Friday, May 18, 2012

Lawrence O'Donnell digs further into the attempt to smear President Obama using the Reverend Wright.

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This O'Donnell segment actually contains my favorite Romney quote of all time, "I stand by what I said, whatever it was."  Which I think should be printed on t-shirts and worn at Mitt Romney rallies all over the country until election day.

Nothing sums this guy up better than that quote.

As for a visual image that best illustrates Romney, watching him flee down the aisle of the press plane after the Reverend Wright issue is brought up is the perfect metaphor for how he is running his campaign.

This attempt to inject race into the 2012 election cycle is STILL all over cable this morning and it does not look like it is going away anytime soon. I imagine that the Sunday talk shows will feature it front and center as well.

Which, by the way, I think is awesome.

23 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:08 AM

    Lawrence O’Donnell Slams Ben Stein For Comparing Obama To ‘Presidential Genius’ Of Nixon

    On his show Thursday, an outraged Lawrence O’Donnell took on Ben Stein, who told Bill O’Reilly last night that President Barack Obama isn’t a smart man — and doesn’t measure up to the “presidential genius” of President Richard Nixon. O’Donnell narrowed in on Nixon’s anti-Semitic remarks and war record, questioning why he would be the picture of said “presidential genius.”

    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/lawrence-odonnell-slams-ben-stein-for-comparing-obama-to-presidential-genius-of-nixon/

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  2. Anonymous7:10 AM

    Kathy gets it right! The level of disrespect is appalling and she is absolutely correct to blast Lizzy the water carrier for the right wing, over it.

    Kathy Griffin Scolds Elisabeth Hasselback Over Obama Question: ‘Take It Down A Notch, B*tch!’

    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/kathy-griffin-scolds-elisabeth-hasselback-over-obama-question-take-it-down-a-notch-btch/

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  3. Anonymous7:12 AM

    Ricketts owns the Cubs and is asking Democratic Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel for $$$$ for a big building project this fall. Right now, Rahm isn't talking to him. (Sadly, the bond issue will probably go through-- though Rickets ought to spend that $10 million on the Cubs instead of begging for money from the city and the state.) Emanuel said that he eventually has to consider the bond issue because it means building jobs in Chicago.

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  4. Anonymous7:14 AM

    He damn well better request the same of Mittens. What a fucking idiot. How many times does this have to be put through the mill? Hawaiian officials must be pretty disgusted at this point. FUCK Breitbart to hell for this garbage being perpetuated under his publication. I hope he is rotting in slime and goo for eternity...and I MEAN IT.

    AZ Sect. Of State Threatens To Remove Obama From Ballot Without Birth Certificate Verification From Hawaii

    http://www.mediaite.com/online/az-sect-of-state-threatens-to-remove-obama-from-ballot-without-birth-certificate-verification-from-hawaii/

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  5. Anonymous8:01 AM

    The most insane lunatics are desparate and think they have to act in haste.

    Off topic some...
    "White supremacist groups have been having a meltdown since the census bureau predicted that non-Hispanic whites would lose the majority by 2050," said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups. "The demographic change in this country is the single most important driver in the growth of hate groups and extremist groups over the last few years."

    http://tinyurl.com/bweduzx

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  6. Anonymous8:03 AM

    what kind of crappy staff does Romney have that they don't read the NYtimes in the AM? Even Sarah reads all of the newspapers (snark). . .

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  7. Not What You Want to Hear8:57 AM

    I'm sure O'Donnell did his usual excellent job of dissecting these attacks, but the problem remains that Democrats and Obama are continually on the defense...and having to dissect these attacks.

    I do not get it. There is simply so much material to work with when your opposition is completely devoid of morals. So why is it the Dems are always under attack instead of being ON the attack?

    Here is something they could totally drumbeat right now: how all the rightwing pacs are saying if this election is lost (i.e., if Obama is re-elected) than the country is lost.

    According to SarahPAC's latest begathon letter: "In fact, if we don’t win this election, I predict that our nation will never recover."

    After years of telling her supporters how exceptional, how rugged, how superior they are; and after years of telling them how exceptional, how rugged, how superior America is - she's now saying that one lost election means the country is doomed??

    And all the rightwingers are doing this. Talk about insulting America...that we're so hard up, if one election is lost we're going to go belly up in the dust...why aren't Democrats turning the tables and attacking such a pathetic lack of faith in this country????

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  8. Ronald Wilson Romney is equivocating--if he expected to stop the proposed campaign he wouldn't merely "repudiate" it he'd downright refudiate it, of course...

    Reverend Wright was in his youth both a US Marine and a Navy Corpsman, by the way.

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    1. Anonymous3:18 PM

      Rev. Wright also trained as a cardiopulmonary technician and was also on the medical team that cared for LBJ after Johnson's gall bladder surgery in 1966, and Rev. Wright received three (count 'em THREE) White House letters of commendation.

      Delete
  9. Anonymous9:36 AM

    Joe Ricketts’s Retreat From Obama Attack Campaign: Are the Chicago Cubs to Blame?

    Joe Ricketts has had quite a day. Thursday morning’s New York Times identified the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade as bankroller of a $10 million super PAC campaign to attack President Obama over his past ties to his old pastor, the hyperbolic Rev. Jeremiah Wright—a favorite villain of the right wing during the 2008 campaign.

    But by early afternoon, a Ricketts aide was disavowing the Jeremiah Wright plan, proclaiming that it went too far. He said that the anti-Obama proposal was neither authored nor funded by Ricketts, though the newspaper was careful to say it was one of several being “studied” by Ricketts. As the Mitt Romney campaign itself voiced mild disapproval, the aide blamed the confusion on Ricketts’s consultants, some of whom worked on John McCain’s failed campaign against Obama.

    The roller coaster ride left political reporters scratching their heads. But the reason for Ricketts’s seeming about-face may prove the adage that all politics is local. And it just might have a lot to do with the Chicago Cubs.

    Ricketts is the patriarch of a conservative clan with strong ties to Chicago; one of his sons, Tom, is chairman of baseball’s beloved, if wins-challenged, franchise. As it happens, the Cubs’ legendary stadium, Wrigley Field, is both an economically vital tourist mecca and a 98-year-old dump in need of millions of dollars of patchwork each winter. Tom Ricketts has spent much of the last two years lobbying for city, county, and state help on a planned $300 million renovation, with construction to commence as early as October.

    ...
    But the damage may have already been done. The word that Joe Ricketts was gunning for Obama could well cost his son the support not only of Emanuel, but of many black aldermen, whose interest in aiding the Cubs arguably dropped through the floorboards Thursday.

    Emanuel’s predecessor, Richard M. Daley, was a product of the South Side and a diehard fan of the Chicago White Sox, whose stadium has long been nestled in a distinctly white enclave surrounded by black poverty on the notoriously segregated South Side. That partly explains why Daley hates the Cubs and had no interest in helping them out—but also why generations of South Side blacks, like Michelle Obama’s parents, were fans of the North Side Cubs.

    The Cubs play in a largely white, gentrified North Side neighborhood about a mile from the home of Emanuel, who has been more amenable to some deal. But Emanuel, ever a pragmatist in an era of declining city revenue, has quietly discussed only a deal where the city gets the maximum benefit with the least possible expenditure.


    ...It won’t help matters that Michelle Obama, Cubs fan, is arriving in Chicago for the NATO summit only days after learning that a man whose wealth helped fund his children’s purchase of her team is trying to shaft Michelle’s husband. Or that some anti-corporate protesters arriving in town for the summit have a potential new, and distinctly local, target in Joe Ricketts and the Cubs.

    But Tom Ricketts isn’t the only member of the family who may have been unhappy with Dad’s activities...

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/18/joe-ricketts-s-retreat-from-obama-attack-campaign-are-the-chicago-cubs-to-blame.html

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  10. Anonymous9:40 AM

    The only candidate who would say something like this: "I stand by what I said, whatever it was" is a candidate who says different things to different audiences. Mitt Romney obviously doesn't know and doesn't care what his policies are or will be. He just wants to be president so he can put another notch in his belt.

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    1. Anonymous11:07 AM

      His belt needs another notch, to hold up his "mom jeans"!!

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    2. Anita Winecooler9:10 PM

      lol Add a diaper change.

      Delete
  11. Anonymous9:50 AM

    Republicans Label Obama a Metrosexual, Black Abe Lincoln

    ...Anyway, here it is 2012 and now they figure it’s time to dig up that dead body of an issue and have it point its bony, accusatory finger at Obama, reminding everyone (mostly white people) of what a true black radical Muslim racist ‘other’ he really is. Which, of course, would explain the title of the Republican Super PAC campaign playbook that was somehow leaked to the New York Times by a staffer who was troubled by the playbook’s contents; “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama; the Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good.”

    Note the presence of the middle name. It’s not potent enough to defeat Barack Obama. They have to defeat Barack Hussein Obama.

    But then? Later on the same day? May 17? Somebody else in another Team Romney decision-makers chair decided maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all to try and tie Obama to his ex-pastor whom he cut off long ago. So another ‘whoops, my bad’ story had to be run to clean up the mess. Could have even been Romney who pulled the plug, although I’m guessing he would have had to do it through channels since there isn’t supposed to be any direct contact between the candidate and his Attack PAC. That’s what they say anyway.

    All that money those Super PACs are raising, and this is what they come up with?

    http://www.politicususa.com/republicans-realized-today-jeremiah-wright-yesterdays-news.html

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  12. That was very satisfying to watch...just when I was getting worn out from opening political e-mails, reading political blogs and watching political shows. Lawrence O'Donnell nails it every time.

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  13. Anonymous10:27 AM

    I'll have to google then Candidate Obama's speech about Rev. Wright. I thought at the time that it was one of the best speeches Barack Obama would ever give.

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    1. Anita Winecooler9:07 PM

      Here's the you tube video, hearing it now is amazing!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxJzjBtaoJE

      Delete
  14. Anonymous10:52 AM

    I thought John McCain's comment on this matter was as lukewarm as his statement during a 2008 campaign stop to a woman who called out that Obama was "an Arab." He did not say that Barack Obama was as much an American Christian as any member of the audience; all he said was that Barack Obama was "a decent man." A huge fuss was made over how generous McCain was in making that statement; in my eyes, it was too little and too late. The damage had been done as shown by the number of Republicans (are they really that dumb?) who still think that President Obama is a Muslim, born abroad for the purpose of destroying this country.

    And that ad that wasn't shown during the 2008 campaign - why show it now? And consider that maybe McCain did not want it shown because his selflessness in captivity had been called into question earlier. And why didn't Lawrence O'Donnell, after he showed the ad, mention that Rev. Wright's words were taken out of context and that Rev. Wright had served this country honorably in the military.

    I think Romney and his minions will use this tactic but it will be done, in the usual Republican fashion, in an underhanded way. Via Fox News; via mysterious emails and websites. The candidates will not have to say anything; the evil will be a miasma floating around them. That's what they did in 2008; they'll do it again.

    President Obama has devoted his first term to helping Americans. He has done absolutely nothing that could be even remotely deemed as unpatriotic or unAmerican which seem to be adjectives that Republicans who behave like traitors in Congress just love.

    I also have only contempt for the gazillionaires in this country who hate the rest of us so much that they are unwilling to pay their fair share in taxes and who are unwilling to help all Americans have decent healthcare, educational and employment opportunities. No one is trying to impoverish them; all we want is for them to make the contribution to our society that they should.
    Beaglemom

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    1. Anita Winecooler8:55 PM

      I'm with you. Mc Same's statement that he "wouldn't change a thing" about the campaign is absurd. If he had to do it all over, would he be stupid enough to pick Screech again?

      And your last paragraph is so very true.

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  15. MissSunshine12:41 PM

    "A black metro-sexual Abraham Lincoln" - that's the label they were going to try and pin on Obama to disgrace him?? HAHAHA!

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  16. Anonymous2:44 PM

    I don't know. If Palin didn't contribute to the political poison as we know it today in order to exploit the cultural panic of the so-called conservatives, somebody else would have.

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  17. Anita Winecooler8:51 PM

    I love his pivot and waddle away from the camera, with arms akimbo and his "ladies jeans". I'm totally with Karen Finney on this, it's an underhanded way to put the issue out there without "owning it". While the buzz continues to build, Joe Biden and Barrak Obama keep moving forward, speaking with workers and veterans, while mentioning it and staying above the fray.

    LOD has been great this week! He relayed, on a personal note on the passing of Donna Summer, that they were schoolmates at the same high school, he slapped Hannity's rant about Mario Batagli's taking "the food stamp challenge" by having him on and showing the true reason for doing it and showing empathy for those in need.



    (BTW the "aircraft" is the same one McCain/Palin used, so there's some crazy ass skank slime still lingering in the cabin).

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  18. Gasman9:50 PM

    It's pretty clear that Ricketts DESPERATELY wants to call President Obama a "darkey fag" but he knows he dare not, so he trots out "meterosexual black Abraham Lincoln." WTF does THAT even mean?

    It's clear that the GOP power brokers want to make racism and homophobia centerpieces of their campaign. Do these cave dwelling cousin humpers honestly think we are going to go - in a four year span - from electing our first black president to succumbing to a wave of racism? Do they think the nation - that is CLEARLY trending toward the acceptance of full rights for GLBT citizens - is going to surrender to the homophobes?

    These clods are just about as stupid and offensive as people can be.

    Goddamn the GOP and go to hell. They are the enemies of all humanity.

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