"First-term battles transformed Obama; Magic that began with ’04 convention speech has given way to frustration" by Christopher Rowland | Globe Staff, September 02, 2012
WASHINGTON — By the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver and his subsequent election as president, Obama had established himself as potentially one of the most transformative politicians in American history, provoking the sort of rapture reserved for religious icons and rock stars.
But now as an incumbent seeking a second term, on the eve of his third convention appearance, the president is politically threatened. The slow economic recovery weighs heavily on his prospects for reelection. His promise to raise American politics to a higher plane is but a faint echo, as Washington and its nasty partisanship remains — stubbornly, defiantly — untransformed.
Supporters pine for the old magic. “There seemed to have been so much hope, and a lot of that seems to have dissipated,’’ said Siroty. “I was hopeful we were entering a new era, and it seems like things have only gotten worse.’’
Obama promised a new era in politics, a rekindling of idealism, an end to Washington’s toxic battles. For millions, the first African-American president seemed to embody a better America. But the same economic conditions that created anti-Republican sentiment in 2008, helping him beat John McCain, have plagued his own presidency.
He has struggled mightily against an entrenched and uncompromising Republican opposition determined to thwart virtually all of his economic initiatives.
Ever notice if it is something Wall Street or Israel want it just sails through?
In the now-famous words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, denying the president a second term was “the single most important thing’’ on the GOP agenda.
After facing accusations from conservatives that he is a “socialist’’ bent on destroying America, he began taking a tougher tone last year and demonstrated his own aptitude for the dark art of negative campaigning.
“Has he changed Washington, or has Washington changed him?’’ said Democratic consultant Jim Manley, who had a ringside seat on the president’s legislative battles as a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “Goodness knows how hard he tried. But the fact is that the political process is broken right now.’’
Ju$t wondering how it got that way.
The challenge at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., will be to explain why voters should trust him more than Mitt Romney to improve the nation’s economy, while also putting into context his record of accomplishments, as well as his struggles.
The president’s achievements, when framed in historical context, are large.
He prevented the economy from sliding even deeper into an economic abyss and got it moving in a positive direction with passage in early 2009 of a $787 billion stimulus package.
See: Administration Telling the Truth About Stimuloot
A job is considered what?
He rescued the US automobile industry with a controversial bailout, saving thousands of manufacturing jobs throughout the Midwest. Fulfilling a central campaign pledge, Obama won the biggest expansion of healthcare coverage since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society spawned Medicare and Medicaid. He pushed a raft of new Wall Street regulations through Congress.
Except none of those regulations are in effect yet.
But his achievements also helped to fuel the growth of the Tea Party, making it even more difficult for GOP leaders in Washington to compromise and helping Republicans win back a House majority in the 2010 mid-term elections.
With Obama now locked in a tight reelection contest, the political world is debating what, if anything, he could have done differently to push the economy toward a speedier recovery and improve his own political fortunes.
In his dealings with the GOP, should he have abandoned efforts to negotiate and been more aggressive in painting former President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans as culprits in the economic meltdown? Could he have been tougher on the big banks and pushed them harder to loosen credit and ease the foreclosure crisis?
Yeah, that would have helped. Instead of incarceration he kept the bailout loot flowing.
On Capitol Hill, as the trajectory of his presidency was being established, should he have taken a firmer hand in crafting the details of the stimulus package? Could he have pushed the Senate to move faster on healthcare — instead of dragging the debate through more than six heated months?
The plan is popularly called Obamacare, but in reality during 2009 and 2010 the president ceded control for drafting the legislation to congressional committees. The move made it appear that he was not leading the charge to enact one of the central promises of his 2008 campaign.
Members of Obama’s team say the president did the best he could, given the grim realities that confronted him once he arrived in the White House.
Not good enough.
“No president for the last 100 years has inherited as problematic and politically difficult an economic situation,’’ Lawrence H. Summers, former director of Obama’s National Economic Council, said in an interview.
That's who the Globe turned to for expert analysis?
The only worse moment, said Summers, was at the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term. And at that point in 1933, the economy was bottoming out. When Obama arrived in Washington, the economy was still in freefall and the recession did not end until June 2009. Obama, said Summers, “didn’t have as easy a time riding the upslope.’’
Republican intransigence, Summers asserted, greatly complicated the president’s job.
“The president thought, given the magnitude of the emergency and the clarity of his mandate, that there would be more willingness to cooperate on the part of the Republicans,’’ Summers added.
The economic “upslope’’ from the 2008 economic crisis and recession, of course, has been difficult to discern for millions of Americans.
That's because there hasn't been one.
As Romney and the GOP point out at every opportunity, unemployment remains above 8 percent. Real estate prices have yet to recover. Demand for goods and services remains low.
And yet the stock market is soaring?
Republicans blame Obama’s fiscal positions, including his efforts to increase taxes on the wealthy and — as he sought to build public support for the Dodd-Frank bank regulations overhaul — his populist rhetoric targeting “fat cat bankers on Wall Street.’’
Has he thrown one in jail yet?
See: Dodd-Frank Failed
What do you mean they haven't written them yet?
“The private sector is scared to death of him. They are sitting there hoarding cash they could use to buy equipment and hire people until they find out if he is going to be there for another four years,’’ said former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, an adviser to Mitt Romney. “The biggest impediment to recovery is the president himself.’’
Given the depths of the economic crisis Obama inherited, many have questioned whether, as a political matter, he should have blamed Republicans and Wall Street for the nation’s economic woes more aggressively once he arrived in office.
“Why did it become Obama’s crisis, rather than it being remembered as the crisis of Bush, the Republicans, and the fat-cat bankers?’’ said Graham Wilson, chairman of political science at Boston University.
Obama’s cool personality, Wilson said, combined with a political imperative to avoid being perceived as an angry black man, may have prevented him from taking a more strident tone. Moreover, Obama had staked his campaign on a promise to seek bipartisan solutions in Washington.
We NEED SOME ANGER down there!
“It locked him out from the obvious and perhaps essential strategy of making sure the crisis was associated in the popular mind with his political opponents,’’ Wilson said. “I don’t think there was ever any real chance he would get cooperation from the Republicans.’’
Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, the Democrat who is a close ally of Obama’s, cites another key factor for the new president’s reluctance to pin blame on Wall Street and the previous administration: jitters about the health of big banks.
“They were afraid of talking us into worse troubles,’’ said Frank. “He made a mistake by soft-pedaling. He held back from fully blaming Bush and talking about how bad things were.’’
I'm sick of the shit fooley blame game when it is BOTH PARTIES that are RESPONSIBLE and beholden to the $AME INTERE$T$!!
**********************************
In the days before the new president-elect appeared at Cardinal Fastener in Ohio to talk up the stimulus, Larry Summers was writing Congress to reassure lawmakers about a crisis of rising home foreclosures. He committed the administration to spending $50 billion to $100 billion from the TARP bank bailout package to help people stay in their homes.
Neighborhoods devastated when the housing bubble burst desparately needed a bailout of their own. Summers called a sweeping homeowner rescue “an absolute imperative if we are to restore the health of our housing sector and the financial system as a whole.’’
Today, Summers, who left the White House at the end of 2010, declines to discuss what became of his specific written pledge to Congress about foreclosures. That may be because the administration failed to keep its promise.
Despite a pot of $45.6 billion set aside for mortgage payment reductions and other housing relief from the TARP bank bailout money, Obama’s treasury department (which administers TARP) had spent just 10 percent of that — $4.5 billion — to help homewners by the end of June 2012, according to a government report. The program was supposed to help 3 million to 4 million remain in their homes. But after three and a half years, only 818,000 had received mortgage modifications.
See: Sunday Globe Special: Foreclosure F*** Over
Which is for what it was devised.
Obama’s failure to do more has drawn criticism from some economists and dismayed housing activists across the country. Critics maintain Obama and his treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, were excessively deferential to banks, at the expense of individual families. Its relief programs lacked sufficient strength to force banks to participate, said Neil Barofsky, the former TARP special inspector general and now a New York University lecturer.
Related: Barofsky: Geithner Said Housing Policies Were "Foaming The Runway For The Banks"
Guess who got hosed.
“There was remarkably little attention and concern that went into the effectiveness of that program,’’ he said. “That’s because it was much more about the politics of the program than the substance of it.’’
Another voice urging Obama to do more to provide large-scale housing relief was a member of his own White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economist and former chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan.
And AIG board member.
In a White House meeting of the advisory board in October 2010, Feldstein directly urged the president to inject hundreds of billions into the housing market — in the form of mortgage principal reduction for underwater homeowners. Obama told Feldstein that his administration would review his recommendations, but treasury took little action.
“That’s where presidential leadership would have made a difference,’’ Feldstein said. “If the president had said: ‘This is something that is holding back the recovery, this is not just hurting people who are underwater on their mortgages, but it is hurting every homeowner and hurting everyone who is hurt by the downturn in the economy.’’’
But then the banks wouldn't have been able to take possession of the hard asset to balance their books.
The Obama administration argues that critics have not measured the full impact of its efforts to keep people in their homes. Although just $4.5 billion has been spent thus far, the government has committed to spending another $6.5 billion or so in future years to cover multiyear modification deals with individual homeowners — for a total of $11 billion. It also has directed $7.6 billion to states to undertake programs at the local level.
The White House also points out that the private banking system was not immediately equipped to negotiate millions of loan modifications, contributing to delays.
But they could roll out millions of fraudulent foreclosures, right?
Once mortgage bankers established systems under the federal program, they used that template — independent of the federal push — to aid an additional 3 million homeowners without government subsidies, according to the administration....
Yeah, the banks are so benevolent!
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"Obama urged to draw sharp contrasts, come out swinging" by Brian C. Mooney | Globe Staff, September 02, 2012
With the spotlight moving away from his Republican challenger, President Obama needs to take advantage of the Democratic convention in Charlotte this week to draw sharp policy differences with Mitt Romney and frame a crystal-clear choice for voters heading into the closing weeks of the campaign, a group of top Democrats surveyed by the Globe said.
Related:
"Town hall meetings can provide off-the-cuff moments with candidates, who are forced to respond to questions from any voter who can get before a microphone. But on Monday, the only time they seemed to be put on the spot was when topics turned to foreign policy. “Our guys are coming home in body bags,” one man said. “If you guys take over in Washington, what are you going to do about this damn mess in Afghanistan?”
Romney criticized Obama for not talking about the topic enough, saying he ought to “time and time again” address the American public about what’s happening with troops overseas. But Romney himself didn’t state a fundamental difference in policy."
"The relative silence on the campaign trail is also due, in part, to the only minimal differences in the presidential candidates’ positions."
And I hold the AmeriKan media responsible for that.
"Both parties oppose deep cuts in defense."
That's the two-headed War Party for you.
Romney offers plan to reduce oil dependency
Sorry, I have no more energy for shit fooley campaigns.
At the same time, the incumbent must fight back against what Democrats say are gross distortions of his record by the Republicans and reinstill in voters some of the inspirational message that propelled him into office four years ago.
After months of Democratic pounding of Romney, in an attempt to portray and him and his policies as tools of the wealthiest Americans, the incumbent should shift the focus to his own plans for the country while simultaneously drawing unmistakeably clear policy differences with the Republican, the officials and strategists said.
The dueling conventions are occurring at a time when the race remains very close and a noxious political environment is made more toxic by the contemptuous tone of the debate. Also, the influx of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of negative advertising by outside groups is saturating the airwaves in the fewer than 10 states whose electoral votes may decide the election.
When the Democrats leave North Carolina later this week, there will be fewer than nine weeks until Election Day, and the stage will be set for three presidential debates and one debate between the vice presidential candidates.
In Charlotte, Obama should focus less on “what’s wrong with Romney” and more on his own achievements — 4.5 million private-sector jobs created in the past 29 months, expansion of health coverage, ending the war in Iraq, rescuing the auto industry, and “bringing Osama bin Laden to justice,” said Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who succeeded Romney and is a high-profile surrogate for Obama.
“I think the president is strongest when he speaks to the whole country and talks about the American dream being at stake and the things we have to do together to make the whole country better,” Patrick said. “This president has been faulted by some in his own party for repeatedly reaching out to the other side even when they declared their main mission was to undo his presidency and make him a one-term president. But had he not done that he would have betrayed the people who want their leaders to be magnanimous and work across the aisle.”
The AmeriKan dream has become a nightmare.
“It’s a real choice,” said Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. “The choice could not be more stark. It’s clearly a choice between [Republican policies] of deregulation and more money in the hands of the wealthiest in the country at the expensive of a whole bunch of things, like investments in research and education.”
That's what the propaganda machine wants you to think.
“What the president has to do is set the record straight, undo the lies, and make clear the record of accomplishment over the last four years and how it’s connected to what he needs to do in the next four years to complete the task,” said Kerry, who, along with Patrick, is scheduled to address the convention.
The remarks by Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will be part of a convention night that emphasizes the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security record, which Democrats see as an advantage in the fall campaign because of the troop withdrawal from Iraq, the start of withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the killing of Al Qaeda leaders, especially bin Laden.
We still have troops in Iraq, Afghanistan will be going beyond 2014, and the bin Laden story is such a lie.
Romney’s lack of experience in foreign policy is a weakness, Patrick said, citing “one clownish mistake after another” during Romney’s trip overseas this summer to the United Kingdom, Israel, and Poland.
See: Romney Would Go to the Wall For Israel
But the principal convention message of the Democrats in Charlotte is shaping up as an economic one, contrasting the fiscal policies of the Obama administration and Democrats with the tax-cutting, shrink-the-government message of Romney, his running mate, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and the GOP platform adopted in Tampa.
“The core question that voters are asking this election is who is going to restore economic security for the middle class and create good-paying jobs for the middle class,” Obama press secretary Ben LaBolt said. Romney’s blueprint of continued tax cuts for the wealthiest and deregulation echoes the George W. Bush policies that created sluggish job growth “and led to a financial house of cards that collapsed in 2008.”
“The convention will focus on how with the president’s vision we will build the economy from the middle class out by investing in education, energy, research and development, and manufacturing,” LaBolt said.
I would like to know WHERE HAVE DEMOCRATS BEEN the LAST 30 YEARS as the MIDDLE CLASS has been DESTROYED? Standing around with their thumbs up their asses?
Republicans have relentlessly attacked the Obama record, arguing that the health care overhaul, increased regulation, and excessive spending have ensured high unemployment and increased a staggering national debt that threatens the country’s future. The Obama plan to increase taxes on the wealthy, they say, will retard future job growth. Romney himself has charged during the campaign that Obama’s view of economics is influenced by European-style democratic socialism, eliciting cries of protest from Democrats.
A broader challenge for Obama is to reconnect with the voters he once inspired, said Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist and former Kerry presidential campaign manager.
--more--"
As for supporting the middle class, have you seen where they are having the convention?
"Charlotte offers promise, pitfalls for Democrats; State has little union strength, high jobless rate" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff, September 03, 2012
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When the Democrats arrive here to renominate President Obama, they will gather in a city where hotel and restaurant workers are not unionized, bailout recipient Bank of America has its world headquarters, and unemployment is a hefty cut above the national average.
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has urged her colleagues to stay home and campaign, and even a Democratic congressman from a neighboring district is planning to skip the convention.
So, why Charlotte?
Democrats must have believed that choosing the largest city in North Carolina might help them duplicate their jolting 2008 victory in a state that had not tilted blue since Jimmy Carter won in 1976.
But that was four years ago, when a frightening economic crisis and an unpopular president gave Obama a rare opening. And this is now, when Republicans have recaptured the House and are threatening to reclaim the Senate, and when GOP nominee Mitt Romney has an edge in recent North Carolina polls.
“The circumstances surrounding the 2008 election were so perfect for Democrats in so many ways, and they squeaked by with 14,000 votes,” said John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. “It will be tough to duplicate those conditions again.”
Put the state in red.
Romney held a 0.7 percent lead over Obama in an average of recent North Carolina polls, according to RealClearPolitics.
If the president is to reclaim the state, he will face a confluence of headwinds, both practical and symbolic: North Carolina voters this year overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions, only days before Obama declared his support for gay marriage; former Senator John Edwards, a 2008 presidential contender, was embroiled in a sex scandal; and Obama is scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech at Bank of America Stadium, whose name is inextricably linked with the financial crisis.
Sorry, but we are not deciding the election over gay marriage as hard as the media pushes that narrative.
Also see: Edwards Affair Over
In addition, only two years after the president’s landmark victory here, Republicans took control of the state Legislature for the first time since the 19th century. The state’s unemployment rate stood at 9.6 percent in July, significantly above the national rate of 8.3 percent.
Even the Democratic base has been grumbling about the choice of venue. Contributions from labor to help defray the $36 million convention price tag are lagging behind the 2008 level. And workers are lamenting the party’s selection of a state whose proportion of union labor — 2.9 percent of the workforce — is the lowest in the country. “It’s disgusting,” said Ben Childs, chief steward of the union that represents 600 food-service workers at Harvard University.
What they are telling you is that you don't matter and you have nowhere else to go, labor. And you wonder why they never listen.
Childs recently visited Charlotte to help local organizers prepare for a protest march and demonstration during convention week. To him, Charlotte is a symbol of contradictory indifference by a party that, at least in its campaign message, is championing the economic concerns of the middle class.
We call it a shit fooley.
“For any organization — Republican, Democratic, or any political organization — to go to Charlotte to basically cuddle up with Bank of America” and area firms such as Wells Fargo and Duke Energy “cannot be on the side of the workers who are trying to change their plight.”
Despite some ominous trend-lines, Democratic convention officials argue that Charlotte continues to make sense as a venue.
“Charlotte was the right choice to host the convention when the selection was made in February 2011, and it is the right choice now. Anyone who’s spent time in Charlotte knows it’s a dynamic, diverse, and vibrant community that reflects America in the 21st century,” said Joanne Peters, a convention spokeswoman.
Gathering in North Carolina, she said, sends “a message that we are not going to cede any ground we gained in 2008, and that we are committed to expanding the map and playing in competitive states.”
It sure does.
Indeed, some union organizers see the convention as a chance to spread a message that labor rights can be compatible with good business.
“For us, it’s a golden opportunity to bring unions to light in this area,” said Scott Thrower, president of Local 379 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, based in Concord, N.C. Because of the controversy, he said, “For the last 18 months, unions have been all you’ve heard. Before that, unions were never brought up.”
About 60 of the local’s 500 members have been hired to prepare the convention center at Time-Warner Arena, Thrower said. The union’s international leaders, however, have not always been as upbeat.
“Having the convention in Charlotte was kind of a wake-up call to that fact that really no one’s paying attention to the middle class and to working people in this country,” Ed Hill, the IBEW president, said this summer.
Organized labor in the South has been linked with trouble, including violence, in textile mills before World War II. That history, Thrower said, has remained vivid. “It’s hard for someone from Boston or New York to understand the mentality that we’ve had to deal with down here. People just don’t want to talk about it. And when you do talk about it, they look at you like you have the plague,” Thrower said.
Try bringing up 9/11 truth or criticism of Israel up around here and see what kind of looks you get.
Democratic officials said national labor groups will be closely interwoven with convention business, including briefings, training sessions, meetings, and receptions. James Andrews, president of the AFL-CIO in North Carolina, serves on the steering committee of the local host committee.
For convention planners, however, a headache could come from demonstrations planned by The Coalition to March on Wall Street South. The coalition, whose name reflects Charlotte’s status as a financial center, includes veterans of the Occupy movement whose presence could be a dissonant note here.
After the MSM described Occupy as a primarily left-wing outfit?
Dinan, the Wake Forest political science professor, said Democrats must have calculated that any public-relations hit they take from a convention in Charlotte will be outweighed by the benefits. Although “there are no clear signs that hosting the convention in the state will shift things one way or another,” Dinan said, “at the end of the day, I don’t think the Democrats are believing those union votes are going anywhere else.”
Meaning you are being TAKEN for GRANTED!
--more--"
"Democrats to play up foreign policy at convention; Link Romney to hawkish views" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, September 03, 2012
The foreign policy strategy allows Democrats to focus on a weighty concern beyond the economy. Convention organizers are planning a series of events, including a speech Thursday by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a combat veteran.
“A presidency can be changed overnight with a foreign crisis,’’ Kerry said in an interview. “You can’t be strong at home if you are not strong in the world.”
And you can't be strong at home when you serve bankers and Israel.
Romney supporters insist the Obama message is misleading. They contend his policies have reduced US influence and respect in the world. And while they give him credit for killing Bin Laden, they assert it was the result of continuing the efforts begun by his predecessor.
“Candidate Obama told us in 2008 that he would bring multilateral leadership to the world, he would talk to our enemies and we would be better off for it,’’ said Richard Grenell, a former Bush adviser at the UN. “But the facts show he has garnered less support at the UN and abandoned multilateral institutions. His stated successes of capturing [Osama bin Laden] and drone attacks in Pakistan are both unilateral actions proving he either failed in his goal or didn’t know what he was talking about in 2008.”
Regarding the drones, Obama is worse than Bush. Not the change I wanted to see.
*******************************
The convention this week provides Democrats a stage for their strategy. Sources say that Vice President Joe Biden, in his speech Thursday, will hail the president for decimating Al Qaeda and killing bin Laden.
Obama advisers say other themes expected to be part of the convention include:
■ Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama ended America’s involvement in the unpopular Iraq War two years ago, fulfilling a campaign promise. The administration has also followed through on Obama’s plan to first intensify the US involvement in Afghanistan, then transition security to Afghan forces over the next two years.
■ A “rebalanced” approach to an unstable world, shifting reliance on the United States as leader in all foreign policy disputes to a collaborative approach, with allies on such matters as sanctions against Iran. The approach also focuses attention on such emerging threats as cyberwarfare.
■ An ability to reach common ground with adversaries that lead to a safer world. The arms control treaty Obama negotiated — and Kerry helped ratify — with Russia to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons will be a key example.
“The public pretty much is with him on most of these issues,’’ said Colin Kahl, a former Pentagon official now advising the Obama campaign. “It is a disconcerting position for the Republicans to be in. They don’t have a natural edge this time around.”
Romney has been critical of Obama but has not provided many details on how he would handle such issues as Afghanistan. Instead he has made some statements considered by both Democratic and some Republican foreign policy hands as unnecessarily threatening.
William S. Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine who served as secretary of defense for President Clinton, singled out two recent Romney statements — that Russia is America’s greatest foe, and that China is manipulating its currency — as unnecessarily confrontational given the United States has to work closely with both on a host of crises, including Iran’s nuclear program and the emerging civil war in Syria.
“You can toughen it up but do in a way that doesn’t put you in a box,” he advised.
Others point out that Romney has expressed stridently hawkish views on issues such as Iran — suggesting that he might back air strikes on nuclear facilities there — and on the Middle East, contending in his acceptance speech that Obama has “thrown Israel under the bus.” That assertion was rebutted publicly by Israel’s prime minister and defense minister.
Then he would get my vote, for I have only two qualifications for president: Will he stand up to Israel, and will he.... okay, I have one qualification for president.
Such aggressive stances have trained greater attention on Romney’s advisers.
“Neither Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan are foreign policy guys. As a result they are more reliant on who is advising them” said Kahl. “It is kind of the neoconservative all-star team.”
“They supported some of the worst decisions in American history,’’ Kerry said. “They left our relationships in tatters. On Iran, there was no focus, no sanctions. They took their eye off the ball in Afghanistan. President Bush said ‘I don’t worry about where Osama bin Laden is.’”
Some political observers, however, question the effectiveness of the Democrats’ strategy.
“Obama is advantaged here and he should talk about that — but he should also understand that this advantage is unlikely to sway very many voters who are undecided at this point because the issues are simply not that salient to voters,” said Lynn Vavreck, coauthor of the forthcoming book “The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election’’ and a professor at the University of California Los Angeles. “He’d be better off talking about the growth in the economy — even though it is slow.”
Others say questions about a candidate’s advisers are valid.
“Who will he turn to?” Cohen asked. “Will it be John Bolton or Richard Hass?” the former adviser to both presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush who represents the pragmatic wing of the GOP foreign policy establishment.
“It is fair to ask, ‘who is your team?’”
Does it matter?
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Forgotten in all that is Obama's very own war in Libya and the current coup attempt in Syria.
"Fact-checkers dispute Romney claims" by Bobby Caina Calvan | Globe Staff, August 31, 2012
WASHINGTON — In his convention speech, Romney also chided the president for what he considered a host of foreign policy missteps.
“President Obama has thrown allies like Israel under the bus,” Romney said.
Certainly, there have been disagreements between the the United States and Israel, particularly over the Palestinians and settlements in the West Bank, said Daniel Byman, a Middle East analyst in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
“But there is still a tremendous amount of cooperation, and you could even say that in the day-to-day level of military operations the cooperation is often stronger,” Byman said.
“It is certainly a significant mischaracterization of Obama’s policies,” he said, to accuse the White House of turning its back on Israel....
In fact, he bends over backwards for them.
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"Under fire, Democrats revise plank on Jerusalem" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, September 06, 2012
WASHINGTON — America’s longtime alliance with Israel was thrust center stage in the presidential campaign Wednesday, with Democrats scrambling to revise their party platform after Republicans pounced on the omission of support for Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
The backtracking resulted in an unwelcome convention sideshow that drew boos and jeers from some party faithful....
Just as the Ron Paul people have awoken to the Republican party the liberals in the Democratic Party have begun to realize who controls their party.
If Israel and the establishment have lost the rank-and-file of the political parties they have lost the public relations war.
An Obama campaign official said the president personally appealed Wednesday for the reinsertion of the wording about Jerusalem and also, in an unrelated platform matter, for language attesting to the importance of a belief in God in American life. It was not known whether Obama had been involved in crafting the original platform language, but candidates often maintain a distance from the platform, which is not binding on them.
All this crap about how Israel and him are at odds, etc. But shit fooleys are what passes for politics here in AmeriKa.
The traditional reference to Jerusalem in both parties’ platforms has never actually translated into official government policy because of the diplomatic realities of encouraging Israelis and Palestinians, who make up a large part of the city’s population, to find a comprehensive peace. But its omission from Democrats’ platform this year provided an opening for Republicans to suggest it showed a lack of support for Israel.
“I find that one more example of Israel being thrown under the bus by the president,” Mitt Romney told Fox News Channel on Wednesday. “I think it’s a very sad day when we have our best friend in the Middle East, a nation which shares our values, a nation now under extraordinary threat and distress.”
Yeah, poow wittle Iswael, blah, blah, blah.
Btw, what kind of friend spies on you and then dances over an atrocity?
*****************************
The voice vote on the convention floor to revise the Jerusalem plank and add a statement dropped from the 2008 platform that government should give “everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential’’ — also did not go as planned. The convention chairman, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, called for a vote three times before he declared passage — amid boos from delegates who thought there were enough no votes to deny the revision the two-thirds majority needed to pass....
Yeah, the "Democratic" leadership just shoved it down their throats.
See: Amidst Boos And Multiple Votes, DNC Reverses Position And Reinstates Jerusalem
Democratic officials said the reason language on Jerusalem was not included this year was not only to keep the platform more focused on Obama’s successes and goals, but also to avoid prejudicing any outcome of “final status” issues that would have to be decided by the Israelis and the Palestinians. That includes the borders of a Jewish and a Palestinian state.
“It has been the policy of both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades that Jerusalem is a final status issue to be negotiated directly between the two parties, as part of discussions to achieve a two-state solution that secures the Jewish state and homeland,” said Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
An Obama adviser who helped write the platform went a step further, insisting there was “no conspiracy” in the omission, contending that officials decided not to use the 2008 platform as a guide but to instead write a new one that focused on the president’s achievements.
The adviser, who was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations, stressed the Democratic platform does discuss the $10 billion in aid Israel has received under the Obama administration, including funds to complete a shield to deflect rocket and missile attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
This in a time of austerity and social service cutbacks, 'murkn.
He also pointed out that the GOP platform this year omitted its previous pledges to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Republicans, however, saw the issue as an opening with blocs of influential voters who feel strongly about Israel — and the president moved to close that opening.
David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, a grass-roots organization in Texas, said in a recent interview there is a deep affinity for the Jewish state among voters of various Christian faiths, particularly evangelicals. “The extent to which Governor Romney can demonstrate he is the more steadfast supporter of Israel . . . the better he is going to do,” Brog said. “It can benefit him more than people realize.”
Indeed, some Middle East analysts scratched their heads at the Democrats’ oversight....
The controversy underscored what some former Israeli officials and policy analysts on Wednesday decried as a troubling trend in recent years: Israel has become a political football in American elections.
PFFFFFFT!
Yeah, right, Israel is getting kicked around again!
Gilead Sher, who served as Israel’s chief negotiator during 2000 peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, called the GOP criticism of the Democratic platform “a manipulation of a political sort that has no grounds.”
“I fail to see how the issue of Jerusalem in the platform is connected in any way to the security of Israel,” Sher said.
Alon Pinkas, formerly Israel’s consul general in New York, also accused the GOP of “pandering” on the issue, noting “Both parties effectively have the same policy toward Israel.”
Isn't it AMAZING how there is NO PARTISANSHIP when it comes to wars, Wall Street, and Israel?
The only time partisanship is a problem is when it is SOMETHING the American people want and need!!!
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Let's not let that spoil the party, 'eh?
"Democrats prepare for national stage at convention; Will stress protections for middle class" by Christopher Rowland | Globe Staff, September 04, 2012
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Thousands of festive Democrats converged on North Carolina Monday and prepared to kick off a convention that will focus heavily on persuading middle-class voters that President Obama will look out for their interests if they entrust him with a second term....
Pffft.
The economy promises to be the dominant theme, just as it was in Tampa, but Democrats say they will be advancing a more positive agenda for rebuilding the jobs base. Convention organizers at every opportunity are talking about bolstering the middle class.
How DISINGENUOUS!
The convention will seek to build a story of a president who led the United States out of an unprecedented fiscal crisis, revived the auto industry, and created manufacturing jobs....
Monday was reserved for a Labor Day street festival open to the public, dubbed CarolinaFest, which attracted thousands of families to barbecue and cheese steak stands, rows of street vendors, and tents where activists handed out literature and sold hats.]
The contrasting conventions could help shape the contours of the presidential race as it enters its final two months....
I'm sorry, readers. I'm full-up on shit fooleys.
In addition to their convention’s greater diversity, the Democrats also take pride in the lesser role of business interests in its funding. The Democratic National Convention Committee imposed a ban on corporate and lobbyist contributions to pay for the proceedings. The convention is still accepting in-kind corporate contributions in the form of goods and services, but Democrats are still claiming the higher moral ground.
“If you look at our convention and last week, the president and vice president and all of our speakers will step on a stage built with dollars donated by grass-roots supporters from around the country and not by massive, million-dollar checks from corporations, and that is a big distinction,’’ said Steve Kerrigan, the chief executive of the convention.
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Speaking of pieces of shit:
"Vital asset Bill Clinton back in party spotlight" by Michael Kranish | Globe Staff, September 05, 2012
WASHINGTON — Former president Bill Clinton, worrying out loud that Democrats were being vastly outraised by Republicans, is the latest sign of how deeply the Democratic Party is relying on the former Arkansas governor.
These two stops on the Clinton itinerary are evidence of one of the most compelling back stories of the Obama years: Two of the party’s most popular national figures are not President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden but instead are Bill and Hillary Clinton, both with identical 66 percent approval ratings. That is well above those of the White House incumbents seeking reelection.
All of this has led to plenty of chatter about who really has the party’s heart: the president or the former president? Like so many things Clintonian, it’s complicated....
So here is the former president, white-haired, gone vegan, and rehabilitated from the nadir of impeachment and an affair with an intern, being given one of the most visible roles at the Charlotte convention. He is certain to receive a rock-star welcome....
Which is really UNBELIEVABLE when you think about it since Bill Clinton was the CHIEF ARCHITECT of the VERY GLOBALIST SYSTEM that SENT FACTORIES OVERSEAS and DESTROYED the American middle class!
And while diplomatic protocol dictates that she can’t attend the convention, Hillary Rodham Clinton is arguably the most successful and prized member of the Obama Cabinet....
Related(?): Why Obama should dump Biden for Hillary Clinton
Doug Sosnick, who served as Bill Clinton’s White House political director, said that while Obama and Bill Clinton had a strained relationship as a result of the 2008 campaign, they have grown closer. He compared it to the way Clinton and the man he vanquished in 1992, former president George H. W. Bush, went from having an acrimonious relationship to a warm friendship.
That's another thing that is forgotten by Democrats, proving that all this alleged partisanship is a pile of shit fooleys as the elite agenda is advanced.
In both cases, Sosnick said, Clinton’s relationships with Bush and Obama have warmed as a result of their membership in one of the world’s most elite groups – men who have been president....
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Also see: Clinton rouses Democrats with passionate defense of Obama
What a despicable lot.
UPDATE:
“Democracy does not have to be a blood sport. It can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest.”
Then they would have nominated Ralph Nader for president.
Speaking of the public interest, WHAT HAPPENED to all that HAITI LOOT, Bill?
Just wondering SINCE WHEN was Bill Clinton this GRAND PROGRESSIVE that the Deomocraps are fawning all over? That certainly is not how I remember his tenure as president. He governed like a Republican. But DOWN the MEMORY HOLE it all goes!
Certainly there must have been something good coming from Charlotte:
"Elizabeth Warren to try for impact near and far" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, September 05, 2012
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Elizabeth Warren plans to deliver a speech Wednesday night that will portray her as a fighter who, along with President Obama, “stood strong” on behalf of the middle class to create a consumer protection agency, according to her chief campaign strategist.
The 12-minute, prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention offers Warren a crucial opportunity to sell herself to Massachusetts voters, especially the undecided among them who may have tuned out the early phases of her campaign against Senator Scott Brown, a Republican.
Sales already been closed here.
But Warren’s message may also help reenergize liberals within the Democratic Party, particularly those who feel Obama has not fought hard enough against Republican opposition.
Even as Warren is slightly behind Brown in public opinion polls in Massachusetts, she has had no trouble capturing the hearts, minds, and political donations of the party’s progressive wing, which admires her anti-Wall Street talk and willingness to articulate the case for a robust government and higher taxes on the wealthy, in populist terms....
Related:
"Warren trailing Brown 58 to 32 among self-identified “independent” voters."
Also see: Scott Brown ahead of Elizabeth Warren in new poll
She gave it a good go, but we know who call$ the $hots and rigs the machines.
Warren’s biggest rhetorical challenge in her speech may be balancing the imperative to appeal to the national base with the need to win over independents at home. A speech that appears too strident could help Brown, who has worked hard to contrast himself as a moderate bridge-builder, with an image of Warren as an uncompromising “rock-thrower.”
****************************
The biggest distraction from Warren’s moment may be football. The NFL moved up its opening night to Wednesday to accommodate Obama’s speech Thursday. That could hurt her ability to reach independent voters in Massachusetts who may be more interested in watching the Dallas Cowboys take on the New York Giants....
Let me tell you something, readers. I know those guys that watch football, and they aren't watching Liz Warren in any event. Nor will they be voting for her.
The real question is why is the Globe shoveling this rank shit? To push a narrative before the scripted and rigged results?
--more--"
Related: Elizabeth Warren pushes consumer agenda at Democratic convention
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: Liz Warren Was a Registered Republican
Warm reception for Warren at Labor Day feast
What Elizabeth Warren is missing
Charisma, and that is upon what this culture of celebrity decides things!
What will decide the election (or so the agenda-pushers tell us):
Abortion, gay marriage put party platforms in spotlight
"Akin’s remarks put a light on the platform’s call for a ban on abortion that otherwise might have drawn little attention."
"The issue of abortion has suddenly become prominent."
Abortion uproar may hurt GOP bid for Senate control
Then there was "Medicare’s moment in the national campaign."
Next:
"Until now, Social Security had been largely absent from the presidential campaign. President Obama has yet to lay out a detailed plan for addressing the issue, and his silence is drawing criticism from advocates who supported him. Romney has been more forthcoming with proposals, but Social Security has not been a big part of his campaign, either."
Democratic platform calls for higher tax on the rich
One question: WHY did they EXTEND the BUSH TAX CUTS?!!
Please stop it with the DISGUSTING and DISINGENUOUS SHIT FOOLEYS!!!!
“Change is hard, and change is slow, and it never happens all at once.”
I'm TIRED of EXCUSES, especially since we seem to get into wars quick enough!
"An argument about the very definition of American capitalism."
No, we are not having that debate.
"Obama’s prime-time acceptance speech, to be delivered at the outdoor Bank of America Stadium, caps the convention on Thursday night."
God put the kibosh on that.
As I posted this the convention coverage was on the television next to me, and I must say the Democrats' worship of AmeriKan militarism was most discouraging.
Update: Obama to highlight challenges ahead, push ‘shared responsibility’
I'm posting this and changing the channel just as he is beginning.
NEXT DAY UPDATES
Just when I thought the coverage couldn't get any worse:
"President Obama paints picture of ‘two different paths for America’" by Brian MacQuarrie and Matt Viser | Globe Staff, September 06, 2012
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Casting this year’s election as the clearest and most important choice in a generation, President Obama called on Americans to persevere toward a future where hard choices and shared sacrifice will lead to “a better place.”
This stuff just rings so hollow.
“On every issue, the choice you face won’t be just between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America. A choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.”
Only regarding the things that the American people are overwhelmingly in favor; meanwhile, the paid-off politicians are lock-step when it comes to Wall Street, wars, and Israel.
The president, speaking before 20,000 delegates and guests at Time Warner Cable Arena, repeated a recurring theme of the three-day Democratic National Convention — that the path to recovery requires pain and a helping hand, compared with what Democrats assert is a “you’re-on-your-own” philosophy endorsed by Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
That doesn't make it true, as EVEN the DEMOCRATS that are PROTECTING the MIDDLE CLASS prescribe PAIN and AUSTERITY!! This as they tell you ALL THEY HAVE DONE FOR YOU!
And please do NOT take my criticism as an endorsement of the Repuglican Party in any way, shape, or form. BOTH PARTIES have BETRAYED America for the $pecial intere$t$!!
“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades,” Obama said.
Another failure.
“It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one,” Obama said. “And by the way, those of us who carry on his party’s legacy should remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington.”
He talks Roosevelt out the side of his mouth while making no moves in that direction at all (except for the war part).
Of course, the medical marijuana clinic raids go on, the national security umbrella is expanded, etc, etc, etc. This federal government under Obama has shown no inkling of letting states handle things themselves. Aren't they suing handful of immigration and voting rights issues?
*********************************
In the hours leading up to Obama’s address, the arena was packed, with delegates dancing and swaying to performances from artists such as James Taylor and the Foo Fighters. They chanted “Fired up!” and “Ready to go!” They walked around the concourse, snapping pictures with complete strangers because they were wearing similarly outlandish Obama outfits.
A man had Obama stickers plastered on his shirt and shorts. A woman had a homemade ballot box attached to her head....
Yeah, they did look like a bunch of damn fools.
--more--"
Seeing as the girls made the photo:
"Obama girls are offstage but crucial; Malia, Sasha are depicted having everyday lives" by Jodie Kantor | New York Times, September 07, 2012
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If the Obama girls are bit players in the presidential race, they are also important ones — not as campaigners but as characters, highlighting traits important to their father’s reelection hopes: his likability and his family-man image....
Can we decide the campaign on policy and issues that are important please?
The first couple clearly choose the stories they tell about their daughters carefully.
It's called propaganda.
The anecdotes are rarely about the celebrities the girls meet or their glamorous trips on Air Force One.
If Malia, now 14, and Sasha, 11, have felt anxiety or distress about the scrutiny and security they live with, the Obamas do not say so. Instead, the president and the first lady share upbeat anecdotes that reflect the rhythms of an ordinary American family: the end-of-season basketball tournament that Sasha’s team won, her discovery that she likes tomatoes, the girls’ enthusiasm for the television show ‘‘Modern Family.’’
The stories are an implicit counter to right-wing charges that Obama is a threatening figure, a socialist, or somehow un-American.
“The family seems so utterly normal, the type of people who could be at the soccer game or basketball game,’’ said Steve Schmidt, who managed Senator John McCain’s 2008 bid for president.
They are also unique figures in the election, because they seem so innocent compared with the rest of the political world, and because their parents and the news media protect them tightly.
‘‘They are a bit of a mystery,’’ said J.J. Abrams, the Hollywood writer-director and Obama donor, discussing how they come across on the public stage. ‘‘But they’re authentic, and we’re starving for that.’’
So far, at least, the Obama girls have not had a gaffe or an embarrassing moment — a rarity for such well-known figures, especially when it comes to presidential children. Chelsea Clinton was tormented as an adolescent for having freckles and frizzy hair. Barbara and Jenna Bush suffered brief careers as tabloid fodder for their nighttime adventures....
Honestly, I feel that is what has become of the Globe.
Aides who know the girls say they are disciplined, thanks to their father but mostly to their mother. (Some staff members even joke that they wish they could send their own children to Michelle Obama’s boot camp for training.)
That certainly wasn't the warm, motherly image presented during the convention speech!
Here are just a few of the household rules that she has mentioned in interviews and other appearances:
■ When the girls go on trips, they write reports on what they have seen, even if their school does not require it.
■ Technology is for weekends. Malia can use her cellphone only then, and she and her sister cannot watch television or use a computer for anything but homework during the week.
■ Malia and Sasha had to take up two sports: one they chose and one selected by their mother. ‘‘I want them to understand what it feels like to do something you don’t like and to improve,’’ the first lady has said.
■ Malia must learn to do laundry before she leaves for college.
■ The girls have to eat their vegetables, and if they say that they are not hungry, they cannot ask for cookies or chips later. ‘‘If you’re full, you’re full,’’ Michelle Obama said in an interview with Ladies’ Home Journal. ‘‘I don’t want to see you in the kitchen after that.’’
Related: Michelle Obama's Appetite
Can you overeat hypocrisy?
After three years, friends and aides say, the Obama girls have fully settled into the White House and have made peace with the quirks of life there.
I wonder if it is the same peace made with all the dead people killed in their father's authorized drone strikes. Some how that seems to be forgotten amidst all the fun and hoopla.
But if their father wins a second term, they will be teenagers in the White House.
Four years ago, Obama liked to say that he was running for president when his girls were young so that the experience would pass over their heads. As they mature, less will be lost on them — good and bad — and they will have to figure out the presidential versions of first dates and college tours.
Meanwhile, one small measure of their popularity is visible on the streets of Charlotte. Near the convention arena, vendors hawk Obama T-shirts, calendars, and buttons that feature not just images of the president and the first lady, but of their two daughters as well.
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I saw some empty seats, didn't you?
"T-shirt vendors at convention making money off GOP insults
Are Democrats in Charlotte insulted by the taunts Republicans are throwing at them? Well, sure, but at least the derision is boosting the economy.
Related: Presidential Election Saving Economy
Can you see why I'm sick of this rank s***?
One street vendor near the convention center was drawing customers Thursday with exuberant shouts of ‘‘More T-shirts than four years ago!’’ That was a play on the Republicans’ pointed question to voters: ‘‘Are you better off than four years ago’’ when Barack Obama took office? And sales were brisk for stacks of shirts showing a seated Obama and the slogan: ‘‘This seat is taken,’’ a retort to Clint Eastwood.
See: The Eastwood Excuse
Markey likens Romney’s stance on global warming to empty chair
WASHINGTON — Representative Edward Markey, borrowing a line from Clint Eastwood’s script, likened Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Thursday to an empty chair when it comes to global warming....
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Shale Game
That's enough fart mist from Markey.
During the Republican National Convention, Eastwood delivered a rambling speech in which he had a conversation with an empty chair that was supposed to be a stand in for President Obama....
"Romney defends commitment to armed forces" September 07, 2012
CONCORD, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the first GOP nominee since 1952 to not mention war in his convention speech....
Heretic!
And what would we do, Americans, if we didn't have a war to fight?
Romney’s omission of Afghanistan in Tampa reflected weak public support for the Afghan war, fatigue over a decade of terrorism fears, and the central role of the economy in the campaign.
Just so the world knows, there is no support for the war here (except for those profiting from it); in fact, it has turned to hatred even amongst those who don't follow things like you and me.
But it was still a remarkable shift in tone for a party that, even in peacetime, has used the specter of war to call for greater military spending and tough foreign policy....
With an huge assist from you-know-who.
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Yeah, that's them!
While we are talking foreign policy:
"John Kerry praises President Obama’s foreign policy decisions; Senator peppers Romney, calls him ‘extreme’" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, September 06, 2012
WASHINGTON — Playing the role of both elder statesman and partisan provocateur, Senator John F. Kerry told Democratic convention delegates Thursday that President Obama “is giving new life and truth to America’s indispensable role in the world” and called Republican challenger Mitt Romney “extreme” when it comes to foreign policy.
Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, played chief foreign policy surrogate for Obama in a rapid-fire speech that swept through a series of international accomplishments over the last four years and pointedly warned voters that electing Romney and running mate Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin would damage American interests overseas.
“So on one side of this campaign, we have a president who has made America lead like America again,” Kerry said....
I don't want to "lead" -- a code word for empire -- anymore. Can't afford it, and it is destroying us.
Not all members of Kerry’s party thought he was the right choice to make the foreign policy pitch aimed at swing voters in states such as North Carolina. Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a high-ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the Massachusetts liberal will have a hard time convincing moderate Southerners that Democrats are the best equipped to keep them safe.
Kerry lost North Carolina by a 12.4-point landslide in 2004 despite choosing then home-state Senator John Edwards as his running mate.
Maybe because of....
“Just speaking from a Southern perspective, he is not the most effective advocate,” Cooper told The Hill newspaper this week. “Massachusetts is great and wonderful, but if you want to do the South, you’ve got to have somebody who speaks with a Southern accent.”
Hey, thanks Tennessee!!
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What fell through the cracks:
"During his State of the Union address in January, Obama specifically said he would support drilling for gas in shale beds, using a method widely known as “fracking.”
Related: Globe $chilling For Shale
"Melanie Whaley, an artist from Millbrook, N.Y., who was a grass-roots team leader for Obama, found her thoughts wandering to Hillary Clinton."
Giving her the VP post would hasten it.
