Daily Archives: September 11, 2012
Who would you rather have a lemonade with (and laugh about the peasants’ cheap raincoats)?
Politico: President Barack Obama likes sports. He likes beer. He likes sports bars. And he wants to make sure voters see that on the campaign trail. And, by way of contrast, he’d also like to remind the electorate about who doesn’t seem to enjoy bars, or sports, or sports bars. Hint: It’s the other candidate running for president, the guy who happens to be a teetotaler and who refers to “sport” as though he were doing an impression of Mr. Burns or an English Olympics official. — President Obama’s suds-’n'-sports regular-guy tour
Show of hands: seriously, who’d rather watch dressage competitions with Mitt and Anntoinette or have a beer with President Obama?
Mitt Romney’s 24 hours of extreme flip flop: Obamacare
Source: kiboxx
Romney: You’re 45, have a heart condition, and want insurance? You can’t play the game like that.
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Pre-existing condition? Tough shit.
con-tem-plate: Mitt Romney on Leno:
“If they’re 45 years old and they show up and they say I have a heart condition and I want insurance? You can’t play the game like that.”
I know plenty of people who have pre-existing conditions. This is exactly why we need the individual mandate. The Republican spokesperson goes on and on about how this is a hard problem to solve. Well, guess what? It’s already been solved, and it called Obamacare! Obamacare is the first pass at helping real life healthcare issues just like this. Under Romney, sorry, you’re out of luck.
Is this man for real? His glib answer just came out without any thought. Cold, compassionless, heck, no intelligence either.
Jay Leno does a great job, and all it took was a simple follow-up question.
Mitt’s own wife, Anntoinette, has a pre-existing condition. But neither of them have been without health insurance (or the money to pay for the very best medical treatment) a day in their privileged, silver-spoon fed lives.
Romneybot is unable to compute a life without a lot of money. FFS, apparently Ann still has PTSD from having to “eat tuna” and sell some stock when they were in college. These two would fall apart if they had to live our lives for a couple of weeks!
When Romney stopped by Van Duzer’s Big Apple Pizza and Pasta
You people!
>Source: facebook.com
The Hugger-in-Chief
Our President is a hugger — and he’s huggable.
Buzzfeed: The President chatted and downed beers with voters at Gator’s Dockside restaurant in Orlando and the West Tampa Sandwich Shop on Saturday. More photos…
(Reuters)
(Reuters)
A Republican for Obama:
“Mr. Obama got a huge lift — literally — from the registered Republican during an unscheduled stop at Mr. Van Duzer’s Big Apple Pizza and Pasta Italian Restaurant here on Sunday. “Look at that!” Mr. Obama exclaimed after the ebullient pizza shop owner lifted him a good couple of feet off the ground after he walked into the restaurant. “Man, are you a power lifter or what?” [...] Mr. Obama said he decided to stop at the pizza place because of the work Mr. Van Duzer does donating blood, and urging others to do the same. “One of the reasons that we wanted to stop by is that Scott has been doing unbelievable work out of this pizza shop in promoting the importance of donating blood,” Mr. Obama said. “And so he has set some records here in Florida. He has received commendations from the White House, the surgeon general, he has galvanized and mobilized the local community and he’s educating kids and folks all across the country on this issue.” And now, we can say, he has also lifted the president. The president’s Secret Service agents looked a bit perturbed, but Mr. Van Duzer said that he got permission first. Speaking to reporters after, he said an agent “said I was alright as long as I didn’t take him away.” — Obama Gets a Lift on the Trail – NYTimes.com (via apsies)
USA Today: “Look at that!” Obama exclaimed once back on firm ground. “Man are you a power-lifter or what?”
Obama said he decided to stop by Van Duzen’s restaurant because he had done some record-breaking work promoting blood donations in his community. He’s received commendations from the White House and U.S. Surgeon General.
“I still wonder how he got these biceps, but what we know is that the guy’s just got a big heart along with big pecs,” Obama said. “So we’re very proud of him and we just want to say thank you for all the great work.”
Meanwhile, President Obama has an adorable fan. (via: communism-kills)
barackobama: “The only thing the President likes more than a bus tour is a hug.”—Jen Psaki, Traveling Press Secretary (via: soupisnotameal – Can anyone remember Mitt ever hugging anybody? I can’t.)
thebigpixture: Presidents Clinton and Obama embrace after President Clinton’s speech at the DNC.
FoxNews / RWNJ controversy fail: Obama’s 9/11 Proclamation doesn’t mention God!
Charles Johnson | Wingnut Nontroversy of the Day: ‘Obama’s 9-11 Proclamation Does Not Mention God’
Today’s wingnut outrageous outrage of the day comes to you by way of the ever-confused Todd Starnes of Fox News. It involves the exclusion of the word “God” in “Presidential Proclamation — Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance, 2012.” This was followed up by an even more hysterical pseudo-religious rant from the ever-seething Pat Dollard.
Behold the announcement from Todd Starnes:
How different from Bush’s Presidential Proclamations, right?
[...] It turns out that George W. Bush did not mention God for his “Presidential Proclamation–Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance” for 5 of 8 such proclamations — meaning that the majority of these proclamations did not include the word “God.”
He mentioned it in the initial proclamation in 2001, and in the years 2004 and 2005.
George W. Bush does not mention God in 2002.
George W. Bush does not mention God in 2003.
George W. Bush does not mention God in 2006.
George W. Bush does not mention God in 2007.
George W. Bush does not mention God in 2008.
[...] I offer the following alternative headline.
Mitt Romney’s Republican Party: the witness protection program
via: occupy-my-blog
9 years ago: George W. Bush: “I Truly Am Not That Concerned About Osama Bin Laden”
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Truly not concerned about Bin Laden, y’all. Not two years after, not even months before then.
11 years: What did Bush know, and when did he know it? (More and earlier than we realized)
Posted in full without comment:
Bush Knew More About Bin Laden’s Plans Than We Realized
Now, 11 years later, new details of the attack on the World Trade Center continue to emerge from the government’s vault of classified documents and the journalists who’ve gained access. This year, the reporter with the jaw-dropping scoop is Kurt Eichenwald, a former Timesman and present contributing editor at Vanity Fair. After reading more than one tweet with the simple instructions “Read this,” we clicked on the link to Eichenwald’s powerful op-ed, due to be published in The New York Times on September 11. In it, Eichenwald goes into teeth-grinding detail about how the Bush administration had even more advance notice about Osama Bin Laden’s attack than we previously realized. You should read it, too.
With the infamous August 6 White House briefing as a focal point, Eichenwald walks through the months and years of warnings leading up to the September 11 attacks. Some of these are events and reports that remain classified, but Eichenwald says he’s “read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed.”
Again, we already knew that Bush had some advance warning. We just didn’t realize how much. This passage from Eichenwalds piece reads like a nightmare:
An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.
In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.
That was in June of 2001. Three months later, the White House didn’t have the luxury of avoiding reports about Bin Laden any more.
There are actually conservatives who say they believe Romney is responsible for Bin Laden
And those voters are what is wrong with everything. Talk about mental contortions.
The Raw Story: A surprising amount of very conservative voters in Ohio apparently believe that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is more responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden than President Barack Obama. Fifteen percent of those who described themselves as “very conservative” said Romney was more responsible for the demise of the terrorist leader, according to a survey released by Public Policy Polling (PDF). Another 51 percent said they were not sure. Only 34 percent said Obama deserved more credit. [...] Overall, 63 percent of those questioned said that Obama was more responsible for the death of Bin Laden. Only six percent said Romney was more responsible, while 30 percent said they were not sure. — Some Ohio conservatives think Romney responsible for Bin Laden’s death
Dylan Matthews: calls it “psychological trickery.” “[V]oters have trouble crediting politicians they don’t like for policy outcomes they do like,” he explained, citing research. “And killing bin Laden is a policy outcome they do like. And so partisan effects have led some Republicans to argue that Obama was not primarily responsible for killing bin Laden or, even more absurdly, that Romney was responsible.” — Do 15% of Ohio Republicans think Romney killed bin Laden? Probably not.
THIS, even though in 2007 Mitt Romney told the Associated Press “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
If this doesn’t convince you that whatever these people think is laughably ignorant and sadly childlike, what would? But they’ll be the first ones in line at the polls on Nov. 6th — so take that into consideration.
Honest GOP slogans
via: destroythegop
If Romney’s background, heritage, and faith have made him the person he is…
…that doesn’t speak well of his faith or heritage or background. Just saying.
“I’m convinced that my background, and my heritage and my faith have made me the person I am to a great degree. The Judeo-Christian ethics that I was brought up with, the sense of obligation to one’s fellow man, and an absolute conviction that we are all sons and daughters of the same God and therefore, in a human family, is one of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing. I’m sure a number of members of my faith are proud of the fact that someone of my faith – our faith – is able to run for president.” — Mitt Romney: ‘My heritage and my faith have made me the person I am’
WILLARD ROMNEY: MAN OF GOD!
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Weirdly, the “Judeo-Christian ethics” with which Romney claims to have been brought up has 10 Commandments, and bearing false witness is NUMBER NINE. Let’s just say that suggesting your political opponent is going to take God off the nation’s currency, just to make that opponent look bad to your supporters, would be a transgression of Judeo-Christian ethics, hypocrite.
And what kind of “faith” makes you attack someone else’s for political points? Is Romney’s Mormonism, his heritage and family’s history in Mexico, still going to be off-limits if he keeps taking digs at the President’s birthplace and religious faith to make the extremist nutjobs froth and shriek with approval (and votes)?
When can we ask how big of a role The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints would play in a Romney presidency? After all, we’ve already learned that the LDS Church profited handsomely in charitable contributions when Romney oversaw Bain Capital. For example:
As part of just one Bain transaction in 2008, involving its investment in Burger King Holdings, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal thatan unnamed Bain partner donated 65,326 shares of Burger King stock to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holdings then worth nearly $1.9 million. And there were numerous others, giving the church a stake in other Bain properties, such as Domino’s Pizza, the electronics manufacturerDDi, the phosphates company Innophos Holdings, and Marquee Holdings, the parent to AMC Theaters.
[...] In a 2008 stock sale involving Innophos Holdings, the church’s 50,301 shares were worth nearly $1.4 million. SEC filings for Marquee Holdings note that “certain members and other employees of Bain and its affiliates may make a contribution of shares to one or more charities prior to this offering, including … The Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
This isn’t 1930 and the intention of “off-limits” isn’t just for the white guy’s comfort and convenience.
2 million jobs lost to politics
9/11: Moment of silence at the White House (Photo)
Obama Observes Moment Of Silence On 9/11 Anniversary (Photo) | TPM LiveWire
President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama observed a moment of silence at the White House Tuesday morning to mark the 11th anniversary of Sept. 11.
[Photo credit: Olivier Douliery/ABACAUSA.COM/Newscom]
Boston.com: With three bell tolls and a bugler playing taps, the White House observance marks the 11th anniversary of the suicide hijackings that struck New York and the Pentagon and downed a plane in Pennsylvania, leaving nearly 3,000 dead. Obama and the first lady also planned to attend an observance ceremony at the Pentagon later Tuesday morning. In the afternoon, the president was scheduled to visit wounded soldiers and their families at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Vice President Joe Biden was traveling to Pennsylvania to deliver remarks at the Flight 93 National Memorial Commemorative Service.
