Barack Obama

Virginia Foxx got an op-ed published in several newspapers in her district a few days ago, hammering Obama and the Democrats on the budget and repeating many of the same talking points that Paul Ryan and Company have been hammering in conservative media the past few days.

If you have some time, call in to the Town Hall on April 15th and give Foxx and her henhouse some grief.

I've also been Googling around a little bit - I have a funny feeling that Foxx or her staff didn't write this op-ed and versions of it are floating around under the bylines of different legislators. If you find proof of this, post something in the comments.

It's time to go to the phones. Again.

Obama budget would cut entitlements in exchange for tax increases

Dave Johnson laid it out in an email:

The Obama budget is going to offer “Grand Bargain” cuts in Social Security and Medicare, hoping to get Republicans to offer tax increases. We are heading into a retirement crisis. The 401K experiment didn’t work. Companies have pulled back on pensions. And the squeeze that has been on regular people for decades means that people also do not have the savings they need to get them through old age. And all the money went to the top. The last thing the country needs is cuts in essential services for the elderly.

Corporations are spending billions this year on negative political ads but what about the voices of ordinary citizens — the very people whose lives will be most affected by the election outcome?

One campaign, at least, is giving them the chance to be heard: Local Voices. The Local Voices ad campaign features real people talking about why they will vote for President Obama in 60-second, documentary-style commercials. Three of the ads are running right here in North Carolina.

[This is a cross-post by me from bluevirginia.us.]

So much has been said about the national debt in recent years, especially during the current presidential campaign. With persistent misrepresentation, the Romney campaign likes to assign responsibility for the debt to the Obama administration. And most of the broadcast media—the single-most failed institution in America along with its greedy and reckless financial system—says little to clarify matters, help citizens sort out the facts, and hold the Romney campaign to account.

If responsibility is to be assigned for the national debt, there is a dishonest method and an honest method of doing so. This is the message from Barry Ritholtz writing for EconoMonitor--an economics project of Nouriel Roubini (http://www.roubini.com), one of the few economists along with Ritholtz to predict the sub-prime mortgage and derivative investment crises. Ritholtz published in 2009-10 Bailout Nation, which won the First Amendment Award for Outstanding Journalism, and he authors the highly acclaimed Big Picture—a leading financial weblog.

Choosing form over substance:

But in any case, Romney clearly said that he loves Big Bird, not that he wants to kill it. And even if he eliminated public funding for PBS, how would that affect Sesame Street, where Big Bird resides? Not much. The 2009 financial disclosure from Sesame Workshop, the company that produces the program, shows that just $7.9 million came from government grants out of $130 million in total revenue, or about 6 percent.

Right after he declared his love for Big Bird, he said “But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for.” The use of "but" in the conjunction denotes an overriding conflict with the previous sentence, effectively nullifying his previous words. I shouldn't have to explain that to a seasoned reporter.

I saw this poll on Yahoo recently ... I am really trying hard not to get my hopes up, but this poll has made it more difficult.

On a broader polling note, the latest series of North Carolina polls concerning the presidential election looks pretty good. The really shocking number comes from the Civitas poll which gives President Obama a 4 point lead. I am glad I didn't have any food in my mouth when I saw that :)

I can't wait for early voting to start. (crosses fingers, knocks wood, looks for 4 leaf clover)

It worked in 2008, and it will work this year:

Among 18- to 30-year-old voters, 36 percent are “very excited” – the lowest level of any age group. The poll also shows 58 percent of N.C. likely voters age 30 and under support Obama versus 34 percent who would vote for Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Logic would tell us that the more "mature" voters would be the ones who would weigh evidence and vote objectively. Unfortunately, most of us have already made up our minds, using an astounding level of immaturity in the process. So it's up to those meddling kids:

With national electoral maps showing almost no path to victory for the GOP in November, it wasn't surprising this weekend to see Mitt Rmoney shift into Hail Mary mode by naming Paul Ryan as his running mate. It's reminiscent of John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, a desperate move, fraught with risk, especially in swing states like Florida and North Carolina. But it's worse than you think for Rmoney ... and Pat McCrory too.

I voted for Barack Obama for President because I am black and I felt strongly that he was intelligent enough to hold the title. I have gone through 12 years of schooling and heard that black folks could become the President one day so when the opportunity came that I could vote for a black man then why in the hell would I not vote for him? I have voted for white men up until “our” current President was elected.

Hell no “our” current President didn’t have any experience at being the President because he had never held the title before. But none of the others before him had held the title before they became the President either. So what is the damn problem?

I can say I found Barack Obama while surfing the net when he was running for US Senate. I was on his mailing list up until that election was over.

Lots of good stuff reported in this excellent horse race update from NC Citizens for Progress. Bottom line? The more people know about Pat McCrory, the less they like him.