Today, as we celebrate James Bond’s 50 birthday, we’ll focus on Timothy Dalton.
The Living Daylights (1987)
Licence to Kill (1989)
And, where would James Bond be without his Bond Girls.
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Black Girls Rock!
Flickr Photos
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Potus Takes Oath of Office
Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China
My Brothers Keeper
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AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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Presidential hug
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http://youtu.be/iATk-p7fVtQ
What Black America Owes the First Black President
November 1, 2012 by Avis Jones DeWeever
Being first is never easy. It brings with it the weight of generations of aspirations along with countless and often divergent dreams of what could be. Over the course of the last four years, President Obama has traversed this delicate and lonely path under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. He has faced down a worldwide financial collapse after inheriting an American economy in free-fall. Along the way he has led the nation to a measured yet persistent recovery, one that has in fact outperformed some of our closest European allies, counterparts whose policies his political foes have persistently sought to emulate. He has maintained what could only be described as a super-human level of dignity, strength, and thoughtful leadership within a political environment that has been nothing short of toxic, rife with vitriol, clear instances of race-based hate, and a carefully plotted unprecedented level of partisan stonewalling, relentless opposition, and plain old-fashioned disrespect. He has faced nothing less than a political perfect storm the likes of which experienced never before in the history of presidential politics.
Yet, for a loud and persistent cadre of self-appointed authentically Black critics, his presidency has been cast as nothing short of an outright failure; if not for the nation, than certainly for Black America. They point to the President’s reluctance to articulate and implement a specifically race-based strategy for attacking things like the wide and stubbornly persistent gaps in poverty, unemployment, wealth, and criminal justice interactions which most certainly exist within the divergent experiences of white and Black America. And they ask the poignant question, after four years of a long-awaited Black Presidency, how could this be?
Further, they seem compelled to attack Black intelligencia and their own narrowly defined notions of Black leadership — a notion that somehow displays a consistent and uncanny tendency to define Black leaders as male-only by design — and then question the effectiveness of that leadership or the motivations of that intelligencia if they fail to display an obsessive-compulsive public tendency to call the President out on what they have couched as nothing short of the abandonment of Black America. In short, they seem to suggest that those who are not openly critical of the first Black President, are somehow themselves, not Black enough, or at minimum, Black with a heavy dose of naiveté.
As someone who has now for twenty years actively worked within the Washington, DC policy-arena, and doesn’t merely pontificate on theories of how politics should work, or seek to augment my income by peddling Obama-bashing books, or engage in corporately funded (at least in part) Obama-bashing tours, I can unabashedly state that in this socio-political environment, an explicitly stated Black-agenda would have torpedoed the Obama presidency faster than you can say, “Who sank my Battleship?”
As we stand on the verge of this President’s true test of history, whether or not a Black President can win re-election in an increasingly racist country, we need to take seriously our responsibility on Election Day.
As we face our choices, or God-forbid, struggle with the notion of whether or not to vote at all, at this stage in the game, we should ask ourselves not what our Black President can do for us, but instead, what can we do for our Black President?
The stakes faced on November 6 are just too high to get caught in the trap of who does and who does not on a consistent basis brandish their Blackness card in gaudy fashion around their neck like some modern-day morphing of Mr. T and 2 Chainz.
For the moment, it’s time to squash that foolishness.
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/11/what-black-america-owes-the-first-black-president/
President Obama in Denver … introduction: http://new.livestream.com/barackobama/boulder …
Keep That Down
KEEP DEMOCRATE VOTING BELOW 50%
http://youtu.be/KwpXTg6Ryjw
Secret Service agent kills self amid affair probe
http://online.wsj.com/article/APa925330d99e9462db6f849ba61703094.html
WASHINGTON — A senior Secret Service agent being formally investigated by the government for failing to disclose a long-standing relationship with a foreign citizen killed himself last week.
People familiar with the matter say Rafael Prieto, a married father assigned to President Barack Obama’s security detail, acknowledged the affair after U.S. authorities began investigating. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Prieto’s death or the investigation.
The sources say Prieto’s relationship was revealed to Secret Service investigators by an agent who had been entangled in the Colombian prostitution scandal earlier this year. That agent was concerned that the Secret Service wasn’t enforcing its rules consistently.
It is against Secret Service rules to have a relationship with a foreign citizen and not tell the agency.
BREAKING: @CBSNews Correspondent John Miller reports investigation underway into apparent suicide of senior Secret Service official.
Charlie Kaye@CharlieKayeCBS
More USSS. Prieto has been assigned to the President’s security detail. He had been suspended for unreported contact with a foreign national
Charlie Kaye@CharlieKayeCBS
More USSS. The body of Rafael Prieto, an assistant Special Agent in Charge, was discovered in an auto in a garage in Washington on Saturday
Statement from President Obama on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Endorsement
“I’m honored to have Mayor Bloomberg’s endorsement. I deeply respect him for his leadership in business, philanthropy and government, and appreciate the extraordinary job he’s doing right now, leading New York City through these difficult days.
“While we may not agree on every issue, Mayor Bloomberg and I agree on the most important issues of our time – that the key to a strong economy is investing in the skills and education of our people, that immigration reform is essential to an open and dynamic democracy, and that climate change is a threat to our children’s future, and we owe it to them to do something about it. Just as importantly, we agree that whether we are Democrats, Republicans, or independents, there is only one way to solve these challenges and move forward as a nation – together. I look forward to thanking him in person – but for now, he has my continued commitment that this country will stand by New York in its time of need. And New Yorkers have my word that we will recover, we will rebuild, and we will come back stronger.”
Go the F*** to Sleep’ author Adam Mansbach wants the American people to wake the “eff” up politically http://bit.ly/RwZv9U
Poll: Obama Re-Emerges As Favorite In Wisconsin, Opens Up 8-Point Lead
http://news.yahoo.com/poll-obama-emerges-favorite-wisconsin-opens-8-point-182128292–politics.html
After watching his double-digit leads in Wisconsin vanish following the first debate earlier this month, President Barack Obama has re-asserted himself as the favorite in the Badger State, a poll released Wednesday shows.
The latest Marquette University Law School Poll shows Obama crossing the 50 percent threshold to open up an 8-point lead over Mitt Romney in Wisconsin, 51 percent to 43 percent. It caps what has been a roller coaster month-and-a-half for the president in Marquette’s polling.
Wisconsonites aren’t crazy. They know what Scott Walker and Co have done to the state, and they know what Lil Eddie Munster Ryan’s all about too.
Former Bain Capital managing director said of Romney’s tenure: “We had a scheme where the rich got richer.” http://thinkprogress.org/romney-facts/#fact-3 …
Will “experimental” software patches affect the Ohio vote?
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4766
Why did the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office, in an end run around Ohio election law, have “experimental” software patches installed on vote counting tabulators in up to 39 Ohio counties? Voting rights activists are concerned that these uncertified and untested software patches may alter the election results.
During the 2004 presidential election, the Free Press reported that election officials observed technicians from the ES&S voting machine company and Triad computer maintenance company installing uncertified and untested software patches on voting machines in 44 Ohio counties prior to the election. Software patches are usually installed to “update” or change existing software. These software patch updates were considered suspect by election protection activists, in light of all the voting machine anomalies found during the 2004 election in Ohio.
The Free Press has learned that Election Systems and Solutions (ES&S) installed the software patches that will affect 4,041,056 registered voters, including those in metropolitan Columbus and Cleveland
Romney Pays Dearly for Making the Fatal Mistake of Lying about Corporations
http://www.politicususa.com/mitt-romney-fatal-mistake-lying-corporations-pays-dearly.html
The Denver Post joined the line up of papers attacking Mitt Romney’s blatant dishonesty in the ad where he claims that Jeep is moving jobs to China and the radio ad in which the Republican candidate claims Obama saved GM for the Chinese. There’s an entire line up of papers that have taken a hard line against Romney’s Jeep and GM lies.
When Romney used his usual tactic of making harmful things up in a chaotic attempt to make himself look better, he made a fatal mistake in taking aim at corporations. Here’s a round up.
The Denver Post begins with, “Nothing smells like desperation more than the falsehoods and half-truths coming out of the Romney campaign about Chrysler purportedly moving Jeep manufacturing jobs to China. The episode has been shameful.” And it gets worse. They denounce Romney for his refusal to let facts get in the way and call him out on basically not liking that Obama was making inroads in Ohio because of his auto bailout, “But why let the facts get in the way when you can exploit a poorly written news story for political gain in a must-win state?”
Posted at 02:34 PM ET, 11/01/2012
For Romney to win, the state polls have to be very, very wrong
By Greg Sargent
Conservatives are taking heart today from a very interesting piece by Reid Wilson that explains some of the disparities between Republican and Democratic internal polling. Yet Wilson’s reporting also confirms something about the race that shouldn’t really give the right all that much comfort: The public polling overwhelmingly tracks with the Dem reading of the electorate, and not with the Republican reading of it.
Wilson explains that questions about how diverse the electorate will be this time around are driving the differences between the GOP and Dem internal polling. Both sides agree that the African American vote will make up roughly the same share of the electorate as in 2008. They differ when it come to Latinos and young voters. Republicans think Latino turnout will be down, thanks to the economy and Obama’s failure to secure immigration reform. They think fewer young voters will turn out and/or that fewer will vote for Obama this time. Republicans think the electorate will be older and whiter. Dems believe the electorate will continue to grow younger and more diverse.
That’s a legit argument to have, and we won’t know who’s right until Election Day. But Wilson adds this absolutely crucial point:
What concerns Republicans most is the fact that media polls seem to track more closely with Democratic internals than with the GOP’s numbers.
This perfectly captures the state of play right now, which is that the consensus of averages of all the state polling is far more in sync with the Democratic reading of the electorate than with the Republican reading of the electorate . And there are five days left.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Romney-Ryan- Dr.s DOLITTLE & DO NOTHING FRAUDS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XzRV2na0VdU
No, no ,no, Romney; you’re not going to clean anything, and America knows it. LOL
Those MOFO is soooo BUSTED
HELLO MR. PRESIDENT!
Jeff Gauvin@JeffersonObama
DAMN YOU OBAMA!! U.S. new home sales hit highest in 2 1/2 years. Sales rise 27.1% in the past year http://cbc.sh/MofG5qD #p2
LOL You pretty, Mutha….
bwa ha ha ha ha
Texas county returning alleged shakedown cash
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/01/3077652/texas-county-returning-alleged.html
DALLAS — Authorities in a Texas county where a drug enforcement program was allegedly used to shake down black and Latino highway travelers are returning more than $100,000 taken during the traffic stops.
The stops in Tenaha, which often resulted in people being forced to hand over cash without any charges being filed, have led to multiple lawsuits and two federal criminal investigations.
District Attorney Kenneth Florence said Shelby County has dismissed all of its pending forfeiture cases, even those without a connection to Tenaha, in what he described as an effort to turn the page after an agreement was reached in August to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from the stops.
“I just don’t think you could get anything done with any of those cases,” said Florence, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in August and is running for the post in next week’s election. “They are all tainted, so to speak.”
Who are the REAL CRIMINALS here?
THE HANDWRITING’S ON THE WALL, MITT ROMNEY
Our American endorsement
Which one?
America could do better than Barack Obama; sadly, Mitt Romney does not fit the bill
OUR years ago, The Economist endorsed Barack Obama for the White House with enthusiasm. So did millions of voters. Next week Americans will trudge to the polls far less hopefully. So (in spirit at least) will this London-based newspaper. Having endured a miserably negative campaign, the world’s most powerful country now has a much more difficult decision to make than it faced four years ago.
That is in large part because of the woeful nature of Mr Obama’s campaign. A man who once personified hope and centrism set a new low by unleashing attacks on Mitt Romney even before the first Republican primary. Yet elections are about choosing somebody to run a country. And this choice turns on two questions: how good a president has Mr Obama been, especially on the main issues of the economy and foreign policy? And can America really trust the ever-changing Mitt Romney to do a better job? On that basis, the Democrat narrowly deserves to be re-elected.
Read on: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21565623-america-could-do-better-barack-obama-sadly-mitt-romney-does-not-fit-bill-which-one
JUST CAME TO POST THIS…HEE HEE HEE
Comforter-in-Chief. Must be nice to be held so gently by the President of the United States!
Shelby County Must Accept Library Cards as Voter ID Immediately
http://wreg.com/2012/11/01/shelby-county-must-accept-library-cards-as-voter-id-immediately/
(Nashville) The Tennessee Supreme Court has ordered the Secretary of State and the State Coordinator of Elections to immediately direct the Shelby County Election Commission to accept city-issued library cards as valid photo identification at the polls.
The state previously told the Shelby County Election Commission to allow voters using library cards to vote on provisional ballots after an Appeals Court ruling allowing the library cards to be used as ID.
But attorneys for the City of Memphis asked the Supreme Court to treat those voters like any others, allowing them to cast standard ballots.
LOL These MOFOs aren’t gonna get away from their attempts at STEALING our votes.
NO.WAY.IN.HELL
OMG My brain can’t take it
LOL! O lawd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Audience giving her the Side eye Bwa ha ha ha
Oh please let one of these MOFOs roll up in my polling district, PLEASE
Poll watchers could bring “chaos” in Ohio and elsewhere, national expert says
Source: The Columbus Dispatch
Forget all that concern about provisional ballots, improperly denied absentee ballot applications and the like.
What is really the biggest wild card for next week’s presidential election in Ohio and elsewhere?
Citizen poll watchers.
So says Doug Chapin of the University of Minnesota, a widely acclaimed expert in how elections are conducted.
“I think the biggest thing to watch next Tuesday is the impact of citizen poll watchers, including but not limited to those affiliated with Houston-based True the Vote,” he said yesterday on his Election Academy blog.
True the Vote and its affiliated Ohio organization, the Voter Integrity Project, have signed up as observers at polling places Tuesday in various precincts across the state.
Read more: http://dispatchpolitics.dispatch.com/content/blogs/the-daily-briefing/2012/11/1-november-2012—poll-chaos.html
_______________
I wish a teabagger would step to me …
BWA HA HA HA HA See this is where I would love to be in the company of Ben LaBolt and Steph Cutter.
Have a stadium full-o-seats, Jeb Bush. Your father was an utter failure as POTUS. THE END
Mitt Romney never had teh numbers, and only won the Republican primary by throwing $$$ for dirty ads against his opponnents. He’s losing now. And ven after a campaign of COMPLETE LIES, which the media has been complicit in covering up, prettying them up with words like “untruths, “falsehoods,” “not factual,” “blatant dishonesty.” & “misinformation.” These are all Frank Luntz cutesy phrases.
How about LIES. & Mitt Romney is a LIAR. Of course that would have been to easy for folks like Chuck Todd, Mark Halperin and CO. The media in America are CRIMINAL in their actions of throwing out propaganda and drama to make profit. Fuck them all.
On Being Republican in 2012
By Thomas Magstadt
To be a Republican nowadays you have to believe concurrently that:
1. Jesus loves you, but shares your deep hatred of homosexuals, gay marriage, gun control advocates, conservationists, animal rights activists, and Barack Obama.
2. “Support our troops” means backing old white men who have no qualms about sending other people’s kids to die in wars we can’t win in countries whose people hate us for being there.
3. The best way to restore growth and prosperity to the US economy is to fire your workers and outsource everything possible to Asia.
4. Venture capitalists who makes millions of dollars slicing and dicing companies and loading the unlucky ones with so much debt that they have to declare bankruptcy and cease operations cannot possibly continue to create jobs unless they get huge tax breaks and pay at an average rate of 14% or less; otherwise, they won’t be “incentivized” to go on making millions while transacting important business on the golf course.
5. Being a lesbian, petty thief, or drug addict is a sign of moral degeneracy unless you’re the daughter of a conservative politician, investment banker, or extreme right-wing radio host. Then it’s either laudable or an illness for which the appropriate remedy is prayer, not punishment.
Read on: http://www.nationofchange.org/print/31011
Nancy Keenan, the President of NARAL, makes the case that a Romney presidency would threaten women’s reproductive rights: http://huff.to/VesnKp
ROMNEY, A LIAR? No shit, SHERLOCK!
It’s been eight days since Mitt Romney first made his false and desperate claim about Jeep production moving to China. It wasn’t true then, and it’s not true now— but it’s a claim the Romney campaign keeps making, despite the fact-checkers, the media, and the auto companies themselves calling them out. Today, newspapers in the Buckeye State published scathing editorials that slam Mitt Romney for deliberately attempting to deceive and mislead Ohioans about the auto industry.
· The Youngstown Vindicator: “Romney’s GM and Chrysler ads are an insult to Ohioans.” http://bit.ly/PoIDG7
· Toldeo Blade says Romney is “conducting an exercise in deception about auto-industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign,” and adds that “Mr. Romney’s own words make clear he is no friend of the auto industry.” http://bit.ly/TwHDQJ
The New York Times agrees: “It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.” http://nyti.ms/Y75XKH
· Jared Bernstein on why Romney’s ads are “particularly ridiculous”: http://bit.ly/Q8OK2s
In case you missed it: “Obama’s résumé of accomplishments is broad and deep, running the gamut from economic to social to foreign policy.” Jonathan Chait makes the case for why President Obama is a great president: http://bit.ly/PoIT7U
What Obama’s accomplished
By Lauren on October 31, 2012 Forward
http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/what-obamas-accomplished
O’Reilly: Obama doesn’t like Americans because blacks have ‘grievance against whites’
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1TNl33/www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/01/oreilly-obama-doesnt-like-americans-because-blacks-have-grievance-against-whites/
With less than a week to go before election day, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is suggesting that the president of the United States doesn’t like half of the country because African Americans have a “grievance against whites.”
Conservative radio host Dennis Miller explained to O’Reilly on Thursday that President Barack Obama had “squandered” the public’s affection for him after the last election.
Miller opined that Obama and President Richard Nixon were the only two presidents in his lifetime “who seemed to actively dislike half the population of the country.”
“I look at Barack Obama and think, you know, I don’t sense he likes half this country,” Miller said. “And I think that’s coming back to bite him in the tookus.”
Do you think it has anything to do with grievance?” O’Reilly wondered. “Because in some African-American communities there is a grievance against whites who aren’t sympathetic to their cause. And that may be driving a little bit of it. So there are some African Americans who believe the reason that they’re not prospering as a community, alright, is because society hasn’t done enough, and the reason society hasn’t done enough is because of rich white guys.”
So blacks aren’t Americans, Bill O’Reilly?
FOUND at TOD:
Dakota
October 31, 2012 at 11:25 pm
This was comment that was posted under the NPR video of the little that was crying because she was tired of “Bronco Bamma” and Mitt “Romeney”:
I am a nanny and the other day one of the girls I was watching started tearing up after some presidential program geared for kids finished. The little girl comes up to me and starts balling saying “Mitt Romney scares me!” her sister then proceeded to chase her around the house yelling “Mitt Romney! Mitt Romney!” It was really sad but pretty hilarious at the same time… I tried my best to hold in my laughter
LOL @ her sister then proceeded to chase her around the house yelling “Mitt Romney! Mitt Romney!”
Latest Swing State Polls
Here are the latest polls from the battleground states:
Colorado: Romney 50%, Obama 47% (Rasmussen)
Florida: Obama 47%, Romney 47% (Newsmax/Zogby)
Iowa: Obama 50%, Romney 44% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Michigan: Obama 53%, Romney 45% (Public Policy Polling)
Nevada: Obama 50%, Romney 46% (SurveyUSA)
New Hampshire: Obama 49%, Romney 47% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Ohio: Obama 50%, Romney 44% (Newsmax/Zogby)
Virginia: Obama 49%, Romney 46% (Public Policy Polling)
Virginia: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (Newsmax/Zogby)
Wisconsin: Obama 49%, Romney 46% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Wisconsin: Obama 49%, Romney 49% (Rasmussen)
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/11/01/latest_swing_state_polls.html
President Obama featured in Jet while he was at Harvard.
LOL Oh the irony of that Andy Rooney article parallel to Then harvard Law’s First BLACK PRESIDENT. Oh the irony of it all.
LOL! It is, isn’t it?
You Don’t Win By Losing
by BooMan
Wed Oct 31st, 2012 at 01:05:20 PM EST
Any liberal, progressive, or Democrat who is spending the last week before Election Day discussing the merits of a third party, or actually trying to make a case that a Romney presidency will do more to advance progressive causes, should probably be euthanized purely out of mercy. If you are a liberal who wants to sell books or gain page views or higher ratings for your television or radio program, a Romney presidency will help you out. Otherwise, everything you believe in and fight for will be set back, put at risk, or utterly destroyed.
If you don’t understand what is at stake at the Supreme Court, you probably don’t understand much else about American politics, either. But the entire premise of this argument is that the Democrats will learn certain lessons from defeat and that this will lead to a reinvigorated defense of civil liberties and an assertion of economic populism that is sorely lacking on the present-day left.
There is no precedent for believing this will actually happen. The whole New Democrat/Blue Dog phenomenon arose out of the ashes of the Mondale and Dukakis defeats. The only time the Democrats responded to defeat by moving left was in 1972, and we know how that turned out.
A Romney administration would roll back the expansion of Medicaid and access to health care for 30 million people. It would result in a rightward shift in the courts that would make voting much harder and would do severe damage to women’s rights. But even if that were all somehow worth it, we have foreign policy to consider. We have competency to consider, the importance of which the current operations of FEMA compared to their performance under Bush should highlight. And, ultimately, we’d have to win the argument within the Democratic Party about why Obama lost. It couldn’t be because of the weak economy or because of the Citizens United ruling, or because Republican governors and secretaries of state and legislatures suppressed the vote, or because of racism, or because Romney got away with a campaign of lies. No, it would have to be agreed that the president lost because he was too aggressive in the pursuit of terrorists and he didn’t do enough to alleviate the foreclosure crisis, and some other combination of populist and anti-militarist reasoning.
The chances of winning that argument would be hampered by the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to support it. It would be further hampered by the fact that the Democrats would be more finance-challenged than ever and therefore less inclined to embrace economic populism.
If progressives want to change the Democratic Party, they should look across the aisle at the Tea Party. Obviously, the Tea Party should not be emulated in full. But their decision to fight in the primaries is the correct one. You do not further your cause by empowering your enemies.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/10/31/13520/835
Coming Up Short While Winning
by BooMan
Thu Nov 1st, 2012 at 09:09:39 AM EST
As the pollsters begin to report their final numbers they can no longer put influencing the election over accurately predicting it. That is because Election Day is the only day when these pollsters are accountable. The worse they do on Election Day, the fewer clients they will get and the less influence they will have in the next cycle. So, as if by magic, the Republican outlier polls will begin the “show” a surge for the president and the result can already be seen. The corporate pundits have called the race. A week ago is was “too close to call” and “incredibly close,” but today it is “baked in the cake” and there is “no way” for Romney to win. Absolutely nothing changed. Hurricane Sandy may have shut down the campaign rhetoric for a couple of days but it didn’t suddenly persuade millions of Americans to change their minds about who they intend to vote for. Obama was winning all along, from beginning to end, with never a single day when he would have or could have lost this election. The only real question was whether he could decisively win the argument and expand on his 2008 victory. If I had to guess, right now, I’d say that Obama will come up short of 2008. He will not win Indiana and he will probably fall a point short of 53% of the vote.
It’s a shame because, prior to the first debate where Obama let Romney stand with him on an equal footing, the trajectory was for a blowout election with Arizona coming into view and Missouri not far behind. Romney was staggered and flailing for two straight months and could have been knocked out. Obama let him off the ropes and the price is probably going to be control of the House of Representatives. And that means more dysfunction for two more years. Of course, the president doesn’t deserve all the blame for that. The districts are gerrymandered and corporate money is unlimited and unaccountable, the media isn’t an effective referee, and there are a lot of very gullible and misinformed people in this (and every other) country.
And, who knows? I could be wrong. Maybe we will win back the House.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/11/1/81618/3283
PublicPolicyPolling@ppppolls
Our new Virginia poll for @HCAN finds Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 49-46: publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/10/o…
New Obama ad stars Colin Powell
By Steve Benen
Thu Nov 1, 2012 9:10 AM EDT.
Last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell threw his support to President Obama, offering strong praise for the president’s record, while raising questions about Mitt Romney’s judgment. Yesterday, Powell’s endorsement was used as the basis for a radio ad launched by the Obama campaign.
Overnight, Team Obama went a little further, turning Powell’s on-air comments into a television ad.
For those who can’t watch clips online, the ad shows Powell endorsing the president and explaining:
“When he took over, we were in one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. And I saw, over the next several years, stabilization come back in the financial community. Housing is starting to pick up. The president saved the auto industry. The actions he’s taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very, very solid. So I think we ought to keep on the track that we’re on.”
The use of that last phrase was especially interesting. For quite a while, polls have shown a large percentage of Americans saying the nation is on the “wrong track.” For the Obama campaign to include Powell’s hope that we “keep on the track that we’re on” suggests the president’s team believes there’s been a shift in public attitudes, and there’s less of a public appetite for dramatic change.
This ad will air, by the way, in 10 states — Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Note that Pennsylvania and Michigan are not on the list, but Minnesota is.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/01/14853928-new-obama-ad-stars-colin-powell?lite
With FEMA’s fate on the line
By Steve Benen
Thu Nov 1, 2012 7:59 AM EDT.
With this week’s deadly storm as a backdrop, there’s been a fair amount in Mitt Romney’s plans for FEMA’s future. Just last year, the Republican said he intends to effectively close FEMA’s doors, turning over authority for emergency response to states and the private sector.
At a public event on Tuesday, Romney was asked 11 times by reporters whether he’d keep FEMA intact if elected president, and 11 times, the candidate ignored the question. It took a while, but yesterday, his campaign issued a written statement with the Republican’s position.
“I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” Romney said in a statement supplied by his campaign Wednesday. “As president, I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs to fulfill its mission, while directing maximum resources to the first responders who work tirelessly to help those in need, because states and localities are in the best position to get aid to the individuals and communities affected by natural disasters
At a minimum, this is preferable to the candidate blowing off the question altogether. But the written statement from aides — why Romney wouldn’t say this out loud is unclear — leaves key questions unanswered.
For example, why is it that Romney now believes FEMA should get “the funding it needs,” but last year, he said “we cannot afford” to fully fund the agency? Other than the calendar, what’s changed
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/01/14852604-with-femas-fate-on-the-line?lite
Romney’s Secrecy: Did He Get Away With It?
In January, in a South Carolina debate just before that state’s primary, Newt Gingrich hit Mitt Romney hard for releasing barely any of his tax returns: “Look, he’s got to decide and the people of South Carolina have to decide. But if there’s anything in there that is going to help us lose the election, we should know it before the nomination. And if there’s nothing in there, why not release it?” The audience applauded, and when Gingrich proceeded to trounce Romney at the polls the following Saturday, voters told me that Romney’s secrecy about his tax returns was part of their decision—they didn’t necessarily care what tax rate Romney paid, but they didn’t like his declaration that it wasn’t any of their business.
Back then, it seemed only a matter of time before Romney would buckle to pressure and release a critical mass of returns—if not the 12 years worth that his father released when he ran for president, then at least, say, five or six. But here we are, with just five days until the election, and Romney has released no more than the two years he agreed to release back during the primaries. This has left voters in near-total darkness about basic questions about his very recent past. As tax experts have noted, there are any number of reasons why Romney doesn’t want to release more of his taxes—it’s possible he participated in an IRS amnesty program for secret foreign bank accounts; it’s more possible he gamed the system to avoid taxes on his huge retirement account and his sons’ $100 million trust fund, or that he paid very, very low rates these past couple years as a result of a tax code that favors people like him whose income is mainly taxed as capital gains. (In releasing his belated 2011 returns in September, Romney asserted, without providing any evidence, that he had not paid an effective rate lower than 13 percent during the past decade.) Just this week, Bloomberg News offered a new shred of insight, into the way that Romney used the Mormon church to shelter some of his investment gains from taxes. But the fact is, barring some future leak, we’re simply not going to find out what was so worrisome in Romney’s taxes from only a few years ago.
Not only that, Romney has—unlike candidates Barack Obama, George W. Bush and John McCain—refused to identify his “bundlers,”the hundreds of people who have each raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for him. This has, among other things, spared him the sort of stories that Obama’s had to contend with, looking at the unsavory connections and interests of his fundraisers. And, of course, Romney has provided exceedingly scant detail on basic elements of his platform, such as how he proposes to replace the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank law, both of which he says he will do away with, and how he plans to make up the revenue lost from cutting tax rates by 20 percent across the board. The candidate has not answered any questions from reporters in the past three weeks.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109464/romneys-secrecy-did-he-get-away-it#
CRICKETS FROM THE LAMESTREAM MEDIA. Bunch of hacks and jackals.
Liberty to Lie
By CHARLES M. BLOW
This election may go down in history as the moment when truth and lies lost their honor and stigma, respectively.
Mitt Romney has demonstrated an uncanny, unflinching willingness to say anything and everything to win this election. And that person, the unprincipled prince of untruths, is running roughly even with or slightly ahead of the president in the national polls.
What does this say about our country? What does it say about the value of virtue?
The list of Romney’s out-and-out lies (and yes, there is no other more polite word for them) is too long to recount here. So let’s just take one of the most recent ones: the utterly false claim that General Motors and Chrysler shipped, or planned to ship, American auto jobs to China.
First, let’s take on the Chrysler claim.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/liberty-to-lie/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121101
UAW Files Charges Against Romney
on his Auto Bail-out Profiteering
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Broke ethics law hiding millions, say good government groups
by Greg Palast
Toledo, Ohio
For Mitt Romney, it’s one scary Halloween. The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon he will charged with violating the federal Ethics in Government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bail-out.
At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney’s so-called “blind” trust.
http://www.gregpalast.com/uaw-files-charges-against-romney-on-his-auto-bail-out-profiteering/
Absolutely spot on.
Coalition of Unions, Community Groups to File Ethics Complaint Against Romney for Failure to Disclose Profits He Gained in Auto Bailout
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/19289
Mitt Romney is said to have profited by more than $15 million from the auto industry bailout, and a coalition of community, labor and good-government organizations is now calling on the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate the Republican Party presidential candidate for non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act and compel him to either disclose his investments or divest them.
REPOST
Posted at 06:46 PM ET, 10/31/2012
Oct 31, 2012 10:46 PM EDT
TheWashingtonPost
Obama and Christie: What bipartisanship looks like
By Jonathan Capehart
A wave of nostalgia washed over me this afternoon as I watched President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) tour the devastation unleashed on the Jersey shore by Hurricane Sandy. I thought back to the distant past when Democrats and Republicans could have their disagreements over policy but come together when the national interest demanded it.
The governor had nice words for the president. “I want to thank the president for coming here today,” Christie said. “It’s really important to have the president of the United States acknowledge all the suffering that’s going on here in New Jersey and I appreciate it very much.”
And Obama had equal praise for Christie. “I want to just let you know that your governor is working overtime to make sure that as soon as possible everybody can get back to normal,” he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/obama-and-christie-what-bipartisanship-looks-like/2012/10/31/7a003a76-23a5-11e2-ba29-238a6ac36a08_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Repost
Good Morning, Everyone! :-) Bond is BAD.
Breaking:US initial jobless claims fell 9,000 last week to 363,000 – @BloombergNews
Good Morning, everyone!
Good Morning, SG2, Ametia and Everyone :)
I’ll have some juice. SG2 is still not feeling well. :(