The Dream is Now

‘Why Obama Now’

‘An animated short about the big choice in 2012’s presidential election by Simpsons / Family Guy animator Lucas Gray’

Also available at WhyObamaNow

rise and shine

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They Gave Us A Republic: ….…I admit to watching, dumbfounded, as contraception became, in the immortal words of the Vice President, “a big fucking deal” over the last week or so…. I had a busy week, and just left it up to Obama…..

What he was up to, it looks to me like, was positioning his pieces to call “checkmate” in one of those games of eleventh dimensional chess that I am starting to believe might actually exist.

He must have been laughing his ass off when the Bishops and their GOP allies picked this fight… Some pro-choice republicans were aghast, and pleaded with the leadership not to, but they charged ahead, like a two-ton bull, right through the doors of the china shop. And Barack Obama smiled and stood aside, holding them open.

…. Obama wasn’t boxed in. Not at all. But now the Bishops are. So far, they have been silent after thunderously declaring that nothing short of total repeal of the mandate would suit them. And as they lost the healthcare reform battle, they are going to lose this one, too. Because they are wrong and their time is past. And by their silence, I think they are telling us all that they realize they’ve been had.

Full post here

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Deaniac (The People’s View): Nontroversy resolved. Another stroke of genius by Obama.

… now the President has stripped off all the cover for the GOP’s anti-women agenda, and they are still not smart enough to hide it. Now women know for sure that this fight is about birth control and not about religious liberty. Now women also know who stands in their corner to protect birth control and which party wants to take this very basic health care right away from them.

Full post here

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Smartypants: In The Atlantic, James Fallows has written one of the most interesting analyses of the Obama administration that I’ve seen.

…. if you’re like me, you won’t agree with some of the things he says. But what I appreciated about it is that he doesn’t seem to have an ax to grind from either side. He’s not trying to defend Obama or take him down. I’ll admit that its rare to see an analysis these days that doesn’t at least seem to have one or the other agenda – no matter how deep people try to bury it.

More here

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TPM – thanks Loriah

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Addictinginfo: The Republican Party is tearing itself apart and many conservative voters are considering abandoning the sinking ship to vote for none other than President Obama in 2012.

According to a poll conducted by Wenzel Strategies on behalf of conservative publication World Net Daily, 1 in 5 Republicans will vote for or are leaning towards voting for President Obama in the upcoming Presidential Election in November.

Full post here

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Otrainofthought

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Steve Benen: Chronicling Mitt’s mendacity

Several weeks ago, I launched a new Friday afternoon feature, highlighting the most blatant Mitt Romney falsehoods of the week. It moved to Maddow Blog last week, and here’s this week’s installment. (It does not include mendacity from Romney’s CPAC speech this afternoon.)

More here

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Toons

Bob Cesca

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Maddow Blog

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Eclectablog

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Morning everyone 😉

evening all

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Steve Benen: ….. “It’s safe to say Speaker John Boehner does not agree with President Obama’s suggestion on Tuesday that Americans are better off now than they were when he took office. “Are you kidding me?!” Boehner said loudly in response to a reporter’s question on the comment.”

…. Obviously, national conditions aren’t close to where they need to be. …. Maybe, if guys like Boehner would start passing jobs bills and stop holding the economy back on purpose, the public would start to feel like the country is on the right track again.

But for those who take reality seriously, there’s no real question as to whether the country is better off now than in January 2009:

Then the nation was hemorrhaging jobs; now it’s gaining jobs.

Then the economy was shrinking; now the economy is growing.

Then the American automotive industry was on the verge of collapse; now it’s starting to thrive.

Then taxpayers were sending money to Wall Street; now taxpayers are being paid back.

Then Osama bin Laden was targeting Americans and our allies; now he’s dead and al Qaeda’s leadership has been decimated.

Then U.S. troops were headed into the Middle East in greater numbers; now they’re headed home with their heads held high.

Republicans, including John Boehner, drove the United States into a pretty deep ditch during the Bush/Cheney era, and conditions are still pretty ugly. That doesn’t change the simple fact that the nation is much stronger now than the day the president was inaugurated ….

Full post here

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The GOP’s racial confusion:

The Week

AP: A third former employee considered filing a workplace complaint against Herman Cain over what she deemed aggressive and unwanted behavior when she and Cain, now a Republican presidential candidate, worked together during the late 1990s, the woman told The Associated Press on Wednesday. She said the behavior included a private invitation to his corporate apartment.

The woman said he made sexually suggestive remarks or gestures about the same time that two co-workers had settled separate harassment complaints against Cain, who was then the head of the National Restaurant Association.

Full article here

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Washington Post: Car buyers were out in force in October, snapping up trucks and SUVs and taking advantage of deals on Japanese cars.

U.S. car and truck sales were expected to top 1 million in October, a surprising number for a month when sales are usually slow. When adjusted for seasonal factors, that would be the best pace since the Cash for Clunkers program in August 2009.

Full article here

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Mediaite: In a Quinnipiac poll taken Oct. 25-31, embattled GOP juggernaut Herman Cain continued to show amazing staying power …. (but) The real news from this poll, taken before most of the fallout from Politico‘s alleged sexual harassment expose, might be that some rays of sunshine are finally hitting President Obama.

….. President Obama gained six points on his approval rating … and is now beating all Republican challengers by margins of 5-16 points. The President has seen steady progress in the polls since rolling out his American Jobs Act in September, taking it on the road, and taking the fight to the Republicans who oppose it.

Elsewhere in the poll, Democrats opened up a lead on the generic House ballot, beating Republicans 42-36, after tying them at 39 in October.

Full post here

Also, the President is up to 45% approval with Gallup today – that’s a rise of seven points in two weeks 😉

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Wait – Suskind said the Obama administration didn’t like women much:

Washingtonian

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White House

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AP: Michelle Obama has presented national arts and humanities awards to 12 community-based, after-school programs, including for at-risk kids.

The programs use dance, theater, writing, music, history and other art mediums to inspire teen moms and other young people and help them reach their potential. The first lady said at a White House ceremony Wednesday that the programs show that the arts are a lifeline – not a luxury – for many of these kids.

Most of the participants graduate from high school or earn a GED and go on to college.

The 2011 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Awards are presented on behalf of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in partnership with three national cultural agencies.

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Gallup

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President Obama leaves Andrews Air Force Base en route to France

‘jane hamsher’s running out of sheep’

Norbrook’s Blog: …. other people have examined Accountability Now, which Jane and Glenn Greenwald launched with great fanfare a few years ago. Ostensibly it was to recruit progressive candidates, but it seemed to end up putting money into Jane and Glenn’s pockets:

Accountability Now collected $113,695 in donations during 2009, as it reported to the FEC, and spent $169,992 that year on nine consultants … including Hamsher ($24,000) and PAC cofounder Glenn Greenwald ($24,000)….

But it’s not Jane’s only PAC. Although most of the scrutiny has been on Accountability Now, when you look at FDL Action PAC’s FEC summary, you see something very interesting:

Fire Dog Lake: $90,063 …. Commonsense Media: $9,920

Hmm… it looks like there’s about $100K of “synergy” going on ….

…. recently Jane had a little blow-up, right after OFA announced what the President had raised (“a staggering $47 million in the past three months”)….

FDL Action’s fundraising wasn’t quite as good:

No wonder she’s pissed! Apparently all the previous donors have been thoroughly shorn, and new sheep aren’t lining up….

Read the full superb post here

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Norbrook’s post is brilliantly timely in light of Hamsher and Dan Choi’s arrests today outside the White House (along with another 60 or so people who actually do care about the environment – but you won’t hear much about them). They were staging a laudable (in my humble opinion) demonstration urging President Obama to block a proposed pipeline that would bring oil from Canada’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries (the Keystone XL pipeline).

Choi tweeted this yesterday:

Okay, so now that he can’t attack the President any more on gay rights issues – without looking even sillier than usual – he’s discovered (true, somewhat belatedly) that he really, really cares about the planet. And if caring about it so much sees him end up in jail, thereby getting him some attention again (when, really, most had forgotten he existed), then that’s a cross he’d, um, have to bear. Mission accomplished, well done Dan.

Hamsher?

Well, you have to admire her purity on this one. She is so passionate and utterly sincere about the blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline she would never, ever have anything to do with anyone who supported it, right?

June 2011:

Dear friends,

…..Hillary Clinton’s State Department is holding up the Canadian-American Keystone XL pipeline … unnecessarily inhibiting billions in economic activity and hundreds of thousands of jobs from being created, the State Department is preventing a much-needed regional stimulus. Click here to tell the State Department to get out of the way of America’s job creators and issue the Keystone XL pipeline building permit!

Onward,

Grover Norquist

President

Americans for Tax Reform

Ah yes, Hamsher’s old buddy, the ‘tax pledge’ guy who makes Rick Perry seems like Mao Tse Tung, the one she collaborated with in opposition to President Obama (and his then Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel).

What? She can partner the lovely Grover on one issue, it doesn’t mean she agrees with him on everything?

Of course! Just like she can team up with President Obama when … oh, never mind.

Any way, those of you who might suggest that this….

…. might have had something to do with Hamsher’s heartfelt concerns about the Keystone XL pipeline – and you can be sure she lies awake at night worrying about it … even though she has a hard-hitting interview with Cenk Uygur the next day (“Jane, you’re, like, soooooooo great!” “I know Cenk – but you are too!”) …. shame on you.

Yes, she has been jailed, and she may well claim she was waterboarded while she was in there, and that will raise her sinking profile, and may even attract a few more dollars to her struggling PAC, but ….. shame on you.

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PS

Ooooops, $$$$$ are creating a strain between the Firebaggers.

John Aravosis has started selling these t-shirts on his “I HATE OBAMA SO MUCH I CAN’T EVEN FIND THE WORDS ” blog:

….and that’s made Hamsher’s peeps very, very angry:

Oh noes, the Firebaggers are eating each other alive …. after all, there are only so many $$$$ to go around 😉

A second PS:

Credit must go to Aravosis, having picked only white male models for the t-shirts he’s being trying to sell so far…

….. he chose a ‘non-white’ man for his ‘Proud Firebagger’ offering. Jeez, if he added a woman to the line-up we might even accuse him of being inclusive.

Thank you Tien Le for the link to Norbrook’s post 😉

the professional left’s heroine…. (updated)

Read Shoq’s experience with Miss BP here – and their Twitter exchange here

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This gem of a 2010 story by David Weigel (now Slate) in the Washington Independent can never be re-posted enough:

Weigel was reporting on an anti-healthcare reform Tea Party rally where he spoke to one of the organizers and speakers, Kathryn Serkes. She told him:

“I’m in contact with folks on the progressive side. They’re saying right now that Pelosi’s almost there with the votes. What they’re saying is that there’s some serious arm-twisting – their words were union thuggery. One progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery this weekend, targeting Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.).”

The source, she confirmed, was Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.

Weigel emailed Hamsher to ask her if she was, in fact, working with the Tea Party on the issue and if she had used the term “union thuggery” in her conversations with Serkes.

Hamsher didn’t reply, instead posting this at Firedoglake in response to his report (‘Tea Party Activist Working With Firedoglake’s Hamsher on HCR Whip Count’ – here)

“Dave Weigel isn’t a journalist, he’s a smear-monger that makes things up and projects his own fantasies onto his stories ….I know Katherine, we were on MSNBC together and we’ve spoken about working on the pot legalization measure in California in the future …. she tells me that when Weigel approached her and asked her who her “source” was, she didn’t say. He said “It’s Jane Hamsher, isn’t it…I’ve been around.” According to Katherine, she didn’t respond.

….I’m not “working” with the tea partiers on health care. But Weigel doesn’t care about the truth …. He’s just a fantasist printing propaganda, and the Washington Independent has no higher standards than to print it.”

Problem?

Weigel had a recording of his conversation with the Tea Party woman:

SERKES: They’re saying that there’s some serious arm-twisting, and their words were union thuggery.

WEIGEL: Who’s the they?

SERKES: The progressive side. A progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery going on this weekend.

WEIGEL: Is this the Firedoglake folks?

SERKES: It’s Jane. You’re figured it out.

WEIGEL: I’m not new at this.

SERKES: She said they were after Altmire this weekend. Yeah, because Jane and I last talked Saturday.

Hamsher’s response to being outed?

“Weigel has now posted the audio tape of his conversation with Katherine Serkes at the Tea Party event, in which he does not inform her that he was taping her. The recording confirms that she did use my name, however. I’ve asked Weigel twice now if at any point prior to this segment he informed her that she was being recorded, and he has not responded.

…. attending a Tea Party event and taping attendees without their knowledge, then posting that tape to discredit them in support of passing the health care bill, sounds more like the actions of a Democratic political operative …. he aspires to be a member of a cliquish, insider set with the moral flexibility to align themselves with anyone in power.”

Ah yes, the big issue here was the recording, not the fact that it had been revealed that Hamsher was working with the Tea Party towards their common goal: the defeat of President Obama’s healthcare bill. Or that Serkes quoted Hamsher using Tea Party speak: “Union thuggery.” Note how she failed to address being exposed, instead resorting to personal abuse.

(Links: here and here)

After exposing Hamsher, Weigel asked for “an apology and a retraction” – he’s still waiting.

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Fox and Friend:

Yep, she joined in on Fox News’ ‘Kill The Bill’ campaign, appearing on the network soon after calling for a boycott of it.

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This story, from May of this year, is an eye-opener too:

Mike Elk (ExiledOnline, May 2011): Yesterday I confronted Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake, over her refusal to honor a labor boycott against the Huffington Post that two major writers unions have called for.

… Hamsher wasn’t satisfied merely crossing the picket line: She went on the offensive against boycott organizers … In an email exchange with several members of the labor movement, Hamsher jeered at the writers’ union organizers, mocking their organizing efforts….

In response to Hamsher’s outrageous anti-labor attacks, I wrote to one of these listserv groups on which both Hamsher and I were members: “Jane Hamsher the last person I would ever want to have as my shop steward” … this was not the first time Hamsher has taken a position hostile to workers’ rights and labor ….

…Hamsher also attacked Sal Roselli (president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers) implying that he was an Italian thug, an old tactic used by anti-labor PR people to smear labor activists as mobsters ….

….When I raised this ugly episode yesterday in the context of Hamsher’s attacks on the HuffPo boycott, Hamsher responded to me, “You’re just halucinating [sic] now, Mike. I never ‘tried to get people fired from their jobs,’ nor did I ever use ‘race baiting language to paint Sal Roselli as a thug.’….You’re either really mentally ill, or incredibly malicious.”

….. This was a new low for Hamsher…….

Full post here

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See here

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See here

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Rooted Cosmopolitan

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Five years ago she posted this photoshopped picture of Joe Lieberman as a ‘black’ man on Huffington Post, in an attempt to describe his efforts to “woo African American voters”. The photo was promptly removed, and she offered a ‘sorry if you were offended’ apology.

Link

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Osborneink.com (December 2010): Jane the Hamsher is one of the cool kids… yet she wouldn’t recognize progress if it smacked her in the face, and so far has achieved nothing resembling progress on any front. Indeed, I have been waiting for someone to tell me what this woman’s “progressive” credentials are.

She is first and foremost a self-aggrandizing publicity whore whose Accountability Now PAC has so far given $0 to progressive candidates in the first two years of its existence while spending $285,272. If she ran a non-profit this way, it would get shut down. As things stand, the PAC (which also counts Kos and Glenn Greenwald as operators) has only made noise.

…. Hamsher’s kill-the-bill madness included an appearance on FOX News just months after her own call to boycott the network. She later returned to that channel spouting nonsense about cap-and-trade. Her recent appearances on Lawrence O’Donnell leave me convinced progress is not her purpose.

Jane has a troubling problem with transparency and truthfulness…..

Full post here

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rcade (DK, March 2010): Firedoglake publisher Jane Hamsher has become one of the most polarizing figures in the liberal blogosphere, moving people sharply to the pro or con column with her outspoken opposition to the health care reform bill, appearances on Fox News bashing the Obama administration and the letter she sent with conservative activist Grover Norquist demanding the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Hamsher wields a lot of influence by operating two Democratic political action committees, FDL Action PAC and Accountability Now PAC. By the end of 2009 these PACs had accumulated $454,000 from thousands of individual donors….

The Federal Election Commission reports show that Hamsher’s PACs are a significant source of income for Firedoglake, but my experience trying to question her about them suggests that she’s not big on transparency.

… Accountability Now collected $113,695 in donations during 2009, as it reported to the FEC, and spent $169,992 that year on nine consultants … including Hamsher ($24,000) and PAC cofounder Glenn Greenwald ($24,000)….

Full post here

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HistoryByDay (March 2010)

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WeeSeeYou

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Osborneink: …. Jane Hamsher is quite obviously accepting money from BP. Why is that important? Because according to Hamsher, anyone who takes money from the oil company is guilty of selling out:

“Carbon cap and trade was a scheme cooked up by BP and Enron lobbyists in the mid nineties. BP has subsequently dropped millions of dollars into the coffers of green groups to pave the way for it. Obama’s cry to pass Kerry-Lieberman as punishment for BP is not only highly ironic, it’s also illustrative of just how broken our national discourse around environmental issues has become.

Until progressive groups successfully address the challenge of funding themselves independent of the elite individuals and institutions that act as enforcers of a corporate agenda, they will not be able to successfully advocate for progressive causes. Any success they might have will mean that their funding dries up, and they will cease to exist.”

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Link

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ABL (BalloonJuice):

See full post here

ABL’s Balloon Juice post refers to this campaign promoted by ‘figaro’ at FDL:

ABL (Balloon Juice):

The post about “Afro-Americans” needing an “education program” appeared on FDL on May 18 – it’s still there, never removed.

‘obama’s rivals now look like lilliputians to his gulliver’

Jonathan Freedland (The UK Guardian): Last week, when Barack Obama released his birth certificate to silence those who had long questioned his American identity, he explained that he did not normally respond to such nonsense because “you know, I’ve got other things to do”. Now we know that those “other things” included meticulous planning for an event that could well transform his presidency, reshaping both the way he is seen and the foreign policy he pursues.

… the success of the operation in Abbottabad now makes Obama’s rivals look small indeed, Lilliputians chasing wild fantasies while Gulliver deals with the things that matter. He has rendered even more laughable Donald Trump’s declaration that “I feel proud of myself” for flushing out the proof of Obama’s Hawaiian birth. The president has shown what a true achievement looks like.

For, like it or not, no trophy mattered more to American public opinion … Obama’s role in slaying the dragon may not make him a national hero, but it will take a special kind of stupidity for Republicans to question his patriotism now.

The killing in Pakistan will bury another criticism, rarely articulated explicitly: the suggestion that Obama was somehow insufficiently tough, insufficiently macho, to be America’s commander-in-chief … Crude though it may be, Obama just passed that test with flying colours of red, white and blue.

He did it, though, his own way … he avoided the crass cowboy talk that was a hallmark of the previous administration: the official statement of Saddam’s capture began with the words “We got him”. Obama’s style was, by contrast, measured and steady, recalling 9/11 and speaking movingly of the images of “that September day” that the world did not see, starting with “The empty seat at the dinner table”.

From now on Obama will be viewed slightly differently at home and abroad, his coolness understood to be unflappable and poker-faced, rather than chilly and professorial. One former foreign minister who has seen the president up close believes that Bin Laden’s scalp will lead other world leaders to conclude that, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, “Obama may speak softly – but he carries a big stick”…

…he has scored a valuable victory, one that lifts his own standing but also arrests the gloomy, declinist mood that has gripped some in his country, convinced that American power is on the slide. He has done in two years what his predecessor failed to do in eight. But Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner should stay in the White House basement: al-Qaida remains, the war in Afghanistan is not over, and there is still so much more work to do.

Full article here

fine print

A screenprint of first lady Michelle Obama by Mickalene Thomas, part of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibit, “Americans Now”

West Wing Week (“Future Planes of the Future” April 2, 2010)

White House YouTube Channel: With everything that President Obama does in a given week, it can be easy to miss important news and interesting events. West Wing Week sums up the past seven days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or wherever the President may travel. It features highlights from last weeks events plus behind-the-scenes footage of life in the White House.