Social Distancing

@OMaraRules Also if you don't quite know what is social distancing and what is not... This is helpful! theatlantic.com/family/archive…

—
iLiana (not ilana) (@ilianainocencio) March 15, 2020

This and That

Musicians Mavis Staples and Justin Timberlake listen to first lady Michelle Obama during a Memphis Soul music workshop in the State Dining Room of the White House, April 9

Musicians Samuel Moore, Mavis Staples and Justin Timberlake

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Coming up:

2:0: Vice President Biden Speaks at a Law Enforcement Event at the White House

7:30: The President and First Lady host a concert celebrating Memphis Soul music as part of their “In Performance at the White House” series

Both on White House live

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Link

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Senator Tim Kaine: Nearly four months after the horrific Newtown shootings, the Senate is poised to do something that hasn’t been done for a long time in Congress – actually have a meaningful floor debate on reducing gun violence. Some senators and lobbyists are trying to make sure that no vote can take place. This should outrage the strong majority of American citizens who believe in reasonable gun rules to protect public safety.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and 11 other senators have promised to filibuster any discussion of gun safety rules. Instead of just voting against restrictions they don’t like, they are trying to block any vote whatsoever….

…. There are those who believe the National Rifle Association and its allies are so powerful that no legislation will pass. But the power of the organization’s leadership is vastly overrated. I’ve run three statewide races in the NRA’s home state. Its leadership campaigned vigorously against me each time, spending nearly $800,000 against me in my 2012 Senate race. I won all my races anyway.

Full Op-ed here

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Read here

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Steve Benen: I’ve long believed we can learn a lot about politicians by how they conduct their campaigns. Candidates who are honest and above board before the election tend to be honest and above board after the votes are tallied. Those who choose to be dishonest and sleazy during the race are often less than forthright once in office.

And if this adage is true, we’re learning some unsettling things about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell…

More here

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Greg Sargent: …. The suggestion by the McConnell campaign that Mother Jones engaged in “Watergate-style tactics to bug campaign headquarters” is intriguing; it constitutes a suggestion that Mother Jones broke the law. To my knowledge, the McConnell campaign didn’t provide CNN with any evidence of this. (The Mother Jones story only says that a “recording” of the strategy session “was obtained by Mother Jones.”) It’s a serious charge, and if it were made without evidence by the campaign of the Senate minority leader — perhaps the most powerful Republican elected official the country — it’s a big deal.

More here

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The People’s View: How Obama is Vastly Expanding the Social Safety Net

Since late last week, we have been fed a steady diet of grandma on catfood and the eeeebil Obama that is trying to make that happen. As usual, focusing on the method of inflation adjustment (that isn’t simply applicable to Social Security but all of government), our venerable Leftist talking heads are missing the forest for the trees. Well, more like they’re missing the forest for the branches. While people are howling at a revised method of calculating inflation, they are completely missing broader perspective on how this president is devising a more expansive social safety net.

So let’s get some perspective. This president has expanded the social safety net in more broadly than anyone since the passage of Social Security – through health care reform, through expanding children’s health insurance, through student aid expansion and through Medicare reforms. Let’s talk about those.

More here

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Thanks Donna

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NYT: David Axelrod, the political strategist behind the rise of President Obama, has signed with Penguin Press to write a memoir, the publisher said Tuesday morning. Release is slated for fall 2014.

More here

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Yikes:

Independent (UK): Lady Thatcher’s death could propel The Wizard Of Oz track “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” to the top of the charts.

Those who saw her death as a cause for celebration have prompted a download surge for the track.

Within 24 hours of the former Prime Minister’s death, the song had risen to number 9 in the iTunes best-sellers chart. It reached number 2 on the Amazon singles download chart.

More here

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Guess who’s paws? twitter.com/petesouza/stat…

— petesouza (@petesouza) April 9, 2013

Rise and Shine

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Today:

10:35: President Obama departs the White House en route Woodbridge, Va.

11:05: Arrives in Woodbridge, Va.

11:30: Delivers remarks via satellite at the AARP Life@50+ National Event & Expo at G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium in Woodbridge

12:45: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium in Woodbridge (C-Span)

1:30: VP Biden and Jill Biden travel to Hanover, N.H., to deliver remarks at a campaign event at Dartmouth College

2:30: President Obama arrives at the White House

3:0 First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks at Morgan State University, Baltimore (need to check the time on this)

5:15: VP Biden and Jill Biden travel to Concord, N.H., to deliver remarks at a campaign event at the New Hampshire State House

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Washington Post: The last of the 33,000 “surge” troops President Obama ordered to Afghanistan in December 2009 have left the country, the Pentagon announced Friday, just ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline.

The number of U.S. troops in the war zone now stands at 68,000, Secretary of State Leon E. Panetta told reporters traveling with him during a week-long visit to the Asia-Pacific region. The troop count is down from a peak of 101,000 U.S. forces last year and marks the end of a critical phase in Obama’s war strategy.

…. The drawdown of U.S. forces is in keeping with Obama’s timetable to pull out all conventional combat forces by the end of 2014…

Full article here

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USA Today: Medicare beneficiaries have saved a total of about $4.5 billion on prescription medications because of the 2010 health care law since January 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services plans to announce today.

“We’re seeing consistent, steady savings for seniors thanks to the health care law,” said Jon Blum, director of the Center for Medicare. “In just 21/2 half years, seniors have seen billions in savings, and those savings will continue to grow as the doughnut hole is fully closed.”

More here

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Washington Post: In 3 1/2 years in office, President Obama has set in motion a broad overhaul of public education from kindergarten through high school, largely bypassing Congress and inducing states to adopt landmark changes that none of his predecessors attempted.

He awarded billions of dollars in stimulus funding to states that agreed to promote charter schools, use student test scores to evaluate teachers and embrace other administration-backed policies. And he has effectively rewritten No Child Left Behind, the federal law passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, by excusing states from its requirements if they adopt his measures.

More here

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Loved this bit:

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Cagle

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rise and shine

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Rolling Stone: …. When Obama 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe likened the campaign’s email list to a television network in his campaign memoir, it was a rough analogy. But for the revamped Obama 2012 campaign, the meaning is quite literal. The YouTube and social media revolution of the last four years has given the campaign the power to produce and disseminate powerful video content that it can broadcast to a highly targeted audience of millions, effectively for free.

….. The folks in Chicago have spent next to nothing on television ads. Yet the campaign’s digital team – the biggest squad by far in Obama 2012’s massive headquarters in a downtown skyscraper – is quietly churning out nearly a video a day, designed to reengage Obama supporters, activate new volunteers, or persuade fence-sitting independents.

…. We’re seeing something really new in the history of presidential politics develop out of Chicago. This is a social-media-optimized campaign …. All of this direct communication with targeted voters is happening without the advice or consent of the mainstream media, in ways that David Plouffe could scarcely have imagined just four years ago. Meanwhile, the Mitt Romney campaign website looks like it’s still trying to catch up to Obama 2008.

More here

Thanks BWD

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Pew Research: The gender gap in presidential politics is not new. Democratic candidates have gotten more support from women than men for more than 30 years. Even so, Barack Obama’s advantages among women voters over his GOP rivals are striking.

In the Pew Research Center’s most recent national survey, conducted March 7-11, Obama led Mitt Romney by 20 points (58% to 38%) among women voters. It marked the second consecutive month that Obama held such a wide advantage over Romney among women (59% to 38% in February).

More here

Thanks Loriah

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MSNBC: …. a new NBC News/Marist poll shows President Obama holding a sizable advantage over his Republican opposition in Wisconsin, which he carried in 2008 but where Republicans made big gains in the 2010 midterms.

Obama leads Romney in Wisconsin among registered voters, 52 percent to 35 percent, with 13 percent undecided. And he edges Santorum, 51 percent to 38 percent, with 11 percent undecided….

Benefitting Obama is growing optimism about the state of the economy (52 percent believe the worst is behind them), as well as a more negative perception of the Republican Party (48 percent say the Democratic Party does a better job in appealing to those who aren’t hard-core supporters, while just 32 percent say that about the GOP).

What’s more, there’s a significant gender gap: Obama leads Romney among women by 25 points (55 percent to 30 percent) and men by 12 points (50 percent to 38 percent). The president’s job-approval rating in Wisconsin stands at 50 percent.

More here

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OFA

Thanks Meta

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Cagle

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The Week

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Link

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Collegekay’s still leading ….. but Marilyn is closing in. The deadline for donations is tomorrow midnight, if you could help that would be brilliant.

Collegekay: “I saw someone on facebook asking for multiple $3 donations and it counts!”

ponzi perry’s polling problems

Bloomberg: Republicans give Rick Perry frontrunner status … even as warning signs flash over his ability to win support in the general election.

Perry is the preferred choice of 26 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in a Bloomberg National Poll …. Mitt Romney places second at 22 percent, while all of the other Republican candidates get less than 10 percent. (Jon Huntsman is on one percent).

…. Perry trails President Barack Obama among the poll’s entire sample, 49 percent to 40 percent, about twice the deficit for Romney. He also confronts negative reactions from Americans disinclined to vote for a candidate expressing the skepticism he has about the viability of Social Security, evolution science and whether humans contribute to climate change.

Forty-five percent of Americans say they’d be less inclined to support a candidate who says science isn’t settled on whether human activity contributes to global warming, while 25 percent said it would make them more likely to back that candidate. Half said they would be turned off by a candidate who says evolution remains an unproven theory, with 20 percent saying they’d be more inclined to support someone who holds that view.

….. Palin is viewed negatively by 66 percent of Americans in the poll, while Gingrich is disliked by 55 percent.

Full article here

ponzi perry …. ooops

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😯

TPM

Thanks aamom

ponzi perry….

Greg Sargent: CNN released a poll this morning finding – as have other polls – that Rick Perry has surged past Mitt Romney…. But this finding really does seem significant:

Which Republican candidate do you think has the best chance of beating Barack Obama in the general election next November? Perry 42% Romney 26%….

Really? Nearly half of Republicans think Perry has the best chance of beating Obama?

….. This underscores a gap between the GOP establishment and the Republican rank and file when it comes to assessing Perry’s chances in a general election …. Perry’s “Ponzi scheme” crack, his book’s claim that Social Security may be unconstitutional, its support for repeal of the 16th Amendment, and his implied threat of violence towards Fed chairman Ben Bernanke (which he hasn’t repudiated) have all left GOP establishment figures openly asking whether Perry’s views and personal style will be far too toxic to the mainstream for him to get elected president

….. If those things weren’t enough to persuade Republicans that Perry is less electable than Romney in a general election, it’s hard to imagine what will.

Full post here

debunking gop lies

Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997) speaking at the ‘Summit For A Fair Economy’ in Minneapolis, September 10

‘the dangerous cowboy’

American Bridge on YouTube

Glenn Kessler (Washington Post): …. “It is a monstrous lie. It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years today you’re paying into a program that’s going to be there.” – Gov. Perry

Perhaps the governor does not know the dictionary definition of a Ponzi scheme. Here’s what Merriam-Webster says: “An investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks.”

This is a frequent mistake politicians make when talking about Social Security. It is not an investment vehicle; it is intended to provide income security as well disability and life insurance. Just more than 60 percent of the 54 million beneficiaries are retired workers; the rest are disabled workers, dependents or survivors.

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits. So Social Security loaned the money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In exchange, Social Security received interest-bearing Treasury securities. The value of those bonds is now about $2.6 trillion.

In any case, Perry is wrong to label Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes ultimately go bust and everyone (except possibly early investors) generally loses their money. Social Security faces a long-term funding issue, but one that most experts say is manageable. After all, the Social Security actuary says that Social Security’s shortfall is 0.7 percent of the gross domestic product over the next 75 years.

More here

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Jonathan Chait: …. Perry, stylistically, ruled the roost. The media seems to consider Romney the winner. Pardon the condescension, but they’re not thinking like Republican base voters. Romney approaches every question as if he is in an actual debate …. Perry treats questions as interruptions …. His total liberation from the constraints of reason give Perry a chance to represent the Republican in in a way Romney simply cannot match.

In this way Perry eerily apes the style of George W. Bush….

More here

the gop assault on social security