Yet another TOD post that has been reblogged by Jueseppi B, despite requests that he make his own effort to support PBO rather than copying others simply to drive up his reblog’s traffic. He doesn’t take kindly to being challenged, as another woman found out: explicit. Genuine bloggers are welcome to use anything they ever see at TOD. Thanks
Hey, don’t forget to press this emergency button when stressed 😉
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Tuesday:
10:30: President Obama departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews
10:45: Departs Joint Base Andrews
1:05: Arrives in Des Moines, Iowa
2:05: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at Iowa State University
4:40: Departs Des Moines en route Fort Collins, Colorado
Later (will check time tomorrow): Delivers remarks at a campaign event at Colorado State University
The President will remain overnight in Colorado
Wednesday: The President will travel to Charlottesville, Virginia for campaign events. He will return to the White House in the evening.
Thursday: The President will attend meetings at the White House
Friday: President Obama will visit Fort Bliss, Texas … A White House official said the president will speak with troops and have a roundtable discussion with service-members and military families (Denver Post). Thanks Jovie.
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‘America’s dark night of the soul’ by Liberal Librarian
George Clooney and Geneva-based American lawyer and co-president of Democrats Abroad Charles C. Adams arrive for a dinner to raise funds for the re-election of President Barack Obama, in Geneva, Switzerland, August 27
Charles Pierce: …. Chris Matthews got all up in the slick, smug little grill of obvious anagram Reince Priebus this morning on Morning Joe’s Playhouse over the obvious racial air-raid sirens that have echoed through Republican politics only since about half-past 1964, and which have grown especially loud these past few weeks as Willard Romney made his little fun-fun about birth certificates last week, and his campaign released an ad falsely accusing the president of “gutting welfare reform” …
If you can tear yourself away from the attempts of the hosts to tut-tut-my-good-man the whole thing to death – and poor Tom Brokaw, who freaking covered the civil-rights movement and knows good and well which party latched on to the wrong side of those events and rode them to glory, looks as though he might have a stroke – listen carefully to what Matthews says. He links the birther joke to the welfare commercials, which any thinking analyst would do, since they came hard, one upon the other….
…. What we have in this campaign is a joining of old Republican money with the modern American financial universe, and its power applied to advance ideas straight out of the swamps of the Wallace campaign 50 years ago. It is an unholy mess, and it is precisely the unholy mess over which Reince Priebus wants to preside, and if Mika wants the tone to change, maybe she should start there.
I predict Matthews will be disciplined. I, for one, am willing to go his bail on this one.
Michael Tomasky: …. Tom Edsall said it without quite saying it this morning in the Times (link), that this Romney-Ryan campaign is becoming among the most racist we’ve ever seen. The two key lies so far are totally about race – that Obama is soft on welfare recipients, and that he’s “robbing” $716 billion from Medicare (77 percent of recipients are white) to “pay for Obamacare” (that is, to extend health care to black and brown people who don’t deserve it, haven’t earned it, etc.).
… We’re going to be hearing a lot of those lies this week, and a lot of quasi-racist dog-whistling about how Obama doesn’t feel the same way about America as “we” do. So no – still not sure what I should find non-loathsome about that.
Read Thomas Edsall’s ‘Making the Election About Race’ piece here
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Ed Kilgore: … It’s clear by now that the Romney campaign is going to shrug off the almost universal denunciation of his welfare ads (and to only a lesser extent, his Medicare ads that show a white senior frowning as the narrator says ObamaCare is “not for you”) as a pack of despicable, race-baiting lies ….
… If nothing else, his wizards probably figured out some time ago that the “welfare” crap offered a rare opportunity to hit notes equally effective with “the base” and the non-college educated white voters who make up a high percentage of this election’s “swing”. Add in the thick armor conservatives have built for themselves against any accusations of racism — now, almost by definition, they believe only liberals are racists, and only white people are targets of racism – and it was probably an easy call for Team Mitt, particularly since truthfulness is not a factor at all.
…. Romney’s not going to be shamed out of his unsavory tactics. But on the other hand, if his gambit fails, not only will his presidential ambitions perish once and for all, but just maybe the kind of politics he has come to exemplify – rich people encouraging the middle class to “kick down” at “those people” – will take a hit as well.
NYT: Mitt Romney appears to trim his social convictions to the party’s prevailing winds. There is no doubt, however, about where the party’s vice-presidential candidate stands. A long history of social extremism makes Paul Ryan an emblem of the Republican tack to the far right.
Mr. Romney’s choice of Mr. Ryan carried some risks, considering Mr. Ryan’s advocacy of overhauling Medicare, but it has sent the strongest signal of solidarity to those who have made the party unrecognizable to moderates. Strident conservatives had been uneasy with Mr. Romney, but it is the rest of the country that should be nervous about conservatives’ now-enthusiastic acceptance of the Republican ticket.
….. for years, he has been a reliable vote against workplace equity for women, opposing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act …. he has co-sponsored more than three dozen anti-abortion bills…. his budget would end all government financing for Planned Parenthood while slashing spending on prenatal care and infant nutrition….
Mr. Ryan’s record on gay rights is no less egregious. He supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and voted against the repeal of the military’s discriminatory don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy. In 2009, a decade after Matthew Shepard was murdered for being gay, Mr. Ryan voted against a bill named after Mr. Shepard that expands the federal hate crimes act to include brutality based on sexual orientation.
…. Mr. Ryan is one of the most anti-gun-control candidates on a presidential ticket in many years, holding a grade of “A” from the National Rifle Association and opposing a background check requirement for purchases at gun shows.
The Obama Diary 
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