Rise and Shine

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Today:

9:0: The President and First Lady host a breakfast with veterans; the Vice President and Dr Biden also attend

11:0: The President participates in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery; the First Lady, Vice President and Dr Biden also attend

11:15: The President delivers remarks at Arlington National Cemetery

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Mike Thompson

Thank you Relellit – I ADORE this!

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There’s a surprise, Gallup the least accurate polling company during the campaign 🙄

Read Nate Silver’s article here

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NYT Editorial: The millionaires and billionaires who gave nearly $500 million to independent groups in the race to elect Mitt Romney and other Republicans not only bet on the wrong party, they bet on the wrong tactic. They believed that an endless drumbeat of television advertisements would be enough to drive voters away from President Obama and Democratic policies.

It did not work…..

…. the biggest-spending conservative groups were trounced. American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove, spent $104 million in the general election, but none of its candidates won. The United States Chamber of Commerce spent $24 million backing Republicans in 15 Senate races; only two of them won. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, spent $53 million on nine Republican candidates, eight of whom lost.

… A backlash against the damaging power of big money cannot come too soon.

Full editorial here

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Steve Benen: First up from the God Machine this week is a look at the 2012 presidential election, and the differences along religious lines….

….. the results among Roman Catholic voters are arguably the most electorally significant. In every recent cycle, Catholics have been considered a key swing constituency and President Obama narrowly won their support, 50% to 48%. It suggests Republicans’ efforts to focus on contraception and reproductive rights had limited success, and the Bishops’ lobbying largely fell on deaf ears.

Also note, while many on the right hoped 2012 would be the year that Jewish voters abandoned Democrats, that didn’t come close to happening. Though Obama fared slightly worse among Jewish voters as compared to 2008, he still enjoyed overwhelming support.

Read full post here

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Deaniac (The People’s View): The Impact of A President: A Personal Reflection on Equality

Four years ago, on election day 2008, I was a poll-captain for the No on 8 campaign in California. After working day and night trying to beat back California’s attempt to ban marriage equality, election day was finally upon us, and my job was to lead my team of volunteers to speak to voters in the parking lot of the polling place about voting No on 8. The team of volunteers rotated throughout the day, in 2, 3 or 4 hour shifts. Some stayed even half a day. I was there all day. From the break of dawn before the polls opened till they closed…..

Read full post here

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Oooooh, cruel!

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Yahoo: It was an intimate snapshot of a sweet celebration: Minutes after the networks called the 2012 presidential election for Barack Obama on Tuesday night, the Obama for America campaign posted a picture of him hugging his wife along with a simple message: “Four more years.” Within minutes, it became the most popular post in the history of Twitter and the most-liked image in the history of Facebook….

…. no one was more surprised than the woman who took the photo back in August, Scout Tufankjian….

…. The President is “so much happier and more relaxed” when he’s with his family … he and the first lady are so focused on each other. The way that they play off each other and get energy from each other… when I was shooting the president during the 2008 campaign I would watch them greet each other on stage and I used to text-message my boyfriend, now my husband: ‘Do you love me as much as Barack loves Michelle?’ and he’d be like, ‘Probably not, no’.”

More here

Thanks BWD

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Cool bag – and shoes!

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Morning everyone 😉

This and That – And More On The Enthusiasm Gap

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Michael Cohen (The Guardian): Two conventions, two Americas. Seldom has the divide been greater – Witnessing both conferences is to see anger from the Republicans and abiding hope from the Democrats

…. the philosophical and tonal divide between them has never felt broader. Quite simply, Democrats and Republicans operate in two completely distinct realms, one that is defined by an attachment to reality and one that is increasingly detached from it.

…. Republicans reside in a fantasy world where government plays no role but that of malevolence, where the free market is the salvation to all that ails this nation and where the country is locked in a Manichaean struggle between the forces of freedom and a failed, socialist interloper named Barack Obama.

…. For four decades, Republicans have relied on an undercurrent of white resentment toward social and economic change to maintain their pre-eminence in national politics. But with an African-American president and the country moving closer to “minority-majority” status, that dominance is slipping away and it feeds the sense of anger and desperation they tried to keep hidden in Tampa, but that all too often crept to the surface….

…. the contrast between the hues in Charlotte and Tampa was remarkable. The Democratic party is a party that looks like the palette of the American experience, not just in skin colour, but in class level. The Republican party (the one in the Tampa convention hall) is one that looks like Sunday brunch at a country club.

Full article here

Thanks Ladyhawke and amk

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President Obama’s introduction at The Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida, Sept 9

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Genius:

‏@RafalcaRomney

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AP: Ford is adding 1,200 workers to a suburban Detroit factory to build the Fusion, a sign of confidence that the revamped sedan will be a big seller.

Ford Americas President Mark Fields told workers at the Flat Rock plant Monday that the Fusion’s market segment is growing two times faster than the rest of the U.S. auto industry. The new Fusion goes on sale this fall.

…. Ford will hire the 1,200 new workers starting next spring. It will also invest $555 million in new equipment at the plant.

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NYT

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President Obama demonstrates size of bounce received by Romney after Republican convention:

Florida, Sept. 9

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R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” was used in the Fox News coverage of the Democratic National Convention last night. R.E.M. today, through its music publisher, Warner-Tamerlane Music, demanded that Fox News cease and desist from continuing its unlicensed and unauthorized use of the song. Michael Stipe said, “We have little or no respect for their puff adder brand of reportage. Our music does not belong there.”

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McClatchy

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Steve Kornacki (Salon): Barack Obama is winning …and he has been pretty much all year

The final evidence isn’t in yet, but there are strong indicators that Barack Obama received a real boost from the Democratic convention – bigger than the paltry bump Mitt Romney got out of his party’s gathering and potentially big enough to push Obama’s national lead to heights not seen since Romney emerged from the GOP primaries back in the spring.

Gallup’s daily trendline, which remained flat during and immediately after the Republican convention, has spiked in Obama’s favor over the last few days; as of Sunday afternoon, his lead was five points. He’s also pulled a few points ahead in Rasmussen’s daily poll, which has tended to be more Romney-friendly than other surveys, grabbed a four-point lead in a Reuters/Ipsos poll, and seen his job approval rating crack the 50 percent mark. A PPP poll released Sunday night also showed Obama hitting 50 percent in Ohio…..

The movement in Obama’s direction reinforces a point that many neutral campaign observers have been reluctant to make for months now: The presidential race is not, and has not been, a virtual tie – Obama is, and has been, winning.

More here

Thanks BWD

rise and shine

CBS Sports

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12:30: White House llive and CNN Live streaming

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TPM: Today the presidential gloves really come off.

In a Tuesday speech hosted by the Associated Press in Washington, D.C., President Obama will deliver a broadside to the House-passed Republican budget, which calls for upending Medicare and making deep cuts to domestic social programs. Obama will describe it as a dark vision for America and draw a clear contrast with his campaign themes of reducing inequality and asking the wealthy to help pay down the nation’s debt.

“This congressional Republican budget, however, is something different altogether. It’s a Trojan Horse,” Obama plans to say, according to excerpts provided by the White House. “Disguised as deficit-reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism. It’s antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it — a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training; research and development — it’s a prescription for decline.”

More here

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Business Insider: Over the next eight hours, twenty automakers will report March auto sales in the U.S. Already, it appears the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales will top all industry estimates, new data out of Business Insider shows.

First out the gate this month is Chrysler, with a better-than-expected sales gain of 34.2 percent, moving 163,381 units in March.

At that healthy gain, Business Insider estimates total U.S. SAAR will run between 15.2 million and 16.1 million. This is well above current estimates of 14.6 million units, per Bloomberg.

The last time auto sales topped an annualized pace of 15.2 million was four years ago, in February 2008.

More here

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Detroit News: Chrysler Group LLC sold 163,381 cars and trucks last month, translating into a 34 percent year-over-year increase and making March another stellar month for the Auburn Hills automaker.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. said Tuesday that its auto sales were up 5 percent in March — the company’s best March in five years. And Hyundai Motor Co. said it set a new all-time record for U.S. auto sales in March, up 13 percent to 69,728 on strong sales of its fuel-efficient models.

More here

Thanks VC

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NYT: For several weeks, Mitt Romney has seized on the rising cost of gasoline to attack President Obama and his environmental aides for what Mr. Romney calls their misguided desire to see higher energy prices.

…. But Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has in the past appeared much more open to the notion that rising energy costs could be good for the American economy. In his 2010 book, “No Apology,” Mr. Romney described a gradual increase in the cost of energy as the kind of market-based incentive that conservatives could embrace.

…. Charles Ebinger, the director of the energy security initiative at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Romney’s openness to the benefits of higher energy prices was similar to the approach that Mr. Obama’s advisers had espoused for years.

More here

Steve Benen: ….. The main problem, as the New York Times reported today, is that Romney has already argued for the same policies he’s now against.

…. As governor, Romney also raised gas taxes — by 400% — and hired an energy advisor who opposes reduction in oil prices. Romney even pushed for more energy-efficient light bulbs, though he now opposes the idea.

Clearly, the former governor is aware of public concerns and wants to incorporate energy policy into the 2012 race, but between Romney’s Big Oil ties and his previous personas, it’s not going to be easy for him to stay coherent on the subject.

More here

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TPM: A new report by an independent government auditor concludes that implementing President Obama’s health care law as intended will make a significant dent in the long-term debt forecast.

…. it concludes that if key cost-control measures in the law, and other automatic cuts to Medicare spending baked into current law, are ignored, or overridden by Congress, the implications for the national debt are vast.

If “Obamacare” is implemented as intended, and other measures, such as automatic payment cuts to Medicare physicians, take effect, “spending on Medicare and Medicaid grows from 5 percent of GDP in 2010 to over 7 percent by 2030.”

By contrast, if Congress overrides those provisions, “spending on health care grows much more rapidly ….”

More here

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Morning everyone 😉

rise and shine

President Obama greets US soldiers and family members before boarding Air Force One at Osan Air Base outside Seoul on March 27 to leave South Korea

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11:00 AM: Michelle Obama participates in the 2012 National Cherry Blossom Festival’s Centennial Tree Planting Ceremony.

12:00: Michelle Obama meets with the spouses of the military’s senior enlisted leaders.

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President Obama covers the microphone as he arrives at the plenary session of the Nuclear Security Summit at the Coex Center in Seoul, March 27

…. with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

President Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak find their places for the group ‘family photo’ at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit

…. with Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev

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The U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement will help to support an estimated 70,000 jobs in the years ahead and increase U.S. GDP by at least $11 billion due to increased exports of goods.

More here

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…. greeting US soldiers and family members before boarding Air Force One at Osan Air Base outside Seoul, March 27

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Time: ….. Trayvon Martin’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton were on the long stretch of a turnpike between Orlando and Miami on March 23 when they heard President Obama’s poignant remark about their boy — that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.”

They say that was when they realized how far-reaching the impact of his controversial death, and their effort to get to the bottom of it, is. “It felt real warm to know our son’s name had been mentioned by the President of the United States and all over the nation and the world,” Martin says.

“His name is ringing all over the country, all over the nation, all over the world.” Fulton agrees, saying, “It showed us that even President Obama understands we need justice, that he understands our situation.” Adds Martin: “The nation is saying, What if — what if this was my son, what would I do?”

More here

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Charles Pierce: This picture, which ran on the front page of The New York Times this morning, and which accompanied the story about the opening of the arguments in the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, makes me as sad and despairing about the state of the country as I have been in an awfully long time. There are better places on the Intertoobz than this one to look either for a general overview of what may happen in the Court over the next three days – Ezra Klein’s joint did a masterful job this morning – …. but this picture makes the whole affair ring a little hollow already.

What exactly are these people praying for?

More here

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Have a perfect day Proud!

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Morning everyone 😉

evening all

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama talk in the Green Room of the White House before hosting a Smithsonian Museum of African American History reception in the East Room, Feb. 22, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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President Barack Obama listens during the groundbreaking ceremony of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, February 22

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Don’t miss Liberal Librarian’s latest post at The People’s View

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Business Week

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The Hill: The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package continues to have a significant effect.

The bill raised fourth-quarter 2011 gross domestic product by as much as 1.5 percent, it states, and lowered the unemployment rate by as much as 1.1 percentage points.

The package reduced the rolls of the jobless by up to 2 million people in the last three months of 2011.

More here

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LA Times: Sales of previously owned homes rose 4.3% in January and inventories fell to nearly seven-year lows as lower prices, unusually warm weather and an improving economy lifted demand.

….. January sales were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million …. Sales rose in all four major regions, including an 8.8% pop in the West.

Job creation, mild weather, rising rents and increased household formation contributed to the sales gains, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the Realtors group. “Things are genuinely improving,” Yun said.

More here

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Slate

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Link

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One photo, two cool cats.

Thank you Pam!

(You can buy the PBO poster here – thank you Donna Dem)

‘a war between two americas’

Michael Tomasky (Daily Beast): …. let’s go ahead and think about a Perry-Obama race …. a war between the two Americas, each side represented by its respective cultural standard-bearer, each side’s foot soldiers absolutely smoldering with contempt for everything the other guy stands for and indeed the way he looks. We’ve never quite had that before, not in this way, so it’s worth thinking about.

… Republicans don’t want a posh, well-spoken Yankee who works at a place with a name like Bain Capital. In their deepest souls, they want a Texas governor. They want a shit-kicker. And here, we circle back to culture.

When my friends and I looked at George W. Bush in 1999, we shuddered like people who’d turned a street corner and stumbled across a dog’s corpse. We knew and had contempt for his beliefs, but it had nothing to do with them, really. It was just the way he presented himself. That puffed-out chest. That self-satisfied smirk. All that Jesus talk – even in the event that it was sincere, which we never quite bought, it was to a liberal deeply inappropriate to haul it into the public square like that. He represented Southern country clubs and Dodge Durangos and Browning bolt-actions and homes with no books in them …. Liberals just couldn’t stand the sight of the guy. And that was before he ruined the country.

I understand that conservatives feel similarly about Obama. They look at him and see wine-and-cheese parties where people have jazz playing in the background and where talk turns to the merits and demerits of Jonathan Franzen, who drive Priuses (or is it Prii?) and buy espresso machines and live in homes with far too many books in them. And worse than that: for much of Red America, Dr. Frankenstein himself could not have stitched together a more perfect Other: urban, urbane, sophisticated, intellectual. “Black,” of course, may no longer be a deal breaker in this day and age, but it doesn’t help. Many conservatives clearly can’t stand the sight of him.

Perry, on this scale, is chillingly Bush-like. I saw a clip the other day of him saluting … he looked exactly like Bush. The chest pumped up with self-regard. The overly aggressive way he thrust his saluting hand out from his forehead. He even, I swear, was smirking. I shuddered all over again.

During an Obama-Perry contest, millions of Americans on both sides would be shuddering constantly for four months. We’ve never had quite this kind of showdown culturally … I don’t relish this. We’re divided enough, thanks. To invoke one of Bush’s most degrading moments of smirky chest-puffery, I say don’t bring it on.

Full article here

whisper it ….. 47 v 41

Quinnipiac

Thanks Proud and Loriah

From the same poll …. wow, so much religious prejudice:

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PPP

‘no more lies’

Fred Rotondaro (Chairman of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good): … President Obama took more than his share of verbal assaults during his 2008 campaign …. For the first time in history, a major candidate found his birth qualifications to be President questioned, in addition to false claims being made about his religion…

To his everlasting credit, John McCain was not one of those bigots who spread such lies … From what I have seen so far, I hope but do not expect such decency and true patriotism in 2012.

Four major candidates have spoken already about Barack Obama not being born in America or having a Kenyan worldview. The potential Republican candidates seem to be appealing to the worst elements of their own party … they seem terrified of confronting the bigotry that is often directed at the President. When Newt Gingrich calls Obama a “food stamp president,” he is giving a dog whistle to racists. When Michelle Bachmann said she took President Obama at his word regarding his place of birth, she was winking at the birthers. America needs better than this in 2012.

Deceit has worked its way into important debates also …. While the financial regulation bill was being discussed, Mitch McConnell met with Wall Street leaders to discuss strategy and raise campaign funds. Soon, back in Washington, he began pounding the theme that the bill was an attempt to set up bailouts for banks. This was not spinning. This was an out and out lie to the American people.

The debate about health care centered for a time on the theme of non-existent death panels after former Gov. Palin tweeted about them.….

This is where the American religious community can play a vital role by insisting on truth in public policy debates … Politicians campaign dishonestly because they can. Let’s make it difficult and let them know they will pay a price for deceptive campaign tactics. We owe it to ourselves, our children, and our country.

Full post here

** Thank you Suzanne **

‘newt gingrich cheated on his wives for america’

NY Mag: …..Newt Gingrich didn’t just get divorced three times, he also cheated on both of his first two wives. And furthermore, he left both of them when they were sick. As Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall recaps today:

Let’s remember, Newt famously dumped wife #1 for wife #2 while wife #1 was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. As in literally went to the hospital to present her with divorce papers while she was recovering from surgery for uterine cancer.

He eventually dumped wife #2 for wife #3 shortly after wife #2 was diagnosed with MS back in 1999. And he was having the affair on wife #2 with wife #3 while he was turning the country upside down trying to drive Bill Clinton from office over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

….Gingrich, naturally, is trying to frame his misdeeds in the best light possible under the circumstances. In a recent interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, he discussed the issue in religious terms that the voters he hopes to win over may understand:

“I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God.”

If God can forgive him, then surely Iowa caucusgoers can, too. And besides, Gingrich has a pretty good explanation for why he did it:

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

Sometimes you just feel so passionate about America that you need to go have some extramarital affairs. We’ve all been there.

Full article here

the republican party, 2010