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03:30:41 05/26/12
Open Thread
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 03:30:41 05/26/12
This is Daily Show funny: those Chinese madcap animators "take on" Occupy the Graduation. (Sent to us by folks at Occupy the Graduation, who are still laughing.) Take note that there's no need to go to college, kids, when turning a wrench turns you into Nintendo's Mario in seconds!
Open thread below....
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03:00:36 05/26/12
C&L's Late Night Music Club with Carlos Santana and Steve Winwood
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 03:00:36 05/26/12
Title: Why Can't We Live Together Artist: Carlos Santana and Steve Winwood
Most folks know, I'm a big fan of both Steve Winwood and Carlos Santana. Put them together, and magic happens. So, what do you guys think? What's your favorite duo of solo stars?
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01:00:36 05/26/12
Pots and Pans Protest in Québec
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 01:00:36 05/26/12
Each night in Montréal, and now in other cities and towns in Québec, the locals are treated to the loud din of thousands of protesters taking to the streets. The video above is from last night, and was relatively peaceful with only a handful of arrests but so far a staggering 2500 have been arrested in the standoff over student tuition and now draconian law enforcement. The Pots Protest ("Manif de casseroles") began earlier this month in response to the Student protests, which are now over 100 days old, see no sign of abating any time soon, and in fact are only growing in numbers -- and volume.
via The Canadian Press >
MONTREAL - The clanging pots of student unrest that have rattled Montreal and Quebec City for several nights are coming noisily to life in other parts of the province.
People took up the percussive protest Thursday night in several towns and cities including Sorel, Longueuil, Chambly, Repentigny, Trois-Rivieres and even in Abitibi — several hundred kilometres away from the hot spot of Montreal.
They were still loudest in Montreal, where a chorus of metallic clanks rang out in neighbourhoods around the city, spilling into the main demonstrations and sounding like aluminum symphonies.
The pots-and-pans protest has its roots in Chile, where people have used it for years as an effective, peaceful tool to express civil disobedience. The noisy cacerolazo tradition actually predates the Pinochet regime in Chile, but has endured there and spread to other countries as a method of showing popular defiance.
Thursday's protest in Montreal was immediately declared illegal by police, who said it violated a municipal bylaw because they hadn't been informed of the route. They allowed it to continue as long as it remained peaceful.
Although there was a massive police presence throughout the evening with the roar of a provincial police helicopter competing with the banging of the pots, there was little if any tension reported between demonstrators and police.
People tapped the pots as they walked, the sounds mingling with shouts and chants. Others leaned out of car windows to bang their pans and one protester smacked a pot right in front of one police officer who looked on indifferently.
Usually the nightly street demonstrations, which have gone on for a month, have a couple of vigorous drummers to speed them along their route. At the very least, someone clangs a cow bell.
But in the last few days, the pots and pans protest — dubbed the casseroles by observers — have acted like an alarm clock for the regular evening march, sounding at 8 p.m. on the nose in advance of the march's start.
While thousands, including children, their parents, students and the elderly, packed the streets in support, the Twitterverse exploded with reactions and observations.
"Spotted a man in an Armani suit banging a pot," tweeted Christina Stimpson on one of Thursday's participants. "Feel the love people."
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03:30:00 05/25/12
Open Thread
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 03:30:00 05/25/12
Don't take the Bible too literally, except when it comes to teh geyz? Those Christianists don't speak for me.
Open thread below....
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02:01:26 05/25/12
Myth McConnell
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 02:01:26 05/25/12
In the wake of the debt-ceiling crisis he helped manufacture last summer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell boasted it was "a hostage that's worth ransoming" which "also is a new template" for the future. As it turns out, those threats were among the few true words McConnell has uttered. Because while he's promising once again to blackmail the White House over the debt ceiling, the Kentucky Republican claimed it's because "we'd like to do something about the nation's biggest problem, spending and debt, which of course is the reason for this economic malaise." Of course, as the data show, it's the very austerity policies here and in Europe which are costing jobs and hurting growth.
But Mitch McConnell's myth-making hardly ends there. On the economy, taxes, deficits, health care and so much else, virtually all of McConnell's talking points are tried - and untrue.
( Click a link to jump to the details for each below ):
* "Obama Made the Economy Worse"
* "No Evidence Whatsoever That the Bush Tax Cuts Actually Diminished Revenue"
* "Punishing Job Creators"
* "We Look a Lot Like Greece Already"
* Public Sector Layoffs Are a "Local" Problem
* 47 Million Uninsured Americans "Don't Go Without Health Care"
* The Public Option "May Cost You Your Life"
* Democrats Are "Sticking It to Seniors with Cuts to Medicare"
"Obama Made the Economy Worse"
For months, Mitch McConnell (for example, here , here and here ) regurgitated the GOP talking point that President Obama " made the economy worse ." Sadly for the trickle-down mythmakers of the Republican Party , the facts and the overwhelming consensus of economists - including John McCain's 2008 brain trust - prove otherwise. President Obama not only did not make the American economy worse; no thanks to obstructionist Republicans in Congress he saved the United States from "Great Depression 2.0" and put the nation on the path to recovery.
Start, for example, with the conclusions of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Despite Republican mythmaking that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) "created zero jobs," in November the CBO reported that the stimulus added up to 2.4 million jobs and boosted GDP by as much as 1.9 points in the previous quarter. As The Hill explained, the CBO has found that "President Obama's 2009 stimulus package continues to benefit the struggling economy": >
The agency said the measure raised gross domestic product by between 0.3 and 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2011, which ended Sept. 30. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that GDP in that quarter was only 2 percent total...
By CBO's numbers, the $800 billion stimulus added up to 0.9 million jobs in 2009, 3.3 million jobs in 2010 and 2.6 million jobs in 2011.
Mark Zandi , an adviser to John McCain in 2008, was adamant on positive role of the stimulus. Federal intervention, he and Princeton economist Alan Blinder argued in August 2010, literally saved the United States from a second Great Depression. In " How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End ," Blinder and Zandi's models confirmed the impact of the Obama recovery program and other federal interventions dating back to 2008, concluding that "laissez faire was not an option": >
We find that its effects on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0. For example, we estimate that, without the government's response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8½ million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation.
"No Evidence Whatsoever That the Bush Tax Cuts Actually Diminished Revenue"
In his version of the Republican myth that " tax cuts pay for themselves ," President Bush confidently proclaimed, "You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." As it turned out, not so much.
After Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt with his supply-side tax cuts, George W. Bush doubled it again with his own. (Reagan's performance would have been much worse, had he not raised taxes 11 times to help make up the shocking shortfall.) As a share of American GDP, tax revenues peaked in 2000; that is, before the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded, the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure, and if made permanent , over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP and the stimulus - combined .
Nevertheless, as the Republican Party waged its all-out attack in 2010 to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy , the GOP's number two man in the Senate provided the talking point to help sell the $70 billion annual giveaway to America's rich. "You should never," Arizona's Jon Kyl declared, "have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed to defend Kyl's fuzzy math: >
"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."
That may have been a view universally shared by virtually every Republican, but it happens to be wrong.
"Punishing Job Creators"
For years, Senator McConnell has been among the legions of Republicans wrongly arguing that even the slightest increase in taxes for the wealthiest Americans is tantamount to " punishing job creators ." As his colleague John Boehner put it: >
"The top one percent of wage earners in the United States...pay forty percent of the income taxes...The people he's [President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy."
If so, those expectations were sadly unmet under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6 percent during the Clinton administration , the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much.
On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, " Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record ." (The Journal's interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The meager one million jobs created under President Bush didn't merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton's tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush's job creation disaster, the worst since Hoover.
That dismal performance prompted David Leonhardt of the New York Times to ask last fall, "Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?" His answer was unambiguous: >
Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7... >
Is there good evidence the tax cuts persuaded more people to join the work force (because they would be able to keep more of their income)? Not really. The labor-force participation rate fell in the years after 2001 and has never again approached its record in the year 2000. >
Is there evidence that the tax cuts led to a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation? Again, no. The rate at which start-up businesses created jobs fell during the past decade.
The data are clear: lower taxes for America's so called job-creators don't mean either faster economic growth or more jobs for Americans .
As Jared Bernstein aptly put it earlier this month: >
"Tax cuts and job growth? They're just not that into each other."
"We Look a Lot Like Greece Already"
As their last round of hostage-taking of the debt heated up last summer, Republicans including Mitch McConnell warned, "We look a lot like Greece."
hile FactCheck.org was quick to conclude that "whatever it 'looks like' through Sen. McConnell's eyes -- the fact is that the U.S. is not yet a fiscal wreck of Greek proportions," its analysis hardly does justice to the scale of the Republican myth-making. The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen summed it up quite succinctly: >
New rule: every time a confused Republican lawmakers compare the United States' fiscal conditions to that of Greece, an angel loses its wings.
Look, the very idea is just crazy. The U.S. has extremely low interest rates and foreign investor are happy to loan us money; Greece has extremely high interest rates and no one is eager to loan the country money. The U.S. has our own currency; Greece has the Euro. We have a great credit rating (for now); Greece has an awful credit rating. We have a manageable debt; Greece has a debt crisis. We're a large country with an enormous economy; Greece is a small country with a small economy. We have one of the world's most stable systems of government (at least until six months ago); Greece's government structure is a little shaky.
For his part, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been decrying the " Hellenization of economic discourse " for months. "Greece -- with a long history of fiscal irresponsibility, very high public debt, and a country without a currency -- doesn't bear much resemblance even to the other peripheral Europeans, let alone the United States."
>
Here's debt levels (if you ask me the IMF projections for Greece are too optimistic). >
Plus there's the having your own currency thing, and the fact that the interest rate on US 10-year bonds is 3.11 percent, on Greek bonds 16.82 percent. >
Otherwise we're exactly the same.
Public Sector Layoffs a "Local" Problem
Last fall, Minority Leader McConnell led the GOP opposition to President Obama's proposed $400 billion American Jobs Act. The loss of hundreds of thousands of police, firefighter, teacher and other public sector jobs, he insisted, was a "local" problem.
As it turns out, the 600,000 state and local government jobs already lost since December 2008 is very much a national issue. That " anti-stimulus ," it turns out, has added a full point to America's unemployment rate .
Last month, the Economic Policy Institute noted that the private sector had gained 2.8 million jobs while federal, state and local governments shed 584,000 just since June 2009. EPI concluded that the public sector job losses constituted "an unprecedented drag on the recovery": >
"The current recovery is the only one that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months."
Back in March, Paul Krugman expressed the same point , but with some inconvenient historical context for the Party of Reagan. "In fact, if it weren't for this destructive fiscal austerity," Krugman explained, "Our unemployment rate would almost certainly be lower now than it was at a comparable stage of the 'Morning in America' recovery during the Reagan era." >
We're talking big numbers here. If government employment under Mr. Obama had grown at Reagan-era rates, 1.3 million more Americans would be working as schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., than are currently employed in such jobs. >
And once you take the effects of public spending on private employment into account, a rough estimate is that the unemployment rate would be 1.5 percentage points lower than it is, or below 7 percent -- significantly better than the Reagan economy at this stage.
47 Million Uninsured Americans "Don't Go Without Health Care"
McConnell the " strict obstructionist " was naturally in the forefront of the all-out Republican effort to block health care reform at any cost. As he repeatedly put it in June 2009 , "all of us want reform, but not reform that denies, delays, or rations health care." To prove his point, McConnell didn't merely trot out a Canadian patient who came to the U.S. for special treatment, but insisted to NBC's David Gregory that no American does without health care now. >
GREGORY: Do you think it's a moral issue that 47 million Americans go without health insurance? >
McCONNELL: Well, they don't go without health care. It's not the most efficient way to provide it. As we know, the doctors in the hospitals are sworn to provide health care. We all agree it is not the most efficient way to provide health care to find somebody only in the emergency room and then pass those costs on to those who are paying for insurance. So it is important, I think, to reduce the number of uninsured. The question is, what is the best way to do that?
That President George W. Bush, Tom Delay and Paul Broun among other Republicans also claimed "people have access to health care in America...after all, you just go to an emergency room" doesn't make it any more true. As the numbers show -- 50 million uninsured, another 25 million uninsured, 45,000 unnecessary deaths, one in five Americans "self-rationing" care and 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies being related to medical bills -- the crisis is far worse than the one Mitch McConnell pretends doesn't exist.
The Public Option "May Cost You Your Life"
While Mitch McConnell insisted that the lack of insurance doesn't prevent anyone from getting health care, in 2009 he suggested having coverage could prove fatal . Months before the passage of the Affordable Care Act without the so-called "public option," Minority Leader McConnell said it would be deadly.
That irresponsible fear-mongering came during an appearance on Dennis Miller's radio show in October 2009. Blasting the "opt-out" version of the public option then being considered in the Senate bill, the Senator from the state ranked 45th in health care performance insisted access to coverage could kill you : >
MCCONNELL: Well, it doesn't make any difference frankly whether you opt-in or you opt-out, it's still a government plan. You know, Medicaid, the program for the poor now, states can opt-out of that, but none of them have. I think if you have any kind of government insurance program, you're going to be stuck with it and it will lead us in the direction of the European style, you know, sort of British-style, single payer, government run system. And those systems are known for delays, denial of care and, you know, if your particular malady doesn't fit the government regulation, you don't get the medication. >
MILLER: Right. >
MCCONNELL: And it may cost you your life. I mean, we don't want to go down that path.
As a Harvard Medical School study found, each year the path of no health insurance leads 45,000 Americans to the grave.
Democrats Are "Sticking It to Seniors with Cuts to Medicare"
For two years running, Mitch McConnell has been among the 40 GOP Senator voting for Paul Ryan's House budget plan to privatize and inevitably ration Medicare now used by 46 million American seniors. In the late 1990's, McConnell joined in Newt Gingrich's effort to slash almost 15 percent from the Medicare budget so that the program would "wither on the vine." But when the Affordable Care Act called for savings from the private Medicare Advantage program used by only 15 percent of elderly beneficiaries, it was Mitch McConnell who warned seniors about the mythical danger.
In July 2009, McConnell tried to scare America's 46 million Medicare beneficiaries by declaring, "The administration plans to use Medicare cuts to fund yet another new government program." Hoping to build on the momentum of the GOP's disgusting and demonstrably false " euthanasia " talking point, McConnell cautioned: >
"Some in Congress seem to be in such a rush to pass just any reform, rather than the right reform, that they're looking everywhere for the money to pay for it -- even if it means sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare."
That salvo comes just two weeks after McConnell promised to defeat health care reform in the Senate, warning America's highest turnout voting block: >
"They are going to pay for this plan by cutting Medicare, that is cutting seniors."
Those claims, the New York Times pointed out the day after the Republicans' overwhelming triumph in the 2010 midterms elections were misleading at best and false at worst. But, sadly, they worked .
And so it goes.
As Joshua Green documented last year in the Atlantic , "Mitch McConnell is a master manipulator and strategist" whose "relentless tactics have made his party victorious." But that doesn't make him a truth-teller, except on those rare occasions when he reveals his true motivations. During the debt ceiling stand-off last summer , McConnell briefly got weak in the knees at the prospect of U.S. sovereign default not because it would be a disaster for the nation, but because it could damage his Republican Party : >
"I refuse to help Barack Obama get re-elected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy. ... If we go into default, he will say that Republicans are making the economy worse and try to convince the public -- maybe with some merit, if people stop getting their Social Security checks and military families start getting letters saying service people overseas don't get paid. It's an argument he could have a good chance of winning, and all of the sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy," he said. "That is very bad positioning going into an election."
Especially an election which marks the culmination of Mitch McConnell's work over the past three and a half years: >
"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
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21:30:21 05/24/12
The GOP is an "insurgent, outlier party": authors -- Fast Forward
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 21:30:21 05/24/12
The GOP is an "insurgent, outlier party": authors -- Fast Forward
Democrats and Republicans have grown more extreme in their positions, but the GOP has truly become radicalized in its efforts to undo legislative accomplishments dating back nearly a century, say authors Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann in this episode of Fast Forward. (May 25, 2012) From: ReutersTV Views: 37 5 ratings Time: 13:07 More in News & Politics
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21:30:21 05/24/12
The GOP is an "insurgent, outlier party": authors -- Fast Forward
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 21:30:21 05/24/12
Democrats and Republicans have grown more extreme in their positions, but the GOP has truly become radicalized in its efforts to undo legislative accomplishments dating back nearly a century, say authors Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann in this episode of Fast Forward. (May 25, 2012)
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12:19:56 05/24/12
Who Spends More: Democratic Or Republican Presidents?
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 12:19:56 05/24/12
Who Spends More: Democratic Or Republican Presidents?
Is Obama really a big spender? Cenk Uygur takes a look at a graph which maps out spending growth of the last few presidents. The results will shock you. Source: tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com Subscribe to The Young Turks: bit.ly Find out how to watch The Young Turks on Current by clicking here: www.current.com The Largest Online New Show in the World. Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com From: TheYoungTurks Views: 20356 1111 ratings Time: 03:48 More in News & Politics
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01:00:28 05/24/12
The Bain of Our Existence
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 01:00:28 05/24/12
I love this Bain debate. It is exactly the kind of debate about the nature of business and job creation we need to be having in this campaign. The Republicans, along with pro-Wall Street Democrats, are squealing like stuck pigs about the Obama campaign “attacking free enterprise” because they want to change the subject fast. They are saying to themselves: please, let’s talk about anything else. Deficits would be their first choice, but anything would be preferable. Maybe we’ll see them start talking about contraceptives and how people shouldn’t have sex again just to change the subject. Because this debate goes straight to the heart of what kind of economy we should be trying to build in this country.
This is isn’t about being for or against free enterprise. This is about how the economy should work better for everyone in it, not just the top 1 percent. The Republicans -- and Democrats like Cory Booker and Harold Ford, who both have raised millions of dollars in Wall Street money ( including money from Bain ) for their campaigns -- say that it is great when financial corporations like Bain make money by loading up the companies they buy with debt, taking all the tax write-offs the law allows, and then walking away with tons of money whatever happens to the original company. In fact, the companies Bain bought frequently went bankrupt, and Bain usually profited when those companies did go belly-up because of tax write-offs and sucking the companies’ assets dry. But in this line of reasoning, it’s all good, because capitalism should be unrestrained and some people got very rich.
What Obama and other Democrats are arguing is that our government should be on the side of the businesses that create not just wealth for a few at the top, but jobs and incomes for a lot of people. That is why Obama made the incredibly gutsy move to save the American auto industry, a policy that saved 1.45 million jobs in the short run, and kept desperately needed manufacturing jobs in this country for years to come. It is why Obama has made big investments in the budget for Small Business Administration jobs. It is why investments have been made in clean energy jobs of the future. It is why the U.S. Department of Agriculture has emphasized rural economic development and small business development in areas where jobs and incomes are desperately needed.
Democratic policies are in fact far more pro-business than policies like the Romney-Ryan budget, which independent studies estimate would cost the nation more than 4 million jobs in the next two years. That’s a lot of business customers who no longer have money to spend.
The Republican attack machine (helped by Democrats like Booker and Ford who have been feeding at the Wall Street trough for their entire careers) wants to intimidate the Obama campaign by making the claim that any attack on greedy business practices like the ones Romney perfected at Bain is an attack on all business and the market. It’s the same kind of argument Republicans make when they complain about class warfare politics when Democrats suggest that millionaires ought to pay a little more in taxes. It is an utterly soulless, amoral argument. But this is a fight Democrats can and will win if we make our case, because I think most people understand that there are ethical and unethical business practices. And they get that there is a difference between making money by manipulating the tax code and squeezing all the value out of businesses before throwing them away, and making money by making and selling good products that people want to buy. Biden laid this case out beautifully in a speech in Youngstown:
And the President got it right when he said “when you are President, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.”
This debate about Bain Capital is one we need to have. What kind of business activity, and what kind of government policy, is better for America? Republicans, you better batten down the hatches, because we are going to have this debate. Whiny Wall Street Democrats, get over it, this is a fight we are taking on. This is a make or break moment for America’s middle class, and we aren’t going to let Republican bullies and Wall Street Democrat whiners from making Bain the bain of Romney’s existence.
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18:54:46 05/23/12
Kennedy, Bielat ready for campaign spotlight
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 18:54:46 05/23/12
Kennedy, Bielat ready for campaign spotlight
Democrat Joe Kennedy III and Republican Sean Bielat get ready for a 4th Congressional seat showdown. From: WCVBtv Views: 4 1 ratings Time: 01:59 More in News & Politics
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03:00:00 05/23/12
C&L's Late Night Music Club with Joe Bonamassa
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 03:00:00 05/23/12
Title: Dislocated Boy Artist: Joe Bonamassa
New Joe Bonamassa. Just released. I missed the show. drat. But, I'm goin to see Taj Mahal this Sunday. :D
Whatcha listening to this evening?
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01:42:46 05/23/12
How To Buy A Politician
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 01:42:46 05/23/12
How To Buy A Politician
How do politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) cash in after they leave office? How does this legalized bribery corrupt the American government? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks down examples showing of the influence of money on our political system. Read more from Charles Ferguson: www.huffingtonpost.com Subscribe to The Young Turks: bit.ly Find out how to watch The Young Turks on Current by clicking here: www.current.com The Largest Online New Show in the World. Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com From: TheYoungTurks Views: 23094 1022 ratings Time: 07:22 More in News & Politics
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22:52:00 05/22/12
Debt Ceiling Debacle: GOP Backs Out Of Deal
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 22:52:00 05/22/12
Debt Ceiling Debacle: GOP Backs Out Of Deal
House Republicans killed the previously agreed upon debt ceiling deal they struck with Democrats last August (when President Obama signed the Budget Control Act). The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down. Read more here from Travis Waldron: thinkprogress.org Subscribe to The Young Turks: bit.ly Find out how to watch The Young Turks on Current by clicking here: www.current.com The Largest Online New Show in the World. Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com From: TheYoungTurks Views: 15904 769 ratings Time: 05:12 More in News & Politics
98 Views
22:00:47 05/22/12
President Obama's Joplin, MO Commencement Speech: The Power of Community
[LESS INFO] 98 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:47 05/22/12
President Obama spoke at the high school commencement Monday night about the power of community, the "bigness of spirit," and the value of unity.
The gist of his message centered on how a community set aside its differences to come together and rebuild after the tornado that nearly wiped out the entire city. His themes touched on the "power of shared effort," and forging a new vision when everything seems hopeless. His primary themes of hope and community are woven throughout the entire twenty minutes. I thought it was an inspiring and touching speech. If it needs a summation, it is his statement that "we are better together than on our own."
At one point in the speech, he mentioned that right after the tornado, the community came together for a meeting and each person was given a Post-it note to write down what their vision was for the community. 1500 Post-its later, there is a wall with all of them on it, and architects are following the suggestions for the rebuilding process. The President quipped, "I'm thinking of trying it with Congress! Give them some Post-it notes."
In a climate where cynicism and negativity seems to rule the day, it's worth taking the twenty minutes to watch this and no matter what you think of the man, his message is true, and it does not depend on him. For me, it's worth remembering that I do this thing, writing, researching, sharing -- blogging -- because I want a record that says we truly are better together than we are alone, and working toward that goal every day is worth enduring the negative and the cynical.
I hope it inspires you today, at least a little bit.
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03:30:59 05/22/12
0 Views
01:00:11 05/22/12
Perino: White House Trashing 'Friends' Cory Booker and Campbell Brown
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 01:00:11 05/22/12
Former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino says that President Barack Obama's White House has been dismissing advice from their "friends" like Newark Mayor Corey Booker, who called an Obama ad "nauseating," and Campbell Brown, who wrote that that the president was "condescending" toward women.
Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Booker had said that the Obama campaign should stop criticizing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for job losses caused by Bain Capital, a firm that he founded. The Newark mayor later released a YouTube video walking back his remarks.
“Cory Booker is a friend of the White House,” Perino told Fox News host Gretchen Carlson on Monday. “In some ways, your friends give you the best advice. They could have taken that yesterday as some friendly advice. A brush-back pitch to let them know that what he is hearing across the country—what Cory Booker is hearing is that this isn’t working."
Carlson pointed out that "there are a lot of Democrats that don't agree with the tactic that this administration is using because all it does is promote class warfare."
Fox News host Clayton Morris asked Perino if it was "going to be a problem for the administration" that former CNN host Campbell Brown, the wife of a Romney adviser, had written a New York Times op-ed accusing the president of "condescending" to women.
"Yesterday, the White House gets these two broadsides and instead of saying, 'That's good advice. Let us take some time to think about that and come back out and have a strong commencement address that President Obama is going to give today.' Instead they basically trashed two of their friends," Perino explained. "It looks like they have nothing else to go on."
(h/t: Mediaite )
