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 😉

‘Mitt Romney: The Worst Week in Washington’

Thank you Donna

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Next week:

Monday: The President will travel to New York City to participate in the 67th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). While in New York City, the President and First Lady will also tape an appearance on “The View.”

Tuesday: The President will deliver remarks to the UN General Assembly; the First Lady will attend the event. The President will then speak at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. He will return to the White House in the evening.

Wednesday: The President will travel to Bowling Green and Kent, Ohio for campaign events.

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the corporate raider

Newsonline: ….Mitt Romney is promoting his private-sector business experience to show he could do better than U.S. President Obama in creating jobs. But opponents will find fault in his record as a corporate raider in the 1980s and as Massachusetts governor when his performance on employment was mixed at best.

Romney stressed his experience as head of private equity firm Bain Capital … He made a fortune wheeling and dealing in companies, some of which endured big job cuts as part of restructuring. Some ultimately went bankrupt.

“He was a corporate raider who often made companies profitable, not by helping them perform better – but by simply laying off employees and killing jobs,” said Ray Buckley, Democratic Party chairman of New Hampshire.

Bain Capital, which Romney headed for more than a decade, specialized in leveraged buyouts: buying companies with money borrowed against their assets, grooming them to be sold off, and in the interim collecting huge fees.

Later, as Massachusetts governor from Jan. 2003 to Jan. 2007, Romney presided over one of the puniest rates of employment growth among the 50 U.S. states, at a time the nation’s economy was booming. Labor Department figures showed Massachusetts ranked 47th in the rate of jobs growth in those four years.

More here

Thank you Proud 😉

I read a more detailed piece about Romney’s dire record on jobs a while ago, will try to find it

‘why i cannot for vote obama’

Motley Moose: So I received an email from my friend and President Barack Obama this morning. He has announced his intention to pursue another term as presiding executive of that circus of dysfunctional acrimony that passes for the US government. I was immediately reminded of the headline in The Onion on the morning following his election: “Black Man Given Worst Job in the World.”

I have supported Obama since the primaries. But I can no longer do so. What kind of nut job would ask for a second helping of what he’s received? I have come to question his sanity. Do we really want a pathological masochist with his “finger on the button” to “answer the 3AM call?”

But all jokes aside, if Obama sees this as the moment to begin to mobilize supporters and activists, it seems the right time for us to start discussing the particular challenges that lie ahead …. how do we get this deranged fool of a president another 4 years of insults, misery and frustration?

More here

😆

Thank you Carole!

The Onion (2008): Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job – African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, “It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”