Rise and Shine

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Winston-Salem Journal: Americans have a clear choice between two presidential candidates with starkly different ideas for spurring the economy, providing for the health of our people, defending our interests abroad, educating our children and protecting our environment. We believe that President Barack Obama’s progress on these issues merits him a second term in the White House.

Four years ago on this page, we endorsed Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona over Obama. We wrote that we were impressed with Obama, but McCain would “bring the Iraq war to a successful conclusion, work to end American dependence on foreign oil, reduce America’s output of climate-changing gases and begin the rebuilding of our economy.”

The Democratic president has done all those things and more. He is calm under pressure and courageous in standing up for the rights of all Americans, including the poor, veterans, the elderly, women, gays and immigrants. In contrast, we’ve sometimes found it hard in the last few weeks to tell just what Obama’s challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, really stands for.

…. Obama has a keen vision that he has worked hard to achieve, against considerable obstacles and often courageously. But the goal is in sight: An America respected worldwide as much for its prosperity as its defense of liberty and justice.

The Journal editorial board endorses Barack Obama for president.

Full editorial here

Thank you DesertFlower and amk

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You can see last week’s brilliant endorsement from the St Louis Post-Dispatch here

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Kansas City Star: Barack Obama volunteer Marilynn Wadden rang more than a dozen doorbells in her first hour canvassing a tidy neighborhood here before stopping to take stock of her progress… If the race is close here and elsewhere, the outcome may come down to how well Obama volunteers like Wadden do their jobs – compelling everyone they can to go to the polls…

…. even Republicans acknowledge that Obama has an advantage on the ground in most if not all of the most hotly contested battleground states. In Iowa alone, Obama has 67 offices to Romney’s 13.

…. Obama backers refuse to cede ground in their quest to turn out every voter they can.

Not registered to vote? Obama’s team can help. Registered but not sure about plans on Election Day? Obama’s campaign can mail you a ballot. Forget to return the ballot? Obama’s volunteers offer a reminder. Need a ride to the polls? Obama’s volunteers can drive.

Obama’s volunteers appear to be having impact. Democrats report an almost 4-to-1 advantage among voters asking for ballots by mail in Iowa.

The vigor among the ranks appears to grow as Election Day nears.

“It’s our time to go out and lace up our sneakers, put on our walking shoes,” Norma Comstock, 71, a leader in the campaign’s Sioux City office, said recently as she gave her fellow volunteers a pep talk. “This isn’t a sure thing. We’ve got to fight every day between now and Nov. 6 so President Obama can keep fighting for us.”

More here – thank you BWD

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Cagle

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Reuters: President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are neck and neck in opinion polls, but there is one area in which the incumbent appears to have a big advantage: those who have already cast their ballots.

Obama leads Romney by 59 percent to 31 percent among early voters, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling data compiled in recent weeks.

The sample size of early voters is relatively small, but the Democrat’s margin is still well above the poll’s credibility interval – a measurement of polls’ accuracy – of 10 percentage points

More here

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Cagle

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OFA

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Mooooooooorning everyone, it’s a beeeeeeeautiful day! Thanks to everyone for the brilliant links, so much terrific news. It’s the usual Sunday for me, a bit busy, but I’ll be dropping in and out 😉

local tv

WXII-TV Greensboro/Winston-Salem, N.C. – more of the interview here

WESH-TV Orlando interview here

The President also did an interview with WTVF-TV Nashville, but I don’t see it on the site yet.

peculiar pals…

Alex Pareene (Salon): Mother Jones writes about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s connections to Olive Tree Ministries, an evangelical Christian operation founded by a former Jew for Jesus and longtime friend of Bachmann’s named Jan Markell. Olive Tree Ministries … is obsessed with Israel because it believes we are living in the end times. Bachmann’s been on Markell’s radio show multiple times, attended an Olive Tree Ministries conference, and left a testimonial on its website. As MoJo says:

“…in 2005, the then-state senator denied any knowledge of Olive Tree Ministries. However, Markell tells Mother Jones that she’s known Bachmann off and on for 35 years, and says she spoke about Israel at Bachmann’s church in the late 1970s. “My hunch is that they misquoted her,” Markell says. “She’s been at my conference. Why she would have said otherwise, I don’t know.”

….So Bachmann stands with Israel because she needs the Jews to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem so that Christ can return, rapture the Christians up to Heaven, convince the Jews to worship him during the Tribulations, and then rule over the Earth from Israel for 1,000 years. (This is what these people believe, very, very literally.)

….in 2006 she was a member of the Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church of Stillwater, which belongs to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. WELS is one of the very conservative “confessional” Lutheran denominations that maintains that the “antichrist” is the pope. You know, the leader of the Catholic Church? That pope….

…In 2008, as I’m sure you remember, Michele Bachmann repeatedly called Barack Obama “anti-American” because of his “mentor”, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And here is Bachmann’s good friend and minister Bradlee Dean calling the pope “that devil disguised as a minister of righteousness.”

It seems more than fair to ask whether Michele Bachmann is anti-Catholic, and whether, should she be elected president, she’d purposefully sabotage a Middle East peace deal in order to bring about the Second Coming. Or whether she’d launch some sort of tactical strike against Vatican City. I think she would. Look who she pals around with!

Full post and videos here

forty winks

Asleep somewhere between Derry and Salem, N.H., 1/6/2008. Callie Shell.