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Do not miss:
BWD? You’re a gem.
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President Barack Obama walks in the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn, Aug. 3, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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Morning everyone 😉
Hi everyone, I know I said ‘see you tomorrow’ in the last post, and here I am. 😕
But before I have to run again ….
… more thanks for all the replies earlier (I haven’t had a chance to read each one yet, but I will), BWD’s post at TOAITR, and my own for-what-it’s-worth comments on that post, were always going to result in a fairly heated discussion, but I really appreciate the vast majority of you who didn’t resort to insults and just made your arguments.
Special thanks to two of my most loved bloggers, SmartyPants and Eclectablog, for their thoughts.
To those who opted for insults ….. a big fat sigh. Really woeful stuff. Comparing what you read here today – a frustrated plea for the campaign to better promote PBO’s extraordinary achievements – with Hamsher, Uygur, Greenwald and Co’s Koch-fuelled efforts to encourage their sheeple to ensure his defeat? Seriously, you see no difference?
And to the 13 ‘I’m a lurker, I’ve never commented here before, but….’ folk stuck in pending when I got back to the blog tonight …. why is it you people only ever try to emerge from lurkdom when you sense division here?? Why don’t you ever appear to offer encouragement and support in difficult times? Please, f**k right off, to FirebaggerLake, or whatever sewer you crawled out of.
As I said before, there is no end to my respect for David Axelrod and David Plouffe, and I still trust that they will get it right this year and ensure the campaign is successful.
But, yeah, and I know most of you disagree: I think they could be doing a whole lot better now, before the MSM/Romney narrative is set in stone. That’s what this frustration is all about, at the end of a completely shitty week. PBO should be 20 pts clear of that contemptible, vacuous, amoral, worthless shitbag, but thanks to the MSM – and, in my humble opinion, the feeble efforts of the campaign – it’s still too close to call. That’s just mindblowing to me.
So, no, I never ever claimed PBO isn’t doing enough, as one of you said I did. He’s done 100 times more than enough to be re-elected, comfortably. I have no words for how much I love, respect and admire him – as I keep saying, I feel blessed to be alive in his time. But I just think his campaign advocates have to be a little more fierce in their attempts to spread the story of his achievements.
We’ll agree to differ, though, we’ve had our say.
Thanks again
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The eternally lovely HZ has just started her own fundraiser for Obama/Biden 2012 – this is the link.
If you can, please contribute to this utterly inspirational woman’s fundraiser.
HZ emailed me a while ago, I just have no words for how gorgeous a human being she is.
Night everyone.
President Obama departs the White House for Fort Belvoir, Virginia for a round of golf, June 9
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Thanks for all the comments on the last post, I’m working today so won’t have a chance to reply, but will catch up asap. Special thanks to those who argued it out, even when they disagreed; to those who read my own comments as a suggestion that PBO isn’t doing enough ….. oh boy. I think he’s done more than enough, that’s the point.
See you tomorrow.
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Hi everyone, we might end up throwing punches at each other over this, but please read BWD’s post.
Some of you might not like it, but think about what it’s saying: this President has achieved extraordinary things, in the face of vicious, relentless opposition – but is his campaign, so far, really doing him and those achievements justice?
Michael Tomasky: ….. the campaign isn’t telling a story. And there is a story to tell, even about the private sector. It’s a slightly more complicated story than the one Mitt Romney is telling, and more complicated means harder, but it doesn’t mean impossible. The story, in a nutshell, is this: we inherited a total disaster, things are getting better, and Romney will bring us back to disaster. The last part is the most important: putting the emphasis back on the challenger.
I’m not sure, to be honest, if Tomasky or BWD acknowledge enough just how hard it is for the campaign to set the narrative or tell that story when the MSM is in the bag for Romney, Politico in particular – which seems to have the most amazing influence on the rest of the media when it comes to creating a narrative – has been utterly poisonous of late, the dishonesty of its ‘reporting’ simply breathtaking. (I could give a few examples from yesterday, but I’ll spare you).
Also, ‘progressive’ media frauds like Cenk Uygur and that Greenwald piece of shit, from his balcony in Rio (part-funded by Koch/CATO), have upped their anti-PBO venom to vitriolic, hysterical levels of late, in their attempts to persuade their brain-dead cheerleaders to work towards his defeat.
But, despite all that, the campaign can, surely, still do a whole lot better – specifically by making more use of its single greatest weapon: President Barack Obama. As BWD said, “when the President goes all in – like he did with marriage equality – he always wins”.
So why not forget about daft ideas like Friday’s press conference, when whatever PBO said was always going to be twisted by the media f**kwits, the same people who spent most of the week chuckling about blowjobs.
Why not bypass these fools and have, for example, PBO address the nation directly from the Oval office, and call out the opposition for what it is: economy-sabotaging traitors.
And why, as BWD said, has his stump speech hardly changed over the last few months? He’s busy running the country, what are his speech writers doing?? To me, he seems bored and uninspired delivering that speech, it’s largely, inexplicably, defensive, when it should be singing from the rooftops about his spectacular achievements. And why aren’t the endless, wonderful benefits of the Affordable Health Care for America Act being promoted in those speeches? They’re hardly mentioned. This is insane.
I know, I know, who the f**k is anyone to question the campaign’s strategy? Well, I am someone who believes PBO to be the greatest and most inspirational world leader of my lifetime, and I’m utterly petrified that he will be beaten in November by execrable right-wing forces, and their allies on the fake ‘progressive’ left, that will reverse every single one of his achievements. And I just believe that his people aren’t doing enough, so far, to positively and aggressively promote those achievements.
I don’t, for a single minute, underestimate how hard it is to get that message out, and I have endless respect for Axelrod and Plouffe, master strategists responsible for an astounding campaign last time. I’ll trust – pray – that they’ll get it right this time too. But don’t they need to get their act together, very soon?
The Only Adult In The Room is back!
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9:35: President Obama departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews
10:45: Arrives in New York City
1:10: Delivers the commencement address at Barnard College
3:00: Tapes an appearance on ‘The View’
5:05: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Rubin Museum of Art
6:50: Delivers remarks at a campaign event
8:30: Departs New York City
9:50: Arrives at the White House
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Back soon.
First I want to thank BWD for her amazing, heartfelt piece on Marriage Equality. Everyone should have that experience, and feel that way. I really feel if more people cared about the happiness and well being of others, this would be a much better world. Perhaps that is all it will take – personal experience.
Alas, we are not there today. In fact I feel that if we’re not careful, and don’t recognize RightWing PropagandaBait when it’s thrown at us (thanks to our GOPWHOREMEDIA™®), we’re going to give this election to the crazies.
I am just about at the end of my rope regarding the shortsightedness of the Left.
I am straight. I never woke up and made a decision that I was going to like men. I just do. It was never a choice.
I was born and raised in Southern California. I grew up in Theatre, and in the Entertainment Industry. It’s hard to avoid if you live here. I have countless friends who are gay. Most of them are in more stable, long-term relationships than my straight friends. Many of them married during the brief window of legality, only to have forces of hate from across the country send in millions of dollars – including donations from Mitt Romney – to fund taking away the rights of other humans they disagree with.
Yes. Marriage (and complete) Equality should be a no-brainer. No one’s marriage has any affect whatsoever on another’s. But what we’ve witnessed during the Prop 8 fight here in California has shown that there are not only a majority on the Right who disagree vehemently with this, and feel the government should be given jurisdiction over who can love and marry whom, there are many on the Left, that for whatever reason, religious or otherwise, also (unfortunately still) feel the same.
Yet today, there is a new groundswell for President Obama to come out before the biggest, most important, and what maybe the most contentious election in my lifetime, in support for repealing DOMA. Of course many Liberal Bloggers who didn’t get their Progressive Pony due to all the GOP and BlueDog obstruction are once again putting their PL EmoProg hats on and whining about every problem President Obama didn’t instantly fix with his Magic Harry Potter Wand™, and have jumped on the End DOMA Yesterday bandwagon, because life wouldn’t be complete without something to complain about.
Take The Nation’s Richard Kim who whines that President Obama has “evolved rightward” on his position on Marriage Equality (subscribe for free for access).
Dear EmoProgs,
Seriously? This is your line in the sand for the most Progressive President in the last 50 years who has done more for LGBT rights than any other President? You want to force him to say more than he already has, and mock him for his stance on it?
Why, exactly? What do you hope you’ll gain? That he’ll come out and say YES, I’m all for getting rid of DOMA before the election? Because……. you think that the LGBT people who will vote for him outnumber the crazies on the Right, and the religious on the Left who disagree? Really? You really think that President Obama will win in a landslide if he does that?
If you honestly believe that, you’re dreaming. If it didn’t work in California for Prop H8te, then it’s not going to work on a National level, and we’ll end up with President Romney who will repeal every single supportive law for LGBT people including DADT, AND then some!
What’s even worse, he will appoint at least THREE SCOTUS judges, who will be überCorporate, überConservative, and überReligious. How is THAT going to help the LGBT community, when in their hearts they want to make it illegal to be gay?
President Obama stated that he is all for “Civil Unions” that afford ALL the rights of straight married couples. Let me share a simple factoid with you: That is EXACTLY what marriage is in the USA – A CIVIL UNION. You can get married all you want in any church, but until you complete a Marriage License and have it signed by someone who is LEGALLY appointed BY THE STATE to marry you, then FILE IT with your STATE CAPITAL, you ARE NOT LEGALLY MARRIED. PERIOD.
Religion has ZERO BEARING on the LEGALITY of MARRIAGE IN THE US.
That makes MARRIAGE = CIVIL UNION.
However, if we push this right now, and President Obama doesn’t get a second term, then Romney will amend the US Constitution and no one alive today will ever see equal rights for the LGBT community.
Let’s get President Obama re-elected, and send him a LIBERAL ARMY that will work WITH HIM, and you will see equal rights and Marriage Equality for everyone during his second term – AND at least THREE LIBERAL SCOTUS JUSTICES.
It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.
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Links to all of Tally’s posts here
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I know most of you don’t want to hear about this issue any more, so please just ignore this post if you feel that way and let others get on with discussing it. Thanks.
by Blackwaterdog
Dear President Obama,
I’d like to share a story with you:
I have two great friends who are gays. They’ve been together for 10 years. Four years ago they adopted a 10 months old baby. The only reason they got him was due to his severe illness. He didn’t have much more time to live and no one else wanted him. For more than two years I’ve seen them being the best parents any kid could hope for. They gave this baby their full, unconditional love, knowing that their time together would be very limited. Tommy died last year. All who knew him are still in deep grief. And these two guys, two of the best parents I’ve ever seen, one of the most in-love couples I’ve ever seen – they can’t get married. This is wrong on every level, on every level.
Mr. President, I understand your struggle. It’s a journey many people had to go through – myself included – and nothing can change the fact that no president comes even close to what you’ve done for gay rights in America and in the world. But, this is the final step and it’s time to take it.
I honestly don’t believe that at this point you’re still against gay marriage. Everything I know about you points to the other direction. And if the calculation is political, that’s not a good one either. Most of the country is already on the right side of this issue and the people who may not vote for you because of this, were not going to vote for you anyway.
Dear Sir, you are the greatest man I’ve seen in my life time. I’m grateful to be able to witness this greatness with my own eyes. But now you’re about to become probably the last Democrat president/presidential candidate to not run on fully supporting gay marriage. No matter how much good you did for gays, you’ll be remembered as being on the wrong side of the last big civil rights issue. Even behind the much older Joe Biden. This can’t happen to you. You are Barack Obama.
I will continue to back you no matter what: I’ll work my heart out to make sure that you’ll stay in the White House – because you are a great president and you’re our only hope against a very dangerous and scary force. But please don’t miss this opportunity to bend that arc of moral universe just a bit more towards justice.
You are the face of hope, change and equality for an entire world.
You are Barack Obama, sir. You are Barack Obama.
Obama White House.gov WH Tumblr The People’s View Smartypants Steve Benen
The Obama Diary 
off to ohio
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President Barack Obama walks with Col. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, commander of the 89th Airlift Wing, before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. The president is scheduled to deliver remarks on the economy at Shaker Heights High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
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11:35: PBO arrives in Cleveland, Ohio.
12:05: PBO participates in a discussion with a family at a private residence.
1:15: PBO delivers remarks on the economy.
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NYT
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😉
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Want to post tweets in the comments? Here ya go: