Rise and Shine

The front pages, five years ago today

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Today:

10:30: The President delivers a statement, The Rose Garden

11:10: The President and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera hold a bilateral meeting; the VP also attends

1:0: Press Briefing by Jay Carney

2:20: The President departs the White House

2:30: Arrives Bethesda, Maryland

2:50: Visits the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

4:35: Departs Bethesda

4:45: Arrives at the White House

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From left: Cornelia Pillard, Patricia Millett and Robert L. Wilkins

NYT: President Obama will nominate a slate of three candidates on Tuesday to fill the remaining vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a White House official said Monday.

The president will name Cornelia T. L. Pillard, a law professor; Patricia Ann Millett, an appellate lawyer; and Robert L. Wilkins, a federal district judge, to fill out the appeals court, which is often described as the second most powerful court in the country because it decides major cases and often serves as a launching pad for future Supreme Court justices.

By making his choices in a group, the president and his strategists are hoping to put pressure on Senate Republicans to confirm them.

More here

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Steve Benen: …. At the outset, let’s emphasize how uncontroversial this is – there are vacancies on an important federal bench, so the president is sending qualified nominees to the Senate for consideration. Republicans are characterizing this as a scandalous power-grab, while many political reporters are describing this as Obama thumbing his nose at his political rivals. In reality, it’s neither – presidents filling judicial vacancies is basic American governance. It’s Civics 101. That today’s announcement is seen as somehow remarkable is evidence of just how broken the process has become.

…. This is far more consequential than much of the public realizes …. the D.C. Circuit is likely to have considerable influence over the future of the Affordable Care Act, Wall Street reform, immigration reform, and perhaps most importantly, efforts to combat the climate crisis.

This is, in other words, a fight worth having, and the outcome will have a lasting impact for many years to come.

More here

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last 30 days: car sales way up. home prices way up. Dow way up, consumer confidence way up. so yeah, makes sensecable obsesses over IRS

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) June 4, 2013

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Michael Tomasky: Obama’s Economic Triumph

It’s increasingly clear that the president has steered the country back from the brink – and, in the process, exposed (yet again) the central lie of conservative economics…..

More here

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If Romney were president and the Dow were up 20 days in a row, would today be a national holiday or would we all just get Mitt tattoos?

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 4, 2013

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Greg Sargent: As I’ve been saying here for some time, behind all the GOP noise and hoopla about Beltway scandal-palooza is a stark reality that can’t be obscured. House Republicans are confronting two major challenges – what to do about the debt limit and about immigration reform, both of which will require cooperation from House conservatives that they aren’t prepared to give — and they don’t have an answer to either one.

This is driven home in fresh and vivid detail by today’s big Post story on the deep divisions within the House GOP caucus.

More here

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Steve Benen: We talked yesterday about the new report from the College National Republican Committee, detailing their party’s difficulties in connecting with younger voters. As the College Republicans explained, it’s a “dismal present situation” with focus groups, led by GOP pollsters, finding that voters under 30 consider the party “closed-minded, racist, rigid, [and] old-fashioned”…..

….     In focus groups in January, the report said, young voters were asked to list leaders of the Democratic Party. “They named prominent former or currently elected officials: Pelosi, the Clintons, Obama, Kennedy, Gore. When those same respondents were asked to name Republican leaders, they focused heavily on media personalities and commentators: Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck.”

More here

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This — in 1 powerful photo — is why wingnuts are losing it. The browning of America. Giddy up. (h/t @nerdywonka) #TFY twitter.com/AngryBlackLady…

— Imani ABL (@AngryBlackLady) June 4, 2013

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As long as we’re listing Eric Holder’s accomplishments at DOJ, let’s not forget this one immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2013/06/as-lon…

— Smartypants (@Smartypants32) June 4, 2013

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Rise and Shine

Cleveland, October 25 (Thomas Miller)

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Joseph E. Stiglitz (NYT): This election has rightly been characterized as one that will deeply affect the future direction of the country: Americans are being given a choice with potentially large consequences. One arena in which there are profound differences that has not been adequately debated is the future course of inequality.

…. Every other advanced country has recognized the right of everyone to access to health care, and extending access was central to President Obama’s health care reform. Romney and Ryan have criticized that reform, but have said nothing about how or whether they would ensure universal access. Most important, the macroeconomic consequences of the Romney-Ryan economic program would be devastating: growth would slow, unemployment would increase, and just as Americans would need the social protection of government more, the safety net would be weakened.

…. let no one be deceived: their tax policies will lead to even more inequality at the top, the continued hollowing out of the middle, and more poverty at the bottom. Worst of all, they will lead to a more divided society that endangers our future – our economy, our democracy and our sense of identity as a nation.

(Joseph E. Stiglitz, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and a former chief economist of the World Bank, is University Professor at Columbia University)

Full article here

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OFA

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Paul Krugman: Mitt Romney has been barnstorming the country, telling voters that he has a five-point plan to restore prosperity …. Mr. Romney’s “plan” is a sham. It’s a list of things he claims will happen, with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen…..

Actually, if describing what you want to see happen without providing any specific policies to get us there constitutes a “plan,” I can easily come up with a one-point plan that trumps Mr. Romney any day. Here it is: Every American will have a good job with good wages. Also, a blissfully happy marriage. And a pony.

So Mr. Romney is faking it. His real plan seems to be to foster economic recovery through magic, inspiring business confidence through his personal awesomeness. But what about the man he wants to kick out of the White House?

…. Mr. Obama may not have an exciting economic plan, but, if he is re-elected, he will get to implement a health reform that is the biggest improvement in America’s safety net since Medicare. Mr. Romney doesn’t have an economic plan at all, but he is determined not just to repeal Obamacare but to impose savage cuts in Medicaid. So never mind all those bullet points. Think instead about the 45 million Americans who either will or won’t receive essential health care, depending on who wins on Nov. 6.

Full article here

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President Obama has his drivers license checked prior to casting his vote in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago

President Obama has a laugh when an election official’s cell phone rings …

Greeting people as he leaves a campaign office in Chicago (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune)

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Eugene Robinson (Washington Post): This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity – and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be.

President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women – about 11 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll – and enormous leads among Latinos and African Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-to-1 advantage among white men … it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.

When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.

…. Some of Obama’s opponents have tried to delegitimize his presidency because he doesn’t embody the America they once knew. He embodies the America of now.

Full article here

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Newseum

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McClatchy

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Paul Krugman:  …. If you’re new to this, there are two basic approaches to election analysis at this point. One is the campaign reporter style, full of impressionist reporting about who won the news cycle and who has “momentum”, whatever that means ….. The other is poll-based. And that mostly means state-level polls at this point: there are more of them, and we have an electoral-college system, not a popular-vote system.

The impressionistic style has been all about Romney on the rise, a narrative that is to a large part being fed by the Romney campaign itself. But the state-level polling doesn’t show it…..

More here

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Chicago, October 25 (Scout Tufankjian)

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NYT Editorial: …. For Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama’s decision to bail out the auto industry and his own rejection of it is proving to be an Electoral College challenge. Several states are also feeling the benefits of an improved economy. Obama campaign officials say that to win, Mr. Romney would have to pick off voters already committed to the president in states where Mr. Romney has never been ahead. “We think we maintain a lot more plausible pathways to 270 than Governor Romney, who we think has to essentially pull an inside straight,” said David Plouffe, the president’s chief strategist.

Those pathways exist because millions of voters still harbor doubts about Mitt Romney. He has apparently decided that in the final days of the campaign, he will do little to dispel them.

Full editorial here

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@amk4obama

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Washington Post: …. this is an interesting case in which Mitt Romney has taken two moments from the third presidential debate – both of which were faulted by fact checkers – and turned them into television ads. In both cases, Romney also misspoke, making his statements even less accurate. The campaign commercial for the “apology tour” selectively snips out Romney’s errors, but apparently it was impossible to clean up Romney’s error on the size of the Navy.

…. The net effect is to suggest Obama made those supposed apologies to Arabs, without actually saying so, because that would be incorrect. But even careful editing still does not fix the basic problem in the first place – there was no apology tour.

This ad also repeats the criticism that Obama has never visited Israel. As we have noted, only four of the last 11 presidents visited Israel during their presidency — and only two visited in their first term…

For doubling down on claims that have been repeatedly called out by fact checkers, even to the point of editing out the candidate’s misstatements, the Romney campaign earns Four Pinocchios.

See here

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Adam Serwer (Mother Jones): GOP’s Benghazi Smoking Gun Goes Up in Smoke …. When a set of State Department emails were released Wednesday, one reporting that a local Islamist militia had claimed responsibility for the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya, conservatives thought they had the smoking gun that the Obama administration had lied about what had occurred.

…. There’s only one problem — well, actually, there are many, but one big one: The email appears to have been incorrect…..

….. in the future it’s a good idea to remember that just because someone posts something on Facebook, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Even better: Just because someone said someone posted something on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s true. Even if you really, really want it to be.

Full post here

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You can seen another clip from the show here

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Apologies for posting a Willard video ….. but you have to hear the singing in this:

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Have a perfect day you two!!

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Today:

11:45 ET: VP Biden delivers remarks at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh

3:0 ET: VP Biden at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha

Morning everyone, happy Friday 😉

Rise and Shine

@BarackObama

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All times ET

11:50: President Obama departs Williamsburg, Va.

12:00: VP Biden travels to Penn Valley, Pa., to attend the funeral services for Senator Arlen Specter

12:55: President Obama arrives in New York

2:50: Michelle Obama speaks to grassroots supporters in Chapel Hill, N.C.

9:00: The Debate

11:05: President Obama departs New York

12:15: Arrives at the White House

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Greatest website ever:

RomneyTaxPlan

Thank you Bill!

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Washington Post: Romney’s 12-million job promise has garnered a lot of attention. We became interested in this ad after a reader asked whether the campaign had provided much detail on how he would reach this total …

…. the candidate’s personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines stretching as long as a decade — which in two cases are based on studies that did not even evaluate Romney’s economic plan. The numbers may still add up to 12 million, but they aren’t the same thing — not by a long shot.

… Clearly, some clever campaign staffer thought it would be nice to match up poll-tested themes such as “energy independence,” “tax reform” and “cracking down on China” with actual job numbers. We just find it puzzling that Romney agreed to personally utter these words without asking more questions about the math behind them.

Read the full article here

Greg Sargent: …. Let’s recap what Kessler has discovered here. The plan that is central to Romney’s candidacy on the most important issue of this election — jobs — is a complete sham. This is every bit as bad — or worse — than Romney’s claim to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, or his vow to cut spending by eliminating whole agencies without saying which ones, or his refusal to say how he’ll pay for his tax cuts.

This could not have come at a better time for Obama. Here is the evidence he needs to spell out as clearly as possible that Romney is peddling economic hokum to the American people. Any fair reading of the backup the Romney campaign itself supplied for his plan reveals that it is nothing but a bill of goods. Obama needs to seize on this in a big way. This should be a big story.

Oh, and by the way: Economists have evaluated Obama’s jobs plan. And they concluded it would create one to two million jobs. The bottom line is simple: One candidate has a jobs plan, and the other doesn’t.

More here

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Photos from the Campaign Trail

Miami, October 11 (Scout Tufankjian)

Miami, October 11 (Scout Tufankjian)

Miami, October 11 (Scout Tufankjian)

Miami, October 11 (Scout Tufankjian)

Miami, October 11 (Scout Tufankjian)

Miami, October 11 (Scout Tufankjian)

First Lady Michelle Obama prepares her absentee ballot (Jocelyn Augustino)

Washington DC, October 12 (Scout Tufankjian)

Washington DC, October 12 (Scout Tufankjian)

La Crosse, Wisconsin, October 12 (Christopher Dilts)

La Crosse, Wisconsin, October 12 (Christopher Dilts)

La Crosse, Wisconsin, October 12 (Christopher Dilts)

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Coming up:

2:45 ET: Michelle Obama speaks at a campaign event at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware

CBS 1 * CBS 2 * CNN

5:45 ET: Michelle Obama speaks at a campaign event at Cuyahoga County Community College, Cleveland

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A hoot:

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Unemployment falls to 4-year low

Steve Benen: If recent history is any guide, Republicans will probably start complaining about the Bureau of Labor Statistics sample size any minute now, complaining it’s “skewed.”

The new jobs report released this morning was largely in line with expectations, showing a U.S. economy that added 114,000 jobs in September…..

Given the severity of the Great Recession that began in late 2007, and the losses associated with the years-long jobs crisis, no one should pop any champagne over 114,000 new jobs…..

The reason, however, that the new report is encouraging is the larger context: the unemployment rate dipped to 7.8%, which is nearly a four-year low, and the revisions found 86,000 additional, unreported jobs from the last two years.

More here

The Richmond Enthusiasm Gap

rise and shine

Morning everyone, I’ll be back later today – meanwhile, chat away 😉

rise and shine

Morning everyone, will catch up later today 😉

morning ;-)

The Obama campaign announced in an email this morning that the president’s reelection effort and the Democratic National Committee raised a combined $70 million in the third quarter of the year:

— In the third fundraising quarter of this year, 606,027 people donated to this campaign — even more than gave in the record-breaking previous quarter.

— Those people gave more than 766,000 total donations – 98 percent of them $250 or less, at an average amount of $56. That’s more than twice as many donations than we had at this point in the historic 2008 campaign.

— We are focused on building infrastructure that will help us win in 2012. And each quarter we set a combined goal for the campaign and our allies at the Democratic National Committee. We far exceeded our goal of $55 million this quarter between the two organizations. Great work.

— Together, Obama for America and the DNC raised more than $70 million. And it all happened during a summer when the President was focused on doing the job he was elected to do — a summer when we had to cancel a series of fundraising events and ask everyone to dig a little deeper.

The Obama campaign raised $42.8 million on its own and the DNC took in $27.3 million, an Obama campaign official said.

The announcement follows an $86 million second quarter for Obama and the DNC, and sets up the president to outraise by far the whole GOP field, combined, in back to back fundraising periods.

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(Video takes 10 seconds to start! Thanks Tally)

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Today:

9:0 President Obama, Vice President Biden and First Lady Michelle Obama welcome South Korean President Lee and First Lady Kim to the White House

11:0 The First Lady invites the Republic of Korea’s First Lady Kim Yoon-ok to Annandale High School in Virginia

11:05 The President holds a bilateral meeting with President Lee and official U.S. and South Korean delegations

12:20 The President holds a joint press conference with President Lee

7:0 The President and First Lady welcome South Korean President Lee and First Lady Kim to the White House for a state dinner

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the killing of bin laden

I finally got around to uploading this, it’s that amazing documentary on the killing of Bin Laden from a few weeks ago. It includes an interview with President Obama – if you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth watching.