has given the Senate more than enough time with his nominees and they choose not to act. Why not bring “we can’t wait” to the confirmation process?
It might be a mistake but it might also be a mistake to start a fight before the State of the Union AND the payroll tax cut fight. Yes, Repubs obstruct no matter what but we must take away any legitimate sounding reason for their obstruction.
Pres.Obama may also be planning to continue to use the blockage of Cordray’s nomination as a compliment to his income inequality/middle class/ obstructionist Congress general election strategy.
I really really hate it though when the media and blogs hype up a situation with absolutely no stoking from the White House and then call him all kinds of names when he chooses to engage in a fight the media started.
For the first time in a year there is a recess that the GOP cannot block. The President has dozens of appointees waiting confirmation that are being obstructed by the GOP. Instead of using the recess to appoint very key ones and then using the GOP outrage to educate the masses on the GOP obstruction and why he felt it absolutely necessary to recess appoint these individuals he chooses not to – and guess what as a result of not making the recess appointments the positions are still not filled and the obstruction will not be covered so nobody is learning about the GOP obstruction – it’s a win-win for Republican obstruction – they get to do it successfully and nobody will ever know about it.
No one knows what the President has in mind regarding the strategy that he will use to get Richard Cordray appointed. What has been tossed around are people’s opinions about what could, or should, be done. Fair enough…but my issue is framing GOP obstruction as “complaining” when it is a substantiated FACT is disingenuous. That said, President Obama has stated that he hasn’t given up on Cordray’s nomination. I choose to take him at his word and will wait and see what happens–without insinuating that he’s playing games or taking us for fools.~
Mitt Romney is now repeatedly saying that he created a net 100,000 jobs in his tenure at Bain Capital. But there seems to be no evidence to substantiate this claim. In fact, in previous campaigns the Romney campaign has been pressed on this number and to the best of my knowledge never been able to offer any evidence.
I think Flip Romney is digging a hole for himself with his lies and outrageous claims. One that he may be unable to dig himself out of during the election.
I read on an earlier blog that Mitt got asked the question When was the last time you actually created a job to no answer. Maybe that and the release his taxes should be a push from the Dems.
Ok, I think OWS has officially jumped the shark. Their mic check got checked by… MITT ROMNEY SUPPORTERS! When you get drowned out by Mittens’ crew, you’ve really lost the plot.
They jumped the shark when they tried to mic check President Obama and got drowned out. OWS makes me mad because they could have made an important difference. They opted to fight to sleep in parks, focus on challenging police (some of whom behaved badly), and ignoring the things that would actually help their cause. They didn’t lift a finger to fight for AJA, or fight for Cordray’s confirmation, or even to point out the uselessness of GOP policies. Instead, they claimed that the President was their enemy, and many of them support Ron Paul, who actually doesn’t support their right to sleep in Zucotti Park, because it violates property rights – just like the Civil Rights Act, according to Ron Paul. Very disappointing.
The World According to Ron Paul
BY MICHAEL A. COHEN | DECEMBER 23, 2011
Republicans are freaked out about what a libertarian isolationist in the White House would do to American power — but not all Democrats are.
The problem, however, is that there is far more to Paul’s view than just his opposition to U.S. military adventurism. Paul also believes that the United States should depart from all international organizations and global alliances. This includes not just NATO, but also the United Nations and the World Health Organization (he introduced legislation to this effect as recently as this March). He stridently opposes NAFTA, all free trade agreements, and even U.S. membership in the WTO on the grounds that free trade should be free of government interference, global rule-making, or apparently dispute mechanisms. He is opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants and believes that securing America’s borders should be the “top national security priority.”
Many of those supporting Paul or saying positive words about his candidacy may not fully comprehend that under a Paul administration it is quite possible that the United States would no longer be a member in good standing at the United Nations, turn to the World Trade Organization to resolve trade disputes, patrol sea lanes that are transit points for U.S. commerce, work with international organizations to fight global diseases or support economic development, and consult with allies in multilateral forums to deal with global challenges. In short, it’s not clear that Americans are as prepared as Paul is for the United States to no longer be a global power.
Maybe someone should send this to Romney, Santorum, Gingrich – all of whom say they’d vote for Ron Paul before voting for President Obama. Their judgement is even more questionable that previously thought.
If only Paul were President, arson would be left to the states as the Founding Fathers intended.
I cannot tell you how glad I am they caught this guy before someone was critically injured or killed. Fifty-three fires he started, straining the fire department and putting the city on edge. People were sleeping in shifts, staying up to watch carports for suspicious activity because of this guy.
Big grin. The plan to fracture the House GOP begins. From Politico:
A senior White House official challenged House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to buck his own Republican conference and pass the payroll tax, jobs and unemployment insurance bills with moderate Republicans and 60 to 70 Democrats.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity and on the (unusual) condition he wouldn’t be directly quoted, said the Senate and a majority of House members could pass a longer-term deficit agreement, but only if Boehner abandons his insistence that all major bills be approved by a majority of ruling Republicans.
Abandoning such a stance, members on both sides have said, would almost certainly prompt a challenge to his leadership from conservatives who make up the bulk of the lower chamber GOP, a challenge the speaker is likely to lose.
Top Tea Party Republican admits it: We’ve been employing hostage strategy
By Greg Sargent
GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa is one of the leading spokespeople for the Tea Party wing of the House GOP. With the national press continually asking King whether he’ll be making an endorsement in the Iowa caucuses, he has been built up into something of an important GOP figure.
So it’s good to see that King is candidly admitting that the House Tea Party wing has been employing the threat of a government shutdown as nothing more than a deliberate hostage strategy designed to wring maximum concessions from Democrats.
Is it time for a renewable energy Manhattan Project yet? From Kevin Drum:
Feeling a little bullish about the economy? Settle down! I don’t know if this forecast is new, or if it’s the same one I wrote about last year, but the oil analysts at Goldman Sachs think we’re very close to reaching our maximum oil pumping capacity again after a few years of looseness caused by the recession. Via Jared Bernstein, Goldman’s chart is on the right. So what does it mean when oil demand starts to bump up against supply? This:
“High prices, as bad as they are for an economy addicted to cheap oil, aren’t the worst prospect facing us. The real problem is spare capacity….Twenty years ago, OPEC had spare production capacity of about 15 million bpd. A decade ago that had dropped to 5.5 million bpd. [Today], spare capacity has dropped almost to zero.”
OH NOES…The POTUS should be very afraid of Mitt and his army of supporters— who are packed into the local diner! LOL! LOL! LOL!…I’m having a hard time catching my breath. Where’s my inhaler?
Be wary of reports of “packed rooms” in Iowa
Posted on Tuesday, January 3, 2012, 7:15 am by Paddy
Those following the Iowa caucuses from home, hearing a steady stream of reports such as this about “packed rooms” that are “standing room only” with people still waiting outside, may be getting the impression that there’s a groundswell of enthusiasm for this year’s candidates that will drive turnout for the caucuses to stratospheric levels. But don’t be fooled. The truth is that the venues candidates are holding events at this year are much smaller than in 2008, back when some candidates were filling large ballrooms or even small arenas.
I see on twitter that Mika said that from everyone she’s talked to “Iowa’s still for Obama”. And just heard horrible Andrea Mitchell admit that Romney’s event today was very poorly attended—-more media than supporters.
Recall effort against WI State Sen. Scott Fitzgerald gathers more than 12,000 signatures
Posted on Tuesday, January 3, 2012, 9:48 am by GottaLaff
FORT ATKINSON, Wis. — Organizers of the recall effort against Wisconsin’s Senate majority leader said Monday they’ve gathered more than 12,000 signatures in a bid to wrestle control of state politics from Gov. Scott Walker and Republican lawmakers. Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, would face a recall election if his opponents get 16,742 names. The other three other Republican senators up for recall are Pam Galloway, Terry Moulton, and Van Wanggaard.
D Wasserman Schultz
@DWStweets
Thanks @BruceBraley for leading off @TheDemocrats press conference highlighting lacking #GOP field & @MittRomney’s constant flip-flopping.
But it quickly becomes clear that Mr. Romney has a point to make in dissecting the song. He sees its vision as matching his, and that is where he makes a serious mistake.
“O beautiful, for patriot’s dream, that sees beyond the years,” he said, discussing the fourth verse and asserting that this dream referred to political and especially economic freedom. “The freedom to choose one’s course in life, to be an opportunity nation, a merit-based society” – that, he suggested, conflicts directly with the president’s vision of America as an entitlement society, where everyone is equal and thus more impoverished.
If, over time, this turns out to be his rebuttal to the president’s new campaign theme of reducing economic inequality, he will have to do better than “America the Beautiful,” because that is not at all what the song was originally about. The lyrics were written in 1894 by the Massachusetts poet Katharine Lee Bates, an ardent feminist and lesbian who was deeply disillusioned by the greed and excess of the Gilded Age.
Her original third verse was an expression of that anger:
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!
Lynn Sherr, the ABC News correspondent and the author of a book about the song, wrote that Bates “wanted to purify America’s great wealth, to channel what she had originally called ‘selfish gain’ into more noble causes.” Bates later rewrote the stanza into its current version, unrecited by Mr. Romney today:
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — U.S. stocks rallied Tuesday, kicking off the new year on a high note, as investors welcomed upbeat reports on economic activity around the world.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) jumped 177 points, or 1.4%, in afternoon trading. The S&P 500 (SPX) gained 18 points, or 1.4%. The Nasdaq (COMP) added 37 points, or 1.4%.
The gains came after reports on manufacturing growth in China and India came in better than expected over the weekend. On Tuesday, a report showed U.S. manufacturing activity expanded at a faster rate in December.
U.S. markets were closed Monday for the New Year holiday.
“There were no major negative headlines out of Europe, and we had some data suggesting the global economy is expanding,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG.
Investors scooped up shares of companies that would benefit from a strengthening global economy.
New Hampshire State Rep. Goes Birther, Calls For Investigation Into Obama’s Eligibility For Presidency | New Hampshire state Rep. Laurence Rappaport (R) and a small group of lawmakers have called on the state’s attorney general to launch and investigation into whether President Obama is eligible to appear on the state’s presidential ballot in 2012. The issue, according to Rappaport, is whether Obama is a natural-born citizen of the U.S. New Hampshire’s Ballot Law Commission has already rejected another similar effort, and Rappaport told the Associated Press that Attorney General Michael Delaney hasn’t responded to the request.
You know, i have a theory that many of these Republicans have seen ACTUAL internal polls showing Barack Obama carrying their states in a walk or as in the case of Georgia, getting it close enough to where he would win it. It is why were seeing these efforts again. Nothing but a last resort effort to defeat the President.
I think you’re right. If the President is so “terrible” and he’s “ruining the country” and the GOP are so in touch with Americans who they claim want to chase the President out of office – then why not let his name stay on the ballot and prove how right they are when they win in a landslide? Isn’t that what people who were telling the truth about the state of affairs would do? Teach the President a lesson by throwing him uniformly out of office? Their fear tells us otherwise.
I really hope this issue makes it into the campaign this year. Most people know it’s bullshit and will further highlight the extreme batty wing of the GOP.
We had Christmas part 2 on Jan 1 and 2 so I have been away from the blog.
So grateful to have this site to turn to when I need to catch up and be inspired.
While we wait for the Iowa Caucus results to come in I had a suggestion
CALL TO ACTION
Let’s send Leslie Stahl some love. I know the show aired 2 days ago, but waht a treat it would be for her to get a bunch of positive email about her report on Cantor.
So I read this from start to finish and concluded that just as there are Fox-polluted seniors who are beyond persuasion, there are a certain amount of millennials who also need to be written off. They simply need to be outnumbered in the 300 days until election day.
Why is it that the uninformed feel so duty-bound to vote armed only with their willful ignorance?
I realize that it’s easy for a person born well after the Civil Rights Movement to take those blood-won civil rights for granted, so they shrug off the reservations older people have about his hostility toward the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s disappointing but understandable if you’ve never lived through that era and no one has informed you in real terms what it was like.
What is not understandable is that the writer makes no mention about Paul’s dubious associations with white supremacist founder of Stormfront or anti-government militias. No mention of Paul wanting to withdraw from all international bodies ranging from the World Trade organization to the United Nations. No mention that he believes that the Founders never intended a separation of church and state. No mention of his conviction that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional.
There is a seriously self-absorbed, tantrum-driven, immature, willfully uninformed strain of politics happening among some millennials that mirrors the righteous ignorance of the tea partiers.
I don’t think 10 months is enough time to teach anyone who is watching the havoc wrought by austerity-crazed, anti-union, anti-women, anti-voting Republicans and wants to put that on steroids by electing Ron Paul.
It is a sad day in America when a person can justify a vote for Ron Paul. SOS Clinton, once said she did not want to see us go backward, well, we are head in that direction as warp speed.
Ron Paul will not be the Republican nominee, so if this young person and others like him/her have to vote for Ron Paul they will be voting third party IF Paul can actually mount a 50 state campaign as a third party candidate. There seem to be a lot of people dumping themselves into third party buckets that will probably end up cancelling each other out. So, let the Paulites waste their vote and learn the hard way to use their heads when then make a voting decision.
Critiquing the libertarian view of racism, Jon Chait says:
The most fevered opponents of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s — and, for that matter, the most fervent defenders of slavery a century before — also usually made their case in in process terms rather than racist ones. They stood for the rights of the individual, or the rights of the states, against the federal Goliath.
I think this is a really important point, as we tend to think of racism as working, primarily, through volume and violence. James Byrd is the only undisputed victim of racism in recent memory. But the poll tax, the literacy tests, the grandfather clauses were all ostensibly color-blind and were explicitly designed for their authors to hide behind that fact. It’s comforting to think of, say, “State’s Rights” as a value neutral, ahistorical proposition. In fact, its always been tied to the aims of white supremacists:
They were making this same “you can’t tell me what to do,” state’s rights claims when the real Scarlet O’Hara was shaking her hoop skirts during the Civil War.
Negative ads can only take one so far. When one has no credible policies; one ultimately fails. Willard is an empty barrel who gets flustered at the slightest questioning of his shoddy platform. PBO will crush him without breaking a sweat.
There are two reasons why Newt was sunk. A-He has NO campaign apparatus, minuscule Republican backing, and has not built up his campaign past the shell that other candidates have done. Thus, he has no power to fight those ads with his campaign. B-Everything in those ads are damn near true if not 100% and he can’t properly refute those ads because those expose everything that has happened ever since he was elected a Representative. I know common conventional wisdom is that Mitt did Newt in, but the fact is that NEWT did Newt in. Basically, Newt was already a pontoon boat to Mitt Romney’s Bismarck, He won’t have such an easy time with Barack Obama’s HMS Dorsetshire. We’ve got the strength to handle him.
Great blog today; have enjoyed all the comments and loved the great humour supplied by our very own Jackie OBoomer. In fact, i’ve built up enough humour to get me through the daily Jackal (aka jackass) circus briefing.
Setting the standard for dishonest smears
By Steve Benen
There’s no great mystery as to why Newt Gingrich’s support collapsed in Iowa: Mitt Romney and his friends spent nearly $4 million in three weeks to tear Gingrich apart.
But before the disgraced former House Speaker began calling Romney a “liar,” he used a different word to describe his recent experiences: Gingrich said Sunday he felt “Romney-boated” by the attacks. The reference, obviously, referenced the loathsome Swift Boat ads run and financed by Bush/Cheney allies in 2004, casting doubts on John Kerry’s heroic military service.
It was a fascinating choice of words for Gingrich. As Eric Boehlert explained this morning, “Newt Gingrich, a leader of the modern-day conservative movement, presidential candidate, and proud Republican partisan adopting language that acknowledged the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are synonymous with unsubstantiated campaign attack ads. With his ‘Romney-boated’ comment, the former Republican Speaker of the House reinforced what progressives have been saying for years.”
Santorum blames own racial remarks on ‘someone trying to cause trouble’
By Andrew Jones| Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Rick Santorum felt Monday evening there’s too much being drawn from his recent controversial comments on African-Americans, so he blamed his words on someone else. “I don’t single out on any group of people, that’s one thing I don’t do,” the former Pennsylvania Senator explained to Hannity. “I don’t divide people by group and race and class. I believe that in no people in this country. And I condemn all forms of racism. There’s no one that’s been out here working, as you know, in the inner city, and with people of all different races.”
Just going by the quote in the snip where he says “there no one that’s been out here working… in the inner city, etc.” Well – there is a Presidential candidate who’s worked in the inner cities with people of all races. That person is President Obama.
A Preview of President Romney’s First Hundred Days?
by Steve M.
Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 11:48:55 AM EST
A lot of people look at the unpopularity of GOP governors in Florida, Maine, and elsewhere, and look at some of the successes their opponents have had in such states as Ohio and Wisconsin, and assume that Republicans know they overreached in 2011.
Apparently not:
A Gathering Storm Over ‘Right to Work’ in Indiana
Nearly a year after legislatures in Wisconsin and several other Republican-dominated states curbed the power of public sector unions, lawmakers are now turning their sights toward private sector unions, setting up what is sure to be another political storm.
The thunderclouds are gathering first here in Indiana. The leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature say that when the legislative session opens on Wednesday, their No. 1 priority will be to push through a business-friendly piece of legislation known as a right-to-work law….
Right-to-work laws prohibit union contracts at private sector workplaces from requiring employees to pay any dues or other fees to the union. In states without such laws, workers at unionized workplaces generally have to pay such dues or fees….
This is presented as “business-friendly” legislation, but at least as important is the fact that it’s Republican-friendly legislation. It’s pathetic that the very existence of even a nominally liberal major political party in America depends on the continued payment of union dues by a certain percentage of the population, but that’s the way it is, given the way money works in our politics — and the GOP and its allied fat cat know that the Democratic Party can literally be destroyed, or turned into an ineffectual minor party, if right-to-work spreads, in combination with other assaults on Democratic voters and funding.
I disagree. The “comfort zone” would be to pander to public opinion or media news cycle – which he refuses to do. Furthermore, running for President with the name Barack Hussein Obama was not remotely close to “going by the book.”
Btw- Reid should have accepted that pleothra of nominees snd judicial apologists, now, those are back to being blocked!
Poor communication.
Me thinks his lawyers and advisers are always telling him no!
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan Taliban said Tuesday that they have reached a preliminary deal with the Gulf state of Qatar to open a liaison office there, in what could be a step toward formal, substantive peace talks to end more than a decade of war.
Romney supporters tell Occupy protesters to ‘get a job!’
By David Edwards| Tuesday, January 3, 2012
While speaking to to about 600 people in Clive, Romney was interrupted by protesters reportedly associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. But before the demonstrators could finish their point, they were cut off by Romney supporters chanting, “Mitt is it! Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!”
“Citizens United is not part of the Constitution!” the protesters continued.
“Get a job!” a Romney supporter yelled back. “Go to work!”
“Hey, you guys, isn’t it great to live in a country where people can express their views?” Romney said, laughing.
I’m pretty happy not to be an insider anymore. There’s just no common ground. I don’t know if it’s distrust or that the politics is substantially more partisan than the public. But there’s no pressure to make a grand bargain on fiscal matters, on growth, on anything. The Republicans were like the East German judge at the Olympics: The president lands a triple flip, but they’ve already given him a 2.
What Romney fails to understand about jobs
\By Steve Benen
Mitt Romney addressed one of his biggest vulnerabilities — jobs policy — on Fox News this morning, and made a series of claims his campaign seems awfully excited about:
This is 2 million jobs that he lost as president. And by the way, when he was overseeing General Motors and Chrysler, how many factories did he close? How many dealerships? How many thousands upon thousands of Americans had to be let go in an effort to try and save those businesses? That’s what we did in our business.
“And I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs. By the way, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president’s created in the entire country. So if the president wants to talk about jobs, and I hope he does, we’ll be comparing my record with his record and he comes up very, very short.”
It’s worth unpacking this, because this argument is very likely to dictate who will be president of the United States in 2013.
The problem here is that none of what Romney is saying stands up to scrutiny.
America’s Secret Political Power
By: Olivia Ward| Tuesday 03 January 2011
As the coming federal election sucks all the oxygen out of America’s political room, it’s easy to ignore the power of the states, and the changes that are quietly taking place across the country independent of — and often hostile to — the federal government. But, for understanding grassroots America, ALEC, here in God’s golf country, is a good place to start.
By its own record, it has created an arsenal of about 800 “model” bills, templates or blueprints for future laws. They are tabled about 1,000 times a year across the country; about one in five are passed. Some 2,000 state legislators belong to the organization, the vast majority of them Republican, in spite of its avowed non-partisan membership. And with Republicans now controlling half of all state governments, they pack an added punch.
The group’s 300-strong corporate members include some of the most high-profile in America: among them AT&T, Wal-Mart, GlaxoSmithKline, UPS, Pfizer, Bayer, Verizon, and Koch Industries — headed by the Kansas-based billionaire brothers nicknamed “the Kochtopus” for their wide-ranging financial and ideological influence.
Stripped across the top of the Des Moines Register website is a banner declaring that the GOP candidates’ policies are “terrible.”
The banner is actually an advertisement paid for by the Obama campaign and not an editorial opinion or news article, but its prominent placement on one of the busiest news days of the year in Iowa has prompted some confusion.
They claim they are worried about OWS disrupting the vote but we know it’s really to make sure Romney is the winner. Yep I’m part of the conspiracy theorist. 😉
I can’t believe this caller just said that PBO does not have a leg to stand on and Dems should do the “operation chaos” at the Iowa caucus for Ron Paul. This guy is a supporter but he is weird. Randi is schooling him good.
I think what some people are afraid about when it comes to the indefinite detention bill is that if given to a truly radical president aka Newt or possible Romney (it really seems like he’s become very extreme on his positions to me), that they would abuse it. The sad fact is that these people are right which should give us an added incentive to get Obama re-elected but progressives don’t care at least the fake ones who only pretend to be progressive like Glen Greenwald and Cenk Uygar.
Those who are afraid of what a radical president would do should pay more attention to making sure that they vote for Democrats. The fact is, Congress passed that bill. And even if the President had vetoed it, and his veto had somehow survived a veto-proof majority, Congress could introduce that bill again under a Republican president, who wouldn’t have the integrity or respect for the Constitution that this President has. Instead of attacking President Obama for having to sign an inevitable bill that had other really important stuff inside it, people should be mad at Congress, who have shown that they are wiling to violate the rights of Americans and will gladly do it again under a Republican president, if people are stupid enough to vote one in. And when they get that Republican president, this will just be the tip of the iceberg for what they have in store for Americans. Be glad President Obama is able to keep the wolves at bay for now, but these people in Congress aren’t going to stop there.
Nineteen Million Jobs for US Workers
By: Robert Pollin, James Heintz, Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Jeannette Wicks-Lim , Political Economy Research Institute | Report
Tuesday 3 January 2011
Commercial banks are carrying a total of $1.6 trillion in cash reserves and the nonfinancial corporations are holding $2 trillion in liquid assets. After accounting for the safety needs of these businesses in a highly risky economic environment, we conclude that the banks are holding $1 trillion in excess cash and the corporations are carrying $400 billion in excessive liquid assets. This brings the total of excess cash held by the banks plus excess liquid assets held by the corporations to $1.4 trillion.
As a corollary to the banks piling up cash reserves, smaller non-corporate businesses have experienced a massive contraction in the supply of credit available to them since the onset of the recession. Total net borrowing for these businesses has been in the negative since 2009. Unemployment would fall below 5 percent by 2014: Approximately 19 million new jobs would be generated within the U.S. economy over three years if the $1.4 trillion in excess liquid asset hoards were channeled into productive investments and job creation. This would push the unemployment rate below 5 percent by the end of 2014. We document how this would create new opportunities for workers at all credential levels within the U.S. economy.
Randi Rhodes is on fire today. She is kicking butt all over the place.
She just did a nice riff on all of the accomplishments of the Obama administration. She says we all need to be able to tick down the list without a piece of paper. And she just made a very good point – The GOP has this book of comments from President Obama that they want to use to criticize his leadership on the economy. But Randi says that just gives us an opportunity to ask WELL WHAT DID YOU DO? And where would we be now if the GOP had not obstruct everything that President Obama tried to do. Also, President Obama can say here is what I DID accomplish with overwhelming obstruction from the Republican Party. He can ask the American people to give him a congress that will work with him for the good of the country. And of course, the reason President Obama’s foreign policy has been such a success is because the Republican Party could not filibuster his agenda.
I read somewhere the other day that comments on the White House website run greatly toward negative comments; they outnumber the positive comments by quite a bit. I’m thinking I will try to post there on a regular basis sending positive thoughts and encouraging words to President Obama.
OMG—-now Perry is crying—–today in his appearance before Nationwide Insurance—-which is kinda sad in itself. He started crying about regulations!!!!!—-saying that states shouldn’t have to put up with any pesky regulations. And then he broke down as he said to remember this statement, that he will “ma—-breakdown sob—-make Washington as inconsequential in your life” Not even a sensible sentence, but it made him cry. We have a candidate running for president of the United States who is actually crying about regulations!!! Crazy Time!
Obama White House.gov
The Obama Diary 
$10,000 says the jackals plan to pester Carney about potential recess appointments.
No bet. There’s nothing else to talk about except what is the WH prediction on IA?
Ann Romney says Willard loves his family and country. We need to know if PBO loves his family and country.
Good point. When will we find that out?
I’m willing to bet you guys a million dollars, Barack Obama loves his family and country too. Pass that on to Ann Romney. It seems like she repeat the same old thing.
Anniebella, you stated so beautifully here the fact that we have seen and watched a man who has presented himself with his family to be the most loving and respected husband and father for his family. As far as country, POB is the best example in my lifetime of showing his love for his country and the people who make up this country, The American People.
I totally concur with you, Ann Romney needs to watch and speak less about the President’s love for his family and country. These ugly and divisive comments about POB needs to stop.
We here have NO doubt that POB loves his family and his country. I am so sick of these very white ladies thinking that their old white husbands are the only ones capable of loving their wives, children and country. Enought of this crap. We have greater things to do, and we get them done, BUT we will not stand by silently allowing these old farts continiously bad mouthing untruths about Presiden Barack Obama. That maybe too much honesty for some to hear, but I never keep my true feelings on these matters go silently. I have been wounded too much and seen the results of these type of comments that being thrown around carelessly by Ms. Romney and other. These are destractions. But they are are slimy and ugly and hateful. HZ
HZ, beautiful and profound comment.
Did she honestly ask the question?
Moines Des ?
😆 You didn’t fool the spam detector!
That is just the freakiest spam trigger. What’s next? Coeur d’Alene?
;lol: well i’ll be.
While we’re waiting, another nice pic from this morning:
Give ’em hell, Jay.
Look at Dad looking at daughter. Same way my son looks at his. Love it.
Good Afternoon JB, your comment just melted my heart. I love it as well. There is nothing like a father’s love during the life of all children, but especially the girls. Oh, I would give anything to have had the look, words of encouragement, coming to my musical recital, debates, and homecoming queen crowing, and my graduations. But most of all, just being able to talk with him more and having those hugs from him.
I am sixty-five plus, and I still tear up when I think of my father and what we missed together. I am not blaming him, because he was very passive in his role as my father and allowed a very strong sister take over his role rather than stand up to her and allow him to be what his role should have been. And to this day, it hurts like hell (but I have forgiven) but one never forgets these feelings.
So, I love seeing the most powerful man of the free world making it a very high priority to give those hugs, talks, smiles, and touches as the beautiful father to his two beautiful daughters. And I am sure that Malia and Sasha will Never forget these moments. Thank Almighty for wonderful fathers like POB and your son, Jachquelineoboomer!!!!!HZ
I can understand what you’re feeling, HZ. My father died when I was 5 years old. What the president is giving to his daughters is precious beyond any measure.
I know exaclty what you mean. My father was 48 when I was born (I’m an only child) and wasn’t really interested. He loved me as much as he could; that just wasn’t very much. I love to see fathers so involved with their children. I love to see the Obamas’ interaction.
The picture is gorgeous.
FLOTUS looks just like Sasha with her head down like that.
OK, just unsubscribed from the ACLU email list. One more hit job on Obama over the NDAA, saying it provides for indefinite detention with no limits as to who falls under its purview. Done with them.
Me, too.
That’s a lie. They know it. They haven’t bothered to read the bill or the changes made by Obama or to take into account the jackals running the Republican party.
This is irresponsible. I hate to think what I’m thinking: do they think they will fare better financially if the real boogey men are actually in office in order to do damage?
Did the President storm into Congress with Team 6 behind him, and demand that Congress pass that NDAA bill? And then go to the Oval Office to issue a signing statement that he objected to the language and potential civil violations in the bill? He’s a tricky one, that one.
I’ve been tracking this issue to see how it would fare as the deadline approached…. and…it’s a wrap!~
After Three Decades, Tax Credit for Ethanol Expires
By ROBERT PEAR| Published: January 1, 2012
A federal tax credit for ethanol expired on Saturday, ending an era in which the federal government provided more than $20 billion in subsidies for use of the product. The tax break, created more than 30 years ago, had long seemed untouchable. But in the last year, during which Congress was preoccupied with deficits and debt, it became a symbol of corporate welfare. Fiscal conservatives joined liberal environmentalists to kill it, with help from a diverse coalition of outside groups. In the United States, most ethanol is produced from corn. The demise of the subsidy is all the more remarkable because it comes at the peak of the political season in Iowa, where corn is king.
~snip~
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/business/energy-environment/after-three-decades-federal-tax-credit-for-ethanol-expires.html?_r=2&wpisrc=nl_wonk
Corporations are people, and corn is king.
Not.
Now, maybe people can be king (or queen!).
P.S. Nothing against corn, which I love.
Presser set to start any minute now.
Paging Tally. Tally. Hello? Hello?
Is 36 years of age old for soccer?
That’s getting up there. Strikers usually retire the earliest, around 33 or 34. Midfielders like Beckham can last until mid to late 30’s. Goalkeepers can keep going on into their early 40s.
Sounds like the story of my life.
The jackals questions will probably be about the election and recess appointments.
The jackals’ questions will ultimately be about making themselves look important.
It has begun. Is on Cspan1.
Ha, nice ad across the top of the Des M0ines Register:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/
Thank you GOPolitico! http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/obama-camp-scores-prime-iowa-ad-space-109443.html
Brilliant!!!!
Did you see at GOPolitico that they “flagged” the ad and has asked for an explanation. WTH should they care? I cannot stand Politico
Didn’t GOPolitico give t-shirts or something to Romney? I think I saw something about this on a previous thread?
OMG Chips, I had to look twice to make sure that I was really seeing our ad. I also like the posts on the right and left hand side of the site. I hate to quote Perry but I say “BRING IT”. 🙂
How Christian Right-Wing Voters in Iowa Make Abortion a Central Issue in the Caucuses
By: Amanda Marcotte| January 2, 2012
After what is the most protracted, ridiculous run-up to a primary season I’ve seen in the couple of decades I’ve closely followed politics, we’re finally going to actually begin the Republican primaries, a mere three months after everyone is completely exhausted of them. The entire situation is particularly frustrating, because the majority of the focus, from the media and the candidates, has been on Iowa, even though the state has been known repeatedly to give far more weight—and even victories—to candidates that have literally no chance of winning the Republican nomination, because these candidates hit a bunch of buttons for Christian conservatives but have little appeal outside of those circles.
To really understand Iowa, you need to understand the primacy of abortion as an issue to the Christian right. It’s baffling how little attention this gets, considering the tendency of all the candidates—and especially those whose numbers in Iowa, like Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, eclipse what they can get in most other states—to make frequent statements about how they consider banning abortion to be a number one priority and the big issue of our time. But abortion is a nice, simple issue, and the candidates by and large seem to get what the media doesn’t: The more you pound the table and stereotype women who get abortions as heartless slatterns, the better you do in the polls.
~snip~
http://www.alternet.org/news/153635/how_christian_right-wing_voters_in_iowa_make_abortion_a_central_issue_in_the_caucuses
Ah, I think (hope?) I’ve rescued Des Moines – there were two Fire/Teabaggers in the blocked list, one with ‘moi’ in their name, another with ‘Des’. 😆 That might have been it – we’ll see!!
I’d love to see how long your blocked list is. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t.
LL, there are almost as many names on it as Michele Bachmann has foster children (a couple of hundred?). 😆
Speaking of—-I see she had 4 of her 5 children coming to her aid today—-altho she said she is relying on a miracle from you know who to save her and give her the edge—-we’ll see how that plan works out. And I still find it strange that if there were 23 foster children that none ever stepped forward to say how lifesaving and marvelous it was to live with Marcus and Michele.
Excellent point. Maybe they’ve purposely forgotten the Bachmanns.
Funny – Four of Mitt’s five were coming to his aid today, too. Must be a lucky Republican number.
Maybe a counteroffensive strategy is in order, by way of sending links to various media outlets and/or talking heads that show the POTUS with his family and crowd shots of events where THOUSANDS of people have lined up for hours to hear him speak.
Remember too that the “media” has consciously chosen not to air these events so we don’t want people to even begin to entertain the idea that this false meme is true. Imo, this would go a long way in shutting down the lie that President Obama doesn’t “relate” to average Americans and strip them of that particular talking point!~
Or as many names as Marcus has pairs of cute shoes.
Chips, have I told you lately how much I appreciate you and love how classy you run your beautiful site. You do not take any mess, my dear one, and we all appreciate you for keeping this a wonderful site.
I love you our Beloved Chipsticks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much!!!!! HZ.
Well let’s test it Des Moines
Fixed 😉
Woooooooooooooot!!!!
Of course, now I’ve unblocked Des and Moi 😕
We’ll “take care of” them. 🙂
Oh, Chipsticks, that is so funny!
Forget Iowa: GOP Always Nominates ‘Next in Line’
By Rick Perlstein| January 03, 2012 08:00 AM
It’s a curious thing. I study Republicans for a living—I’ve done so for almost 15 years. I write books about their history; I write articles about their present. But these days, you probably couldn’t find a political junky in America less interested to the supposedly hotly contested race for the Republican nomination. I called it for Willard “Mitt” Romney well over three years ago—the day he finished second to John McCain in 2008. That made him “next in line;” and our modern Republican Party pretty much always nominates the next in line, or at the very least The Logical Choice Of The Party Establishment. In 1968, it was Nixon, the former vice president. In ’76 it was the accidental president, Gerald Ford. The guy who came in second in ’76, Ronald Reagan, was nominated in 1980; Vice President Bush, the man who finished second in ’80, in ’88. Old Man Dole in ’96. Son of Bush in 2000. Mighty McCain in 2008.
Read more: http://crooksandliars.com/rick-perlstein/forget-iowa
The tea party and the genuflecting of all Republicans to them, may have changed this CW.
The problem with the ‘Next in Line’ theory is who from the 2012 crop is going to become the ‘Next in Line’ in 2016? Not one of them.
Cspan!
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-presidential-primary/202069-immigrant-advocates-hammer-romney-on-dream-act
Reality Check: Breaking Down Obama’s NDAA Signing Statement
By sarah Jones| January 2, 2012
The President issued a signing statement when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. Conservatives are freaking out over the alleged hypocrisy of Obama’s usage of a signing statement and the less hysterical are still confused as to what it really means, if indeed, it means anything. So, let’s break it down. The NDAA signing statement does not change the law; but it does direct the executive agencies, including the Department of Justice, as to how this administration will interpret the law. To wit, according to this administration, it will not apply to US citizens.
The more pertinent question is not will this apply to US citizens as it will not under the Obama administration, but why the Senate Armed Services Committee is ignoring the very effective defense and security tactics of the Obama administration, and still pushing for a McCain approach. There was way too much of the “give up your freedoms for security” flavor to this law in its original form; and we should be asking why, when the Obama administration’s approach has been more than effective.
~snip~
http://www.politicususa.com/en/reality-obama-ndaa-signing-statement
I posted this earlier and it deserves to be posted again. In light of the dishonest ACLU’s disregard for the truth (TPV has been on top of this as well), the truth about the NDAA needs to be spread.
I’m sure many of you received this email from Speaker-for-Life Pelosi, on behalf of the DCCC:
Jacqueline —
Because of generous and committed supporters like you, we made history.
For the first time ever, we are entering the election year with 500,000 grassroots contributors standing behind us.
It’s clear that Democrats are more united and determined than ever before in our fight to win the House Majority, re-elect President Obama, and respond to House Republicans’ extreme and reckless agenda.
Your generous contributions helped us shatter our year-end $1 million Republican Accountability Fund goal. We will put your dollars to work immediately in our effort to hold Republicans accountable with targeted advertising, rapid response research, and grassroots organizing.
Thank you for your generous, record-breaking support. Onward to more Democratic victories in 2012!
Nancy Pelosi
I just saw that on twitter:
”Howard Fineman points out Mitt compares enemies to Lucy Ricardo, Marie Antoinette, Kim Kardashian – ie, women.”
I didn’t notice that….how true………..ok that’s weird.
It’s not weird. He has no respect for women. That’s apparent.
No misogyny there. Nothing to see. Move along.
It’s actually not misogyny, it’s racism. He’s trying to emasculate the President by calling him a girl. Juvenile and ultimately ineffective because the President will not stoop to this kind of high school tactics.
Following up on more RON PAUL MYTHS from the last thread!
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/02/395363/gop-economic-agenda-for-the-one-percent/ What’s that? HE’S THE SAME AS EVERY OTHER REPUBLICAN RUNNING? You don’t say!
Playing it safe still-
Today was the day that legal experts and many aides in both parties thought President Obama would provide a recess appointment to Richard Cordray, his nominee to administer the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The rationale is quite technical, but here’s the bottom line: one reading of the Constitution and of executive branch administrative law suggest that today is Obama’s last day to recess appoint any of his languishing nominees, at least until the next time the Senate leaves town several weeks from now.
But a senior administration official who would not be quoted told reporters at a White House background briefing Tuesday that Obama will not take advantage of that opening.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/obama-bypasses-key-window-to-recess-appoint-director-of-consumer-watchdog.php?m=1
A big mistake! Oh well!
The “mistake” is this stuff getting into the mainstream of twitter and blogs. I knew this morning when I was reading these reports that this was just hyped up leftist reporting. I don’t believe any of this stuff until I hear it directly from the WH and I’m sure they have their reasons if they have decided not to do this. Let the emoprog complaining begin. Sigh!!!
Exactly! They get you all amped up and when the administration says No, they freakout.
It is like they set him up!
Bingo! We’ve seen this movie before.
So what’s the “big mistake, oh well”??
My guess? The WH would rather, in an election year, highlight Senate GOP obstructionism, and Obama’s pragmatism of wanting to work with the Senate. Recess appointments would be a tactical win, but possibly at the expense of a grander strategy.
I agree but something is going to have to be done about the Consumer Protection Agency head because they cannot implement some of the policy without the administrator in place. We on the left (especially the so-called OWS) should be furious about this.
Raj Date is currently leading the Bureau’s day-to-day operations in his capacity as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On July 18, 2011, President Obama nominated Richard Cordray, the head of the Bureau’s Enforcement Division, to be the first Director of the CFPB. This nomination is currently pending before the Senate.
So CFPB and NLRB are toothless and nullified because Pres. Obama wants to highlight obstruction when he had the tools to break this obstruction and didn’t? Sorry, but that’s BS.
It makes the President complaining about GOP obstruction disingenuous and he’s playing us for fools with this kind of stuff.
Wow! saintroscoe, did you not read this: “Raj Date is currently leading the Bureau’s day-to-day operations in his capacity as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.” And in fact much of the groundwork HAS been laid by the the CFPB which is why credit card companies have to explain in excruciating detail the lending terms and how long it will take to pay off a bill.
“It makes the President complaining about GOP obstruction disingenuous and he’s playing us for fools with this kind of stuff.”
Really? So, in other words the GOP hasn’t been, and isn’t, obstructing Richard Cordray’s nomination…is that what you’re saying? And the President could make it happen if he wanted to?
Unbelievable…coming from you…is all I can say.
While Raj Date is running “day to day” operations, I’ve read that without an actual head of the Agency, certain important reforms and initiatives cannot be implemented. So, it appears Date is like a manager, but he’s not the leader with the power to implement things.
I agree with you, creole. To say that one act from President Obama, (not yet verified and for reasons which may not be entirely obvious to the casual observer), would nullify the GOP obstruction is ludicrous. GOP have been obstructing since Day 1. The President’s administration has been operating at well-reduced capacity, for no really good reason, other than obstruction. And the refusal of Congress to recess is the complete fault of Congress – including the Dems who have gone along with it. When the President brings up this latest act of obstruction, we should all be right behind him amplifying his message, and pointing out to OWS and naysayers alike, that the full effect of protecting the middle class of America (including those below the poverty line who Romney has now designated as middle class) has been dulled by the GOP and their wish to protect the rich instead of the people who elected them. That is the truth.
I didn’t say it would nullify the GOP obstruction. I said it would make complaints about specific obstruction disingenuous. Of course he can’t recess appoint the 110 or so nominees currently blocked, but he can’t preach on about how important Cordray is and how important he is to be confirmed and then chooses not to recess appoint him because he wants to use his blocked confirmation as a political tool rather than getting him in place to protect the consumer like the reform spelled out.
President Obama has given the Senate more than enough time with his nominees and they choose not to act. Why not bring “we can’t wait” to the confirmation process?
A crock. But then he’ll be out slamming GOP for blocking him – it will be disingenuous.
SR – in this, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yeah because choosing not to make a recess appointment is just too darned hard for little old me to understand. It’s rocket surgery!
There has to be a recess before you can make an appointment.
And there has to be a recess before 2012 Congress opens new year, even if it’s literally a second.
It might be a mistake but it might also be a mistake to start a fight before the State of the Union AND the payroll tax cut fight. Yes, Repubs obstruct no matter what but we must take away any legitimate sounding reason for their obstruction.
Pres.Obama may also be planning to continue to use the blockage of Cordray’s nomination as a compliment to his income inequality/middle class/ obstructionist Congress general election strategy.
I really really hate it though when the media and blogs hype up a situation with absolutely no stoking from the White House and then call him all kinds of names when he chooses to engage in a fight the media started.
For the first time in a year there is a recess that the GOP cannot block. The President has dozens of appointees waiting confirmation that are being obstructed by the GOP. Instead of using the recess to appoint very key ones and then using the GOP outrage to educate the masses on the GOP obstruction and why he felt it absolutely necessary to recess appoint these individuals he chooses not to – and guess what as a result of not making the recess appointments the positions are still not filled and the obstruction will not be covered so nobody is learning about the GOP obstruction – it’s a win-win for Republican obstruction – they get to do it successfully and nobody will ever know about it.
No one knows what the President has in mind regarding the strategy that he will use to get Richard Cordray appointed. What has been tossed around are people’s opinions about what could, or should, be done. Fair enough…but my issue is framing GOP obstruction as “complaining” when it is a substantiated FACT is disingenuous. That said, President Obama has stated that he hasn’t given up on Cordray’s nomination. I choose to take him at his word and will wait and see what happens–without insinuating that he’s playing games or taking us for fools.~
TPM…FOLKS NEED TO GET ON THIS….
Mitt Romney is now repeatedly saying that he created a net 100,000 jobs in his tenure at Bain Capital. But there seems to be no evidence to substantiate this claim. In fact, in previous campaigns the Romney campaign has been pressed on this number and to the best of my knowledge never been able to offer any evidence.
Even if it is true…he was there 25 years. Not a record worth crowing about.
I think Flip Romney is digging a hole for himself with his lies and outrageous claims. One that he may be unable to dig himself out of during the election.
I read on an earlier blog that Mitt got asked the question When was the last time you actually created a job to no answer. Maybe that and the release his taxes should be a push from the Dems.
Ok, I think OWS has officially jumped the shark. Their mic check got checked by… MITT ROMNEY SUPPORTERS! When you get drowned out by Mittens’ crew, you’ve really lost the plot.
Story here: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/watch-the-saddest-ows-mic-check-in-history-as-mitt-romney-supporters-fight-back/
They jumped the shark when they tried to mic check President Obama and got drowned out. OWS makes me mad because they could have made an important difference. They opted to fight to sleep in parks, focus on challenging police (some of whom behaved badly), and ignoring the things that would actually help their cause. They didn’t lift a finger to fight for AJA, or fight for Cordray’s confirmation, or even to point out the uselessness of GOP policies. Instead, they claimed that the President was their enemy, and many of them support Ron Paul, who actually doesn’t support their right to sleep in Zucotti Park, because it violates property rights – just like the Civil Rights Act, according to Ron Paul. Very disappointing.
THIS
The World According to Ron Paul
BY MICHAEL A. COHEN | DECEMBER 23, 2011
Republicans are freaked out about what a libertarian isolationist in the White House would do to American power — but not all Democrats are.
The problem, however, is that there is far more to Paul’s view than just his opposition to U.S. military adventurism. Paul also believes that the United States should depart from all international organizations and global alliances. This includes not just NATO, but also the United Nations and the World Health Organization (he introduced legislation to this effect as recently as this March). He stridently opposes NAFTA, all free trade agreements, and even U.S. membership in the WTO on the grounds that free trade should be free of government interference, global rule-making, or apparently dispute mechanisms. He is opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants and believes that securing America’s borders should be the “top national security priority.”
Many of those supporting Paul or saying positive words about his candidacy may not fully comprehend that under a Paul administration it is quite possible that the United States would no longer be a member in good standing at the United Nations, turn to the World Trade Organization to resolve trade disputes, patrol sea lanes that are transit points for U.S. commerce, work with international organizations to fight global diseases or support economic development, and consult with allies in multilateral forums to deal with global challenges. In short, it’s not clear that Americans are as prepared as Paul is for the United States to no longer be a global power.
~snip~
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/23/the_world_according_to_ron_paul?page=0,2
Maybe someone should send this article to Kelly Clarkson. This does not even include the domestic policies Ron Paul does not support.
Maybe someone should send this to Romney, Santorum, Gingrich – all of whom say they’d vote for Ron Paul before voting for President Obama. Their judgement is even more questionable that previously thought.
Damn Big Govt intervention!
If only Paul were President, arson would be left to the states as the Founding Fathers intended.
I cannot tell you how glad I am they caught this guy before someone was critically injured or killed. Fifty-three fires he started, straining the fire department and putting the city on edge. People were sleeping in shifts, staying up to watch carports for suspicious activity because of this guy.
Big grin. The plan to fracture the House GOP begins. From Politico:
Follow up..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/when-will-media-demand-that-mitt-romney-back-up-his-claims-about-jobs/2012/01/03/gIQALsJQYP_blog.html
Top Tea Party Republican admits it: We’ve been employing hostage strategy
By Greg Sargent
GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa is one of the leading spokespeople for the Tea Party wing of the House GOP. With the national press continually asking King whether he’ll be making an endorsement in the Iowa caucuses, he has been built up into something of an important GOP figure.
So it’s good to see that King is candidly admitting that the House Tea Party wing has been employing the threat of a government shutdown as nothing more than a deliberate hostage strategy designed to wring maximum concessions from Democrats.
Sorry..here’s the link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/top-tea-party-republican-admits-it-weve-been-employing-hostage-strategy/2012/01/03/gIQA1fXKYP_blog.html
D Wasserman Schultz
@DWStweets
Tune into MSNBC’s @mitchellreports at 1:30pm ET for my interview with Andrea about tonight’s #iacaucus.
I would, Debbie, but I cannot stand Andrea. Used to like her, but now I can’t even stand seeing her lips moving. I’ll catch a transcript.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Yeah, that’ll fly!
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/01/03/396687/john-thune-mitt-romney-millionaire/
Sen. Thune Says There Is ‘No’ Merit To Idea That Multimillionaire Romney Is Of The 1 Percent
And pigs fly.
With lipstick!
Is it time for a renewable energy Manhattan Project yet? From Kevin Drum:
Story here: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/goldman-sachs-bearish-oil
Pollgasm!
Is Chris Matthews getting half a clue?
http://crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/chris-matthews-romney-win-iowa-will-be
More pollgasm!
If he’s “The One” these #’s will get wider, not smaller 🙂
OH NOES…The POTUS should be very afraid of Mitt and his army of supporters— who are packed into the local diner! LOL! LOL! LOL!…I’m having a hard time catching my breath. Where’s my inhaler?
Be wary of reports of “packed rooms” in Iowa
Posted on Tuesday, January 3, 2012, 7:15 am by Paddy
Those following the Iowa caucuses from home, hearing a steady stream of reports such as this about “packed rooms” that are “standing room only” with people still waiting outside, may be getting the impression that there’s a groundswell of enthusiasm for this year’s candidates that will drive turnout for the caucuses to stratospheric levels. But don’t be fooled. The truth is that the venues candidates are holding events at this year are much smaller than in 2008, back when some candidates were filling large ballrooms or even small arenas.
~snip~
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/01/03/be-wary-of-reports-of-packed-rooms-in-iowa/
THIS is what “standing room only” looks like!
Barack Obama’s Victory Speech: Yes We Can! (Part 1 of 2)
Whooaaa…what happened? Okay, let’s try again.
The President gets more people standing in the street waiting to see his car go by.
Bbbbut bbbut…Priebus said….
I see on twitter that Mika said that from everyone she’s talked to “Iowa’s still for Obama”. And just heard horrible Andrea Mitchell admit that Romney’s event today was very poorly attended—-more media than supporters.
Somebody at MSNBC must have them given permission to speak the truth for five minutes.
Mrs. Greenspan wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit her in her scrawny ass.
Oh no! Media has a sad face. 😦
I don’t know how to embed videos other than YouTube but here is DWS on Morning Joe this morning.
http://on.msnbc.com/zuwJQf via @msnbc
So this is rich: Out of all the regions in Iowa, the Republicans snubbed mostly hispanic West Liberty, Iowa.
Not surprising at all.
Right. Guess they’re for “Liberty,” unless the word “Hispanic” is next to it. We’ll remember that, Republicans!
Who is pushing this lie that the Obama Administration has eliminated the Bill of Rights? That is the most absurd thing I’ve read all day.
It’s strewn out from the signing of the NDAA bill.
They ignore the signing statement, because that would interfere with their bitching!
I’ve seen it on twitter since the Senate passed the bill.
GO WISCONSIN!
Recall effort against WI State Sen. Scott Fitzgerald gathers more than 12,000 signatures
Posted on Tuesday, January 3, 2012, 9:48 am by GottaLaff
FORT ATKINSON, Wis. — Organizers of the recall effort against Wisconsin’s Senate majority leader said Monday they’ve gathered more than 12,000 signatures in a bid to wrestle control of state politics from Gov. Scott Walker and Republican lawmakers. Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, would face a recall election if his opponents get 16,742 names. The other three other Republican senators up for recall are Pam Galloway, Terry Moulton, and Van Wanggaard.
~snip~
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/01/03/recall-effort-against-wi-state-sen-scott-fitzgerald-gathers-more-than-12000-signatures/
He’s in deep red district I believe – it’s just a nuisance for him is all.
Time will tell!~
D Wasserman Schultz
@DWStweets
Thanks @BruceBraley for leading off @TheDemocrats press conference highlighting lacking #GOP field & @MittRomney’s constant flip-flopping.
Irony is a funny thing sometimes…
http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/mitt-romney-and-america-the-beautiful-when-reach-exceeds-grasp/?hp
But it quickly becomes clear that Mr. Romney has a point to make in dissecting the song. He sees its vision as matching his, and that is where he makes a serious mistake.
“O beautiful, for patriot’s dream, that sees beyond the years,” he said, discussing the fourth verse and asserting that this dream referred to political and especially economic freedom. “The freedom to choose one’s course in life, to be an opportunity nation, a merit-based society” – that, he suggested, conflicts directly with the president’s vision of America as an entitlement society, where everyone is equal and thus more impoverished.
If, over time, this turns out to be his rebuttal to the president’s new campaign theme of reducing economic inequality, he will have to do better than “America the Beautiful,” because that is not at all what the song was originally about. The lyrics were written in 1894 by the Massachusetts poet Katharine Lee Bates, an ardent feminist and lesbian who was deeply disillusioned by the greed and excess of the Gilded Age.
Her original third verse was an expression of that anger:
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!
Lynn Sherr, the ABC News correspondent and the author of a book about the song, wrote that Bates “wanted to purify America’s great wealth, to channel what she had originally called ‘selfish gain’ into more noble causes.” Bates later rewrote the stanza into its current version, unrecited by Mr. Romney today:
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!
Just tweeted this to Mitt Romney – he’s such an idiot and his organization is so sloppy. It’s going to be fun knocking down all their lies.
Wait. What’s this? http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/03/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — U.S. stocks rallied Tuesday, kicking off the new year on a high note, as investors welcomed upbeat reports on economic activity around the world.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) jumped 177 points, or 1.4%, in afternoon trading. The S&P 500 (SPX) gained 18 points, or 1.4%. The Nasdaq (COMP) added 37 points, or 1.4%.
The gains came after reports on manufacturing growth in China and India came in better than expected over the weekend. On Tuesday, a report showed U.S. manufacturing activity expanded at a faster rate in December.
U.S. markets were closed Monday for the New Year holiday.
“There were no major negative headlines out of Europe, and we had some data suggesting the global economy is expanding,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG.
Investors scooped up shares of companies that would benefit from a strengthening global economy.
Gallup’s presidential job approval: 45 percent (up 2 percent) approval, 47 percent (down 1 percent) disapproval.
But but but CNN said…
Political Animal – What Romney fails to understand about jobs http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/what_romney_fails_to_understan034497.php via @stevebenen
New Hampshire State Rep. Goes Birther, Calls For Investigation Into Obama’s Eligibility For Presidency | New Hampshire state Rep. Laurence Rappaport (R) and a small group of lawmakers have called on the state’s attorney general to launch and investigation into whether President Obama is eligible to appear on the state’s presidential ballot in 2012. The issue, according to Rappaport, is whether Obama is a natural-born citizen of the U.S. New Hampshire’s Ballot Law Commission has already rejected another similar effort, and Rappaport told the Associated Press that Attorney General Michael Delaney hasn’t responded to the request.
That man needs a MUG! Can he read?
You know, i have a theory that many of these Republicans have seen ACTUAL internal polls showing Barack Obama carrying their states in a walk or as in the case of Georgia, getting it close enough to where he would win it. It is why were seeing these efforts again. Nothing but a last resort effort to defeat the President.
agreed. They’re all so squirrelly…
I think you’re right. If the President is so “terrible” and he’s “ruining the country” and the GOP are so in touch with Americans who they claim want to chase the President out of office – then why not let his name stay on the ballot and prove how right they are when they win in a landslide? Isn’t that what people who were telling the truth about the state of affairs would do? Teach the President a lesson by throwing him uniformly out of office? Their fear tells us otherwise.
I really hope this issue makes it into the campaign this year. Most people know it’s bullshit and will further highlight the extreme batty wing of the GOP.
Good morning TOD family
We had Christmas part 2 on Jan 1 and 2 so I have been away from the blog.
So grateful to have this site to turn to when I need to catch up and be inspired.
While we wait for the Iowa Caucus results to come in I had a suggestion
CALL TO ACTION
Let’s send Leslie Stahl some love. I know the show aired 2 days ago, but waht a treat it would be for her to get a bunch of positive email about her report on Cantor.
#!/60Minutes – twitter
60m@cbsnews.com
Fax: 212-975-1893 use this site to FAX for free – http://www.gotfreefax.com/
Why Young Liberals, Like Me, Will Vote Ron Paul
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/turnstyle/why-young-liberals-like-m_b_1181427.html
So I read this from start to finish and concluded that just as there are Fox-polluted seniors who are beyond persuasion, there are a certain amount of millennials who also need to be written off. They simply need to be outnumbered in the 300 days until election day.
Why is it that the uninformed feel so duty-bound to vote armed only with their willful ignorance?
I realize that it’s easy for a person born well after the Civil Rights Movement to take those blood-won civil rights for granted, so they shrug off the reservations older people have about his hostility toward the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s disappointing but understandable if you’ve never lived through that era and no one has informed you in real terms what it was like.
What is not understandable is that the writer makes no mention about Paul’s dubious associations with white supremacist founder of Stormfront or anti-government militias. No mention of Paul wanting to withdraw from all international bodies ranging from the World Trade organization to the United Nations. No mention that he believes that the Founders never intended a separation of church and state. No mention of his conviction that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional.
There is a seriously self-absorbed, tantrum-driven, immature, willfully uninformed strain of politics happening among some millennials that mirrors the righteous ignorance of the tea partiers.
I don’t think 10 months is enough time to teach anyone who is watching the havoc wrought by austerity-crazed, anti-union, anti-women, anti-voting Republicans and wants to put that on steroids by electing Ron Paul.
It is a sad day in America when a person can justify a vote for Ron Paul. SOS Clinton, once said she did not want to see us go backward, well, we are head in that direction as warp speed.
This is a piece of blah, blah, blah.
Ron Paul will not be the Republican nominee, so if this young person and others like him/her have to vote for Ron Paul they will be voting third party IF Paul can actually mount a 50 state campaign as a third party candidate. There seem to be a lot of people dumping themselves into third party buckets that will probably end up cancelling each other out. So, let the Paulites waste their vote and learn the hard way to use their heads when then make a voting decision.
The Banality of Racism
Critiquing the libertarian view of racism, Jon Chait says:
The most fevered opponents of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s — and, for that matter, the most fervent defenders of slavery a century before — also usually made their case in in process terms rather than racist ones. They stood for the rights of the individual, or the rights of the states, against the federal Goliath.
I think this is a really important point, as we tend to think of racism as working, primarily, through volume and violence. James Byrd is the only undisputed victim of racism in recent memory. But the poll tax, the literacy tests, the grandfather clauses were all ostensibly color-blind and were explicitly designed for their authors to hide behind that fact. It’s comforting to think of, say, “State’s Rights” as a value neutral, ahistorical proposition. In fact, its always been tied to the aims of white supremacists:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/the-banality-of-racism/250779/
They were making this same “you can’t tell me what to do,” state’s rights claims when the real Scarlet O’Hara was shaking her hoop skirts during the Civil War.
I hope the Obama Campaign is ready for Mitt, because he is killing Newt out in Iowa with negative ads.
Willard Mitt the lying liar with no core Romney is not fit to wipe the bottom of PO’s shoes. President Obama will crush him.
Negative ads can only take one so far. When one has no credible policies; one ultimately fails. Willard is an empty barrel who gets flustered at the slightest questioning of his shoddy platform. PBO will crush him without breaking a sweat.
There are two reasons why Newt was sunk. A-He has NO campaign apparatus, minuscule Republican backing, and has not built up his campaign past the shell that other candidates have done. Thus, he has no power to fight those ads with his campaign. B-Everything in those ads are damn near true if not 100% and he can’t properly refute those ads because those expose everything that has happened ever since he was elected a Representative. I know common conventional wisdom is that Mitt did Newt in, but the fact is that NEWT did Newt in. Basically, Newt was already a pontoon boat to Mitt Romney’s Bismarck, He won’t have such an easy time with Barack Obama’s HMS Dorsetshire. We’ve got the strength to handle him.
Great blog today; have enjoyed all the comments and loved the great humour supplied by our very own Jackie OBoomer. In fact, i’ve built up enough humour to get me through the daily Jackal (aka jackass) circus briefing.
You are so cute, canadabarb! Skip the circus; don’t watch the jackals!
but,but,but, Jackie, where will I get my news, huh, huh, eh?
January 03, 2012 12:35 PM
Setting the standard for dishonest smears
By Steve Benen
There’s no great mystery as to why Newt Gingrich’s support collapsed in Iowa: Mitt Romney and his friends spent nearly $4 million in three weeks to tear Gingrich apart.
But before the disgraced former House Speaker began calling Romney a “liar,” he used a different word to describe his recent experiences: Gingrich said Sunday he felt “Romney-boated” by the attacks. The reference, obviously, referenced the loathsome Swift Boat ads run and financed by Bush/Cheney allies in 2004, casting doubts on John Kerry’s heroic military service.
It was a fascinating choice of words for Gingrich. As Eric Boehlert explained this morning, “Newt Gingrich, a leader of the modern-day conservative movement, presidential candidate, and proud Republican partisan adopting language that acknowledged the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are synonymous with unsubstantiated campaign attack ads. With his ‘Romney-boated’ comment, the former Republican Speaker of the House reinforced what progressives have been saying for years.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/setting_the_standard_for_disho034491.php
Santorum blames own racial remarks on ‘someone trying to cause trouble’
By Andrew Jones| Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Rick Santorum felt Monday evening there’s too much being drawn from his recent controversial comments on African-Americans, so he blamed his words on someone else. “I don’t single out on any group of people, that’s one thing I don’t do,” the former Pennsylvania Senator explained to Hannity. “I don’t divide people by group and race and class. I believe that in no people in this country. And I condemn all forms of racism. There’s no one that’s been out here working, as you know, in the inner city, and with people of all different races.”
~snip~
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/03/santorum-blames-own-racial-remarks-on-someone-trying-to-cause-trouble/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
Believe me – I listened to the video twice to make sure – he said “blacks.” As Rev. Al would say, “We gotcha,” crybaby Santorum.
Just going by the quote in the snip where he says “there no one that’s been out here working… in the inner city, etc.” Well – there is a Presidential candidate who’s worked in the inner cities with people of all races. That person is President Obama.
Community organizing is not actually working. Don’t you know that by now?
/snark
A Preview of President Romney’s First Hundred Days?
by Steve M.
Tue Jan 3rd, 2012 at 11:48:55 AM EST
A lot of people look at the unpopularity of GOP governors in Florida, Maine, and elsewhere, and look at some of the successes their opponents have had in such states as Ohio and Wisconsin, and assume that Republicans know they overreached in 2011.
Apparently not:
A Gathering Storm Over ‘Right to Work’ in Indiana
Nearly a year after legislatures in Wisconsin and several other Republican-dominated states curbed the power of public sector unions, lawmakers are now turning their sights toward private sector unions, setting up what is sure to be another political storm.
The thunderclouds are gathering first here in Indiana. The leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature say that when the legislative session opens on Wednesday, their No. 1 priority will be to push through a business-friendly piece of legislation known as a right-to-work law….
Right-to-work laws prohibit union contracts at private sector workplaces from requiring employees to pay any dues or other fees to the union. In states without such laws, workers at unionized workplaces generally have to pay such dues or fees….
This is presented as “business-friendly” legislation, but at least as important is the fact that it’s Republican-friendly legislation. It’s pathetic that the very existence of even a nominally liberal major political party in America depends on the continued payment of union dues by a certain percentage of the population, but that’s the way it is, given the way money works in our politics — and the GOP and its allied fat cat know that the Democratic Party can literally be destroyed, or turned into an ineffectual minor party, if right-to-work spreads, in combination with other assaults on Democratic voters and funding.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/index.php
ANYONE ELSE BELIEVE THAT PBO WILL USE HIS VISIT TO OHIO TOMORROW TO NOMINATE CORDRAY?!!!!
*APPOINT, NOT NOMINATE
No! He always goes by the book, never goes outside of his comfort zone!
I disagree. The “comfort zone” would be to pander to public opinion or media news cycle – which he refuses to do. Furthermore, running for President with the name Barack Hussein Obama was not remotely close to “going by the book.”
I hope this is snark.
Doubt it.
Btw- Reid should have accepted that pleothra of nominees snd judicial apologists, now, those are back to being blocked!
Poor communication.
Me thinks his lawyers and advisers are always telling him no!
Good News!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45859143/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/#.TwNcPjXlPeg
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan Taliban said Tuesday that they have reached a preliminary deal with the Gulf state of Qatar to open a liaison office there, in what could be a step toward formal, substantive peace talks to end more than a decade of war.
Romney supporters tell Occupy protesters to ‘get a job!’
By David Edwards| Tuesday, January 3, 2012
While speaking to to about 600 people in Clive, Romney was interrupted by protesters reportedly associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. But before the demonstrators could finish their point, they were cut off by Romney supporters chanting, “Mitt is it! Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!”
“Citizens United is not part of the Constitution!” the protesters continued.
“Get a job!” a Romney supporter yelled back. “Go to work!”
“Hey, you guys, isn’t it great to live in a country where people can express their views?” Romney said, laughing.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/03/romney-supporters-tell-occupy-protesters-to-get-a-job/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
🙄
Romney blew it with that response.
OWS better start picking a side. I don’t remember any Democrat telling them to “get a job”
They won’t. They’re spoiled nihilists.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/epiphanies_from_austan_goolsbee
I’m pretty happy not to be an insider anymore. There’s just no common ground. I don’t know if it’s distrust or that the politics is substantially more partisan than the public. But there’s no pressure to make a grand bargain on fiscal matters, on growth, on anything. The Republicans were like the East German judge at the Olympics: The president lands a triple flip, but they’ve already given him a 2.
Spot on.
Go Goolsbee
If I get a dog i am naming him Austen Goolsbee. I love that name.
Hey guys check this out:
http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/01/03/michelle-obama-visits-icarly/
January 03, 2012 1:35 PM
What Romney fails to understand about jobs
\By Steve Benen
Mitt Romney addressed one of his biggest vulnerabilities — jobs policy — on Fox News this morning, and made a series of claims his campaign seems awfully excited about:
This is 2 million jobs that he lost as president. And by the way, when he was overseeing General Motors and Chrysler, how many factories did he close? How many dealerships? How many thousands upon thousands of Americans had to be let go in an effort to try and save those businesses? That’s what we did in our business.
“And I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs. By the way, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president’s created in the entire country. So if the president wants to talk about jobs, and I hope he does, we’ll be comparing my record with his record and he comes up very, very short.”
It’s worth unpacking this, because this argument is very likely to dictate who will be president of the United States in 2013.
The problem here is that none of what Romney is saying stands up to scrutiny.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/what_romney_fails_to_understan034497.php
America’s Secret Political Power
By: Olivia Ward| Tuesday 03 January 2011
As the coming federal election sucks all the oxygen out of America’s political room, it’s easy to ignore the power of the states, and the changes that are quietly taking place across the country independent of — and often hostile to — the federal government. But, for understanding grassroots America, ALEC, here in God’s golf country, is a good place to start.
By its own record, it has created an arsenal of about 800 “model” bills, templates or blueprints for future laws. They are tabled about 1,000 times a year across the country; about one in five are passed. Some 2,000 state legislators belong to the organization, the vast majority of them Republican, in spite of its avowed non-partisan membership. And with Republicans now controlling half of all state governments, they pack an added punch.
The group’s 300-strong corporate members include some of the most high-profile in America: among them AT&T, Wal-Mart, GlaxoSmithKline, UPS, Pfizer, Bayer, Verizon, and Koch Industries — headed by the Kansas-based billionaire brothers nicknamed “the Kochtopus” for their wide-ranging financial and ideological influence.
~snip~
http://www.truth-out.org/americas-secret-political-power/1325535857
Stripped across the top of the Des Moines Register website is a banner declaring that the GOP candidates’ policies are “terrible.”
The banner is actually an advertisement paid for by the Obama campaign and not an editorial opinion or news article, but its prominent placement on one of the busiest news days of the year in Iowa has prompted some confusion.
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/obama-camp-scores-prime-iowa-ad-space-109443.html
Check it out!
Why are they going to count the votes in a secret location. Is the fix in for Romney ?
They claim they are worried about OWS disrupting the vote but we know it’s really to make sure Romney is the winner. Yep I’m part of the conspiracy theorist. 😉
Randi’s kicking ass today…she just said this whole thing is a joke…”It’s almost like Mitt Romney PAID them to run” (against him)….ummmmmmmm
http://www.iheart.com/#/live/197/?autoplay=true
I am listening to Randi also, but I would be happy if she would call Romney a liar as well as Newt. Both are big liars and flipfloppers.
Darnit!!! I forgot she’s on. I’ll tune in now…
I can’t believe this caller just said that PBO does not have a leg to stand on and Dems should do the “operation chaos” at the Iowa caucus for Ron Paul. This guy is a supporter but he is weird. Randi is schooling him good.
I think what some people are afraid about when it comes to the indefinite detention bill is that if given to a truly radical president aka Newt or possible Romney (it really seems like he’s become very extreme on his positions to me), that they would abuse it. The sad fact is that these people are right which should give us an added incentive to get Obama re-elected but progressives don’t care at least the fake ones who only pretend to be progressive like Glen Greenwald and Cenk Uygar.
Those who are afraid of what a radical president would do should pay more attention to making sure that they vote for Democrats. The fact is, Congress passed that bill. And even if the President had vetoed it, and his veto had somehow survived a veto-proof majority, Congress could introduce that bill again under a Republican president, who wouldn’t have the integrity or respect for the Constitution that this President has. Instead of attacking President Obama for having to sign an inevitable bill that had other really important stuff inside it, people should be mad at Congress, who have shown that they are wiling to violate the rights of Americans and will gladly do it again under a Republican president, if people are stupid enough to vote one in. And when they get that Republican president, this will just be the tip of the iceberg for what they have in store for Americans. Be glad President Obama is able to keep the wolves at bay for now, but these people in Congress aren’t going to stop there.
Nineteen Million Jobs for US Workers
By: Robert Pollin, James Heintz, Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Jeannette Wicks-Lim , Political Economy Research Institute | Report
Tuesday 3 January 2011
Commercial banks are carrying a total of $1.6 trillion in cash reserves and the nonfinancial corporations are holding $2 trillion in liquid assets. After accounting for the safety needs of these businesses in a highly risky economic environment, we conclude that the banks are holding $1 trillion in excess cash and the corporations are carrying $400 billion in excessive liquid assets. This brings the total of excess cash held by the banks plus excess liquid assets held by the corporations to $1.4 trillion.
As a corollary to the banks piling up cash reserves, smaller non-corporate businesses have experienced a massive contraction in the supply of credit available to them since the onset of the recession. Total net borrowing for these businesses has been in the negative since 2009. Unemployment would fall below 5 percent by 2014: Approximately 19 million new jobs would be generated within the U.S. economy over three years if the $1.4 trillion in excess liquid asset hoards were channeled into productive investments and job creation. This would push the unemployment rate below 5 percent by the end of 2014. We document how this would create new opportunities for workers at all credential levels within the U.S. economy.
~snip~
http://www.truth-out.org/19-million-jobs-us-workers/1325618718
New post everyone:
http://theobamadiary.com/2012/01/03/promises-kept-2/
Martin bashir played that song, from the Sunday’s, -about bachmans chances-
“Heres where the story ends”.
Love that song!
Randi Rhodes is on fire today. She is kicking butt all over the place.
She just did a nice riff on all of the accomplishments of the Obama administration. She says we all need to be able to tick down the list without a piece of paper. And she just made a very good point – The GOP has this book of comments from President Obama that they want to use to criticize his leadership on the economy. But Randi says that just gives us an opportunity to ask WELL WHAT DID YOU DO? And where would we be now if the GOP had not obstruct everything that President Obama tried to do. Also, President Obama can say here is what I DID accomplish with overwhelming obstruction from the Republican Party. He can ask the American people to give him a congress that will work with him for the good of the country. And of course, the reason President Obama’s foreign policy has been such a success is because the Republican Party could not filibuster his agenda.
I read somewhere the other day that comments on the White House website run greatly toward negative comments; they outnumber the positive comments by quite a bit. I’m thinking I will try to post there on a regular basis sending positive thoughts and encouraging words to President Obama.
good idea Mary!
How do I link up there? I will join Mary Jones and leave a few positive words for the President and VP.
OMG—-now Perry is crying—–today in his appearance before Nationwide Insurance—-which is kinda sad in itself. He started crying about regulations!!!!!—-saying that states shouldn’t have to put up with any pesky regulations. And then he broke down as he said to remember this statement, that he will “ma—-breakdown sob—-make Washington as inconsequential in your life” Not even a sensible sentence, but it made him cry. We have a candidate running for president of the United States who is actually crying about regulations!!! Crazy Time!