A Year Ago Today: “The President and Vice President share a laugh before a campaign rally together in Portsmouth, N.H.” (Photo by Pete Souza)
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MooooOOOOoooorning early birds, back in a bit with R&S.
07
Sep
13
92 Responses to “Early Bird Chat”
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The People’s View
- Follow me at my new venture: Reclaim the Fight Spandan Chakrabarti
- Ignore the bait: Why it’s the right strategy for Democrats to focus SCOTUS fight on health care Spandan Chakrabarti
- BIG: Judge halts Trump administration attempt to shortcut the census Spandan Chakrabarti
- Trump doesn't want peaceful transition of power. Legally, it doesn’t matter. Spandan Chakrabarti
- Fauci goes off on Rand Paul Spandan Chakrabarti
Smartypants
- How RealClearPolitics Mainstreams Extremism
- The Question Anti-Choicers Are Being Forced to Answer
- Regardless of the Durham Indictment, We Still Don't Know What Was Up With the Trump-Alfa Bank Servers
- White Supremacy Has Become Mainstream Republican Thinking
- Always Be Suspicious When the Anti-Science Crowd Claims to Be Following the Science
Steve Benen
- 'We simply cannot afford to leave people behind,' says House member
- Fauci details what could be the future of Covid-19 therapeutics
- The 'absolutely frightening' way Republicans are attacking Republicans — and our democracy
- Joe: People who attacked Cuomo on nursing homes 'strangely mute' over anti-vaxx nurses
- Joe: GOP spent like 'drunken socialists' and ran up record debt. Now they refuse to pay for it.
Good Morning TOD!
Mooooooorning Proud!
Hey Proud, congrats on 1st.
Hello TODers
Moooooooooorning Africa!
Hiya Chips!! 🙂 🙂
Good morning all!!!!
Mooooooorning Layla!
Great morning to you Miss Chips!!!!
Hey Layla!!
Hey you!
Count me in! Good Morning!
Moooooorning Faypax – wow, lots of early birds!!!
I’m always here, but I’m cutting down on the coffee and the trauma leaves me speechless, or at least incoherent. 🙂
Morning TOD Family
Mooooorning Carly!
‘Morning Chips, ‘morning TOD & everyone.. Congrats Proud & africa on 1st place tie 🙂
Moooooooooooorning Hopefruit!
Good morning all my fellow TOD’ers.
Good morning everyone.
Thanks for the lovely trips to Sweden and Russia with PBO, Chips. Is there a photo of PBO’s return to the White House?
Here is one CEB: President Barack arrives on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday, Sept. 6, 2013 in Washington.
Thanks JER! Off to check it out.
Thanks.
Morning!! Congrats to proud and africa this morning:)
Good morning everyone and here is hoping ALL have a great day.
From the tireless warrior that is WiW….. 40 ways Obamacare is Working!
http://www.whatisworking.com/2013/09/40-ways-obamacare-is-working.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WhatIsWorking+%28what+IS+working%29
Brilliant link DF, will include it in R&S, thank yoooooooooooou!
Linda’s brilliant:) Great idea for R/S! Morning, Chips….
awesome!
I love that photo of POTUS and VPOTUS!
by the way, something trivial has always nagged me about that photo’s background so I better ask it: is the place the two placed their jackets what my mind thinks it is ???
What do you think it is…
I dare not say it – un-mentionable
Good Morning Linda and TOD,
If its what I think you think it is it’s too short to be that. If you notice its height is at the VP and Presidents head. They would have to be munchkins to use it. 😆
thanks for the reassurance (needed that) – been bugging me ever since I first saw that photo
you must have read my mind correctly about what I thought it is & I was saying to myself : they possibly couldn’t have done that.
probably this was part of the public address system
I come here to be among friends as we make our way through the Obama Administration, I enjoy the conversation and the thoughtful analysis that spring forth from those conversations. I like to think that I’m an adult that can stay focused on the task at hand and not get distracted by shiny objects. But the previous post was very trying for me; it was a post that sent me to my knees in prayer. I’m a humble man and I don’t ask for much, but can the powers that be refrain from posting pictures of Michelle Obama exercising, PLEASE?
You are just sooo cute!!!!
{{{{Don}}}}} All weak kneed and everything:) She IS fabulous!
She did look mighty good Don. So good that I’m gonna go myself up this morning and go to the track and run this morning cuz if FLOTUS can look that good at (almost) 50 so can I darn it!!!
he he, he! She is hawt, isn’t she? Built like a real woman; shapely and toned. Anorexic, skinny bitches need to recognize.
Her beauty, class, and intelligence, I imagine will make a lot of men lose their religion.
ROFLMAO!!! Bless your heart Don! 😀 😀 😀
Happy Saturday everyone! What a glorious day it is…our darling President is back home with his beautiful family.
Read it and weep, conservatives. The overall US teen pregnancy rate has fallen six percent and it’s all thanks to contraception knowledge and access. Meanwhile, in abstinence-only red states, the rate remains high as the Republican war on comprehensive sex education and birth control rages on.
Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/07/us-teen-pregnancy-rate-drops-due-to-contraception-access-remains-high-in-abstinence-only-red-states/#ixzz2eDBPc1yd
Ah, yes! If they bury their head’s in the sand and pretend that kids won’t have sex until THEY deem it appropriate ( marriage!) then it all will be ok….when you live in Facts Don’t Matter Land, that’s what you get! Sad that so many are so ignorant
I was surprised to read in that article that a school district in Oklahoma, Tulsa, is adopting California’s plan of comprehensive sex education. That is a giant leap forward for this state.
About this author: Scales was named director of the Desert Storm Special Study Group in 1991, and authored the book, Certain Victory, the Army’s official account of the first Persian Gulf War. The book was published in 1994, the first of seven he has written. He writes this scathing article about the “amateurish” Syria plan, and talks about Generals embarrassed by the administration. There is not one quote.
So we don’t get one quote and then all the generals he talks about are former retired generals …Okay ? Last I checked the administration has a plan and the pentagon produced the plan. People like this author hate Obama so much that they will lie and twist things in order to justify their hatred.
thought members of the armed forces are encouraged to disobey an illegal order or opt out due to conscience. let these “concerned personnel” show us who they are by outing themselves
They all said that the w/d from Iraq was a bad idea too, if I remember correctly….they know matters of war, not peace and stability. Why ask them?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/06/201376/retired-justice-sandra-day-oconnor.html#.Uisnj9KUROg
Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in Boise, laments ‘alarming degree of public ignorance’
“The more I read and the more I listen, the more apparent it is that our society suffers from an alarming degree of public ignorance,” O’Connor said.
That ignorance starts in the earliest years of a child’s schooling, she said, but often continues all the way through college and graduate school.
O’Connor argued that learning about citizenship is just as important for American children as learning multiplication or how to write their names.
“We have to ensure that our citizens are well informed and prepared to face tough challenges,” she said. “If there is a single child not learning about civics or not being exposed to what they must do as citizens, then all our lives are poorer for that.”
To combat what she sees as a dangerous lack of civics in schools, O’Connor founded icivics.org, a website for educators and students. The site uses games, lesson plans and activities to make learning about government and citizenship less boring.
THIS! I have seen the icivics site and passed that along to other teachers at my school. The loss of civics in the classroom has become not just a detriment, but a liability as far as I’m concerned.
I so agree with the justice. People get angry when I express these thoughts but it’s true. It isn’t even a matter of education, people don’t even pay attention to what is happening in their own communities, let alone the country or the world. I was too through when a recent poll revealed that a huge percentage of people had no idea who Joe Biden is. And to think, legislators are supposed to formulate foreign and domestic policy based on what “we the people” desire.
Maybe she shouldn’t have installed GWB as President, under whose regime that race to the bottom became a stampede of stupidity.
There ya go. For all her ‘lurning’, she inflicted dumbya and the neocon regime on the entire world.
Ain’t it the truth!
Great round up this morning. I’d like to recommend reading the NY oped MagicalEarth posted the link to: Bush’s Burden. This piece says exactly what has happened and is happening. We are going to have to bleed the poison of the Bush administration for years. They created a nation of cynics who don’t believe anything the government says, yet still influence what people think. Thoughtful, carefully thought out and written..
Sorry, but I don’t buy the notion that the current opposition to PBO’s intervention in Syria is because of Bush’s plunder in Iraq. As many others have noted, PBO has a solid 5-yr record of Foreign Policy experience backed by sound/superior judgment, including but not limited to, ending two major wars, and masterminding the capture/kill of a highly desired target Osama Bin Laden. He is the current President and he should be judged based on HIS record, not on what Bush did over 10 yrs ago.
The fact that the MSM is now so willing to “remind” us of Bush’s plunder (something they would have hated to do otherwise), suggests to me that they are trying to divert our attention away from the REAL reason behind this resistance. The MSM rarely puts the focus on something unless it ultimately helps the GOP’s agenda. And right now, claiming that people are opposed to intervention in Syria is because of what happened in Iraq is a convenient excuse from the fact that the GOP (& MSM) is invested in thwarting PBO’s effectiveness at all costs. It’s not that they don’t trust him, as has been suggested by many, it’s that they FEAR him. They are afraid that what he intends to do will only serve to reinforce his superior credentials on the world stage – something they have been trying to erase since he got re-elected.
Your view is my view, hf2. “Defeat POTUS by any means necessary,” appears to be the game plan. This is now a country whose dominant media voices seem to have lost all sanity and moral sense. They do not speak for me or any of us here at TOD.
THIS! It’s not that they don’t trust him, as has been suggested by many, it’s that they FEAR him. They are afraid that what he intends to do will only serve to reinforce his superior credentials on the world stage – something they have been trying to erase since he got re-elected.
Absolutely. Spot. On.
HF, thank you for this,,,
”
And right now, claiming that people are opposed to intervention in Syria is because of what happened in Iraq is a convenient excuse from the fact that the GOP (& MSM) is invested in thwarting PBO’s effectiveness at all costs. It’s not that they don’t trust him, as has been suggested by many, it’s that they FEAR him. They are afraid that what he intends to do will only serve to reinforce his superior credentials on the world stage – something they have been trying to erase since he got re-elected.”
We will not be hoodwinked!
TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!!!! Amen hopefruit2
It’s an excellent short article, Carolyn. I posted a link to it on FB and noted that it draws attention to two important and consequential historical errors: 1) the decision to invade Iraq (though it is not exactly an error because of the deliberate lying involved and 2) the manner in which the Allies carved up the former Ottoman Empire after WWII, drawing up new national borders around societies of people that had been historical enemies, such as they did with Iraq and Syria.
There is, of course, more involved in the Republican response to PBO, but this is a critical element.
so the aussies voted for their own rand paul ludditte, eh? peeps are idjits & maroons everywhere.
Hi AMK!!! Nice to see you. Hope all is well!
Hi Layla. Yeah, I am stuck in a hellhole in SA. Other than that, everything is juuust peachy
Good morning, amk. I was just reading that, too. Unbelievable.
Hey amk. How are you?
I am fine in south africa, africa. How you doing?
seems they did just that.
I never understood WHY Ms. Julia Gillard was undermined & thrown out. What was the reasons they gave
Because rudd is a divisive AH?
UGH
Did someone post this before and I missed it?
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/pacifists-and-liberals-when-do-we-actually-stand-up-for-those-we-allegedly-care-about/
But there is war, and there is mass murder; they are not the same thing, even if you’re a pacifist. The war is about the government and factions of Syrian people fighting for control of the country. It’s unfortunate that humans haven’t evolved beyond using war to gain freedom, but we haven’t. Someday, but not yet. But that a tyrant like Assad decides to cheat to keep control by mass murdering people is not the same as conducting a war. Perhaps 1000 years ago, it was. But now, we have rules. You can laugh at how silly the notion of rules in war can be, but they exist for a reason. And mass murdering civilians is a violation of the rules of war. How can a pacifist not see this mass slaughter of civilians and not want to do something to stop it? When our soldiers commit crimes against civilians in wartime, they are punished. Should Assad just be able to do this and thumb his nose at us?
Hitler killed millions before the outside world found out what was going on, in part because they refused to believe “intelligence” coming from millions of refugees who were telling them. But if we’d had the opportunity to stop the Holocaust with an air strike, would our pacifism demand that we shrug and do nothing because some people might die?
He wrote about some of the issues that I brought up yesterday…Morning MUST READ And why I called the situation in Syria a distinctly liberal cause.
we have always been upset at the fact that the United States didn’t do enough to stop things like this? I see the Rwandan genocide mentioned nearly every day in this debate, with pacifists and liberals rightfully lamenting the fact that we didn’t do enough to stop that genocide, as well. Now, we are confronted with a situation in which a tyrannical despot is beginning to use chemical weapons as a way to gain an advantage, and we have an opportunity to perhaps nip this in the bud before it becomes a chronic problem. Why would we not do this? How can we complain about not doing anything about Rwanda and Iraq, and be equally as vocal about doing nothing in Syria? At what point do we stop lamenting things we haven’t done and actually do something instead?
Liberalism is supposed to be about standing up for values we supposedly hold dear, including peace. Liberals, as a group, are supposed to stand for what the Founding Fathers stood for (on paper if not in real life). We value democracy and equal rights and justice for everyone, regardless of ethnicity or faith, and we supposedly believe in these things for all people, worldwide. But how does that square with the knee-jerk reaction to the mere mention of the use of military force to enforce these principles around the world? How can we simultaneously complain about our government not intervening in Iraq and Rwanda and then also complain when our government tries to save innocent Syrians from slaughter from their government, and call ourselves liberals or pacifists?
excellent piece DF
Thank you DF! So on point!
Flipping the script on Israel
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For nearly five years, the rhetoric from U.S. conservatives about the Middle East has been fairly consistent: President Obama has shown insufficient fealty to our Israeli allies, while Republicans remain steadfast in their unyielding support for Israel, no matter what.
When it comes to U.S. intervention in Syria, the script has apparently been flipped.
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http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/09/06/20358782-flipping-the-script-on-israel?lite
GM TODers.
It is quite simple……., at least to me.
The TBGOPers started in 2008. They failed to stop the juggernaut……the Obama presidency. They even gave Us Palin. Then they waged a Political Coup d’etat. 2 in Dce 2008 and one, on Jan 20, 2009. 20 TBGOPers were involved. The nation was in total mess and the GOP were determined to destroy pres Obama. They promised to make the POTUS a one term president. It failed. They went further into birtherism, racism coded, uncoded and decoded. They failed in Nov 2012. Now the goal is simple. Destroy the next 4 yrs, period.
And like Assad, with his back cornered. The TBGOPers are so angry, so obsessed, so focused that their ONLY Goal is: The Destruction of PBO. They will do it by any means necessary. Those who pretend not to see this: Media, Emoprogs, those easily fooled and Libertarians.
TOD gets it. The reason I visit TOD 6-9 times most days.
I am against Syrian intervention and I believe I can effectively make an argument for and against it. No one here trusts the President more than I. That being said, I always seem to have a rather cockeyed view of things. I am not convinced that President Obama is not pulling off the most brilliant flim-flam of all times. It’s either that or there is something pressing we aren’t being told…which is entirely possible.
Did you read what I just posted above from Milt Shook? These are my feelings and i’m wondering your thoughts on this?
Yes I did read it and it is much the same argument I would make…that is a moral argument. But on the flip-side, I question America’s moral authority to make demands of any country. We seem always to be in that old “do as I say, not as I do” mode. Clearly, my views are far too complex for me to outline here…I’m working on a post…but I can see both sides of this issue.
I’ve been suspecting, maybe wishing, for some time that the President may have something up his sleeve. Well stated, Faypax. But what’s with stopping coffee?????
Vicki, I’m beginning to ask that myself. Withdrawal is a “b”! 🙂
THIS! ‘most brilliant flim-flam of all times..’ never underestimate this President!!!
Layla, I will not be convinced the President did not foresee the opposition…I did. But knowing our own history, it’s hard to believe two veterans of war…Kerry and Hagel are convinced there is no alternative to a strike. These men were in a war where America tested chemicals on its own people and then disbursed them without regard for their health and safety. Think back to the President calling for Congress to rescind the Presidential power to wage conflict. What’s the first thing Congress did? For the sake of our world image, the argument to stop atrocities “must” be made. But suppose the argument is being made with the knowledge that Congress will tie his hands? If the use of chemical weapons escalates…who will be responsible for the lack of intervention?
Of course PBO foresaw the opposition to his decision to intervene – he has stated this on multiple occasions. He also stated that debating this will help us think through these complex issues.
may be the fact that Sec Hagel & Kerry saw the things you say makes them understand the victims’ side more clearly than some.
can we really argue that because US gov’t used these in the past, then its not right for this current POTUS to say that such use is wrong and must be stopped by any means necessary?
may be it is time to borrow something people say in social ills & family dynamics (e.g. domestic violence, alcoholism, absentee-parents): time to break the cycle of CW use & gov’t not intervening in mass slaughter & set a new standard
I believe there is every effort to set a new standard…to curb presidential power to wage conflict and to stop being the world’s police without other democratic countries putting some skin in the game.
The President canceled his trip to Calif…was that the trip in which he was speaking at the AFL-CIO Convention…I so wanted him to speak to the rank and file…I hope he is able to at least send a video message…although his presence there would have said so much…
Yep…..
wow…I wanted him the Rank and File to hear him….like I said I hope that he can send a video message…
Goooooood Morning everyone…ty for those pics of FLOTUS in the last thread…I love how the children love her….
Riiiiiiiiiise and Shine!
http://theobamadiary.com/2013/09/07/rise-and-shine-604/