President Obama marks the eleventh anniversary of the September 11th attacks by remembering the innocent lives lost, and honoring the first responders and men and women in uniform who have served and sacrificed to keep our country safe.
In the difficult years following the attacks, the United States has come back stronger as a nation, decimated the leadership of al-Qaeda, ensured that Osama bin Laden will never attack America again, and strengthened our alliances across the world.
The two men running for President and Vice President on the Republican ticket have proven time and again that they are not afraid to tell a lie. Lies that have been debunked on numerous occasions and we are sure there will be many more lies debunked in the future.
But it seems lies are not the only hallmark of the Republican ticket. They are also good at stealing, as the two are parading around asking a question they stole from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, “are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?” The question suggests that since President Obama took office, things in America have gotten worse.
Well here are the facts. Ezra Klein explains.
Do Republicans really want to ask this question? Does the party whose policies are most responsible for blowing up the United States economy really want to ask if we’re better off now than four years ago, when the country faced an imminent destruction of its banking system and a possible depression? Do the GOP governors who implemented policies that devastated the public sector and led to hundreds of thousands of teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other essential government services workers being laid off or forced to take pay cuts truly want the country to debate their actions?
And most important, does the party of the wealthy really want to ask a question that so panders to people’s craven self-interests, that it firmly establishes the GOP as the vanguard of selfishness and regression?
Why, yes it does, thank you very much. And that’s why this is such a dangerous moment in the campaign.
The Republicans think they actually have a winning issue here, but they don’t. Today, we have more jobs than we did four years ago. The stock market is higher, the housing market is beginning to recover and incomes are on the rise (though they are rising faster for Romney’s class than they are for your average middle class worker). It is true that the Obama team underestimated just how much damage the Bush Administration did to the economy and they should have asked for more direct stimulus and fewer tax cuts in the 2009 bill, but Republican obstruction and the debt-defying game of Russian Roulette they played that resulted in the country’s credit rating downgrade were prime contributors to the slow growth we find ourselves with today.
But this all pales in comparison to the devastation of the good public sector jobs that formed the backbone of many middle class communities. In New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states, GOP governors weakened or destroyed collective bargaining rights and imposed harsh wage controls, leading to layoffs and downsizing of essential workers. And as for craven self-interest, no, I am not better off because of it. Is it any wonder that New Jersey has an unemployment rate of 9.8%?
Democrats and the Obama campaign must forcefully fight back against this ridiculous misrepresentation of reality. That they initially gave scattered answers is mystifying, but a unified response during the convention can go a long way towards laying this lie to rest.
Are you better off? Speak your mind at:
www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest
Former Republican governor Charlie Crist officially endorsed President Obama yesterday and today we’re learning that the former governor will speak at the Democratic convention next week.
AP reports;
Florida’s former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist will be a speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
An official with President Barack Obama’s campaign said Sunday that Crist will speak at next week’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., but the day hasn’t been worked out.
The official wasn’t authorized to speak and requested anonymity.
Crist announced Sunday that he is endorsing Obama, and Republicans called the decision political opportunism and pointed out Crist has previously criticized the president on issues such as his health care overhaul.
Crist changed his voter registration to no party affiliation after he dropped out of the 2010 Republican Senate primary and ran as an independent. Many speculate that he will return to politics as a Democrat and possibly challenge his Republican successor, Rick Scott.
With the Republicans having their Convention in Florida this week to re-invent and reintroduce Mitt Romney to the American public, it’s only natural that a former Republican governor use this opportunity to make his endorsement.
Governor Charlie Crist, wrote in today’s edition of Tampa Bay Times that the only person capable of turning around this economy and bringing jobs back, is the man he’s endorsing for President… Barack Obama.
I’ve studied, admired and gotten to know a lot of leaders in my life. Across Florida, in Washington and around the country, I’ve watched the failure of those who favor extreme rhetoric over sensible compromise, and I’ve seen how those who never lose sight of solutions sow the greatest successes.
As America prepares to pick our president for the next four years — and as Florida prepares once again to play a decisive role — I’m confident that President Barack Obama is the right leader for our state and the nation. I applaud and share his vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility. It is a vision of the future proven right by our history.
We often remind ourselves to learn the lessons of the past, lest we risk repeating its mistakes. Yet nearly as often, our short-term memory fails us. Many have already forgotten how deep and daunting our shared crisis was in the winter of 2009, as President Obama was inaugurated. It was no ordinary challenge, and the president served as the nation’s calm through a historically turbulent storm.
The president’s response was swift, smart and farsighted. He kept his compass pointed due north and relentlessly focused on saving jobs, creating more and helping the many who felt trapped beneath the house of cards that had collapsed upon them.
He knew we had to get people back to work as quickly as possible — but he also knew that the value of a recovery lies in its durability. Short-term healing had to be paired with an economy that would stay healthy over the long run. And he knew that happens best by investing in the right places.
President Obama invested in our children’s schools because he believes a good education is a necessity, not a luxury, if we’re going to create an economy built to last. He supported more than 400,000 K-12 teachers’ jobs, and he is making college more affordable and making student loans, like the ones he took out, easier to pay back.
He invested in our runways, railways and roads. President Obama knows a reliable infrastructure that helps move people to work and helps businesses move goods to market is a foundation of growth.
And the president invested in our retirement security by strengthening Medicare. The $716 billion in savings his opponents decry today extended the life of the program by nearly a decade and are making sure taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted in excessive payments to insurance companies or fraud and abuse. His opponents would end the Medicare guarantee by creating a voucher that would raise seniors’ costs by thousands of dollars and bankrupt the program.
We have more work to do, more investments to make and more waste to cut. But only one candidate in this race has proven a willingness to navigate a realistic path to prosperity.
The President used this weeks address to talk about the critical need to strengthen and preserve Medicare for our seniors and future generations.
Through the President’s Affordable Care Act, nearly 5.4 million seniors have already saved an average of more than $700 on prescription drugs, preventive care services like mammograms are free without co-pay, and the President’s plan extends the life of Medicare by almost a decade by cracking down on waste, fraud, and overpayments.
Republicans in Congress have put forward a very different plan that turns Medicare into a voucher program—under one plan forcing seniors to pay an extra $6,400 out of their own pocket for care-and effectively ends Medicare as we know it. The President believes that our seniors deserve better and will work with anyone to keep improving the current system to give our seniors the security and peace of mind they have earned.
A Seattle, Washington-area man was arrested Tuesday night for allegedly making threats on President Obama‘s life, and for pointing a shotgun at a federal agent. When the Secret Service, along with the Federal Way Police Department, went to question 31 year-old Anton Caluori , whom Mediaite has confirmed describes himself in a LinkedIn profile as an “Offshore Banking Entrepreneur,” about threatening emails he allegedly sent to an FBI general email address, authorities say he answered the door holding a shotgun. From WJLA:
A Secret Service agent and a Federal Way police officer went to an apartment in a four-plex at the Panther Ridge Apartments, knocked and announced themselves for about three minutes, then found themselves facing a man armed with a shotgun when the door opened, Schrock said.
“The shotgun was coming up to point in the direction of the agents,” she said. “The two officers were able to close in and take control of the weapon before anyone was harmed.”
The officers also seized a gun in the man’s ankle holster, she said. Because the resident made statements about explosive devices in the apartment, the Federal Way bomb squad was called to evacuate the four-plex and sweep it for explosives, Schrock said.
None was found.
Caluori is due in federal court this afternoon.
President Obama is finally beginning to own the word “Obamacare and he is ripping the word straight out of the clutching hands of Republicans, who have used it as a divisive measure ever since the President proposed his Affordable Healthcare Plan back in 2009.
Until recently, any mention of the word “Obamacare” conjured up memories of town-hall brawls and misspelt Teaparty signs accusing the President of being a “communist socialist” who is setting up death panels and placing the government between you and your doctor. But as Americans realized that Republicans were intentionally lying about the law and its benefits, they too are referring to the word as a term of endearment.
And so is the President.
Yesterday at his most recent campaign stop in Colorado, Mr. Obama was heard saying; “The Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare,” as the audience applauded at the University of Denver. “I actually like the name,” he added. “Because I do care — that’s why we fought so hard to make it happen.”
Although the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of ObamaCare, Congressional Republicans are on a mission to repeal the bill. They have already held 33 failed attempts to void Mr. Obama’s healthcare law and the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, has sided with his base and is promising to repeal the law if he becomes president… although he passed the same law in Massachusetts as governor.
And as more benefits for the American people continue to materialized, Republicans will come to terms with the fact that repealing the law will be equivalent to political suicide.
The Romney ad following this post has already been debunked by all the major news organizations and called a lie by many. And now, some Republicans are stepping up to the plate and calling out Mitt Romney for the lies he is telling. Ron Haskins, the Republican who was a senior adviser to President Bush on welfare policies, is the latest Republican to disagree with Romney’s attacks.
Mitt Romney’s latest television ad attacks the Obama administration for announcing a “plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” It’s a strong allegation, but according to a former Republican congressional aide who was key to crafting welfare reform in the 1990s, it’s also not true.
“There’s no plausible scenario under which it really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform,” Ron Haskins, who is now co-director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on Children and Families, said in an interview with NPR that aired on Wednesday.
Haskins spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Human Resources Subcommittee, first as welfare counsel to the Republican staff, then as the subcommittee’s staff director. In 2002, he was President George W. Bush’s senior adviser on welfare policy.
Welfare, formally known as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, is administered by states within federal rules. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services invited states to apply for waivers from some rules in order to run “demonstration projects” so that states could “consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment.”
Haskins noted that the requirements states have to meet in order to receive the waivers are quite rigorous.
“First of all, the states have to apply individually for waivers,” he said. “And they have to explain in detail, sometimes using data, why this approach would lead to either more employment or better jobs for people who are trying to welfare or get off welfare.”
As The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney has pointed out, this waiver policy was sought out by Republican governors. In a release defending its waiver request from conservative backlash last month, the office of Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) said, “Utah’s request for a waiver stems from a desire for increased customization of the program to maximize employment among Utah’s welfare recipients.”
In 2005, as Massachusetts governor, Romney also signed a letter in support of a waiver policy — a fact left out of his new TV ad.
Here’s the ad:
The book titled Obama’s Last Stand by Glenn Thrush said that in the beginning of the 2012 campaign season, the President was neutral in his feelings for Mitt Romney – the eventual Republican candidate. But as time went on, Mr. Obama “quickly developed a genuine disdain” for his Republican challenger.
“One factor made the 2012 grind bearable and at times even fun for Obama: he began campaign preparations feeling neutral about Romney, but like the former governor’s GOP opponents in 2008 and 2012, he quickly developed a genuine disdain for the main. That scorn stoked Obama’s competitive fire, got his head in the game, which came as a relief to some Obama aides who had seen his interest flag when he didn’t feel motivated to crush the opposition. Obama, a person close to him told me, didn’t even feel this strongly about conservative, combative House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Hill Republican he disliked the most. At least Cantor stood for something, he’d say.”
“When he talked about Romney, aides picked up a level of anger he never had for Clinton or McCain, even after Sarah Palin was picked as his running mate. ‘There was a baseline of respect for John McCain. The president always thought he was an honorable man and a war hero,’ said a longtime Obama adviser. ‘That doesn’t hold true for Romney. He was no goddamned war hero.'”
President Obama congratulates all of the American athletes competing in the Olympics and Paralympics this summer. These men and women have inspired us all with their hard work, determination, and their indomitable spirit as they present the best of America to the rest of the world. The President tells our Olympic and Paralympic competitors that the American people could not be prouder of them, and thanks them for reminding us that we are one people, and by working together we can achieve great things.
John Boehner had to get something off his chest, so he went to his friendly neighborhood propaganda machine called Fox News Radio and expressed his frustrations at President Obama for doing the unimaginable – talking about middle class issues.
When Boehner was asked about the president’s belief that economic stability comes from the middle class out and not from the top down, Boehner exploded!
“Sometimes I have to catch my breath and slow down because the rhetoric in this campaign is just so over the top. And that’s because the president’s policies have failed. Listen — 93% of Americans believe they’re a part of the middle class. That’s why you hear the president talk about the middle class every day, because he’s talking to 93% of the American people. But the president has never created a job. He’s never even had a real job for Christ’s sake.”
The Maddow Blog found Boehner’s response interesting; “For the record, Obama has been an attorney, a community organizer working with churches in communities hit by factory closings, a law professor, a state lawmaker, a federal lawmaker, and the president of the United States during a time of multiple crises. I’m curious, which of these jobs does Boehner consider fake?
I’m also struck by the notion that Boehner thinks Obama is too focused on the middle class — a complaint Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) also levied last week. Since when did Republicans decide “talking about the middle class every day” is a bad thing?
Boehner really should catch his breath, slow down, and consider the fact that the rhetoric in this campaign is just so over the top. Then, once he’s regained his composure, he should also realize it’s unbecoming of a Speaker of the House to lose his cool and make attacks like “he’s never even had a real job for Christ’s sake.”
