The Republican refusal to countenance any way to raise revenues to tackle the massive debt incurred largely on their watch and from a recession which started under Obama’s predecessor makes one thing clear. They are not a political party in government; they are a radical faction that refuses to participate meaningfully in the give and take the Founders firmly believed should be at the center of American government. They are not conservatives in this sense. They are anarchists.
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Coming from abroad, this country seems as if it is beyond dysfunctional. It looks like a banana republic on the verge of economic collapse. Now that Nixon’s dream has come true and the GOP is fundamentally the party of the Confederacy, it was perhaps naive to think they could ever accept the legitimacy of this president, or treat him with respect or act as adults in the governing process.
But this is who they are. I longed for Obama to bridge this gulf in ideology. But he cannot bridge it alone, especially when the GOP is determined to burn the bridge entirely, even when presented with a deal so tilted to the right only true fanatics could possibly walk away from it. And so the very republic is being plunged into crisis and possible depression by a single, implacable, fanatical faction. Until they are defeated, the country remains in more peril than we know.
Great thing happened yesterday, and was basically ignored, but here’s PBO signing the certification stating the statutory requirements for repeal of DADT.
Among the more than 550,000 donors to the president’s 2012 reelection bid were big-name movie stars including actors George Clooney, Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Michael Keaton, Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg and his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, also gave to the 2012 campaign, according to the latest Federal Election Commission report. Jennifer Garner and Gwyneth Paltrow both contributed under their married names —Affleck and Martin, respectively.
30 Rock” actor Alec Baldwin, who has often toyed with a potential political run, also shelled out cash for Obama’s second-quarter fundraising haul. And several other TV actors — such as “Monk”’s Tony Shalhoub, “Glee”’s Jane Lynch, “24”’s president Dennis Haysbert and sci-fi stars Scott Bakula and Richard Dean Anderson — joined Baldwin in contributing to the president’s reelection bid.
Comedians Will Ferrell, Carl Reiner and “The Simpsons”’s Yeardley Smith also doled out money for Obama, whose campaign attracted a record-breaking $86 million in donations.
KABUL (Reuters) – The first U.S. troops have left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama’s planned drawdown of about a third of the 100,000 U.S. forces there during the next year.
Facing growing political opposition to the nearly decade-old war, Obama announced in June the withdrawal plan, which was a faster timetable than the military had recommended.
The first 10,000 troops will come home by the end of the year, but Obama left the details up to his commanders.
U.S. Lt. Col. Wayne Perry, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said about 650 troops who had completed their rotation in Afghanistan left on Wednesday as scheduled, and would not be replaced.
“As part of the drawdown the first U.S. troops have left Afghanistan,” he said.
Finally, I hope everyone is paying attention to the fierce that is ChipSticks over atThe Obama Diary, because she’s doing the best job I’ve ever seen of exposing the fraud, the lie and disgust that is the unprofessional left.
So, Obama can rake in the big bucks—no surprise there. The real story is the 552,000 donors who gave to the Obama 2012 effort, “more grassroots support at this point in the process than any campaign in political history,” said campaign manager Jim Messina in a video message to supporters. Messina said that 98 percent of donations last quarter were under $250, and that the average donation was $69.
That haul throws a huge bucket of cold water on claims that Obama is losing his liberal/Democratic base. Pollster James Zogby wrote in September 2009 that Democrats were souring on Obama after the health-insurance-reform fight and for his policies on the war in Afghanistan. Liberal TV host Ed Schultz told former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs last year that “you’re losing your base.” If Obama’s donor rolls are any indication, the left appears to be just as motivated in the 2012 race as they were in 2008.
Of course, reams of polling data have been reinforcing this for months. According to Gallup polling, Obama’s approval rating among Democrats has held steady at around 80 percent, give or take a few percentage points, since September of last year. Among liberals, Obama’s doing almost as well, with approval ratings hovering around 70 percent; it’s currently 76 percent.
So all that talk of Democrats and liberals sloughing off Obama? Nothing to it. Today’s fundraising numbers prove Obama’s still hugely popular, and that whomever the GOP picks to run against him will face the major undertaking of matching the powerful Obama fundraising machine.
Did we not see the same thing 2-3-4-5 times over the past couple of years? Every time there’s a big issue on the table, it’s always the same. Rumors after rumors from unnamed “sources”, speculations, trial balloons, “progressives” pants on fire and the sky is just about to fall.
Here’s the thing: this is no ordinary president. The fact that America didn’t get it by now, is quite amazing. This guy never played small-ball in his life and he won’t start now. Unlike the Republicans, who couldn’t care less about the deficit and it’s all just social war for them, PBO really think – and rightly so – that the huge deficit is something we need to fix. Unlike many of his predecessors, this man is a serious, responsible adult. He will not kick this down the road. He’ll try to get a big deal here, because this is who he is. Hey, people can always vote the lunatics back to power next year. We see how good it worked in 2010.
I learned few things over the past couple of years:
1. This president is and always will be held to much much higher standards than any previous president. He’s also much much better than almost any previous president.
2. This president is so far ahead of the country, it’s actually depressing.
3. This president is about solving problems and he despise righteousness or extremes.
4. This president is the greatest defender of the middle class in almost 50 years.
5. The only “source” I’m taking seriously is Barack Obama. And until I’ll hear from him, the rest is just the usual stupid outrage.
6. It’s a waste of time, health and sanity to visit those “progressives” sites. These places are full of hate, racism and poison. People who are so disingenuous that they can never say anything good about anything PBO does, are not worth taking into any account.
Which bring me to my last point: until we hear from BARACK OBAMA HIMSELF that he’s cutting benefits to Medicare and SS (as oppose to cutting waste and abuse, which are everywhere, and we know that) – please try take the panic button down a notch when you post here. I respectfully ask to NOT bring here media spins by right-wing tools, and not link to that other site (seems like I ask that every second week).
As I said, we’ve been through this a few times before, and over the past 2.5 years, Barack Obama has done nothing to justify me not trusting him. He may still do so, but until then – this site is fully behind him.
Here’s yesterday’s Twitter town hall, which went so good, the media had to change the subject quickly. People should listen to what PBO said about entitlements (not that it’ll change anything).
I hope you’re all having a good day. Don’t forget the fascinating event tomorrow.I don’t think Barack Obama can answer any question in 140 characters…:)
Here’s a very nice story about Rufus Gifford, who is in charge of PBO money-raising machine. This guy is only 36 years old, and, he’s gay – Which proves Rachel Maddow’s point yet again…(That was a snark, just making sure :)).
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CHICAGO – By his own account, Rufus Gifford’s early life was everything you would expect of the son of a patrician New England banker. Privileged North Shore upbringing. Elite schools. In the summer, tennis on Nantucket.
But things shifted for the third child of Chad Gifford, who ran some of Boston’s biggest financial institutions, after Father’s Day weekend in 1993, when his family discovered he was gay. Rufus Gifford says now that coming out to his parents allowed him to pursue a less traditional path, launching him toward California and ensuring that he would never wear the starched shirts and gray business suits of his father.
Still, money and power have exerted a strong pull on Rufus Gifford’s career.
Just 36 years old, he is working at the center of the Democratic political universe as chief of President Obama’s fund-raising operation for his reelection bid. The post has solidified his status as one of the most prominent openly gay operatives in the country.
After he served as a successful West Coast fund-raiser for Senator John F. Kerry in 2004 and other Democrats in subsequent years, Gifford was dubbed “Obama’s Gay Goldmine’’ by a California publication during Obama’s 2008 bid for the White House.
Now he spends much of his time in a Chicago office tower, home to Obama campaign headquarters. The president’s reelection hinges in substantial part on Gifford’s ability to persuade a big slice of American industry – from Wall Street’s players to Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs – to pour as much as $1 billion into the coffers for what is expected to be the most expensive campaign in history. Obama set the record in 2008 when he raised $745 million.
“I have not slept through the night in probably two years. There’s the pressure, but also the adrenaline,’’ Gifford said in a recent interview. “I went into this knowing how difficult it would be, that we were being asked to do something that’s never been done before, and for me that’s the most exciting part of this job.’’
// You need to be registered in order to read the rest – So if anyone wants to bring the entire story here, please do.
Michael Busick says his credit union “was shocked” to discover his credit score was 812 of a possible 850 when he applied for a $19,500 new-car loan.
The loan officer told Busick he rarely sees scores so close to perfect, said the Charlotte, North Carolina, math teacher, who added that he always pays his bills on time and doesn’t “overextend.” He got the funds in May.
The average U.S. credit score — a predictor of the likelihood lenders will be paid back — rose to 696 in May, the highest in at least four years, according to Equifax Inc., a provider of consumer-credit data. The ratio of consumer-debt payments to incomes is the lowest since 1994, and delinquencies have dropped 30 percent in two years, Federal Reserve data show.
Improving credit quality gives households the ability to lift borrowing as concerns ease about rising gasoline prices, hard-to-find jobs and falling home prices. A reacceleration in spending would belie Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach’s assertion that consumers will be “zombies” for years because of too much debt.
Cuomo and the NY politicians were very carefully advancing the issue in a delicate manner, allowing this to be a vote of conscience for the Senators, free from the usual heightened levels of partisan rancor. Things were proceeding nicely, everything pointed to a win for gay rights the next night, and Obama didn’t need to do anything to “lead.” In fact, if Obama had gone up there and delivered what these clowns wanted, and gave a rousing speech claiming he had changed his mind, it would have done nothing but blown up the current negotiations. How many Republicans who were supporting the vote would have backed away, simply because Republicans could not give Obama a “win.” The vote of conscience would be gone, and it would become a partisan battle and the vote would probably have failed.
I swear, it is almost like these idiots don’t understand politics, don’t understand risk and reward, and do not understand strategic thinking. The vote was going to pass- why would Obama do anything to insert himself into the issue and possibly blow things up? Hell, I was worried that just him appearing at the fundraiser would blow things up.
It’s almost like they just want to cheer and feel good about themselves rather than have good legislation pass.
The only adult in the room 