rise and shine

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Washington Post: A majority of Americans believe that former President George W. Bush is more responsible than President Obama for the current economic problems in the country, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Fifty-four percent of respondents said that Bush was more to blame while 29 percent put the blame on Obama…. Independents continue to blame Bush far more than Obama for the economic troubles … 57/25 …. Heck, even one in five Republicans say Bush is more responsible than Obama for the state of the economy!

The economic blame game numbers are somewhat remarkable given that Obama is in the third year of his presidency …. We’ve written for quite some time that the longer Obama is in office (and the longer Bush is out of it), the more likely it is that blame for the economy would shift toward him. But, these numbers suggest — gasp! — we were wrong.

…. that the baseline in the economic blame game still favors Obama over Bush suggests that Republicans’ attempt to use the economy to drag the incumbent down won’t be as simple as some in the party might think.

More here

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CBS

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Buzzfeed: A document found online by BuzzFeed appears to be John McCain’s entire, 200-page opposition research file — or “book” — on Mitt Romney from 2008, the year they were bitter rivals. Segments of the book have been posted on RedState.com, but this the first time the document has been shared for public consumption in its entirety.

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Andrew Sullivan: Fox News is now waging war on the essay. I’m not surprised. Megyn Kelly has declared that I am “not a real journalist.” …. So this is an open challenge to Fox News. If you want to trash my work, have me on to defend it. Any time, Megyn. Any time. What are you afraid of?

Apart from the truth, that is.

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Nick Anderson

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LA Times: Republican voters may not have settled yet on a challenger to take on President Obama, but his reelection campaign is laying the groundwork for what could be a major television advertising buy to buttress his standing in the coming months.

Campaign officials have requested ad rates from television stations in at least 14 states, according to a strategist with a prominent political media agency, the first step they would take before deciding to purchase air time. That does not mean a buy will definitely occur this quarter, but Republicans are bracing for what they believe will be a multimillion-dollar campaign on the heels of the South Carolina GOP primary.

More here

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McClatchy

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Morning everyone 😉

we the people! (well, a couple of dozen of us)

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann speaks to millions of Tea Party Patriots at the “Continuing Revolution” rally on Capitol Hill, March 31

Steve Benen: …Tea party organizers had high hopes for their rally today in Washington, DC – high enough hopes that they arranged for Fox to give it live coverage.

Then something sad happened. Just a few dozen people showed up. And Fox, naturally, blamed the weather.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite who has an incentive to exaggerate the crowd size, said 200 people showed up, but if the media footage is at all accurate, even that pathetic number is inflated.

Put in this way: the number of reporters and Republican lawmakers, when combined, rivaled the size of the attendees. That’s not good.

As for Fox News blaming the weather, let’s not forget that tens of thousands of progressive activists showed up in the snow in Wisconsin a few weeks back. With federal spending on the line, today’s Tea Party crowd was less than 1% as big … because of a little rain? That’s just sad.

Chances are, this little get together will be forgotten by dinner time, but part of me wonders if it might end up having the opposite of the intended effect. The goal was to offer a right-wing show of force – with a shutdown deadline looming, lawmakers were supposed to think to themselves, “I better not cross those throngs of activists who gathered at the Capitol on March 31.”

But the point is, practically no one showed up. How many members of Congress will be afraid to cross “those tens of activists” who were on hand today?

Full article here

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ah, more lies

No, President Obama’s trip to Asia is not going to cost $200 million a day

USA Today: That figure — first thrown out by a single Indian media outlet and now viral on conservative talk radio — is wildly, wildly off the mark.

The problem is that the costs for these trips are impossible to determine, for many of the president’s expenses would be incurred whether he was visiting India or Atlanta or simply hanging around the White House….

….. “The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality,” said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. “Due to security concerns, we are unable to outline details associated with security procedures and costs, but it’s safe to say these numbers are wildly inflated.”

To be sure, these trips do cost millions of dollars per day. Whenever a president travels, he or she takes a mini-White House with them, from bulletproof limousines to gaggles of aides. This can come in awfully handy when trouble happens, such as the terrorist attacks on 9/11 when George W. Bush was in Florida. Ronald Reagan was traveling in Asia when the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Russia blew up in 1986.

Foreign trips are expensive but are a staple of presidential duties. India is a rising economy power. It is next to — and has an intense rivalry with — one of the world’s most dangerous countries, Pakistan. It can be a counterweight to threats from China. Any president is going to deal with India.

There’s no evidence that Obama’s team is spending any more money than its predecessors….Yes, these gigs will cost money. But $200 million a day? Not even close.

One other thing to keep in mind: The Secret Service is not going to let anything happen to a president overseas if they can help it. They’re going to do — and spend — whatever it takes. That’s just a fact of life.

Full article

A man walks his camel past a sand sculpture of President Barack Obama on a beach in Puri in the eastern Indian state of Bhubaneswar November 4

Full schedule for the President’s trip to Asia here