SPIN METER: Obama disconnects rhetoric, reality - AP

The Edwardsville Intelligencer : AP General News:

Oct 10, 6:24 AM EDT SPIN METER: Obama disconnects rhetoric, reality By ERICA WERNER Associated Press

The disconnect between what Obama says about his jobs bill and what stands as the political reality flow from his broader aim: to rally the public behind his cause and get Congress to act, or, if not, to pin blame on Republicans.

He is waging a campaign, one in which nuance and context and competing responses don't always fit in if they don't help make the case.

For example, when Obama says his jobs plan is made up of ideas that have historically had bipartisan support, he stops the point there. Not mentioned is that Republicans have never embraced the tax increases that he is proposing to cover the cost of his plan.

Likewise, from city to city, Obama is demanding that Congress act (he means Republicans) while it has been clear for weeks that the GOP will not support all of his bill, to say the least. Individual elements of it may well pass, such as Obama's proposal to extend and expand a payroll tax cut. But Republicans strongly oppose the president's proposed new spending and his plan to raise taxes on millionaires to pay for the package.

The fight over the legislative proposal has become something much bigger: a critical test of the president's powers of persuading the public heading into the 2012 presidential campaign, and of Republicans' ability to deny him a win and reap victory for themselves.

"He knows it's not going to pass. He's betting that voters won't pick up on it, or even if they do they will blame Congress and he can run against the `do-nothing Congress,'" said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development.

'via Blog this'

Updated because Pelosi made a good point... Nancy Pelosi & Democrats Seek to Own 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement

Not quite sure that "help" from Congressional Democrats is really what anyone needs...

Democrats Seek to Own 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement - Yahoo! News: "Occupation can lead to ownership, whether or not you want it.

The spread of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement was met with initial hesitation in both the Democratic and Republican parties. That might be an appropriate response to any protests that aim themselves squarely at the establishment, particularly those with goals that are diverse and diffuse as the current protesters' are.

But a consensus is emerging among Democrats that the "Occupy" movement is worth tapping into, even helping along and joining with in some instances.

"I support the message to the establishment," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on ABC's "This Week.""

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UPDATE:

This is cool...

 Daily Kos: Nancy Pelosi smacks Eric Cantor over Occupy Wall Street: "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is concerned about what he calls the "growing mobs" of Occupy Wall Street protesters. In response, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi quips that Cantor didn't seem to mind when tea party protesters were literally spitting on members of Congress:" 'via Blog this'

GOP: The true tax and spend party?

Posted by Anne on Facebook, thanks!

Elizabeth Warren and Class Warfare

Thank You, Elizabeth Warren!: "Progressives take note: THAT is how it is done. THAT is how you fight back hard, and THAT is how you defeat Fox News talking points. And THAT is why Warren has actually moved AHEAD of the Republican incumbent in this race."

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Obama turns fire on Republicans - Yahoo! News

The President seems to be coming to the understanding that you can't win a baseball game when the other team is playing football. Or that you can't win a knife fight when you show up armed only with a 14 point agenda for negotiation based on mutual concessions made by both sides and a sincere desire for both sides to act with maturity and common sense.

Obama turns fire on Republicans - Yahoo! News: "The deficit-reduction speech President Obama delivered from the Rose Garden on Monday underscores the sharp strategic pivot he and his administration have made in the wake of the debt ceiling negotiations.

Call it lessons learned the hard way, or the necessary readjustment by a politician, but the Obama who spoke on Monday was in a far different place politically and stylistically from the president who tried to pull off a grand bargain with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in July and August.

Obama is a politician whose first instincts always have been to try to find ways to entice, cajole, reason with or otherwise produce cross-party consensus. On Monday, he continued a transition toward greater partisanship that began with his speech to a joint session of Congress two weeks ago.

Rarely has this president been as blunt in his challenges to the other party as he was on Monday. Rarely has he been so willing to draw lines in the sand. Rarely has he waved the threat of a veto with such emphasis.

Obama has gone from a president who talked openly about his willingness to rile his own party by making concessions on entitlements to get a deal with the Republicans to a politician determined to reconnect with his base as the two parties head into a new round of negotiations and an election campaign in which the stakes could not be higher."

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Karl Rove: Bush's Goebbels?

I wanted to take a moment and explain why I mentioned Karl Rove in the headline yesterday. These sorts of dirty tricks are what Mr. Rove seems to be all about. In fact, when I searched Google on his name, the first sentence of the first article that came up was, “He's America's Joseph Goebbels.”

While I would like to stay away from the Bush Administration/NAZI comparisons, when one of the most influential people in the White House started their political career by sabotaging the opening of a campaign office of a Democratic candidate there is definite cause for concern.

In 1970 when he was a protege of Donald Segretti (a convicted Watergate conspirator), Rove snuck into the campaign office of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon and stole some letterhead. He printed fliers on the letterhead promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" and distributed the fliers at rock concerts and homeless shelters. Admitting to the incident much later, Rove said, "I was nineteen and I got involved in a political prank."

It’s The Simpsons “Boys will be Boys” defense. From there he went on to such heights as the 1986 bugging incident in the Texas govenors race.

[J]ust before a crucial debate in the election for governor of Texas, Karl Rove announced that his office had been bugged by the Democrats. There was no proof, and it was later alleged he had bugged his own phone for the media coverage that the incident generated, but there was no proof of that, either, and no charges were ever filed.



This is a man that defines the concept of the ends justifying the means, and to him, the ends are the political success of his canidate. Now that his canidate is going into the 5th year of his presidancy, it would seem that there would no longer be a role for this Senior Advisor to the President. But the Bush Administration sees their leadership role from the perspective of being in a permanent campaign. Having to constantly defend their record, this makes sense. Unfortunarely, “Rove, running a permanent campaign, doesn't grasp his limitations, and at the very least this means a greater risk to American lives.”

What this means to me is that when a CIA agent who does not tow the party line is suddenly investigated on “allegations that he had sex with a female informer and stole money used to pay informers,” I start getting really nervous. As I said yesterday, an anonymous plaintif in a wrongful termination lawsuit against the CIA has more credibility than the Bush Administration does with me at this point. Much of my confidence in the Administration is eroded by the high profile of Rove in the White House.

And when Bush starts talking about spending political capital, I start wondering what Rove has in mind.

Rove’s tactics get really scary if the Administration dares use such measures when it comes to foreign policy. Especially when we are at war.

Today, I noticed this nice headline, “White House mum on El Baradei eavesdropping report.” It seems that there are allegations that “the United States has monitored telephone calls between El Baradei and Iranian diplomats, seeking ammunition to oust him.”

There is a big difference between bugging your own office in a gubernatorial race and using similar tactics to take out the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency. These are the sorts of actions that, if they are happening often enough and severely enough, tend to get Coalitions of the Willing riled up for a military intervention.

If the www.counterpunch.org essay is correct that Rove’s mentor was a Watergate conspirator who went to jail for distributing illegal campaign material, could we see Karl taking a long look at his shower options in the future? I would guess not. I doubt that we’ll see a Republican Congress take on the president. I doubt that any investigation would carry enough weight to make the GOP turn against the Administration. For Clinton, it took lying about receiving oral sex to get an impeachment trial rolling. However, for a Chief Executive of their own party, Bush would probably need to be caught red handed drowning Christian Orphans from Mississippi in the Lincoln Bedroom to even be investigated by the Republicans in Congress. Since it would be hard to take down Rove without taking down the President, he is probably safe.

For more information on this gentleman, who was once heard shouting "We will fuck him like he's never been fucked before," a man who even GWB calls a “turd blossom,” please explore the following articles. The above quotes came from them, though I cannot say that I have read each one in depth.

White House mum on El Baradei eavesdropping report

Exposing Karl Rove

The brains behind Bush

Karl Rove: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

And Rove Gets to Keep His Job… A Green Light For Abuse?

A Small, Subpoena-Less Step: Senate Democrats to Investigate Bush Administration

Wow, I actually got this one off one of the politics feeds I have on "My Yahoo."

Senate Dems Plan Investigatory Hearings

This is actually the best news that I have heard in a while. This will essentially be an indepandant investigation lacking actual Senate support, and supoena power, but at least the Democrats are girding up their loins and actually saying, essentially, "This stinks and we are going to poke it with a stick and see if we can get it to ooze."

I fully expect the networks to put their full attention on these hearings when they get started now that the Peterson Matter is resolved... Ah, oops. I forgot about the appeals. And Jacko. And...

Washington Democrats Rule!

They pulled it off.

The Washington State Democrats delivered a $730,000 check to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed's office on Friday as payment for the hand recount, the first in the state's history.
It seems a bit weird that the State requires cash to do its job, but I suppose that they are a bit strapped for cash in this economy these days. Also, I am guessing that there is some logic in forcing the party to pay for it just in case they are being a sore loser. That is not the case when the certified results show a 42 vote difference between the two candidates.

Remember, this 42 vote difference was the result of the machine recount. It came down to 42 votes from 261 votes.

Anyway, it appears that the idea in Washington is a bit like the Replay Rule in the NFL. If you request a review of the call and it goes your way, it costs you nothing. However, if you stall the game and the refs got it right the first time, that’s going to cost you a time out. In this case “According to state election rules, a hand recount must be financed by the party requesting it, although the state will reimburse the money if the recount reverses the tally.”

Some thanks on this one also should go to the Kerry Campaign.

Democrats scrambled to raise the money for the recount, which was supported by a $200,000 contribution from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's unused campaign funds.
42 votes out of 2.8 million cast in the election. What do the Republicans have to say about this? "The Democrats are trying to steal the election," said Chis Vance, the Washington State Republican party chair.

Republicans wouldn’t know anything about that, now, would they? Sorry, cheap shot.

The argument they should be using is the one from 2000 in Florida. It went something along the lines of, “Well, you can’t just count over and over and over again until you get a result you are happy with. At some point you just have to say it’s enough and just stop and move on.”

However, to quote Dan Rather from the 2000 election, "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach."

It seems like the most troubling aspect of this whole ordeal, just like the one in Florida, is that the tallies do change with every recount. Is every vote being counted each and every time? Is there an election official out there who is forgetting to carry a one every time? Or, everyone’s biggest fear, “Yes Mr. Rossi, no one will find that bag o’ ballots from Seattle. I got them stashed under my desk in my office… Hey, Paul, get out of my office, will ya’? I got stuff in there you don’t want to see.”

Supposedly, these were the sorts of issues that electronic voting machines was supposed to resolve. Unfortunately, those come with their own, new issues. In Washington, King County took a look at these machines and essentially laughed at them and moved on. Probably a good call.

Now they actually have ballots that they can recount.

It is unknown if this will actually put the Democrat, State Attorney General Christine Gregoire, into office, but it is good to see that the party isn't just rolling over and conceeding another loss in 2004. These battles must be joined. City by county by state by the nation... No more rolling over and conceeding one seat after another to the Republicans.

One final note: I pulled the Dan Rather quote from here. A page full of his election comments. Funny. I am going to miss Dan.