Rise and Shine

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Jonathan Capehart: There was a great story in The Post yesterday that was nothing but good news for the American consumer. “Gas prices expected to fall further heading into summer” read the headline. Truth be told, the story isn’t new. Dropping pump prices have been reported on for about a month now.

Yet, what interested me most was the chart that accompanied yesterday’s story. It depicts the daily average price for regular gas over the last year, from May 2011 through May 2012. Were it a noise meter, it would also chart the volume of Republican hysteria over rising gas prices.

….. the national average gas price, which peaked at $3.91 in early April, was down to $3.64 on Memorial Day. That’s 17 cents cheaper than a year ago.

According to Politico, Republicans are still going to target the president on gas prices. But with fuel costs expected to continue their downward slide, the GOP can expect its credibility on this issue to follow suit.

Full post here

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Richard Adams (The Guardian): ….Last night – under the cover of darkness – the Mitt Romney campaign published what it claims to be a birth certificate for “Willard Mitt bin Romney”.

As we can plainly see, this is obviously a forgery, and Donald Trump and Sheriff Joe Arpaio need to get right on it. Here are the five key signs:

1. This is clearly not a birth certificate at all. It’s something called a “Certificate of Live Birth” – which suggests the obvious question: where is the birth certificate?

2. This is only the “short form” of the certificate and that is plainly inadequate. Why won’t Mitt Romney publish his “long form” birth certificate? What does he have to hide?

3. Notice that the “date of birth” is listed as March 12, 1947 – but the so-called “certificate” was filed on March 17, 1947. How can Mitt Romney explain this mysterious five day gap during which time he may (or may not) have been smuggled in from Canada? – the foreign country bordering on Michigan.

4. Using my computer I note that this “certificate” image is labeled: “Adobe Photoshop JPEG file”. Clear signs of a forgery?

5. “Father’s birthplace: Mexico”. Come on, do I have to paint you a picture for this one?

To be clear, none of these obvious errors, omissions and forgery are evidence that Mitt Romney was born abroad and has engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to conceal his foreign birth – we are merely asking questions. And putting words in italics for sinister effect. That’s all. Over to you, Donald.

😆

Richard Adams’ Election 2012 blog here

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LA Times: President Obama ruffled some feathers two years ago when he lambasted the Supreme Court for its Citizens United decision during a State of the Union speech. It was unusual for a president to criticize the justices as they sat before him.

Now, retired Justice John Paul Stevens has taken the equally unusual step of saying the president was right in challenging the court’s opinion.

Obama said the 5-4 ruling freeing corporations to spend unlimited sums on elections “reversed a century of law,” adding it would “open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”

“In that succinct comment, the former professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago made three important and accurate observations about the Supreme Court majority’s opinion,” Stevens said in a speech Wednesday evening. “First, it did reverse a century of law; second, it did authorize unlimited election-related expenditures by America’s most powerful interests; and, third, the logic of the opinion extends to money spent by foreign entities.”

More here

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On CNN’s live streaming schedule for today:

11:30: President Obama’s re-election campaign communications director, David Axelrod, speaks with reporters in Boston.

1:25: Bush official White House portrait revealed

10:00: Wisconsin gubernatorial debate – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic opponent Tom Barrett debate ahead of next month’s recall election.

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Morning everyone

rise and shine

Charles Pierce: …. That was about as bad a speech as you ever will see from a candidate who probably just wrapped up the nomination. …. At its heart, though, Romney’s speech featured some sub-Santorumish sarcasm directed at the president for having been a law professor while Willard was fighting his way up every inch of the hard road that leads from opulent wealth to incalculable wealth.

…. There was also the requisite sneering at community organizing. Let us consider, then, the community in which the president once organized. This is what I found out about it when I went and looked at it in 2008:

Obama also worked in the Altgeld Gardens, a housing development built in 1945 atop an ecological hellspout where two thousand families lived on an old landfill and hard by fifty-three different sites that had been designated as “toxic” by one study of the area.

Altgeld Gardens was built on the bones of old steel mills and factories, and atop the waste dumps and landfills that serviced them. And, when they built the projects there, they filled them full of asbestos. That poisoned neighborhood was a perfect product of the “freedom” that Romney talks about when he talks about an unregulated economy. Barack Obama went there to organize the people who were living on that deadly ground because The Market couldn’t have cared less about them, and the various governments allowed The Market not to care and, so, did not care either. The kids with the asthma, they weren’t free. The kids who developed the renal disease, they weren’t free. The people in all the cancer clusters, they weren’t free ….. in the 1980’s, when the president was working for peanuts trying to get some sort of justice for the people that The Market had chosen to poison, Willard Romney was making millions with Bain Capital…..

More here

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9:40: PBO Obama departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews

2:40: Arrives Las Vegas

4:10: Tours Copper Mountain Solar 1 Facility

5:50: Departs Las Vegas en route Roswell, N.M.

8:15: Delivers remarks on the Administration’s commitment to expanding domestic oil and gas production

9:35: Departs Roswell en route Oklahoma City

10:50: Arrives Oklahoma City

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White House live

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Michael Tomasky: Illinois was a breeze for Mitt Romney, and yes, numerically, maybe it’s getting close to done. But state by state, this still isn’t over. Rick Santorum remains likely to win Louisiana, which is next. Then comes Wisconsin on April 3. Santorum is still about 15 points ahead there right now. And it looks like Santorum has taken Missouri – again. So while Illinois probably means that Romney is on his way to the nomination, and maybe on his way to 1,144 delegates, it’s also a fact that Santorum isn’t going anywhere….

More here

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Cagle

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Jake Tapper: “Romney and his allies have spent $45 million. That totals $12.40 per vote. … Santorum and his allies have spent $3 per vote.” (Video)

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The Week

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The Hill: Sen. Dick Durbin on Wednesday mocked GOP hopeful Mitt Romney, saying that the low turnout for Illinois’s primary had diminished his victory in the state.

“Romney outspent Santorum 5 to 1 and at the end of the night we had the lowest turnout for a Republican presidential primary in 70 years,” Durbin said on CBS’s “This Morning.”

“You could draw a bigger crowd at a Green Bay Packers rally in downtown Chicago than what Mr. Romney delivered at the polls yesterday in Illinois.”

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Nick Anderson

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afternoon all

President Obama shakes hands with a supporter after speaking about energy and energy independence at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire

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Charles Pierce: NASHUA, N.H. …. After several months of watching the Republican primary process, I can’t tell you what a cool breeze it was to watch a politician who looks at a crowd and doesn’t see a group of potential marks (Romney), a collection of your fellow Elect marching with you through the dystopic Sinai that is America (Santorum), a gaggle of goldbugs (Paul), or the class of half-bright sophomores that N. Leroy Gingrich sees every time he looks anywhere but into the mirror.

Barack Obama is not stiff. He is not bristling with unbridled id. He grins. He kids people, even the people who faint at the beginning of his speeches …. He is relaxed about the job of politics. He is the only president of the United States – real or prospective – that I’ve seen in months.

…. He talks about the challenges Americans face, but he doesn’t do it in the gloom-ridden, stalactite-festooned, minor-key funeral mass context that the Republicans talk about them. He talks in terms of “boundless ingenuity” and “unbridled optimism.”….

More here

Woot, even the ever-grumpy and ever-brilliant Charles Pierce sounds happy today!

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More here

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Bloomberg: The number of Americans filing first-time claims for jobless benefits fell to a level matching a four-year low, more evidence the labor market is healing.

Applications for unemployment insurance decreased 2,000 in the week ended Feb. 25 to 351,000, Labor Department figures showed today…..

Firing is on a downward trend as employers gain confidence in the outlook for economic growth. A smaller number of job reductions also puts those companies in place to hire additional employees as demand picks up.

More here

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Steve Benen: …. here’s the chart, showing weekly, initial unemployment claims going back to the beginning of 2007:

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PPP: There might not be any state that better represents Barack Obama’s improved fortunes in the opening months of 2012 than Wisconsin. When we polled there in late October Obama’s approval was a 44/51 spread and he led Mitt Romney by only 3 points at 46-43, representing a much closer race than the state had in 2008. Now those numbers have shifted significantly, with Obama’s approval basically flipping to 52/44. And he now leads Romney 53-39, a 14 point margin that matches what he won against John McCain there.

Obama’s 14 point lead in Wisconsin matches a trend we’re seeing in both our national and state polling across the country right now: Obama/Romney is starting to look more and more like Obama/McCain, or even something more friendly to the President.

More here

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The Atlantic

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Jerusalem Post: Poll finds vast majority of Israelis against unilateral military strike on Iran, Israeli Jews prefer Obama over all republican rivals …. The survey also polled Jewish Israelis’ feelings on the US presidential race, with respondents preferring President Barack Obama to all his Republican rivals.

More here

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Buy a mug today in honor of the Sheriff 😉

OFA

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Our Founding Elitists:

ET’s Right Turn:

The Week

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Ruy Teixeira (TNR): Judging from recent headlines, things are looking up for President Obama. The Republican presidential nominees have been serially embarrassing themselves; the White House communications department has successfully focused its messaging on jobs and economic fairness; and consumers are feeling ever more confident about the economy.

But it’s not just anecdotal evidence that suggests Obama’s re-election chances have improved – most of the polling data suggests the same. Obama has been running consistently ahead of his most likely challenger, Mitt Romney, in national polls – by an average of 4 points according to the Pollster.com website. Indeed, the closer you look at the numbers, the more reassuring the news: Obama, it seems, is well on his way to reconstructing the very coalition that elected him in 2008.

More here

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National Memo: In this Citizens United era of unregulated campaign cash, gay activists and donors are finding innovative ways to reward Barack Obama, who despite his equivocation on marriage equality is often lauded as the greatest friend to the LGBT community of any president in American history.

The reemergence of social issues on the presidential campaign trail, coupled with the reversal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, has helped Obama improve his standing with this key segment of the liberal base, a vital source of campaign funds for any Democrat running a presidential campaign.

“This kind of Republican campaign has mobilized the community like I haven’t seen since 1992,” said David Mixner, a veteran progressive strategist Newsweek once called the most powerful gay man in America. “There’s a lot at stake. I have no doubt people will be involved in some way in Super PACs. You can count on the major donors of this community doing whatever they have to do to assist in the re-election of this president.”

More here

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rise and shine

Thanks for the link everyone!

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Steve Benen: It’s hard not to marvel at just how dishonest Mitt Romney is prepared to be in order to win. The notion of politicians misleading the public to advance their ambitions isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, but Romney acts as if he doesn’t even care about getting caught, leading to blatant and obvious falsehoods.

This one, from last night’s debate, was just shameless….

Full post here

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Charlotte Observer: On the final night of this fall’s Democratic National Convention, President Barack Obama will deliver his acceptance speech at Bank of America stadium, party sources told the Observer on Monday night.

Convention officials are expected to announce the venue this morning at a news conference at the stadium. Two party sources say the decision to use the stadium was made months ago.

More here

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Link

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Morning everyone 😉

night everyone (second video added)

New York, April 27

“In 2008 I didn’t have all this gray hair. I was kind of fresh and new. Everybody had all these nice posters. It was cool to back Obama. Now I’m older, distinguished, that’s the word, distinguished, and we’ve had some setbacks, some things haven’t happened as fast as some people wanted. … But … when I stood that night in Grant Park, I didn’t say change you can have tomorrow. … I said change you can believe in.”

President Obama speaks at a campaign fundraising event at The Town Hall in New York, April 27

the end

Thanks Fred

Meanwhile…

‘there are still questions’

Warning: Don’t watch this if you have a weak stomach.

Excuse my language, but this ‘report’ on CNN tonight was simply beyond ****ing belief – what is this, Birther ****ing TV?

“Some of the people who are still very concerned about the authenticity of this….”

Like you, Tom Foreman?

“If this is genuine….”

If? So CNN is now officially – as opposed to implicitly – calling the President a liar?

**** you, CNN

Contact The Situation Room here

enough’s enough

Anne E. Kornblut (Washington Post): After his major address on the deficit two weeks ago, President Obama sat down for an interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos expecting a conversation about fiscal issues.

Instead, Obama faced repeated questions about the controversy surrounding his place of birth … the interview added to the growing sense within the White House that the mainstream media was perpetuating a dangerous myth.

Obama had grown incredulous at the overall debate. He had watched as even Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan had been sucked into the discussion of his birthplace, aides said … on April 19, in a meeting with White House counsel Bob Bauer, the president asked about the feasibility of getting his long-form birth certificate at last …..Last week, it was Obama who made the call to proceed. “He was the driving force,” the official said.

…the process began early in the week of April 18, after Obama raised the subject. White House counsel Bauer reviewed the legal steps necessary to obtain the long-form document, which is not routinely released by authorities in Hawaii …..When administration officials released the paperwork on Wednesday morning shortly after 9 a.m., it came as a shock to the political establishment….

….Aides acknowledged that there would have been a potential upside to keeping the obviously outrageous myth alive. “He did that despite the fact that it probably was…probably in his long-term political interests to allow this birther debate to dominate discussion in the Republican Party for months to come,” Pfeiffer said. “But he thought even though it might have been good politics, he thought it was bad for the country. And so he asked counsel to look into this.”

Full article here

‘republicans will rue their birther backing’

Paul Harris (The Guardian): The timing of the release of Barack Obama’s birth certificate expertly made a fool of Donald Trump – and the GOP with him.

….to the surprise of no one with two brain cells to rub together, the document proved that, yes, in fact, Obama was indeed born on American soil.

Yet Obama seemed barely in chiding mode at having to deal with this idiocy. Instead, he appeared relaxed. He told reporters that he had “watched with amusement” as the rumours spread and been surprised they refused to go away….

…The fact is that the Obama administration has played the recent spasm of birther attention remarkably well. They have let Trump rise up on a balloon of inflated birther nonsense – getting near the top of Republican polls for the 2012 nomination – and then promptly popped it underneath him.

…the White House timed the release so that Trump would be right in the media’s glare when the birther bubble burst. Not surprisingly, he looked like an idiot. At a news conference, he blustered about his proud achievement in forcing the release of the birth certificate, then attempted to cast a little doubt on it and finally made up a CNN poll that he claimed showed him neck-and-neck with Obama in the race (CNN promptly reported no such poll exists).

No one needed any more proof to understand that Trump is a joke in very poor taste. But he provided it anyway – in long form….

Which is why Obama has played this well. His team waited for Trump to have enough rope to hang himself on the birther issue, and in doing so, have helped him toxify the Republican brand – just as he tried to debut his serious side.

…. the sheer and increasing madness of the issue – especially now that the long form birth certificate has been released – must be offputting for the independents and moderates who are often so crucial in American elections.

…It is a sad indictment of the Republican party that its own leaders took the attitude of not dismissing birtherism and its followers without qualifying their stance or hinting at closet sympathies.

Come 2012, they may yet pay at the polls for that cynicism and moral cowardice. It is going to be an easy task for Democrats to paint the Republicans as extremists with little grasp of reality and many Republicans will have only themselves to blame.

Full article here

well?

Searching for Chump’s tax returns

Former White House press secretary and Obama confidante Robert Gibbs is throwing down the gauntlet on Donald Trump. “Donald Trump said he’d release his tax returns as soon as the president released his birth certificate, so the ball is in his court now and I know everybody is anxious to see his tax returns over the last 10 years,” Gibbs told Politico.

Trump first floated the trade-off in an interview with ABC earlier this month. “Maybe I’m going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate,” said the real estate mogul, whose wealth has long been a matter of dispute. “I may tie my tax returns [to the birth certificate]. I’d love to give my tax returns.”

At a Wednesday morning news conference in New Hampshire following the president’s release of his birth certificate, Trump repeatedly ignored questions about whether he’d fulfill his pledge.

But now he’s being called out by one of the president’s closest advisers. What say you, Mr. Trump?