‘Obama for president: A second term for a serious man’

St Louis Post-Dispatch: Four years ago, in endorsing Democrat Barack Obama for president, we noted his intellect, his temperament and equanimity under pressure. He was unproven, but we found him to be presidential, in all that that word implies.

In that, we have not been disappointed. This is a serious man. And now he is a proven leader. He has earned a second term.

Mr. Obama sees an America where the common good is as important as the individual good. That is the vision on which the nation was founded. It is the vision that has seen America through its darkest days and illuminated its best days. It is the vision that underlies the president’s greatest achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Twenty years from now, it will be hard to find anyone who remembers being opposed to Obamacare.

He continues to steer the nation through the most perilous economic challenges since the Great Depression. Those who complain that unemployment remains high, or that economic growth is too slow, either do not understand the scope of the catastrophe imposed upon the nation by Wall Street and its enablers, or they are lying about it.

To expect Barack Obama to have repaired, in four years, what took 30 years to undermine, is simply absurd. He might have gotten further had he not been saddled with an opposition party, funded by plutocrats, that sneers at the word compromise. But even if Mr. Obama had had Franklin Roosevelt’s majorities, the economy would still be in peril…..

….. The question for voters is actually very simple. The nation has wrestled with it since its founding: Will this be government for the many or the few?

Choose the many. Choose Barack Obama.

Full editorial here

Thanks to @jidts07

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And then there’s this guy….

Rise and Shine

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A lukewarm reception for President Obama at Centreville High School …… 😉

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Virginia Beach

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Paul Krugman: … this is only for the specifics Romney has announced; he claims that he will make up for the large revenue losses under his plan (Obama gains revenue) by closing loopholes. But he refuses to say which, and the clear reality is that he’s talking through his hat. Meanwhile, Romney also proposes severe cuts in Medicaid, and his party wants big cuts in other safety-net programs.

So like it or not, we have an election in which one candidate is proposing a redistribution from the top — which is currently paying lower taxes than it has in 80 years — downward, mainly to lower-income workers, while the other is proposing a large redistribution from the poor and the middle class to the top.

So the next time someone tut-tuts about “class warfare”, remember that the class war is already happening, in real policy — with the top .01 percent on offense.

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Cagle

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ThinkProgress: In a series of interviews yesterday, Mitt Romney maintained he would only release tax returns dating back two years…..

….On the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting in Williamsburg, Alabama’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, called on Romney to release all the documents requested of him.

“If you have things to hide, then maybe you’re doing things wrong,” Bentley said. “I think you ought to be willing to release everything to the American people.“

Ana Navarro, a prominent Republican strategist, has also called on Romney to release more tax returns, telling Politico “I wish he’d hurry up and release more tax returns so this distraction would go away.”

More here

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Monday: The President will travel to Cincinnati, Ohio for a campaign event.

Tuesday: The President will travel to San Antonio and Austin, Texas for campaign events.

Wednesday: The President will attend meetings at the White House.

Thursday: The President will travel to Jacksonville and West Palm Beach, Florida for campaign events. He will remain overnight in Manalapan, Florida.

Friday: The President will travel to Ft. Myers and Orlando, Florida for campaign events. Later, the President will return to Washington, DC.

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President Obama and Michelle Obama are on CBS News Sunday Morning – check your local listings (thanks for the reminder UT)

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Morning everyone 😉

‘eight myths to chill an old-school republican soul’

St Louis Dispatch: When Sen. Jon Kyl and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor quit the (no longer) bipartisan deficit-reduction talks last week, it was not exactly a “Profiles in Courage” moment.

Serious deficit reduction can’t be – and shouldn’t be – accomplished without tax increases and broad elimination of tax expenditures, which would have the effect of raising taxes. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last year acknowledged that … But tax increases, in whatever guise, fail the current Republican purity laws…

It’s sad to see what has happened to the Party of Lincoln … Today we have the spectacle of smart, patriotic men and women putting their brains and integrity on ice to please a party dominated by anti-intellectual social Darwinists and the plutocrats who finance and mislead them……

Read full column here

Thank you PoliticalJunkessa

‘crackpotonomics’

Clay Bennett

St Louis Post-Dispatch: …  Paul Ryan’s plan offers a big bouquet to wealthy Americans, cutting their tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent; eliminating the estate tax and taxes on capital gains and dividends. The richest 1 percent, who already take in nearly a quarter of American income and control almost 40 percent of all forms of wealth, would see their taxes cut in half. The average tax cut for millionaires would be about $500,000 a year.

The burden of the Ryan plan would be born by the shrinking middle class, which would lose its single biggest tax break, the deduction for home mortgages; and the elderly, who would see their Medicare health coverage effectively eliminated. Medicare for those already age 55 or older would be left alone (for political reasons) but younger Americans, as they become eligible, would get vouchers to purchase care on insurance exchanges …He would turn Medicaid, which pays for medical care for the poor, into a block grant program, letting states spend it as they wish.

Mr. Ryan’s bill is a potpourri of crackpot Republican ideas – a “business consumption tax” that is effectively a value-added (sales) tax that falls most heavily on the poor and middle class; the discredited trickle-down nonsense of Reaganomics;  “flat” (or at least flat-ish) tax rates and the shredding of the social services safety net. Defense spending would not be cut. Spending on veterans’ health care would be.

….Clearly spending must be cut. But it must be done fairly, in combination with new revenue generated from those who can afford it, and without imposing heavier burdens on those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

…House GOP negotiators are held hostage by 87 freshmen zealots; the White House is holding out for short-term fixes in the probably vain hope that adults will gather and talk seriously about the long term.

The government may have to grind to a halt before that can happen. That, and public outrage over the Ryan plan, may play right into Mr. Obama’s hands.

Full article here

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There’s another great post here on Ryan’s plan by PM Carpenter (Thank you Ladyhawke)