Rise and Shine

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Matthew Yglesias: Obama’s 2010 Lame Duck Tax Deal Was a Triumph, Not A Sellout …. David Corn has an interesting piece (see below) pushing back on the myth of the Obama cave-in, but I’d go further – the deal was a triumph …

….. Obama secured a deal that extended the middle class tax cuts, extended UI benefits, created a stimulative payroll tax holiday, cleared the legislative decks for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal and the passage of the New START arms control treated, and in exchange he gave up nothing of any real substance ….  now he gets to play that leverage from a somewhat stronger economic and political context. It’s totally solid legislative dealmaking, and not any kind of cave-in or surrender.

Full post here

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David Corn (Mother Jones):  ….. Obama didn’t wave the white flag in 2010. He turned a face-off over the Bush tax cuts into an opportunity to enact a second stimulus that he otherwise could not get past Senate Republicans. His failure at that time was not that he mustered insufficient mettle; he failed to convey to the world that he had ju-jitsued the GOPers.

….  no one ought to forget that Obama, a progressive in his policy preferences, remains a pragmatist. What happened two years ago is not an indication that Obama is likely to yield in the new face-off, but that he will be assessing the political dynamics in gridlocked Washington and be willing to bargain hard for a good deal with true benefits. That’s not caving in. It’s governing.

Full post here

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NYT: When Tea Party activists swamped town hall-style meetings about health care in the summer of 2009, President Obama’s army of campaign volunteers largely stayed away ….. now, Mr. Obama is seizing a second chance to keep his election-year supporters animated.

With lawmakers scheduled to return to work on Monday to begin intense discussions before a looming fiscal deadline, Mr. Obama’s aides are trying to harness the passions that returned him to the White House, hoping to pressure Republicans in Congress to accept tax increases on the wealthy. The president’s strategists are turning first to the millions of e-mail addresses assembled by the campaign and the White House.

Already, supporters are being asked to record YouTube videos of themselves talking about the importance of raising taxes on the rich. Aides said those videos would be shared on Facebook and Twitter and would be forwarded to centrist Democrats, as well as to mainstream Republicans, who they hope will break with their Tea Party colleagues.

More here

More from Steve Benen here

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catching up

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Greg Sargent: If there are reasons for President Obama to be optimistic about his reelection chances, one of them has to be this: The two key dynamics driving our politics right now are both playing in his favor. First, economic optimism continues to rise. Second, the GOP primary seems to have left likely nominee Mitt Romney with historically low standing.

The new NBC/WSJ poll finds that Obama has hit the 50 percent approval mark – his highest since Bin Laden’s death. That’s apparently driven by these findings about the economy:

Forty percent believe the economy will improve during the next year, a three-point increase from January. And looking back at the economic recession, 57 percent say that the worst is behind us, while 36 percent say the worst is still to come.

More here

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MSNBC: Just hours after President Obama described to a group of pro-Israel activists the steps he has taken and will take to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, Mitt Romney made a dire prediction about the consequences for that effort if the president is reelected.

“If Barack Obama gets re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change if that’s the case,” Romney (said) in response to a question from an eleven year-old boy…..

More here

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Steven Pearlstein (Washington Post): In case you haven’t noticed, the economy is actually getting better. Noticeably better.

…. On Wall Street, the Dow is at its highest point in nearly four years and Nasdaq at its highest point in a decade, reflecting both record profits and renewed investor confidence. Federal and state tax revenues are beginning to come in better than projected and households are continuing to whittle down their debt, with a savings rate of 4.5 percent. There are even enough green shoots in the housing market to suggest that residential construction might contribute to GDP growth this year rather than subtract from it. Revisions of government data are now reliably up rather than down.

And yet, there are those on the Republican right and the Democratic left who have so much invested in a bad economy that they are reluctant to acknowledge any of this good news.

Full article here

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Thanks amk

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Steve Benen: Last summer, with gas prices rising, several leading Republicans came up with a curious accusation: President Obama was causing pain at the pump deliberately, as part of some undefined environmental agenda. This odd line was pushed by Haley Barbour and the Koch brothers, among others.

…. I wonder if Republicans seriously expect anyone to believe their rhetoric on this. The argument Americans are supposed to believe is that President Obama, in an election year, not only has the power to manipulate gas prices at will, but is trying to raise them – on purpose – to the dismay of consumers.

The follow-up question is rather straightforward: why on earth would Obama want to do that? It doesn’t even take much in the way of critical thinking skills to know the answer: he wouldn’t.

More here

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ABC: The federal judge who presided over Chrysler’s bankruptcy told ABC News in an exclusive interview that the ailing company could not have survived without taxpayer money.

“The record before the Court was clear that there were no other sources of lending,” said Arthur J. Gonzalez, who served as chief judge of the U.S. bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York … “One thing is clear, without government support in one fashion or another, there were no sources of funding.”

….the new Chrysler is accelerating on the road to recovery, earning $225 million in its most profitable quarter since emerging from bankruptcy.….

And what about that taxpayer money? The company has paid back all but $1.3 billion of the $12.5 billion that Uncle Sam  loaned it under Presidents Bush and Obama.

More here

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Cagle

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Jerusalem Post: President Shimon Peres on Monday praised US President Barack Obama’s speech to the AIPAC annual policy conference, saying he had offered the maximum support for Israel that an American president could possibly offer.

Peres told Army Radio that Obama made clear that the “security of Israel is a national American interest.” He added that it would be preposterous to expect Obama to give a timetable for possible military action against Iran.

“I don’t expect someone to say when they will do this, and when they will do that, not us or them. It’s not done,” Peres stated. “He didn’t talk about dates, but he spoke about actions,” the president added.

…. The president also expressed satisfaction with Obama’s assertion that diplomacy as a means to solve the Iranian nuclear threat had not been exhausted.

More here

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Cagle

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Charles Pierce: ….. Rush Limbaugh unloads his weepy pilonoidal cyst of an intellect in this fashion on your daughter. Then, as his advertisers run screaming into the night … he finally issues a statement wherein he, essentially, apologizes for:

….. Using the word “slut,” rather than, one supposes, “trollop,” “slattern,” or “lady of the town.” …. For failing clearly to explain his deeply serious political philosophy regarding what is proper to discuss before Congress in these “very serious political times.”….

Does any of that remotely constitute an “apology” to you for what he said about your daughter? Does any of that make you more likely to trust in the good faith of anything this Viagra-sponging pillhead says in the foreseeable future? Does any of that make you less likely to kind of wish, at least in your heart of hearts, that you could perform orthopedic surgery on this guy with a Louisville Slugger?

Thought not.

More here

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Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King leading the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., March 1965

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ABC

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RCP: You need not look further than this critical swing state to see just how badly Mitt Romney’s vaunted campaign organization lags behind President Obama’s.

Obama for America already has more than a dozen staffers in the Buckeye State, working seven days a week. There are nine offices scattered throughout Ohio where volunteers gather every day to contact voters — and Election Day is still eight months away. And what should send a chill down Romney’s spine is that the same thing is happening in every swing state.

More here

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Extracts (Thanks Dotster)

rise and shine

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9:50: PBO departs the White House en route to Joint Base Andrews

10:05: Departs Joint Base Andrews en route to Cedar Rapids, Iowa

12:20: Arrives in Cedar Rapids

12:40: Tours Conveyor Engineering & Manufacturing

12:55: Delivers remarks

2:30: Departs Cedar Rapids en route to Phoenix, Ariz

5:35: Arrives in Phoenix

6:30: Delivers remarks at Intel Ocotillo Campus

8:35: Departs Phoenix, Ariz. en route to Las Vegas, Nevada

9:30: Arrives in Las Vegas

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John Cole (Balloon Juice): I gotta say, every time I get some one on one time with that guy, which is basically what the SOTU is- an opportunity for the President to speak to America, I just want to vote for him early and often. The contrast between Obama and the crowd of miscreants in the GOP running to replace him is just striking.

…. every time I hear him speak, I am still aware of all the things I disagree with him on, but think “That is a good man doing what he thinks is best.”….

We really don’t deserve him. We really don’t.

More here

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New York Times

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Paul Krugman: From the Daniels reply to the State of Union: Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew.

…. Steve Jobs designed great products. It’s very, very hard to make the case that he created large numbers of jobs in this country. Obama’s auto bailout, just by itself, saved a lot more jobs than Apple’s US employment.

More here

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TPM

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David Corn (Mother Jones): …. With this speech, Obama forcefully presented a view of the nation and the tasks at hand that positioned him as a can-do, patriotic, forward-looking optimist against obstructionist Republicans with a dark take on the nation’s prospects. He pitched government policies that would bolster middle-class security ….. “Take the money we’re no longer spending at war,” he declared, “use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”

… This State of the Union — Obama’s best so far — won’t move the needle (as politicos like to say) in Washington. The president’s calls for bipartisan cooperation, for reforming the easy-to-abuse rules of the Senate, for campaign finance reform, and for lowering the heated rhetoric will not be heeded. But he demonstrated that when it comes to concocting a political messaging — and tethering it to his past achievements and current proposals — he can be masterful….

More here

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Steve Benen: Daniels is the serious one? Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels delivered the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, to the delight of GOP insiders who still hope he might run for president. The national platform offered Daniels an opportunity to back up the hype — pundits routinely praise the former Bush budget director as a serious, thoughtful conservative, and this was his chance to prove it.

Alas, he blew it….

Full post here

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President Obama phones Jessica Buchanan’s father John last night to inform him of her rescue.

MSNBC: In a daring nighttime raid Tuesday, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued two hostages, including one American, who were being held by kidnappers in Somalia, U.S. officials tell NBC News.

American Jessica Buchanan, 32, and a 60-year-old Dane, Poul Thisted, were working for a Danish relief organization in northern Somalia when they were kidnapped last October. U.S. officials described their kidnappers as heavily armed common criminals with no known ties to any organized militant group.

More here

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Thanks Pinkbunny

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Morning everyone 😉

the gop…..

Rep Steve King (R-Iowa), June 2: “Labor is a commodity, just like corn or beans or oil or gold.” (Full C-Span video here)

And lest we forget….

Thanks Michele

‘birtherism is dead. long live otherism’

David Corn (Mother Jones): …..Mitt Romney … is still playing footsie with a popular conservative meme: Obama’s not really one of us …. (he) made a fierce pronouncement: The Obama Administration fundamentally does not believe in the American Experiment.…here was Romney saying that the president doesn’t understand the country he governs.

…Romney was engaging in what can be called otherism, a big cousin to birtherism. Otherism can be more virulent than birtherism (Obama is a secret Muslim socialist!) or more subtle (Hey, this Obama guy just doesn’t get America), but the main contention is that somehow he’s not a true American. It’s not a matter of his birth records, but of his attitude.

Newt Gingrich has helped set a benchmark for otherism …  Mike Huckabee said Obama’s “worldview is dramatically different than any president, Republican or Democrat, we’ve had… He grew up more as a globalist than an American.”

…Romney slammed Obama for apologizing for “American misdeeds, both real and imagined.” (Romney didn’t explain what was wrong with apologizing for real misdeeds.) His bottom-line message: Real Americans don’t apologize. And the obvious conclusion is that if Obama does apologize, he’s not a you-know-what.

…Birtherism is (was?) fundamentally about delegitimizing Barack Obama – proving him a complete fraud … Yet the birthers, dependent on conspiracy theories, were easily done in by basic facts…..

Yet otherism continues and thrives … The strategy is to fuel suspicion, not prove a conspiracy. But the goal is the same: to encourage voters to believe Obama is not a real American …Unlike birtherism, otherism remains quite useful to the Republicans. Not even the adults of the party can resist its ugly temptations.

Full article here – really worth reading

‘there’s always demagoguery to wage and paranoia to fuel’

David Corn (Politics Daily): It’s been thrilling to watch millions of people rise up and call for free expression and democracy in Egypt. The collective courage of the demonstrators has been inspiring……but on Planet Beck and in other conservative quarters, the Egyptian revolution, sadly, has become just another vehicle for Obama-bashing.

Since the start of this uprising, President Obama has handled the matter well, demonstrating prudence while still adhering to principles. He has walked a fine line. The president inherited a three-decade-long relationship with Hosni Mubarak, which on several fronts worked to the United States’ advantage….

The possible consequences of Obama throwing Mubarak under the bus at the get-go were stark …. yet Obama could not risk being on the wrong side of this popular rebellion –  Nor did he want to be. So he praised the protesters and acknowledged that their gripes were important and fully legitimate – and he warned Mubarak and the military not to harm them. At the same time he nudged Mubarak toward fundamental change.

In public, Obama and his aides were firm without being fiery. They responsibly concocted careful phrases … behind the scenes, Obama officials were leaning on Mubarak to develop an exit strategy. Shortly after Mubarak announced on Tuesday night that he would not run for “reelection” in the September election … Obama declared that “an orderly transition” in Egypt “must begin now.” In other words, Mubarak’s statement was not good enough.

The Egyptian crisis is far from over; Obama and his team can hardly be fully judged. But to date, they have represented the United States well. In fact, Republican leaders in Congress have not been complaining. Yet the Obama Hate Machine has seized on the Egyptian uprising as another opportunity to slam the president….…it never takes a vacation. But its eager exploitation of the uprising in Egypt cheapens the stirring images of those brave Egyptian citizens seeking democracy and the right of free expression. This is no surprise. There’s always demagoguery to wage and paranoia to fuel.

Full article here

Egyptian anti-government protesters gathered in Tahrir (Liberation) square, watch a screen showing U.S. President Barack Obama live on a TV broadcast from Washington DC, speaking about the situation in Egypt, Feb. 2