This seat's taken. OFA.BO/c2gbfi, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 31, 2012
I have one message burned into my memory for everyone who cares about the outcome of this year's presidential election:
Respond quickly and powerfully to attacks from the other side.
We've got to step up and fight back before it's too late.
What makes 2012 different from when I ran for president in 2004 is that the other side doesn't have to wait for an outside group to come along with false attacks.
Consider this: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spent about $23 million on smear ads against me in 2004.
Most of the debate between the former shipmates who swear by John Kerry and the group of other Swift boat veterans who are attacking his military record focuses on matters that few of us have the experience or the moral standing to judge. But one issue, having nothing to do with medals, wounds or bravery under fire, goes to the heart of Kerry's qualifications for the presidency and is therefore something that each of us must consider. That is Kerry's apparently fabricated claim that he fought in Cambodia.Whatever good John Kerry might be able to do for the Obama campaign, it's a good bet a reference to "burning" or "searing" his memory linked to the Swift Boat Veterans and the Vietnam War won't get the job done.
It is an assertion he made first, insofar as the written record reveals, in 1979 in a letter to the Boston Herald. Since then he has repeated it on at least eight occasions during Senate debate or in news interviews, most recently to The Post this year (an interview posted on Kerry's Web site). The most dramatic iteration came on the floor of the Senate in 1986, when he made it the centerpiece of a carefully prepared 20-minute oration against aid to the Nicaraguan contras....
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."
However seared he was, Kerry's spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia, none of Kerry's shipmates came forward, as they had on other issues, to corroborate his account. Two weeks ago Kerry's spokesmen began to backtrack. First, one campaign aide explained that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. But there is no between; there is a border. Then another spokesman told reporters that Kerry had been "near Cambodia." But the point of Kerry's 1986 speech was that he personally had taken part in a secret and illegal war in a neutral country. That was only true if he was "in Cambodia," as he had often said he was. If he was merely "near," then his deliberate misstatement falsified the entire speech.
FACT: Economists say Romney's ideas wouldn't fix the short-term crisis and could make things worse. OFA.BO/f6Y5mCThree and a half years into the Obama presidency and the country is still in a "short-term crisis"? Just exactly how long is "short"? If Obama is reelected, will candidate Joe Biden in 2016 be talking about the "mess we inherited back in 2008?"
— TruthTeam2012 (@truthteam2012) August 30, 2012
So basically here's what this election comes down to. They're betting that between now and November there going to come down with amnesia. They figure you're going to forget what there agenda did to this country. They think you'll just believe that they've changed. These are the folks whose policies help devastate our middle class they drove our economy into a ditch....This sounds like an appeal from the president to return him to the White House in November rather than turn "the keys" over to Mitt Romney. But the curious thing is that this is an excerpt from a speech from September 6, 2010 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, about two months before one of the largest Republican landslides in history, not only returning control of the House to the GOP, but produced far-reaching gains on the state level as well. NPR reported at the time:
After we got it out of the ditch, and then they got the nerve to ask for the keys back. I don't want to give them the keys back. They don't know how to drive.
Early Wednesday, Republicans were on track to hold more than 30 governorships — up from 24. Those GOP governors will be joined by new majorities in as many as a dozen legislative chambers. Republicans, in fact, appeared on course to win the most legislative seats they've held nationwide since World War II.President Obama's protestations notwithstanding, the voters indeed seemed to be grasping for those "keys" with both hands to put the Republicans back behind the wheel, and the effort seems to be paying off, as I have noted on more than one occasion.
Statement #1 - "It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Statement #2 - "Crazy as it sounds, the fight to limit--or even ban--birth control is a key issue in the upcoming presidential election."The first statement is medically baseless, the phrasing offensive, and the claim is irrelevant to the underlying issue of an abortion exception in cases of rape. Republican Todd Akin's words were roundly and universally condemned and repudiated, even by Akin himself. In addition to rejecting the statement itself, most Republicans and conservative politicians and pundits went on record calling for Akin to drop out of his Senate race against Claire McCaskill to avoid further damage to Republican electoral chances as well as the pro-life cause. After a week of collecting signatures on a petition of support for Akin to stay in the race, he has managed to get only 7,760 (as of Monday morning.) Given that McCaskill herself has not even called for Akin to drop out (which would not be in her best interest,) it's unclear how many of those 7,760 signers would even be Akin voters. Based on the 2006 Senate election in Missouri, Akin will need over a million votes to beat McCaskill, a long way to go from 7,760. Clearly support among Republicans and conservatives (and even pro-lifers) for Akin is meager, and support for his absurd statement is non-existent.
Make sure the women in your life know: twitter.com/BarackObama/st…If they are willing to say this now, one wonders what statements the Obama campaign is holding in reserve for the last month or week of the campaign.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 26, 2012
I don't have as much time to campaign this time as I did in 2008, so this whole thing is riding on you making it happen.This remark is amusing for two reasons. First, there is this from CBS News's Mark Knoller, who keeps track of the president's fundraisers so you don't have to:
As Pres Obama hits the 200 mark in fundraisers today, compare to GeorgeWBush who had done 88 fundraisers at same point in re-election bid.That was two weeks ago, so the number will now exceed 200. Also according to Knoller, only 67 of the 200+ took place in 2011, so the tally for 2012 is now 133+. It seems as though the president isn't as quite as short on free time as he lets on in the fundraising email.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 12, 2012
Housing: Third, there's going to be more competition so that consumers can shop around for the best rates. Right now, some underwater homeowners have no choice but to refinance with their original lender -- and some lenders, frankly, just refuse to refinance. So these changes are going to encourage other lenders to compete for that business by offering better terms and rates, and eligible homeowners are going to be able to shop around for the best rates and the best terms.
Medical Care: I also think that we should -- hospitals should publish the cost of their basic procedures, what's an appendectomy or a colonoscopy or whatnot, to enable consumers to shop around, where's the best price. We all know that there's a wide disparity in what hospitals charge for the same procedures. I think the disinfectant of sunshine helps -- it helps consumers, it helps our people.
Health Insurance: And you'll eventually see lower costs. And, if you lose your insurance for some reason or you're underinsured or you work for a small business that can't afford to provide you health insurance, you can shop around for a plan on the Insurance Exchange, which will have many, many options, many affordable options, and that's a choice that you absolutely don't have today. So you will have many more choices, not fewer choices.So who are these radicals, these out-of-touch elites who don't understand that competition chews up and spits out regular Americans? Who are these people suggesting that top-of-the-line housing, medical care, and health insurance apparently are "luxuries reserved for the privileged few"? How about, in order, Barack Obama, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, and Linda Douglass of the White House Office of Health Reform.
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I’ve seen the fliers, heard the robocalls, been at the polling places with the mysterious malfunctioning machines. No one ever knows exactly who does these things, and yet everyone generally knows. Republicans...
But we do know that in every single election in this country where the black vote matters, these mysterious things happen in African-American neighborhoods in the run-up to the election and on Election Day itself. We never know exactly who does it, but it’s pretty self-evident that it isn’t Democrats.Needless to say, Tomasky is not exactly in possession of hard evidence, for instance, perhaps a photo of Republican voter intimidation taking place. Remarkably, Tomasky does not even bring up the recent high profile case of voter-suppression via robocalls in the 2010 Maryland gubernatorial election. Could it be because one of the accused, Republican Paul E. Schurick, even after being convicted, was aided by "[s]cores of letters from prominent Republicans and Democrats [who] asked a Baltimore judge for extreme leniency"? In his letter to the judge, Democrat State Comptroller Peter Franchot "wrote that while voter suppression is 'morally and legally unacceptable,' Schurick’s legacy in Annapolis is foremost that of a bipartisan solution seeker." Schurick is apparently not the wild-eyed racist Tomasky would have us believe populates the GOP.
This is a conspiracy of thousands of people, Republican Party operatives in every state in the country (except those where the black vote is small enough not to matter), all of them agreeing that denying the most fundamental civic right to a group of citizens because they vote the wrong way is a good idea—and knowing that they can get away with it because, after all, it’s “just” “those people.”It's a nice touch, using the quotation marks when he's not actually quoting anyone - gives a ring of authenticity to the smear. But Tomasky nearly outdoes himself in his closing paragraph:
I cannot understand how any individual can be anything other than abjectly ashamed to be associated with a political party so thuggish as to try to rig elections like this and then at its conventions have the gall to invoke Abraham Lincoln and hire lots of black people to sing and dance and smile, to make up for their absence among the attendees. A black mark indeed.I would link to Tomasky's source for the hired-minstrels accusation, but of course, he doesn't cite any. Perhaps he felt it would interrupt the flow of his parting shot to insert proof or facts.
Greer—and I should say up front he’s under indictment... his credibility is open to question. He’s accused of funneling party money to himself, about $125,000. He’ll stand trial sometime this fall. Obviously, we don’t know whether he’s guilty of that...Incredibly, as poor a source as Greer appears to be, Tomasky makes it worse by noting that Greer made his charges against the Florida GOP in an interview with Al Sharpton! Does Tomasky really believe that invoking Sharpton, the ringleader of the Tawany Brawley hoax, adds credibility to his charges?
Every election come the warnings that if you haven’t paid your telephone bill yet or what have you, you won’t be permitted to vote. Something that like, which I saw all the time in New York City, can be pulled off by a handful of ne’er-do-wells, and the party leaders themselves can maintain plausible deniability.Tomasky's smoking gun, his coup de grace evidence of out-of-control thuggery committed by the "racists [who] left the Democrats and joined the GOP... in the late 196os [when] these voter-suppression efforts began," consists of "warnings that if you haven’t paid your telephone bill yet or what have you, you won’t be permitted to vote." How stupid does Tomasky believe black voters are? After decades of get-out-the-vote and voter registration drives, all it takes is a "you didn't pay your phone bill" to keep black voters home? Does Tomasky have such a low opinion of “those people?”
PUEBLO, Colo. – President Obama, while villifying Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance and said he now wants to see every manufacturing industry come roaring back.The money quote that Politico and Drudge focused on was of course "Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry." Tacked onto the end of the Politico story, however, is a curious note:
“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.
“I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China, I want those jobs taking root in places like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd gathered for a campaign rally at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fairgrounds here.
Clarification: This post was updated to reflect the president's intent to express his support for manufacturing success. An earlier version was unclear about his intent.I have not been able to locate that earlier version. I read the story about an hour after it was originally posted, so I do not know how long the unclarified story was up, and I was not able to find a cached or quoted version anywhere. The curious part of the clarification is, how does Politico (or Donovan Slack, the writer) know what the president's "intent" was? Did someone at the White House read the story and call Politico? Or did someone else at Politico read Slack's story and say, "He can't really mean that!" But the president's choice of words belie Politico's clarification. He did not say, "Now I want to see the same thing with manufacturing jobs ... in every industry." He said, "Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs ... in every industry." There's a big difference.
When all of us share in prosperity, we all do better. (Applause.) That’s the choice in this election. That’s why I’m running for President -- because I believe we’re all in this together. (Applause.)Obviously the president never uses the term "bailout"in the speech, but the government bailout of GM is the example he makes a beeline for as the premier example of his economic approach versus Mitt Romney. And then he cites targeted tax breaks:
We’ve got a bunch of examples of the differences, the choice in this election. When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse, more than 1 million jobs at stake, Governor Romney said, let’s “let Detroit go bankrupt.”
AUDIENCE: Booo --
THE PRESIDENT: I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. (Applause.) So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo. (Applause.)
Governor Romney brags about his private sector experience, but it was mostly investing in companies, some of which were called “pioneers” of outsourcing. I don’t want to be a pioneer of outsourcing. I want to insource. I want to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas; let’s give those tax breaks to companies that are investing here in the United States of America, making American products with American workers and selling them around the world. That’s why I’m running for a second term. (Applause.)
I don’t want to be a pioneer of outsourcing. I want to insource. I want to stop giving tax breaks...To borrow the cadence of John F. Kennedy, President Obama is virtually saying, Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what Barack Obama can do for your business. Time and again, this president returns to his default view that the typical business just can't get along without the active involvement of the government. In his more guarded remarks, he stresses infrastructure (roads and bridges) as government's primary contribution to the smooth operation of the private sector. But he was on a roll in this speech, perhaps spurred on by the Romney-induced "booos" and the frequent applause of the crowd, and bailouts and picking winners and losers via revoking and granting tax breaks rose to the surface.
That’s why I’ve cut middle-class taxes every year that I’ve been President -- by $3,600 for the typical middle-class family. Let me repeat: Since I’ve been in office, we’ve cut taxes for the typical middle-class family by $3,600.The problem is that the $3,600 was actually the accumulated savings over his term, not the yearly savings. Soon the campaign adjusted the claim:
FACT: The typical middle-class family's taxes have been cut by $3,600 over President Obama's first term.Apparently counting on short memories, the president relapsed today in a speech in Colorado. The campaign just tweeted this quote:
POTUS: "The average middle-class family—their taxes are about $3,600 lower than before I came into office.”Although he left off the explicit "per year," the impression given by the phrase "their taxes are about $3,600 lower than before I came into office" is that the number represents an annual savings. To illustrate, if you'd been given a $1,000 raise in your salary three years ago, you would not say "my income is about $3,000 higher than it was 3 years ago." The president's claim is similarly misleading.
A household making $50,000 saved $3,600 in taxes during President Obama’s first term. What about yours?Is the president just talking off of the top of his head in these speeches and so he garbles the facts? Or are these "gaffes" intentional? Hmmm... if we could just get a look at that teleprompter...
It's not at all clear that what President Obama would have us do is clear either, so I go back to what you said, David, we have a paucity of facts.Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Obama's economic plan over Romney's, is it? And, by the way, you might recall this from July 2008 during the last Presidential campaign (ABC News):
ABC News has learned that two former administration officials for President George W. Bush will appear with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, at an economic meeting today, having signed up to be Obama economic advisers.
Bush administration veterans former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and former Securities and Exchange Commissioner William Donaldson will join former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and more traditionally Democratic economic advisers such as former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, billionaire liberal Warren Buffett, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger.So instead of labeling O'Neill "President Bush's former Treasury Secretary", the Truth Team could have just as well written "President Obama's former economic advisor." And speaking of that, what was this former economic advisor of Obama's saying later in the 2008 campaign? From the Washington Note:
I have not heard either candidate [Obama or McCain] talk about the $53 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities that we have as a nation, that we need to do something about, or we're going to have a problem that makes this current financial crisis look like child's plan not too far down the road.The Truth Team may want to think twice before encouraging supporters (and foes) to listen too closely to Paul O'Neill in the future. Better to keep that cat in the bag where it belongs.
I haven't heard anybody say in this campaign the 10,000-page tax code that we have is proof that we're not an intelligent people. And so what are the candidates talking about? They're talking about more credits, they're talking about more deductions, they're talking about more complication in the tax code.
Neither one of them are talking about, we need to fix this monster, which is also part of our problem.
Who’s In Wednesday - Bernard ABy OFA Washington on August 8, 2012
It’s Who’s in Wednesday, Young Americans for Obama edition, and this week we’re joined by 11-year old Bernard A.
Hailing from Vancouver, Bernard helps his mom phone bank every week, and has been a steadfast volunteer. At local phone banks, he makes calls like an old pro and he absolutely knows why he’s in for 2012.
President Obama has made education a national priority. By investing in K-12 education, President Obama has worked to better prepare kids like Bernard for competing in the global workplace, and by doubling funding for Pell Grants, he has ensured Bernard can get the education he deserves.
But that's not the only reason why he supports the President this election.
“I like him because he can get everything he says done,” Bernard said. “I can look forward to the future and going to college [...] I like him because he’s modest.”
If you, too, like the President and his modesty, then join Bernard in making phone calls, in volunteering, and learn why President Obama stands for and with the youth of this nation.I titled my post "Some Things Speak For Themselves," and as difficult as it is, I'm going to stick with that. For now.
It is unclear why this accomplishment is listed twice. But even though the repetition would seem to indicate its level of significance, at the time the White House ignored this development. There's no press release or statement about it on the White House website in June 2010 or since. Even when President Obama addressed an LGBT Pride Month reception in the East Room at the White House on June 22, 2010, just 13 days after the State Department announced the rule change in a "Media Note," he made no mention of the new passport rule. However, the change was reported more heavily in the media than the SSA's dropping of gender "no-match" letters that I noted in my previous post. Time and CNN, for example, both covered this story. So why the initial soft-sell from the administration?
- Ended the Social Security Administration’s gender “no-match” letters and allowed for true gender passports
- Ensured that transgender Americans can receive true gender passports without surgery
It is also possible to obtain a limited-validity passport if the physician’s statement shows the applicant is in the process of gender transition. No additional medical records are required. Sexual reassignment surgery is no longer a prerequisite for passport issuance.Every type of abortion, from the earliest abortificents such as RU-486 to post-birth/partial-birth abortions, has been justified by a "health of the mother" exception. "Health" has, of course, been expanded to cover mental, emotional, physical and any other type of "health" abortion advocates can squeeze in. So labeling transgender as a medical/health issue says, "Hands off. It's my body. It's between me and my doctor." As the faux religious compromise on the HHS insurance mandate shows, "medical" needs (birth control, abortifacients, sterilization) trump religious liberty in the Obama administration. How long will it be before religiously affiliated institutions or even churches are barred from discriminating against the "medical" needs of the transgendered?
I worked hard to build my small business. Though it took time, investment, and a lot of hard work, I've built a business I'm proud of.The page includes the wise counsel: "Revising the letter and making it your own greatly increases the chance that a newspaper will publish it." So never again let it be said that Barack Obama doubts the ability of the American business owner to build his own business. But, hey, letters can be tricky.
The American economy is built on businesses like mine - that hire American workers and promote American innovation. If we are going to create an economy built to last, we have to support our small businesses.
But Mitt Romney's plan for the American economy would put business like mine at risk. His plan would gut investments that benefit small businesses - like education and infrastructure - so he can give more tax breaks to millionaires like himself and to companies that ship jobs overseas. His top-down philosophy won't grow our economy for the long run - we already tried it for the past decade, and it crashed our economy and hurt the middle class. If Romney thinks his plan is the best way to grow our economy and help small businesses, then he must have forgotten how we got into this mess in the first place.
Mitt Romney believes we can afford to shower the wealthiest Americans with tax cuts, but that it's a bridge too far to rebuild the roads, runways and ports our businesses rely on to ship goods across the country and around the world. He believes we can afford to cut taxes for companies that ship our jobs overseas, but that we can't afford to invest in the training and education that American workers need to compete for those jobs in the global economy.
Small business owners can't afford the failed policies of the past. And Americans can't afford a Romney presidency.
President Obama’s record on transgender equality in the workplaceSo in the name of "equality for transgender Americans in the workplace," President Obama ended (in September 2011) what must be one the most common sense lines of defense against fraud, matching a person's sex on a W-2 with Social Security records. To avoid "outing" the transgendered, we have doubled the resources for someone committing fraud since the fraudster need not even assume the identity of someone of the same sex. What a bonanza! This is reminiscent of the recent decision by Argentina to allow anyone to choose his? her? (are the days of pronouns numbered?) own sex to list on official government ID cards without the bother of consulting a doctor, a judge or even basic anatomy. Are we not on that same path now ourselves?
Did you know that President Obama has taken pivotal actions to advance equality for transgender Americans in the workplace?
In addition to naming one of the first openly transgender Presidential appointees, President Obama banned discrimination in Federal workplaces based on gender identity, and his administration released guidance to help ensure safe work environments for transgender federal employees.
Nationally, the President ended the Social Security Administration’s gender “no-match” letters, stopping the practice of notifying employers about differences between gender markers on employees’ W-2 forms and Social Security records—a step toward ensuring that transgender Americans are not accidentally outed at work.
Barbra Casbar Siperstein, the first transgender member of the DNC Executive Committee, said:
"It's an understatement to say that Barack Obama has already done more for Transgender Americans than all other Presidents combined. It's time for ‘us’ to step up and help President Obama help us!"If you support President Obama’s commitment to respect and dignity for transgender Americans in the workplace, join Obama Pride.
[M]ost people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle-class families or small businesses -- not when so many folks are just trying to get by... And that’s why I’m calling on Congress to extend the tax cuts for the 98 percent of Americans who make less than $250,000 for another year... If Congress doesn’t do this, millions of American families... could see their taxes go up by $2,200 starting on January 1st of next year.The statement was repeated on the White House blog later that day, and now appears dozens of times on the website and continues to pop up in Obama's speeches as well. Today, continuing a pattern I have noted before, the Obama campaign extracted a dollar figure from a policy proposal (what $40 means, $1,000 increase on student loans) and began to reshape and distort it to maximize its impact without regard for honesty:
Use the hashtagNote the wording: "the President’s middle-class tax cut". This is the same administration that has balked at referring to the current rates as "the Bush tax cuts," and now has appropriated that label for the President himself. And it's not even a new cut, simply a continuation of current tax policy. The only answers the president should have received via Twitter should read: "I will spend the $2,200 on the same expenses I used it for in 2012 because my taxes are not being cut." However, the president's followers on Twitter were much more creative in their replies:#2200dollars to share how the President’s middle-class tax cut would help your family next year.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 2, 2012
@barackobama a#2200dollars would help my fiancé and myself get married (something we've been saving for a year and a half)
— Kristopher Wazaney (@therealwuz) August 2, 2012
@barackobama#2200dollars is a house payment, a car payment and groceries and a couple of relaxing weekends out!
— BobbiKing (@BobbiKing) August 2, 2012
#2200dollars can help me start my daughters college fund.
— Edwin Gomez (@ego_32) August 2, 2012
Was the creativity of the tweeters just an effort to make the president look good? Or do these people, based on the president's own words, believe they've got a new $2,200 windfall headed their way in 2013? One could hardly blame them for believing the latter. But if they manage to get him reelected, it'll be too late in 2013 when Net Pay on their paychecks stays the same. Unless the Social Security tax holiday is allowed to expire and Net Pay actually gets lower. The president has been silent about that tax matter. Could it be that the Social Security tax holiday issue is being reserved by the Democrats as a homemade October Surprise issue? If so, look for a repeat of the pattern I detailed above. Who knows, maybe they'll even resurrect What $40 Means.@barackobama#2200dollars could help my parents pay for the three kids they are helping to put through college!
— Abby Cowan (@abbencowey) August 2, 2012
