Tag: Pres. Obama

So Much for the Rumors — Bloomberg Endorsed Obama

Trish

bloomberg

You heard the speculation this week that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to let Obama assess places destroyed by Hurricane Sandy because he is rooting for Mitt Romney and didn’t want to give the president any photo ops. Looks like the rumors were wrong.

Bloomberg, who had previously said that he would not make a public endorsement in the 2012 race, apparently changed his mind after New York was pummeled by Hurricane Sandy…

Bloomberg’s endorsement comes as momentum for Obama seems to be building as the race ends

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Bloomberg wrote.

“We need leadership from the White House — and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks,” the mayor continued. “His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants…which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year.”

He then went on to praise President Obama’s “Race to the Top” education initative, his defense of a woman’s right to choose, and his support for marriage equality, noting that “I want our president to be on the right side of history.”

But, Bloomberg added, it’s not just that he likes Obama. It’s also that he doesn’t like Romney.

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October Job Growth Might Have Been Twice the Forecast. Cue the Rightwing CEO Tweets

Trish

Tweets galore address the report from ADP (a payroll services provider) that 158,000 private sector jobs were added in October. Since this figure is about twice the gain of 88,000 jobs that was forecasted, we can again expect rightwing CEOs to start questioning the motives of the company, in between sending emails to their staffs threatening to cut their jobs if Obama is re-elected.

While we wait for those tweets to proliferate, here’s one I liked:

Four More Years @4More99
We expected the US to create 88,000 jobs in October – instead there were 158,000. I blame Obama.

Romney Campaign Treats Mitt Like McCain Campaign Dealt with Palin – No More Interviews before Election Day

Jon Ponder

photo-mitt-disheveledIn 2008, the McCain campaign figured out early on that their vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was incapable of giving an interview to actual journalists, as opposed to the pretend ones on Fox, and so canceled all her prospective interviews in the run-up to the election.

There is a similar dynamic at play in the 2012 election. The Romney campaign has learned from experience that when Mitt does not have a teleprompter in front of him or a long stream of memorized talking points — in other words, when he speaks extemporaneously — disaster ensues. They spent all of August and September cleaning up messes he had made.

So now, with less than two weeks before the election, they have quietly announced that they are treating Mitt the way the McCain campaign dealt with Palin — other than reading speeches off teleprompters at campaign rallies, Romney is going dark … until after he’s elected?

How will this work if Mitt becomes president? He is even more gaffe-tastic than Bush, but even worse, he won’t have anyone remotely similar to Bush’s “brain,” Karl Rove, guiding his every political move in the White House.

For now, Pres. Obama and the First Lady have a heavy schedule of interviews lined up with the network anchors, MTV and others.

Right-Wing Bubble Implodes on Romney in Debate – He’s Humiliated after Parroting GOP Media Lie That President Was Slow to Call Benghazi Attack an ‘Act of Terror’

Jon Ponder

The Fox-News, right-wing radio propaganda bubble that has dominated American politics since the Clinton era imploded on Mitt Romney during last night’s debate, leaving him exposed as a liar and humiliated in front of as many as 65 million television viewers.

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Why “Independent” Doesn’t Equate to “Idiot”

Trish

It’s hard for those of us who have absolutely no trouble whatsoever figuring out how to vote to understand what’s going on in the heads of “the undecideds.” It’s also easy to believe that they’re like the folks in this video, clueless morons distracted by irrelevant issues — and not all that bright.

When the dust settled, the choice given was Romney, a candidate McCain himself considered a poorer choice than Palin in 2008

But an essay* from a retired cop in Jacksonville named Jim Crosby, who’s changed parties several times, shows that not all independents are self-absorbed halfwits. In fact, some of them do a more thorough job of thinking through the issues and making a decision than those of us whose leanings in one direction or the other allow us to get there faster. For proof, read on.

I defected…I changed my voter’s registration from Republican to Democrat.

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Breaking: Unemployment Drops to 7.8% in September

Trish

You could hear the collective Republican “rut-roh” from here. The last thing Romney and the GOP want is for the economy to improve. Sorry guys but your worst nightmare is happening.

…the Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added 114,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 7.8 percent, the first time the rate dropped below 8 percent in three years…

This time, the improvement was not due to people dropping out of the workforce but “actually reflects a substantial increase in employment…”

Andrew Sullivan Suggests That If Obama Wins a Second Term, He Could Become ‘The Democrats’ Ronald Reagan’

Jon Ponder

screenshot-newsweek-obama-2nd-termAndrew Sullivan writing in Newsweek:

At this point in 2004, one recalls, George W. Bush was about to see a near eight-point lead shrivel to a one-state nail-biter by Election Day. But one thing that has so far, in my view, been underestimated is the potential impact of a solid Obama win, and perhaps a Democratic retention of the Senate and some progress in the House. This is now a perfectly plausible outcome. It would also be a transformational moment in modern American politics.

If Obama wins, to put it bluntly, he will become the Democrats’ Reagan. The narrative writes itself. He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al -Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery. To be sure, the Obama recovery isn’t likely to have the same oomph as the one associated with Reagan—who benefited from a once-in-a-century cut of top income tax rates (from 70 percent to, at first, 50 percent, and then to 28 percent) as well as a huge jump in defense spending at a time when the national debt was much, much less of a burden. But Obama’s potential for Reagan status (maybe minus the airport-naming) is real. Yes, Bill Clinton won two terms and is a brilliant pol bar none, as he showed in Charlotte in the best speech of both conventions. But the crisis Obama faced on his first day—like the one Reagan faced—was far deeper than anything Clinton confronted, and the future upside therefore is much greater. And unlike Clinton’s constant triangulating improvisation, Obama has been playing a long, strategic game from the very start—a long game that will only truly pay off if he gets eight full years to see it through. That game is not only changing America. It may also bring his opposition, the GOP, back to the center, just as Reagan indelibly moved the Democrats away from the far left

Obama Tweets on NFL Lockout; Does Romney Know What Football Is?

Trish

NFL fans on both side of the aisle hope the refs’ lockout is settled soon. -bo

Pres. Obama, tweeting after a complicated call on a complicated play by stand-in referees that recently gave a win to the Seattle Seahawks. Upset Green Bay Packers fans want the NFL to settle their labor dispute with the real refs before any more games go awry. One can’t help but wonder if Mitt Romney, who famously said he wasn’t a NASCAR fan but knew several team owners, has ever seen a pro football game or would know an interception if he made one.