Today the White House held a special news conference where Obama announced that the war in Iraq will officially end by the end of 2011. Continue reading
Barack Obama
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Editor’s Note:
Tonight we have the pleasure of a double live blog from MonkeyBiz and Momof3Wildkids. As many of you know, they do not generally see eye to eye on these issues so this should be a lot of fun. Sit back, grab your white zin, and enjoy. Continue reading
President Barack Obama concluded his three-day bus tour yesterday and give this interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. The set is supposed to be some kind of machine shop with an American flag on the wall. Also, when the camera is on Obama there are various tools and pieces of equipment associated with general manufacturing and industrial jobs. They really are trying to convince us that Obama is very serious about jobs. Look he even did an interview in a machine shop!
I’m sure that I’m not the only one that had an email from the White House land in my inbox today, pimping the President’s Twitter Town Hall. Today at 2pm Eastern time, President Obama will answer questions generated by the Twitter-verse. Allegedly, the folks at Twitter have worked up a way to make sure that he gets questions that are being asked frequently and hit with the #AskObama hashtag. I’m sure they actually have, I just stink at technology. Continue reading
Hat tip to Scootcha. AP image source Politico
Like a great many folks who found themselves caught up in the wave of Obama fever that permeated the Internet in 2008, I’m still a part of the mailing lists that were used to drive the President’s (amazingly well-financed) 2008 grassroots campaign. In the intervening three years, I’ve dutifully remained on that list, a fact borne as much out of laziness as my hope for some niblet of insider-y information that presidents are well-known to share with a mailing list of a few million strangers ahead of the rest of the world. Continue reading
Dr. Cornel West is an American racial theorist, civil rights activist and philosopher of political and moral ethics – perhaps you’ve heard of him? Like with most thinkers or philosphers whose ideas are actually worth half a damn, West is a somewhat controversial figure. He’s what some might call “radical” in his politics and more importantly, his ideas. Recently, West has made some rather petty and provocative statements about Barack Obama’s presidency. However, despite West’s self-important pontification on the issue his critiques are unfortunately right on the money. Continue reading
Public interest and transparency advocacy group Judicial Watch filed a federal Freedom of Information Act Request to force the Obama administration the release photographs of the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan last weekend. Included in the suit is a request that pictures of Bin Laden’s corpse be released to the public.
Last night at roughly 11:oopm EST, President Obama announced that the United States was in custody of the body of Osama Bin Laden, the founder of al- Qaida and the leader behind the 9/11 attacks that killed over 3000 Americans in 2001.
Fearing that the Republicans would stop looking for excuses to attack him, and desperately in need of the attention, the President jumped into the 2012 campaign on Monday. With a paltry 19 months to go until the election, Barack Obama released a short video on his website announcing that he and Vice President Biden will seek reelection against ”Koch Brother’s Puppet Candidate TBA.”
In addition to announcing his re-election bid to the world, the Obama campaign machine has already swung into full fundraising mode. Appropriating a version of an old Democratic strategy, it seems like Obama and Co. are asking donors to “give early and give often.”
Given that some estimate that the campaign will need close to $1B (yes, that’s a ‘B’, as in ‘billion’), it is a sensible move. If I want to pay cash for a medium ticket item next year, I’m smarter to put $20 a week away starting now. There’s not exactly a credit card for big media buys that I’m aware of.
So, it was little surprise to me when the package asking for money for the campaign landed in our mailbox this week. After all, Organizing for America (the outfit that the 2008 Obama campaign morphed into) scarcely goes a week without emailing me, hat in hand, for cause ‘x’.
What may surprise Obama/Biden 2012 is this: My wallet is closed to them for the foreseeable future.
Why? Simply put, he campaigned as a progressive Santa Claus, and gave me a Blue Dog for Christmas the last two years. Sadly, I’m just not excited about a watered down health care bill or milquetoast finance reform, which were two big issues for me in 2008. Add in zero movement on gay marriage and the disinterest in paring back a bloated military, and I question what side the guy is even on sometimes. The Great Tax Cut Capitulation of 2010 made me want to strip the “Yes We Can” sticker off the bumper of my neighbor’s Prius.
Before someone throws the “What the f*ck has Obama done so far” website in the comments: I get it, he’s gotten further on some important issues than Clinton ever did. He also folds like a Walmart tent the face of even token GOP opposition. That’s not the guy I thought I was voting for, or donating to, in 2008.
He’ll undoubtedly get my vote, and that of my spouse. We live in a battle ground state that went all crazy red in 2010, and I’m not dumb enough to risk throwing double-digit electoral votes to Mittchelle Huckawlenty (the GOP-zombie creation who appeals to creepy Evangelicals and big-business) in service of my progressive pouting.
Rather, I’m voicing my displeasure in the same way I do when my favorite sports teams make a series of moves I dislike. Taking money out of their pockets, or rather, refusing to ever put it in there in the first place. It is the only other way I know of to get a politicians’ attention. Watch the way the 2012 campaigns (or any recent campaigns, for that matter) court the big money, and you’ll get evidence of this in abundance.
Do I expect that the loss of whatever relatively paltry sum my family would donate will have much effect on the Obama campaign? Am I suddenly going to get an audience with the big guy to air my grievances? No, of course not.
Yet, between a still-sagging economy and a general malaise among progressives, I sincerely doubt that we’re the only small money donors from 2008 whose checkbook stays on the sidelines in 2012.
Besides, if there’s a GOP victory in 2012, I’ll need to save every cent I can to pay for my privatized Medicare.