At least when the Democrats do a video snipe at a candidate, they put their name on it. Most of the clever stuff against Obama is, I suspect, manufactured by some group in the employ of the Republican National Committee, but anonymous, to protect the originators of the hoaxes and inaccuracies.
Maybe the Democrats are proud of this one. I also suspect there is no good answer to it that wouldn’t bend the truth: “Mitt vs. Mitt”
Generally, Republicans are better at producing this kind of snark. Generally, their stuff includes a lot of stuff that’s made up. Which claims in this video aren’t accurate? Any?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
This is an encore post, from August of 2008. We need to recall, an issue early in the Democratic primaries was ‘who would you want on the Hotline at 2:00 a.m.’ Sometime before the end of the primaries, a jokester mashed up a photo of candidate Barack Obama, changed the line on the phone handpiece, and added a clock at 3:00 a.m. on the wall.
Republicans picked up on the photo, and thinking it a real photo, shipped it around during the general campaign. It was a hoax then, and it still is. I found it today on Facebook, and found people defending the hoax photo as real. Oy, it will be that kind of election as Republicans get more desperate and more crude. The encore post:
The real photograph. Notice there is no clock on the wall, and the phone works properly. By the way, the suit fits, too — Obama’s a very tall man, and that’s what a well-fitting suit looks like on a tall man sitting in a low chair.
Dennis called him on the hoax. After a few rounds of weak defense, and then moral waffling of significant proportion, the hoaxer deleted the comments from his blog. Dennis preserved the conversation at TMB.
Moral of the story: Don’t believe much of what you hear or see, without corroboration. If a claim casts aspersions on someone, and comes on the internet, check it out before granting credence. Thanks to Dennis, an honest guy, for exposing the hoax and preserving the record of it.
Hoaxers are malicious and will do almost anything to damage Obama, even if it requires bringing down the U.S. and burning the flag. No wonder George Washington wanted out of this sort of politics.
Question: What’s the deal with the clock in the doctored photo? [Oh – it says “3:00 o’clock”]
Honor roll: Bloggers and others who exposed the hoax:
Obama’s latest attack ad basically says that if corporations are people, then Bain Capital committed treason. This is the ad in which Mitt Romney sings “America the Beautiful” while we see a thundering denunciation of Romney’s record of outsourcing jobs and hiding his money in foreign banks and tax shelters. It might be the meanest ad since Lyndon Johnson said Barry Goldwater was going to blow up the world, and every word of Obama’s ad is true, even if Romney’s singing is a little off key.
Romney’s team tried to change the subject by accusing Obama of trying to change the subject and even demanded an apology that he very quickly did not get. All Romney’s response proved was that Hunter S. Thompson’s axiom that “true happiness in politics is a wide open hammer-shot on a poor bastard who knows he’s trapped, but can’t flee” were the truest words ever written about politics.
When Ari Fleischer complaining on CNN that Obama was being too rough, Paul Begala could barely contain his glee: “I’m heartened if we’ve gone from toothless in Ari’s eyes to ruthless. I’d rather be tough. These are tough times.”
Watch that space.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Sacrificing 750,000 Americans to stop a dozen cases of ID fraud. Voter ID laws don’t even touch 90% of voter fraud, ID can’t prevent it. This is lunacy.
Worse than lunacy: Pennsylvania’s voter ID law is evil.
Pray for success of the ACLU challenge to this miscarriage of justice.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
After redistricting, we live and vote in Johnson’s district, Texas District 30. Johnson won a three-way race, pulling in more than 50% of the total vote against Clayton and local political activist Barbara Mallory Callaway. Clayton had a lot of signs up. I got personal calls from his campaign early on, as opposed to the annoying robo-calls we got from Johnson in the last couple of days before the primary. Incumbency is tough to beat, and even a great campaign ad won’t do it.
Where was Taj when we were in the 24th District, and we needed a good Democrat to beat Kenny Marchant?
It is a good advertisement. Voters would probably like to see a lot more like it, to explain to them who the candidates are, and what the issues in the election are. Ads of this type live in the endangered species zone, when attack ads and negative advertising carry so much clout.
Romney campaign chairman John Sununu danced a little bit trying to qualify Mitt Romney’s attack on first responders and teachers — Sununu said some cities have smaller populations than they once did, and they need fewer teachers.
Sununu’s position, opposed to all government workers, remains relatively consistent over the past three decades. Sununu remains one of the crabbiest people ever to hold high office and great power (U.S. Senator, White House chief of staff). We probably should take him at his word now.
ThinkProgress.com quotes Sununu:
SUNUNU: Let me respond as a taxpayer, not as a representative of the Romney campaign. There are municipalities, there are states where there is flight of population. And as the population goes down, you need fewer teachers. As technology contributes to community security and dealing with issues that firefighters have to deal with, you would hope that you can, as a taxpayer, see the benefits of the efficiency and personnel that you get out of that.
JANSING: But even if there’s movement to the suburbs, teachers and policemen are needed somewhere.
SUNUNU: But I’m going to tell you there are places where just pumping money in to add to the public payroll is not what the taxpayers of this country want.
JANSING: Do you think that taxpayers of this country want to hear fewer firefighters, fewer teachers, fewer police officers, from a strategic standpoint?
SUNUNU: If there’s fewer kids in the classrooms, the taxpayers really do want to hear there will be fewer teachers. […] You have a lot of places where that is happening. You have a very mobile country now where things are changing. You have cities in this country in which the school population peaked ten, 15 years ago. And, yet the number of teachers that may have maintained has not changed. I think this is a real issue. And people ought to stop jumping on it as a gaffe and understand there’s wisdom in the comment.
Nationwide, the number of students is increasing, and even with the dip for the recent massive Republican recession, population continues to grow. My school is not representative of the entire nation, but we had a 25% increase in student population, with a 10% decrease in faculty. Class sizes rose dramatically (I had as many as 36 students in a room designed for 22).
That’s more common than decreasing student populations.
I’m not sure we can accuse Sununu of not being in touch with what goes on in the U.S. He maintains his anti-government, do-more-with-less positions despite knowing better.
Plugging his own jobs creation bill, President Obama said that 250,000 teachers lost jobs in state budget cuts in the last few months. NEA’s news line reported:
Obama Cites Teacher Layoffs In Push For Jobs Bill.
The AP (6/9) reports President Obama “wants Congress to help states rehire teachers and act on a key part of last year’s jobs bill.” In his weekly address, the President said “many states have been squeezed by the economic recession and have been forced to lay off teachers — about 250,000 across the nation.”
The Los Angeles Times (6/10, Reston) reports the President “renewed his push for his stalled jobs bill in his weekly address Saturday, arguing that the legislation could play a critical role in preventing teachers around the country from being pink-slipped in cash-strapped states.” He said, “It should concern everyone that right now — all across America — tens of thousands of teachers are getting laid off. … When there are fewer teachers in our schools, class sizes start climbing up. Our students start falling behind. And our economy takes a hit.” The Times notes that he cited “the shrinking pool of teachers in the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio.”
Politico (6/9, Boak) says the President “told voters to send Republicans to the principal’s office,” calling on Congress “to pass a measure to stop teacher layoffs that he first proposed last September. The $30 billion package to fill in the gaps left by slashed state education budgets failed to get a passing grade from Capitol Hill.” The President said, “In Pennsylvania alone, there are 9,000 fewer educators in our schools today than just a year ago. In Ohio, the number is close to 7,000. And nationwide, over the past three years, school districts have lost over 250,000 educators.”
The Hill (6/9, Sink) says his “messaging largely echoed his remarks at an unplanned press conference Friday at the White House. But that effort was overshadowed” by his “remark that ‘the private sector is doing fine’ in terms of job growth, drawing immediate criticism from Republicans.” The Hill (6/9, Sink) also reports the Obama campaign also released a new web video criticizing Mitt Romney “for saying Friday that the federal government shouldn’t move forward with legislation that would give cash-strapped states money for teachers and emergency responders.”
Meanwhile, The Hill (6/9, Pecquet) reports in the Republican address, Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) criticized the Affordable Care Act, saying, “The President’s policies are standing in the way of a stronger economy. His healthcare law well may be the worst offender, driving up costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire workers. It’s making things worse in our economy, and it needs to be fully repealed.”
It’s difficult to find an analogy about just how contrary to wisdom is the idea of laying off teachers in a national economic recession. Imagine Mitt Romney saying, “We need to keep Americans safe, so I propose we lay off policemen and firefighters.” It wouldn’t make any sense. Surely Americans would rise up in protest.
Early voting for the twice-delayed* Texas primary elections opens this week. The election is set for May 29.
Happy to see the Texas Democratic Party sending out notices that voters won’t be turned away from the polls. It’s a clear effort to deflate the voting discouragement campaign of State Attorney General Greg Abbott, Gov. Rick Perry, and the Republicans of the Texas Lege.
On Monday, the polls will open for early voting for the May 29th Democratic Primary Election. We’ll be selecting the Democratic nominees who will lead the charge towards taking back our state in 2012.
Use the same documents that you’ve used in the past to vote.No photo ID is required! The photo voter id legislation is not in effect for this election. All you need is:
I’d be interested to see that the Republican Party in Texas is doing something similar. They keep booting me off their lists. Anybody got a similar letter from them, especially one showing how the Texas Voter Identification law does not apply to this primary election?
_____________
* The elections were delayed by federal court orders. Texas is a place that historically discriminated against minority voters, and so under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, reapportionments by the legislature must be approved by the Justice Department or a federal court as complying with the nondiscrimination laws. AG Abbott tried to do an end run around Justice, suing for approval as a first step. As part of its War on Democracy, the Texas Lege wrote a spectacularly Gerrymandered reapportionment plan, depriving Texas Hispanics from new representation despite the dramatic increase in their populations. Consequently the federal courts balked at quick approval. Instead, they asked for more information. In the delay, the Washington courts ordered the federal court in San Antonio to draw up a more fair plan, giving at least three new seats to districts where Hispanics hold broad sway.
Litigation against the Texas Jim Crow Voter Identification law is separate.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson told Charlie Rose that he’s grateful President Obama didn’t offer the Simpson-Bowles budget balancing plan, since Republicans would then have to oppose every part of it, reflexively, as part of their “hate Obama completely” policy.
Pat Bagley uncoded the formula, too.
Pat Bagley, Primordial gas politics, Salt Lake Tribune, May 3, 2012
The danger? The danger is Obama will propose something to save America, and the Republicans will oppose it in a knee-jerk fashion. Some say it’s happened already.
And all of a sudden, you find yourself naked, cold and wet, and stuck in a swamp. Can you console yourself that the flies are tasty?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Have you heard any of the most frantic, frenetic, dedicated birthers ask for the birth certificates of Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum?
Why all the tough questions for the Democrat, for the non-lunatic, for the Chicago guy, for the kid from the single-parent household, and none for the White Anglo-Saxon Catholic/Mormon/Lapsed Lutherans?
If only Congress would get the message that America’s president is president of all of America, and their efforts to bring down the nation to “get” Obama are not working, and should be stopped, I’d be a lot happier guy.
Minor update, March 17, 2012: Sorta as I feared/expected/realized-from-years-of-experience, the birthers are letting the current group of Republicans slide, so far as I, or they, can tell. Most of them are completely unaware that at least one candidate has a foreign-born father, most of them don’t know where or when the candidates were born or naturalized, and of course, because the Republicans are not Obama, they don’t really care. One birther claims to be sure that “others” are looking hard into these questions, experts. Shades of that other Harrison Ford movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark:” What experts? “Top experts.” And shame on me for even asking the questions calling their bluff.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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