Make Some Calls – Like This Fella

Columbus, Nov 5

OFA

Visiting a campaign office in Chicago today

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Rise and Shine

OFA

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10:50: President Obama departs the White House

12:25: Arrives Nashua, New Hampshire

2:15: Delivers remarks at a campaign rally at Elm Street Middle School, Nashua

4:30: Vice President Biden, Jill and Beau Biden campaign in Lynchburg, Virginia (live on C-Span)

5:05: President Obama departs Nashua

6:45: Arrives White House

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On Wednesday, the President will travel to Cincinnati, Ohio and Akron, Ohio for campaign events. In the evening, the President and the First Lady will welcome local children and children of military families to trick-or-treat at the North Portico of the White House.

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Col. Lawrence Wilkerson:

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Paul Krugman: For a few days there the Romney campaign was boasting a lot about having Big Mo — and the press corps actually fell for it, briefly. At this point, however, the reality seems to be sinking in: if Romney has Big Mo, it looks like this:

Despite the Denver Debacle and its aftermath, state polls are showing a clear Obama lead in the electoral college, which if anything is getting a bit stronger….

Why? Jonathan Cohn singles out the auto bailout, and rightly so. I’d add, however, that the killing of Osama bin Laden mattered too …. what the auto rescue and the bin Laden strike have in common is that they were both very courageous decisions — decisions that could easily have gone wrong, that faced lots of second-guessing. You can criticize Obama for many things (and I have, and will in future), but he showed true grit when it mattered, and now seems likely to reap the reward.

Full post here

Thank you Criquet

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Truly, Steve Benen is heroic trying to keep track of all these lies

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In case you missed it:

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If you can bear to see Trump’s face, make sure you look at the clip of him on Letterman (at the very start of the video)

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Thank you Meta

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Charles Blow: The saying goes: A man is known by the company he keeps. If that is true, what does the company Mitt Romney keeps say about him?

….. Sununu has apologized, somewhat, for his racial attack on Powell’s motives. But what should we make of all this?

We have a very racially divided electorate …. I worry that Sununu’s statements intentionally go beyond recognizing racial disparities and seek to exploit them.

What does that say about Romney, and what does it say about his campaign’s tactics?

Remember: A man is known by the company he keeps.

Full article here

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Maddow Blog: ‘Susan B. Anthony would be appalled’

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Mediaite: Bill Maher used his final New Rule of the night to warn voters unhappy with President Obama of the political and social consequences of the other guy winning. Maher argued that Mitt Romney winning the presidency would not just be a victory for him, but for every Republican extremist Romney has ever supported in his recent political career. Maher said Romney “may seem like a nice fella,” but he’s “a compulsive liar whose whole life is secret” and would bring too much unwanted baggage into a relationship with America.

…. Maher also warned about the “fresh can of nuts” in Congress with wildly anti-scientific beliefs that would have more free reign under a Republican administration. Maher said that a Republican in the White House would mean the return of “Bible-thumping bullshit” in government.

More here (video at the link)

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Las Vegas, Oct 26 – report and more photos at the Las Vegas Sun. C-Span will have the video of the speech some time today – see here

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😎

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Cagle

McClatchy

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Moooooooorning everyone! Will catch up with emails today, I’m waaaaaaay behind.

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PS:

pete souza & chuck kennedy? magic.

…. with St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Lance Berkman after welcoming the team to the White House to honor their 2011 World Series victory, Jan. 17

….. greeting neighbors outside the home of William and Endia Eason in Cleveland, Ohio, Jan. 4

….  during the flight on Marine One to Soldier Field in Chicago, Ill., Jan. 11

….. greeting Tuskeegee Airmen in the East Garden Room of the White House prior to a screening of the film “Red Tails” in the Family Theater, Jan. 13

….. watching a performance backstage with iCarly cast members prior to an iCarly screening at Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria, Va., Jan. 13

Jan. 27

… boarding Marine One for departure from Cambridge-Dorchester Airport in Cambridge, Md., Jan. 27

First Lady Michelle Obama participates in a potato sack race with Jimmy Fallon in the East Room of the White House, Jan. 25

…. signing items for Make-A-Wish child Rafael Mullet during a visit in the Oval Office, Jan. 25

….. with students at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., Jan. 25

…. hugging Rep. Gabrielle Giffords before delivering the State of the Union address, Jan. 24

How did I miss these, they were posted on Flickr a week ago 😕

More photos here

winds of change …. blowing wild and free

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All (well, almost all) official White House photographs …. Singer: Adele …. Song: Make you feel my love

oh boy….

Washington Post: …. Rick Perry, whose bid for the White House depends heavily on support from religious conservatives, finds himself confronting an issue that is a flash point for that part of his base: his attempt to order schoolgirls to take a vaccine that would protect them against a sexually transmitted virus.

The uproar over the Gardasil vaccine – manufactured by Merck, a major Perry campaign donor – knocked the candidate off-stride during a Republican debate Monday night ….

Perry bristled at accusations from Michele Bachmann that he had pushed the vaccine in 2007 at the bidding of Merck, a Perry donor that also employed a former aide to the governor as a lobbyist.

“It was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them,” Perry said. “I raise about $30 million. And if you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.”

But campaign disclosure records portray a much deeper financial connection with Merck than Perry’s remarks suggest.

His gubernatorial campaigns, for example, have received nearly $30,000 from the drugmaker since 2000, most of that before he issued his vaccine mandate, which was overturned by the Texas legislature.

Merck and its subsidiaries have also given more than $380,000 to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) since 2006, the year that Perry began to play a prominent role in the Washington-based group…

Perry served as chairman of the RGA in 2008 and again this year, until he decided to run for president. The group also ranks among the governor’s biggest donors, giving his campaign at least $4 million over the past five years….

…. One of Perry’s closest confidantes, his former chief of staff Mike Toomey, was then working as an Austin-based lobbyist for Merck, which was in the midst of a multimillion-dollar campaign to persuade states to make the vaccine mandatory.

Toomey, who has declined requests for comment, has since helped found Make Us Great Again, a pro-Perry super PAC that can accept unlimited donations from corporations and wealthy donors. The group plans to raise as much as $55 million to help Perry compete for the GOP nomination, according to media reports.

Full article here

‘you are making us choose’

The Jewish Daily Forward: … President Obama’s May 19 speech outlining his administration’s response to the so-called Arab Spring contained a ringing defense of Israel’s continued security and a stinging rebuke to Hamas. Obama plainly defended Israel’s right to exist and its place in the community of nations…

But the president also stated out loud what every president over the last two decades and many Israeli officials have acknowledged: The borders of Israel before the 1967 war, before the 43-year occupation, are the starting point for negotiations with Palestinians. The starting point, not the conclusion, as Obama also called for “land swaps” that, again, have long been an accepted mechanism for dividing the contested land….

….. the stern conditions for peace talks that Netanyahu enunciated before Congress were framed in such a way to leave little diplomatic space for the Palestinians. His narrative placed all the blame on them for the current impasse … while he promised he’d make “far reaching compromises” in the interests of peace, it’s unclear what that could mean when so much is off the table.

…. Netanyahu’s defiant stance puts American Jews in a heart-wrenching conundrum. We can choose to support his view of the world, in which an aggrieved Israel bears no responsibility for the occupation and for the impasse in negotiations – and many American Jews will… Most American Jews don’t want further procrastination, but an end to the conflict, which has stained Israel’s moral standing in the way that occupation and continued violence inevitably do…

…here’s what Obama does embody in his insistence on a peace process: The quintessential idealism and optimism that undergirds the American personality, the “yes we can” feeling that is right now at odds with Israeli fatalism, along with a pragmatic approach to foreign policy that sees a much larger picture than Netanyahu does….

We want the Palestinian leadership to take bold steps to recognize a new reality and the need for compromise. Why shouldn’t we expect the same of Israeli leadership?

Most of us hoped that Netanyahu would have given a courageous, creative speech to move the process forward, safeguarding Israel’s security as he must, but also recognizing the cogent, entirely reasonable requests from the President of the United States.

You are making us choose, Mr. Prime Minister. Please don’t.

Full article here

ah, wonderful wisconsin

😆

west wing week: ‘oconus ii – mamalluca’ (march 25, 2011)

vote! and cancel hers out ;-)

“make history again”