How is it possible this sorry racist loser is still — if only barely — viable as a Presidential candidate? The GOP sure went through better losers as every potential challenger floated to the top of the bowl as the not-Mitt-of-the-week. But it really says everything you need to know about the “anti-deficit” and “anti-spending” tea-party cohort of the GOP that they all finally settled on an anti-woman racist who’ll speak clearly about their concerns about the Kenyan devil baby America elected President in 2008.

Listen to Santorum:

Here’s the transcript:

We know, we know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like. The anti-war government nig- uh, the uh America was a source for division around the world.

I ask again, how is it possible that this scumbag can be afforded “viable candidate” status by the American media? If there’s any evidence that their quest for eyeballs, ratings and advertising revenue needed a horserace in the GOP to lift first quarter revenue, this is it. Their projections presumably having been met, they are declaring the nomination closed in the first week in April.

Now we can look forward to the “Prom Queen” section of the spectacle, when Candy Crowley giggles as she asks the unlikeliest and most-hated GOP Scrooge, Paul Ryan, whether he would accept the call from Quarterback Mitt Romney.

Why can’t America have a better media? Read the rest of this entry →

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey

Echoing his commander in chief in issuing statements that provide improper command influence in the trial of Bradley Manning, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, stated unequivocally that Manning broke the law.

To review, here’s what Barack Obama said when asked about Bradley Manning in April 2011:

And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law.

We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.

It appears that President Obama’s highest military officer agrees with him:

The Joint Chiefs chairman also was asked about Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks contributor, and whether Dempsey thought Manning should be viewed as a political prisoner, whistle-blower or traitor.

“We’re a nation of laws. He did violate the law,” Dempsey said.

This is a very disturbing echo of a very disturbing pronouncement from the Commander in Chief. If the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs publicly says that Manning did “violate the law,” how long until that is the view of the entire jury pool? Especially since the Joint Chiefs Chairman’s statement was almost a year later, as preliminary hearings are underway, and was made to a reporter for Stars & Stripes.

The audience for this statement is serving military. The jury pool will see this statement of Gen Dempsey’s.

I hope this statement is brought up to the judge by Manning’s counsel. In a command environment, these unequivocal statements from the highest civilian and military commanders cannot have no impact on those selected to serve on the jury, in Manning’s court martial. They can be seen to have an improper command influence of those on the bench during the current hearings.

This improper command influence must stop if there’s to be even the semblance of a fair trial.

“I have no updates for you on the President’s position on same-sex marriage.”

I think, Chris, you know very well what the President’s views are on LGBT issues and civil rights. The President’s very proud of this Administration’s record on those issues. The question is — [interrupted -- 'about marriage'].

I don’t — I have no updates for you for you on the President’s position on same-sex marriage. I think that you know, and others here know, that his position broadly on LGBT issues is quite significantly different that that particular candidacy.

Except, of course, it isn’t: Rick Santorum is right. His position and Obama’s on same-sex marriage are identical. This Democratic president cannot provide daylight to his official spokesman between his own views on same-sex marriage and the views of the most radical aspirant for the GOP’s nomination.

In other words, despite the “quite significant” but unnamed differences between President Obama and Rick Santorum on same-sex relationships, White House press secretary Jay Carney won’t compare Obama’s views (“God’s in the mix”) on marriage between same sex couples to Rick Santorum’s.

Because they are, um, exactly the same.

Train Wreck? Duuuuhhhhh. (Photo: dok1, flickr)

Has Barack Obama lost Susie Tompkins Buell — founder of the Esprit clothing line and a major big-deal national Democratic fundraiser, bundler, and tastemaker? Then he’s lost a critically important component of his re-election treasury.

“I don’t even know what he stands for,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a co-founder of the Esprit clothing company and one of the most generous Democratic Party donors in the nation – instrumental in backing such powerhouse progressive organizations as the Democracy Alliance and Media Matters.

This is going to give lots of wealthy liberal Democrats all over the country real pause: if Susie’s willing to say this in public, to the SFChronicle, while protesting in the street outside President Obama’s W Hotel big-roller fundraiser, won’t it be okay for me to delay my donations to the re-election campaign? If Susie’s signalling her unhappiness in public, doesn’t that give me permission to wait-and-see about my 2012 donations?

Susie Buell Tompkins is a San Francisco powerhouse: she drives non-profit fundraising, Democratic fundraising, women’s issues fundraising. She’s a Democratic pillar of the money machine. And she knows everyone with money in the Democratic party. She was #4 among John Kerry’s 2004 fundraisers. Making this public statement is a very bad sign for Obama’s re-election fundraising prospects:

“I think this is a huge issue about our future, about the planet, not just America,” she said. “And he needs to be a leader … to have the awareness of it. To fight for it.”

What issue has Susie so concerned she’s not only skipping a fundraising dinner she could easily afford, but also protesting outside the event and talking to the local paper about it, for attribution?

The Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed 1,700-mile underground conduit linking the tar-sand fields in Alberta, Canada, to Texas refineries.

It’s not only Nebraska ranchers and hippie bloggers and the Obama campaign’s 2008 fundraising email author and 80-year-old Barbara who are disappointed and worried about Barack Obama’s performance on environmental issues: it’s also Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bestest West Coast friend, the one who led the Hillary Holdouts in from the wilderness with her HuffPost article after the historic Denver convention.

If Susie Tompkins Buell is in the streets protesting Barack Obama, he needs to seriously re-think his strategy. Something is seriously amiss.

From the White House press corps gaggle on Air Force One, en route to Minnesota today:

Q Also, anything on these protests outside the White House on this pipeline? Has the President decided against TransCanada’s permit for the pipeline? It’s the tar sands pipeline. There have been a lot of arrests outside the White House about it.

MR. CARNEY: I don’t have anything new on that. I believe the State Department has — that’s under the purview of the State Department presently, but I don’t have anything new on that.

Q Is the President aware of the protests?

MR. CARNEY: I haven’t talked to him about it.

So, there you have it: almost six hundred protesters arrested right in front of the White House — including, today, actress Daryl Hannah — and Press Secretary Jay Carney claims he doesn’t know if the President is aware of the protests because he hasn’t talked to him about it.

This is a credibility gap.

Here’s Bill McKibben:

Now, here’s the thing: while it’s great to see the press corps pushing the Administration to recognize our demonstration, the fact that Carney hasn’t yet briefed the President on the protest and the pipeline is a worrying sign about how out of touch this administration is on this issue.

“Just in the last two days everyone from the president’s chief climate scientist to an 84-year-old grandmother was arrested on his front doorstep,” said environmental author Bill McKibben, who is spearheading the White House protest. “This is the largest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement in a generation, and if they really aren’t even discussing it with the president, that signals a deep disrespect for their supporters, especially young people who have demonstrated that the environment is a top priority.”

Welcome to “under the bus,” environmentalists and eco-conscious Eaarth citizens. We gays have decorated it quite festively, and our Latino and other immigrant communities have added their own touches as well. We’ve all been thrown under here, sacrificed to the highest goal: Obama’s re-election. You’d better clear the way, though, because there are other disappointed Obama constituencies joining us under here soon.

Keeping a meme aloft is hard work in America’s constantly shifting political landscape. David “Axe” Axelrod must have thought the “Mitt’s weird!” message was in danger of sinking below the waves of Minnesota Not-Nice during yesterday’s FOX/GOP (but I repeat myself) debate in Iowa.

So Body Spray Dave did what all good campaign advisers do: he went on Morning Joke to “tamp down” the rumors that the Obama campaign, bereft of a decent economy or a motivated base, would organize itself around Mitt’s weirdness. With Michael Steele and, later, MJoe:

STEELE: Do you think taking it to the level of referring to Romney or any of the Republican candidates as “weird,” is that more personal or is that more a reality in terms of an issue you want to talk about? How do you guys plan to really define this discussion if the team is already throwing out stuff, we want to show America he’s weird. How about we just speak to the issues?

AXELROD: Michael, lets you and I make common cause right now. No one on my team believes that. And anyone who purports to be a source within the Obama camp who used that term and some of the other terms that were in that story according to unnamed sources should be ripped out of whoever’s Rolodex considers them sources. That doesn’t reflect our thinking. We have real legitimate differences with Mitt Romney, some of which I just spoke about.
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SCARBOROUGH: If the President found out or you found out or the Chief of Staff found out that somebody working for President Obama was trying to take that tack, would you all fire them?

AXELROD: I would — if someone used words like ‘weird,’ I would certainly do that, yes.

Which means that sound you hear is about a dozen Rolodex cards getting torn up (is there an app for that? because people don’t actually have Rolodexes anymore, right?) in about a hundred different “newsrooms.”

Is this simply an attempt by Body Spray Dave to keep the meme aloft another news cycle, going into the crucial weekend of the Iowa straw poll? Or does he really not want the folks who revealed Team Obama’s re-election strategy to Politico talking to the media any longer?

Harry Belafonte, promoting his HBO documentary “Sing Your Song” about his career-long work alongside civil rights activists, had some priceless comments on what’s gone wrong in the Obama Administration.

“There has never been such a void in moral truth as it now exists,” Belafonte said. “And what the expectation has been for many of us was that Barack Obama would bring to the table a great sense of moral fortitude. I think were he to apply that in the decisions that he would have to make, he would find that his presidency might touch on a level of greatness that he has not yet considered.”

He added, “He (Obama) has only listened to the voices that shout the loudest, and it’s all those reckless right-wing forces. It’s almost criminal.”

Would, might, would: almost criminal. Tough words, spoken true, as always. Sing your song, indeed, Mr Belafonte.

(YouTube: From the Smothers Brothers in 1968, features a highly political song with a backdrop of the 1968 Democratic Convention, including protesters and the riots. Pretty amazing. When the show originally aired, CBS cut this sequence from the show, and it remained unseen by most until fairly recently…. On the DVD, Tom Smothers says that after CBS cut this segment, they sold the vacant time to the Nixon campaign.)

When a Democratic President continues to shove Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid back onto the negotiating table after being offered a clean debt ceiling deal by the Senate GOP, CNN polling shows liberals are taken aback:

“… 13 percent say they disapprove of Obama because he has not been liberal enough – nearly double what it was in May, when the question was last asked, and the first time that number has hit double digits in Obama’s presidency.”

Looking at that figure another way, roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he’s not been liberal enough.

Obama’s approval and renominate numbers are at their lowest point ever, as well:

Obama’s approval rating among liberals has dropped to 71 percent, the lowest point in his presidency. And the number of Democrats who want the party to renominate Obama next year, now at 77 percent, is relatively robust by historical standards but is also down a bit since June.

CNN polling director Keating Holland provides the “why:”

“It’s likely that this is a reaction to some of Obama’s recent actions, including his willingness to discuss major changes in Social Security and Medicare as part of the debt ceiling negotiations,” adds Holland.

Worth noting: this poll closed two days ago, before public notice from Senators Mikulski, Feinstein, and Cantwell that they weren’t on the same page as the president. Long-tenured, mainstream Democratic Senators’ complaints about the White House don’t reverse this polling trend: they amplify it.

Penny Sue Pritzker, the Hyatt Hotels heiress whose Superior Bank subprime loan corruption made her unfit to serve as Barack Obama’s Commerce Secretary, has a strike on her hands at the Park Hyatt in Chicago, where temperatures approached 100 degrees today.

Penny Sue’s response to the workers striking for better conditions for housekeepers after almost two years of stalled negotiations? Turn on the heat lamps under the glass awnings, right where the picket line is.

In case you didn’t know, Hyatt is owned by the Pritzker family. Heiress, Penny Sue Pritzker chairs Obama’s national campaign finance committee. She is also big player in Democratic Party politics as well as in the world of anti-union, corporate school reform and was recently appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a seat on the Chicago school board.

Pritzker’s response to the Park Hyatt strikers was to turn on the hotel’s powerful heating lamps to try and bake the workers into submission on this brutally hot day. But this seemingly inhuman and probably illegal response seemed to have had just the opposite effect. Picketers began chanting, “Hyatt can’t take the heat, but we can!” The lamps were left on until word got out and media began to show up.

This is how Barack Obama’s rich friends treat workers seeking humane conditions in the workplace. It’s no wonder he wants to cut your Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Here’s what the Boston Hyatt did to union workers:

The union says the Boston Hyatt replaced 100 housekeepers with temps making minimum wage. That, they say, is what they’re fighting.

That will probably earn Penny Sue Pritzker a standing ovation at Obama’s next campaign finance committee meeting.

Wow, talk about tone-deaf.

Someone really screwed this one up in Obama’s speech tonight to the New York City LGBT crowd. Sudbay:

One thing I thought was very odd for this particular crowd was referring to Election Night 2008 as “a perfect night.” Maybe for him, but we lost rights that night when Prop. 8 passed in California.

My partner and I, who never married in the 2008 window between the California Supreme Court decision mandating marriage equality and Election Night 2008, became second-class California citizens that night, along with thousands of other LGBTs who hoped, someday, to marry the person we love.

There was nothing “perfect” about that night for us.

Let’s hope someone in the speechwriting department at the White House omits this characterization by our Evolver-in-Chief before he takes his LGBT fundraising to California. New Yorkers may have let him get away with it, but I don’t think Californians will.

That wound is still too raw.

Full text of the speech after the jump. Read the rest of this entry →