rise and shine

First lady Michelle Obama listens to President Barack Obama speak in the State Dining Room of the White House, February 26. President Obama hosted the 2012 Governors Dinner which coincides with the yearly meeting of the National Governors Association meeting in DC.

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Michelle Obama and Jill Biden also deliver remarks.

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The week ahead:

Tuesday: PBO will deliver remarks at the United Auto Workers conference in Washington, DC.

Wednesday: PBO and the First Lady will host a dinner at the White House to honor Armed Forces, who served in Iraq, and their families.

Thursday: PBO will travel to Nashua, New Hampshire, and deliver remarks on the economy. In the evening, the President will attend campaign events in New York City.

Friday: PBO will travel to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to visit with wounded service members.

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Ooops – this is one poll Politico will have troubling ignoring …. because it’s their own:

A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll reveals the prolonged nominating battle is taking a toll on the GOP candidates and finds the president’s standing significantly improved from late last year.

President Barack Obama’s approval rating is 53 percent, up 9 percentage points in four months. Matched up against his Republican opponents, he leads Mitt Romney by 10 points (53-43) and Rick Santorum by 11 (53-42). Even against a generic, unnamed Republican untarnished by attacks, Obama is up 5 percentage points. In November, he was tied.

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Thanks Loriah

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USA Today: ….. Today …. President Obama meets with state executives from across the country and with political donors in Washington.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will both speak today to the National Governors Association during a meeting in the State Dining Room. Their wives, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden will also deliver remarks.

…. This afternoon, Obama and Biden will meet with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner …. Obama ends his day with a closed-door campaign fundraiser in Washington.

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CBS: Mitt Romney went to the Daytona 500 NASCAR race Sunday for what should have been a chance to show he’s one of the guys. Instead, in casual conversation with an Associated Press reporter at the Florida track, he reminded people once again that he is not exactly a regular Joe.

Asked by the AP reporter if he follows NASCAR, Romney responded, “Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.”

Democrats and liberals quickly ridiculed the remark on Twitter. “I don’t know people who fish but I know people who own yachts,” tweeted Brad Woodhouse, communications director of the Democratic National Committee….

More here

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Link

Donna Dem: I’m raising money on my grassroots fundraising page to help President Obama win in 2012. The President is counting on people like you and me giving what we can afford to build this campaign. Will you donate $5 today to help me try and reach my goal?

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Morning everyone 😉

rise and shine

Morning everyone 😉 Will catch up later.

oh politico…..

Am I the last to see this story? 😕

Cognidissidence: The right wing propaganda site Politico was so eager to try to do a smear job on President Barack Obama and his visit to Milwaukee that they failed to look before they leaped and ended up landing into a pile of foolishness with both feet.

Yup, they mistook the Wisconsin state flag as being the flag of Wisconsin Local 1848.

Once they realized how stupid they looked, they deleted the post …. but thanks to the power of Google Cache, you can see it for yourself.

More here

🙄

Donovan Slack is the ‘reporter’ who had the story on Politico about Michelle Obama buying $50,000 worth of lingerie …. but never followed it up with the admission from the English paper, that first reported it, that it was untrue.

the soviet union is rising!

ThinkProgress: Of all the candidates vying for the GOP presidential nomination, Rep. Michele Bachmann perhaps has the most colorful record of flubbing historical facts … today, on the right-wing Christian attorney Jay Sekulow’s radio show, the congresswoman evinced a far more disturbing lack of basic knowledge about world history. Specifically, Bachmann said the American people are worried about “the rise of the Soviet Union.”

Apparently no one’s told her that America’s one-time Cold War nemesis has not existed for 20 years:

BACHMANN: What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward. And especially with this very bad debt ceiling bill, what we have done is given a favor to President Obama and the first thing he’ll whack is five hundred billion out of the military defense at a time when we’re fighting three wars. People recognize that.

In December 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 separate countries. It’s hard to believe Bachmann that the American people live in continued terror of an “evil empire” that no longer exists.

Thank you Loriah

a little less conversation michele, please?

It’s not Elvis’s birthday ….. it’s the anniversary of his death 😳

‘romney flubs foreign policy again’

Steve Benen: When it comes to policy, I think Mitt Romney’s biggest problem is his atrocious record on jobs. But a close second are his bizarre struggles with foreign policy.

Take this one from earlier today: “Mitt Romney talked this morning at a Town Hall in Wolfesboro, N.H. about the U.S. military action in Libya…. It’s not clear what the questioner asked, but Romney clearly refers to congressional approval of the U.S. action in Libya, which did not happen.”

Now, the fact that Romney is confused about congressional approval of the mission in Libya isn’t, by itself, a big deal. The former governor probably just got confused …. The larger problem, though, is that these foreign policy errors keep happening.

Romney recently described current conditions as “peacetime,” despite the wars. Last year, Romney tried to trash the New START nuclear treaty in an op-ed, prompting Fred Kaplan to respond, “In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and — let’s not mince words — thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney’s attack on the New START treaty.”

…. In all likelihood, the economy will dominate the 2012 election, and Romney can largely get away with foreign policy and national security ignorance, since voters’ attention will be elsewhere. But for those who care about the issue, it’s discouraging that Romney has been running for president pretty much non-stop for more than four years, and he still can’t keep these details straight.

More here

oh mitt (part 9,372) ….

President Obama arrives to speak to workers at the Alcoa Davenport Works Factory in Bettendorf, Iowa

Des Moines Register: Alcoa officials and business leaders dismissed an assertion from … Mitt Romney that a federal labor board’s actions could threaten jobs at the Alcoa plant in Iowa. “No, we don’t see that happening,” said Alcoa spokesman Michael Belwood…

Romney said Monday that National Labor Relations Board’s actions against aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co. could result in job losses nationally and in Iowa. Boeing is accused of trying to move its Washington-based assembly line for its 787 airliner to a new nonunion factory in South Carolina as retaliation for past strikes in Washington.

Romney has complained about the federal board before, and on Monday said its decision to file a complaint against Boeing for unfair labor practices “slanted the field toward labor bosses.”

….. but the outcome of the NLRB hearing – whether it’s in favor of Boeing or against – will have no impact on this plant, the Alcoa spokesman said. Alcoa is growing, Belwood said. It has added 240 jobs since Dec. 1 and it has 60 more to fill in July and August. “The outlook is very good for the industry and for this plant.”

…. the National Labor Relations Board is an independent board and the president doesn’t control its decisions other than to appoint new members as terms expire.

….U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat, said Romney made it sound like a final decision has been made to block Boeing from opening its South Carolina plant. The reality is, the hearing process is at its beginning stages, Braley said. “(Romney) obviously doesn’t understand how the National Labor Relations Board works.”

More here

Thanks Suzanne

mitt’s a foreign policy expert, you know

You had to love the army guy’s expression when Mittens pledged to hand Afghanistan “over to the Taliban military”

🙄

eh?

I followed the link above on Mark Halperin’s ‘The Page’ at Time this morning…..

It brought up this worrying news – ABC: Economists are split over whether today’s dismal employment numbers will stay the Reserve Bank’s hand when it meets next month…..

….and from there there was a link to a report on the story (ABC): Employment has fallen by 22,100 in April, with a steep fall in full-time jobs driving the decline….

Worrying.

Except Halperin has linked to a story about Australia, not America … the hint was in the address: abc.net.au

Wakey, wakey Mark.

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He’s woken up, the story has been removed from the site.

ooooooops

Sorry for bringing a Politico story here, but this one made me smile…..

Politico: Michele Bachmann’s suggestion Saturday that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H., rather than Lexington and Concord, Mass., marks the third time in recent months that the potential GOP presidential hopeful has committed a puzzling gaffe about history and current affairs.

Making her first trek to New Hampshire as a 2012 prospect, Bachmann told a GOP crowd in Concord: “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.”

The Revolutionary War began, not in New Hampshire’s capital, but in the famous two towns more than 50 miles away in Massachusetts.

For Bachmann, who leads the House Tea Party caucus and champions a return to the Constitution, to get such basic facts wrong about the country’s birth is revealing.

Her comment wasn’t just an off-hand reference that she inserted in her remarks. At a fundraiser Friday night on the New Hampshire Seacoast, Bachmann said almost the exact same thing, according to the Minnesota Post: “It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world, you are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard.”

Bachmann’s geographic mix-up prompted derision among some New Hampshire Republicans. “Is she on her way to Lexington, N.H. now?” cracked Matt Suermann in response to somebody who posted on Twitter that Bachmann had left the building.

…“She makes Sarah Palin look like Count Metternich,” groaned longtime GOP consultant Mike Murphy….

…By late Saturday, Bachmann had taken to Facebook in an attempt to swiftly address her Concord mix-up. “So I misplaced the battles Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire,” she wrote. “It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!”

More here