Donors have dreaded the consequences of clashing with Mr. Trump directly. Elected officials have balked at attacking him out of concern that they might unintentionally fuel his populist revolt. And Republicans have lacked someone from outside the presidential race who could help set the terms of debate from afar.
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Showing posts with label Obama's Policies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama's Policies. Show all posts
Monday, February 29, 2016
REPUBLICANS ATTACK DONALD TRUMP WITH INTENSE FEROCITY BUT NOT OBAMA: (GUEST VIDEO)
PATRIOTIC GOP ESTABLISHMENT WANTS TO DESTROY TRUMP BUT PLAYED "PATTY-CAKE" WITH OBAMA.
I AM CONFUSED.
Sources: Infowars, NY Times, YouTube
**** Note:
Commentary and Opinions expressed in this posted guest video are solely the views of Mr E.T. Williams ("The Doctor Of Common Sense" YouTube channel).
The scenario Karl Rove outlined was bleak.
Addressing a luncheon of Republican governors and donors in Washington on Feb. 19, he warned that Donald J. Trump’s increasingly likely nomination would be catastrophic, dooming the party in November. But Mr. Rove, the master strategist of George W. Bush’s campaigns, insisted it was not too late for them to stop Mr. Trump, according to three people present.
At a meeting of Republican governors the next morning, Paul R. LePage of Maine called for action. Seated at a long boardroom table at the Willard Hotel, he erupted in frustration over the state of the 2016 race, saying Mr. Trump’s nomination would deeply wound the Republican Party. Mr. LePage urged the governors to draft an open letter “to the people,” disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics.
The suggestion was not taken up. Since then, Mr. Trump has only gotten stronger, winning two more state contests and collecting the endorsement of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.
In public, there were calls for the party to unite behind a single candidate. In dozens of interviews, elected officials, political strategists and donors described a frantic, last-ditch campaign to block Mr. Trump — and the agonizing reasons that many of them have become convinced it will fail. Behind the scenes, a desperate mission to save the party sputtered and stalled at every turn.
Efforts to unite warring candidates behind one failed spectacularly: An overture from Senator Marco Rubio to Mr. Christie angered and insulted the governor. An unsubtle appeal from Mitt Romney to John Kasich, about the party’s need to consolidate behind one rival to Mr. Trump, fell on deaf ears.
At least two campaigns have drafted plans to overtake Mr. Trump in a brokered convention, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has laid out a plan that would have lawmakers break with Mr. Trump explicitly in a general election.
Despite all the forces arrayed against Mr. Trump, the interviews show, the party has been gripped by a nearly incapacitating leadership vacuum and a paralytic sense of indecision and despair, as he has won smashing victories in South Carolina and Nevada.
Donors have dreaded the consequences of clashing with Mr. Trump directly. Elected officials have balked at attacking him out of concern that they might unintentionally fuel his populist revolt. And Republicans have lacked someone from outside the presidential race who could help set the terms of debate from afar.
Donors have dreaded the consequences of clashing with Mr. Trump directly. Elected officials have balked at attacking him out of concern that they might unintentionally fuel his populist revolt. And Republicans have lacked someone from outside the presidential race who could help set the terms of debate from afar.
The endorsement by Mr. Christie, a not unblemished but still highly regarded figure within the party’s elite — he is a former chairman of the Republican Governors Association — landed Friday with crippling force. It was by far the most important defection to Mr. Trump’s insurgency: Mr. Christie may give cover to other Republicans tempted to join Mr. Trump rather than trying to beat him. Not just the Stop Trump forces seemed in peril, but also the traditional party establishment itself.
Should Mr. Trump clinch the presidential nomination, it would represent a rout of historic proportions for the institutional Republican Party, and could set off an internal rift unseen in either party for a half-century, since white Southerners abandoned the Democratic Party en masse during the civil rights movement.
Former Gov. Michael O. Leavitt of Utah, a top adviser to Mr. Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said the party was unable to come up with a united front to quash Mr. Trump’s campaign.
“There is no mechanism,” Mr. Leavitt said. “There is no smoke-filled room. If there is, I’ve never seen it, nor do I know anyone who has. This is going to play out in the way that it will.”
Resistance Runs Deep
Republicans have ruefully acknowledged that they came to this dire pass in no small part because of their own passivity. There were ample opportunities to battle Mr. Trump earlier; more than one plan was drawn up only to be rejected. Rivals who attacked him early, like Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, the former governors of Texas and Louisiana, received little backup and quickly faded.
Late last fall, the strategists Alex Castellanos and Gail Gitcho, both presidential campaign veterans, reached out to dozens of the party’s leading donors, including the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the hedge-fund manager Paul Singer, with a plan to create a “super PAC” that would take down Mr. Trump. In a confidential memo, the strategists laid out the mission of a group they called “ProtectUS.”
“We want voters to imagine Donald Trump in the Big Chair in the Oval Office, with responsibilities for worldwide confrontation at his fingertips,” they wrote in the previously unreported memo. Mr. Castellanos even produced ads portraying Mr. Trump as unfit for the presidency, according to people who saw them and who, along with many of those interviewed, insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The two strategists, who declined to comment, proposed to attack Mr. Trump in New Hampshire over his business failures and past liberal positions, and emphasized the extreme urgency of their project. A Trump nomination would not only cause Republicans to lose the presidency, they wrote, “but we also lose the Senate, competitive gubernatorial elections and moderate House Republicans.”
No major donors committed to the project, and it was abandoned. No other sustained Stop Trump effort sprang up in its place.
Resistance to Mr. Trump still runs deep. The party’s biggest benefactors remain totally opposed to him. At a recent presentation hosted by the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch, the country’s most prolific conservative donors, their political advisers characterized Mr. Trump’s record as utterly unacceptable, and highlighted his support for government-funded business subsidies and government-backed health care, according to people who attended.
But the Kochs, like Mr. Adelson, have shown no appetite to intervene directly in the primary with decisive force.
The American Future Fund, a conservative group that does not disclose its donors, announced plans on Friday to run ads blasting Mr. Trump for his role in an educational company that is alleged to have defrauded students. But there is only limited time for the commercials to sink in before some of the country’s biggest states award their delegates in early March.
Instead, Mr. Trump’s challengers are staking their hopes on a set of guerrilla tactics and long-shot possibilities, racing to line up mainstream voters and interest groups against his increasingly formidable campaign. Donors and elected leaders have begun to rouse themselves for the fight, but perhaps too late.
Two of Mr. Trump’s opponents have openly acknowledged that they may have to wrest the Republican nomination from him in a deadlocked convention.
Speaking to political donors in Manhattan on Wednesday evening, Mr. Rubio’s campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, noted that most delegates are bound to a candidate only on the first ballot. Many of them, moreover, are likely to be party regulars who may not support Mr. Trump over multiple rounds of balloting, he added, according to a person present for Mr. Sullivan’s presentation, which was first reported by CNN.
Advisers to Mr. Kasich, the Ohio governor, have told potential supporters that his strategy boils down to a convention battle. Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire senator who had endorsed Jeb Bush, said Mr. Kasich’s emissaries had sketched an outcome in which Mr. Kasich “probably ends up with the second-highest delegate count going into the convention” and digs in there to compete with Mr. Trump.
Several senior Republicans, including Mr. Romney, have made direct appeals to Mr. Kasich to gauge his willingness to stand down and allow the party to unify behind another candidate. But Mr. Kasich has told at least one person that his plan is to win the Ohio primaryon March 15 and gather the party behind his campaign if Mr. Rubio loses in Florida, his home state, on the same day.
In Washington, Mr. Kasich’s persistence in the race has become a source of frustration. At Senate luncheons on Wednesday and Thursday, Republican lawmakers vented about Mr. Kasich’s intransigence, calling it selfishness.
One senior Republican senator, noting that Mr. Kasich has truly contested only one of the first four states, complained: “He’s just flailing his arms around and having a wonderful time going around the country, and it just drives me up the wall.”
Mr. McConnell was especially vocal, describing Mr. Kasich’s persistence as irrational because he has no plausible path to the nomination, several senators said.
While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches.
He has reminded colleagues of his own 1996 re-election campaign, when he won comfortably amid President Bill Clinton’s easy re-election. Of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.
The Rubio Hope
There is still hope that Mr. Rubio might be able to unite much of the party and slow Mr. Trump’s advance in a series of big-state primaries in March, and a host of top elected officials endorsed him over the last week. But Mr. Rubio has struggled to sideline Mr. Kasich and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is running a dogged campaign on the right. He has also been unable to win over several of his former rivals who might help consolidate the Republican establishment more squarely behind him.
Mr. Rubio showed a lack of finesse in dealing with his fallen rivals’ injured egos.
Mr. Christie had attacked Mr. Rubio contemptuously in New Hampshire, calling him shallow and scripted, and humiliating him in a debate. Nevertheless, Mr. Rubio made a tentative overture to Mr. Christie after his withdrawal from the presidential race. He left the governor a voice mail message, seeking Mr. Christie’s support and assuring him that he had a bright future in public service, according to people who have heard Mr. Christie’s characterization of the message.
Mr. Christie, 53, took the message as deeply disrespectful and patronizing, questioning why “a 44-year-old” was telling him about his future, said people who described his reaction on the condition of anonymity. Further efforts to connect the two never yielded a direct conversation.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, made frequent calls to Mr. Christie once he dropped out, a person close to the governor said. After the two met at Trump Tower on Thursday with their wives, Mr. Christie flew to Texas and emerged on Friday to back Mr. Trump and mock Mr. Rubio as a desperate candidate near the end of a losing campaign.
‘Verging on Panic’
Efforts to reconcile Mr. Rubio and Mr. Bush, a former governor of Florida, have been scarcely more successful, dating to before the South Carolina primary, when Mr. Rove reached out to their aides to broker a cease-fire, according to Republicans briefed on the conversations. It did not last.
Mr. Bush has been nearly silent since quitting the race Feb. 20, playing golf with his son Jeb Jr. in Miami and turning to the task of thank-you notes. In a Wednesday conference call with supporters, he did not express a preference among the remaining contenders. When Mr. Rubio called him on Monday, their conversation did not last long, two people briefed on it said, and Mr. Rubio did not ask for his endorsement.
“There’s this desire, verging on panic, to consolidate the field,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former supporter of Mr. Bush. “But I don’t see any movement at all.”
Mr. Rubio’s advisers were also thwarted in their efforts to secure an endorsement from Mr. Romney, whom they lobbied strenuously after the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary.
Mr. Romney had been eager to tilt the race, and even called Mr. Christie after he ended his campaign to vent about Mr. Trump and say he must be stopped. On the night of the primary, Mr. Romney was close to endorsing Mr. Rubio himself, people familiar with his deliberations said.
Yet Mr. Romney pulled back, instead telling advisers that he would take on Mr. Trump directly. After a Tuesday night dinner with former campaign aides, during which he expressed a sense of horror at the Republican race, Mr. Romney made a blunt demand Wednesday on Fox News: Mr. Trump must release his tax returns to prove he was not concealing a “bombshell” political vulnerability.
Mr. Trump responded only with casual derision, dismissing Mr. Romney on Twitter as “one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.”
Mr. Romney is expected to withhold his support before the voting this week on the so-called Super Tuesday, but some of his allies have urged him to endorse Mr. Rubio before Michigan and Idaho vote March 8. Mr. Romney grew up in Michigan, and many Idahoans are fellow Mormons.
But already, a handful of senior party leaders have struck a conciliatory tone toward Mr. Trump. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader, said on television that he believed he could work with him as president. Many in the party acknowledged a growing mood of resignation.
Fred Malek, the finance chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said the party’s mainstream had simply run up against the limits of its influence.
“There’s no single leader and no single institution that can bring a diverse group called the Republican Party together, behind a single candidate,” Mr. Malek said. “It just doesn’t exist.”
On Friday, a few hours after Mr. Christie endorsed him, Mr. Trump collected support from a second governor, who in a radio interview said Mr. Trump could be “one of the greatest presidents.”
That governor was Paul LePage.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Herman Cain: GOP's New Token "Boy"! Just Like Steele




Ha Ha Ha!
Please Forgive Me But I Couldn't Stop Laughing!
I Just Finish Viewing Video Clips Of The First 2012 GOP Primary Debate, Filmed In South Carolina & It Was Hilarious!!
Ok. Enough Of That!
Ladies & Gentlemen Meet Mr. Herman Cain!
New Token/ "Blackface"/ "Coon" For The Republican Party!
NO!
That Isn't How I Perceive Mr. Cain!
However Like It Or Not It IS How Many GOP & Tea Party Leaders Will Always See Him.
They Just More Than Likely Would NEVER Utter Such Degrading Words To His Face!
Last Year it Was Michael Steele.
This Year Its Herman Cain; A BLACK Business Man From Atlanta, Georgia.
How Sad It Is That Mr. Cain Really Believes Those GOP & Tea Party Leaders Actually Love Him.
When In Fact They Just Want To Pit One Black Man Against Another, Just As They Did With Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
But Where Is Mr. Steele Today??
For The Record I Have No Problem With Black People Voting For Republican Candidates Or Joining The Republican Party.
As A FREE, Legal Citizen 18 Years Or Older We Have The Right To Vote For Whomever We Please!
Black People Were Born Black NOT Democrats!
Furthermore Its The Republican Party That First Accepted & Allowed Black Voters To Participate In The American Voting Process.
Democrats Formerly Pegged "Dixiecrats" Refused To Allow Black People To Register To Vote.
They Also Created Illegal Discriminatory Voting Laws To Prohibit Black Citizens From Having A Voice At The Polls During Elections.
Thus The Reason For Historic Black Leaders Such As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Colin Powell & Dr. Condoleeza Rice Being Republicans.
However Today's Republican/ GOP Party Is NOT The Same Political Party Which Previously Welcomed Black Citizens With Sincere Smiles & Bear Hugs.
Today The Political Tables Have Turned!
Now Its Democrats & Independents Who Embrace Black Voters With Open Arms, While Republicans Often ONLY Seek To Reach White & Sometimes Asian Voters.
I Have Voted For Republican Candidates In The Past & Will Probably Do So Again.
However I Won't Do It At The Risk Of Hurting The Entire American Black Community.
i.e., Presidential Candidates!
Which Is Why I'm Supporting Barack Obama In 2012.
GOP & Tea Party Leaders Know Without A Doubt There's NO Absolute Way Herman Cain Can Win Any Debates Against Pres. Obama, Nor Whip Him In The General Election.
But After Using Mr. Cain To Publicly Bash Pres. Obama, & Create Further Division Within America's Black Community, They'll Cast Him Aside Just As They Did Michael Steele.
Hmmm. I Wonder How Many GOP Leaders Are Standing By Michael Steele's Side Today??
I Believe Mr. Herman Cain Is Most Likely A Very Intelligent, Very Nice Man.
Which Is Why Knowing What McConnell, Cantor & Boehner Will Do To Him After They Finish Screwing Him Over, Is NO Laughing Matter.
Perhaps Like Donald Trump, Mr. Cain Is Just Seeking His 15 Minutes Of Fame On The Political Center Stage.
Unfortunately That 15 Minutes Could Ruin His Reputation. FOREVER!!
Besides NO One Is Going To Help Elect A Black Man With A Southern Accent As U.S. President! It Will NEVER Happen!
Remember Jesse Jackson??
At This Late In The Game, GOP Leaders Hate Pres. Obama So Much & Want To Get Rid Of Our Nation's FIRST BLACK President So Badly, They Would Recruit Their Family Dogs To Help Run Pres. Out Of Office If It Were Possible!
So Do You Really Think They Are Actually Going To Help Another BLACK Man Get Elected President Of The United States???
Is The Moon Made Of Blue Cheese, Green Cheese Or Caviar??
I'll Pray For Mr. Cain But I'm Voting For Barack Obama In 2012!!
See You At The Polls!
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Joe Manchin & John Raese Fight Over/ Run From Obama's Policies

Joe Manchin, John Raese Duel Over Obama
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and Republican John Raese had their only meeting Monday evening, in a debate in which the two Senate candidates sparred over the president, his most controversial legislation and the state's dominant coal industry.
With a national spotlight shining on the once-sleepy Senate race, Manchin and Raese tried to capitalize on their last opportunity to speak directly to voters, two weeks before Election Day. Public polls show a competitive race, and both political parties have zeroed in on the contest, pouring millions into the race.
A relaxed Raese frequently attacked Manchin, who often brought up his six years as governor when making his case that voters should send him to Washington to serve the remaining two years of the late Sen. Robert Byrd's term.
Manchin invoked Byrd twice during the debate in Morgantown, W. Va., recalling that the state's political legend would occasionally buck his party for the sake of his home state because he "didn't care who the president was."
A pair of third-party candidates rounded out the debate, for a total of four men being grilled in the West Virginia public broadcast studios, but another politician took center stage for most of the evening: President Barack Obama. In keeping with his strategy to tie Manchin to the unpopular president, Raese repeatedly brought up Obama throughout the hourlong session.
Manchin has tried to distance himself from Obama during the campaign, most notably during his latest television commercial, in which he fires a gun at the Democratic-sponsored cap-and-trade bill. Monday evening's meeting was no exception to the Obama dodging.
"I hate to inform my opponent, but Mr. Obama's name will not be on the ballot for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia. It will be me," said Manchin. "And my record has been very clear, and I've worked very hard."
Raese shot back: "That certainly sounds like a career politician to me."
At the crux of the Obama-centered debate was health care reform. Manchin initially supported the legislation and said publicly earlier this year that he would have voted for it. But more recently, Manchin has criticized the bill, and he announced in his latest television commercial that he would work to repeal parts of it. Pressed by the moderator, Manchin said he favored getting rid of the "onerous" small-business provisions and the mandates for coverage in the legislation.
Raese, for his part, said he would scrap the entire bill.
"I'd like to repeal every part of that because it is pure, unadulterated socialism," said Raese. "It is the worst bill that has ever come out of the United States Senate and House."
Raese also hit Manchin for another of Obama's signature pieces of legislation: the stimulus package. He questioned how the governor could accept funds from the stimulus bill and still claim to support a balanced federal budget.
"Mr. Manchin has accepted $1.4 [billion]; he's already used $500 million," Raese said. "So if this is his idea of how to save and cut spending, then it's rather odd to me."
Manchin quickly interrupted, noting that the state did not support a second stimulus package. He argued the funds were acceptable because "the federal government and state government should be your partner but not your provider."
Raese has recently come under fire for expressing opposition to the minimum wage — not a popular stance in West Virginia, with its high percentage of low-income and working-class families. Raese tried to explain his position in the debate, saying he wanted to get rid of the minimum wage because he wants "a better wage" for workers by eliminating the federal requirement for hourly pay.
"I want a better wage for everybody, and in order to get a better wage for everybody, we have to start lifting jobs and manufacturing where they should be," Raese said. "Not like Manchin and Obama — they enjoy people working for $7.25. Quite frankly, I don't."
Coal, one of the state's most dominant industries, also played heavily in the debate. Raese, who owns a mining company, said he thought coal has "almost 200 years of reserve" to satisfy the nation's energy needs. He also said he did not believe in global warming.
At the heart of the coal issue, however, was mine safety. The topic was a raw one, coming less than a week after dozens of miners in Chile were rescued after being trapped for months underground; meanwhile, West Virginia has endured several mine accidents with casualties in the past few years.
"As you know, the safety of our miners is the most important thing in my mind," said Manchin.
Raese, audibly angry, lamented why he — as an owner of a mining company — had never been asked by government officials to give insight about safety issues.
"I'm in the mining business; I'm in the coal mining business; I've served in the limestone mining business," said Raese. "You know, I have never in my life, ever, been asked by any bureaucrat, ever, about my input into safety, my input into what we can do."
Flanking the two third-party candidates on a closed television set, Manchin and Raese kept their distance from each other for most of the debate.
The two third-party candidates were also questioned by the panel of local journalists, although less frequently than Manchin or Raese.
At one point, a visibly nervous Constitution Party candidate, Jeff Becker, ranted about a conspiracy behind Sept. 11. A more polished Jesse Johnson, a Mountain Party candidate, railed against the environmental damage caused by coal mining through the mountaintop removal method.
View Larger Map
Sources: Politico, Google Maps
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Obama's Policies Creating Populist Anger; Losing White & Black Voters (Videos)



The videos below help prove that Voters from all ethnic groups and socio-economic backgrounds are becoming angry at Pres. Obama's "Big Brother" policies.
These people are NOT Racist, Crazy or Stupid.
They are afraid because Pres. Obama is making some strange moves.
Harvard degree or no, he's doing things to make our nation seem less stronger.
Contrary to what's being broadcast from the MSM, those people DO love their Government.
They just don't want their Constitutional Rights taken away.
Stop letting the Mainstream Media tell you how to think!
Watch the videos and judge for yourself.
Sources: CNN, Fox News, Youtube
Friday, December 4, 2009
Pres. Obama Rejects CBC's Complaints...His Black Community Report Card


President Obama talks about the African American community and "getting out of this together."
Congressional Black Caucus pressures White House. Rep. Elijah Cummings converses with Morning Joe show panel members.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Pres. Obama rejects Congressional Black Caucus criticism
President Obama said today it would be wrong for him to narrowly focus on the troubles blacks face in the recession, rejecting criticism from the Congressional Black Caucus that the government was ignoring the economic plight of minorities.
"I will tell you that I think the most important thing I can do for the African-American community is the same thing I can do for the American community, period, and that is get the economy going again and get people hiring again," the president told Richard Wolf of USA TODAY and Justin Hyde of the Detroit Free Press in an exclusive joint interview.
On Wednesday, 10 members of the black caucus -- of which Obama was a member when he was a U.S. senator from Illinois -- boycotted a key House committee vote on financial reform. The group said it would push harder for Congress and the White House to tackle problems including an unemployment rate for blacks of 15.7%, higher than the national rate of 10.2%
"We can no longer afford for our public policy to be defined by the worldview of Wall Street," members of the caucus said in a statement Wednesday. "Policy for the least of these must be integrated into everything that we do."
Obama said in today's interview, held ahead of this afternoon's White House summit on job creation, that he agreed with some of the goals the CBC had outlined such as making sure black-owned small businesses had access to credit. But he stressed that he needed to keep a broader view.
"I think it's a mistake to start thinking in terms of particular ethnic segments of the United States rather than to think that we are all in this together and we are all going to get out of this together," he said.
Rich and Justin will have more on their interview with the president in Friday's editions of USA TODAY and the Free Press, which are both owned by Gannett.
See this post for Obama's comments on the White House gate crashers.
Pres. Obama Gets an "F" from Black Agenda Report
Bruce A. Dixon at Black Agenda Report, a progressive “journal of African American political thought and action,” has graded the first 100 days of Barack Obama’s Presidency on 18 general issues…
1. Health Care Reform (9 points)
2. Creating New Jobs and Preserving Old Ones (5 points)
3. Fully Funding and Preserving Public Education (6 points)
4. War & Peace (9 points)
5. Transportation (5 points)
6. Caribbean and Latin America (4 points)
7. Obama’s Africa Policy; Our Brotherman and the Motherland (5 points)
8. Wall Street Bailout (6 points)
9. Debt and Foreclosure Crises (6 points)
10. Investigating Bush-era Crimes (5 points)
11. Criminalizing Immigration, Militarizing the Border (5 points)
12. Broadband For Everyone and a Just and Fair Media (5 points)
13. Environment (5 points)
14. Agricultural Policy, and Policy Toward Black Farmers (5 points)
15. Mass imprisonment (5 points)
16. Employee Free Choice Act (5 points)
17. Urban Policy (5 points)
18. Privatization of Government Agencies and Services (5 points)
Out of 100 possible points, 55 was considered passing.
Pres. Obama scored 22.5
This is so far down in the failing scores that the most appropriate letter-grade is probably… "F-"
Frustrated Congressional Black Caucus plays hardball with White House
The long-simmering family feud between the Congressional Black Caucus and the first African-American president burst into the open on Wednesday, with members boycotting a financial overhaul vote as a warning shot at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The 43-member caucus — which included Illinois Sen. Barack Obama from 2004 to 2008 — has chafed against President Obama and his top aides since the Inauguration, complaining that the White House takes it for granted and plays favorites with conservative Blue Dog Democrats.
Ten CBC members decided to boycott the House Financial Services Committee vote en masse after a tumultuous morning meeting at the Capitol between Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel failed to yield a deal, according to people familiar with the meeting.
The bill passed easily, but Waters suggested the CBC’s 43 members could vote with the GOP to scuttle a variety of Democratic bills if Obama and Emanuel don’t address what she thinks is a lack of understanding of the CBC’s wide-ranging goals of reducing urban unemployment, home foreclosures and bank failures.
“I think that it is important for us to educate those people around [Obama],” Waters told reporters. “We’ve got to get his people educated and moving. We have not brought these issues to him personally — it is important first to educate those people around him so they understand.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), who recently accused Obama of bowing down to the GOP on health care reform, was more pointed, shouting “Yes!” when asked if he was disappointed with Obama’s level of attentiveness to African-Americans’ needs.
He added that he had an extensive list of issues with the president — a list he said was too long to disgorge in a hallway conversation with a reporter.
“There are those who choose not to speak about African-Americans or the working class,” Waters said. “We can no longer be in denial that certain sectors of our population, including the African-American community, are feeling the recession to a greater extent.”
Waters, a former CBC chairwoman and one of its most outspoken members, clashed often with Emanuel during his days in the House and has also had a rocky relationship with the president, according to staffers.
But the volatile Los Angeles Democrat isn’t the only CBC member to have run-ins with the equally combustible Emanuel.
For years, caucus members have complained that Emanuel worked against their interests by failing to appoint a sufficient number of blacks to senior staff positions when he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Many still believe Emanuel favors the conservative, mostly white Democrats he helped elect to battleground districts in the South, West and Midwest.
CBC members have long said they would rather deal with Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is black, but have been forced to negotiate with Emanuel, Obama’s point man in the House.
But, increasingly, the members’ grievances have focused on Obama himself.
In the lead-up to February’s stimulus vote, many caucus members grumbled that Obama buckled by allowing the GOP to strip out nearly $60 billion in aid to states to make way for an extension of the alternative minimum tax that will largely benefit the middle class.
CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is still bothered by Obama’s selection of New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg as commerce secretary — an appointment that ended with Gregg’s voluntary withdrawal over ideological differences with the White House.
And many felt Obama waited too long — nearly two months into his term — to invite them to their first White House meeting.
Waters has been meeting with Emanuel and other officials for weeks with an a-la-carte list of programmatic demands, ranging from pumping more Troubled Asset Relief Program funding into troubled inner-city banks to steering Census Bureau advertising dollars to church newsletters to appointing minority members to a consumer protection commission.
Aides say Emanuel and his staff are aware of the need to address the concerns of predominantly black inner-city districts, which often have 20-plus percent rates of unemployment. “We share the concerns raised by CBC members about struggling minority communities, and that’s why we’ve engaged in a positive way to make progress on these issues,” said Obama spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki. “We have not been informed of the reasoning behind their decision not to vote on the bill, but we continue to think it is important to move financial reform forward to prevent future crises from damaging our economy and disrupting the lives of millions of Americans, including African-Americans.”
Even though no caucus members voted for it, the administration inserted several of the CBC initiatives into the financial overhaul package, including the expansion of the consumer commission and the addition of minority liaisons at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury Department.
Until Wednesday, Waters and other CBC members had been reluctant to spell out their Obama wish list, with Financial Services Committee members refusing even to say why they skipped the vote.
The caucus released a2½-page handout to answer those questions on Wednesday, with an emphasis on addressing the economic problems of members’ districts, ranging from the crisis engulfing minority-owned auto dealerships and newspapers to the need for more-targeted foreclosure mitigation programs.
But Waters says the CBC’s point was a larger one — a statement that the group would “use our strength and our influence to better represent our communities.”
Sources: USA Today, Black Agenda Report, TPM, Politico, MSNBC, Morning Joe Show, AP, Congressional Black Caucus
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Obama's Poll Numbers Continue To Slip...Voters Are Losing Patience & Confidence



Inside Barack Obama’s campaign. Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe talks about his book which chronicles Barack Obama’s road to the presidency.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Democrats are divided over the Health Care Reform Bill.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Americans await a decision from Pres. Obama on the Afghan War crisis.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Confidence in Pres. Obama slips more, poll shows
The euphoria of 2008 is over: America is in a funk.
Elected last November on a wave of optimism, President Barack Obama now finds himself governing an increasingly pessimistic country in recession while muscling through Congress a health care reform overhaul and weighing whether to commit more troops to the 8-year-old Afghanistan war.
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows that Americans grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, continuing slippage that has occurred since Obama took office as the year began.
They were more pessimistic about the direction of the country. They disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy a bit more than before. And, perhaps most striking for this novice commander in chief, more people have lost confidence in Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan over the last month.
Ambitious agenda
All that is troubling for a president trying to accomplish an ambitious agenda at home while fighting wars abroad, as well as for a Democratic Party heading into a critical election year in which it will look to stave off losses a new president typically experiences in his first midterms. A third of the Senate, all of the House and most governors' offices will be on the ballot.
The findings underscore just how quickly the political environment can change, a lesson in cautiousness for out-of-power Republicans salivating at the murky state of the electorate and buzzing with energy after booting Democrats from rule in Virginia and New Jersey governors' races last week.
It was just over a year ago that Obama won the White House in an electoral landslide and Democrats padded their congressional majorities. The country was riding high with optimism by just about all measures when Obama took office in January.
"Hope" and "change" were en vogue back then. But "change" didn't happen overnight, as the rhetoric of campaigning crashed headlong into the realities of governing. And "hope" slipped in a country that always has clung to it.
Approval at 54 percent
Now, Obama's approval rating stands at 54 percent, roughly the same as in October but very different from what it was in January just before he took office, 74 percent. And some 56 percent of people say the country is heading in the wrong direction, an uptick from 51 percent last month and 49 percent in Obama's first month as president.
The economy is by far the most important issue on the minds of Americans given a crushing recession that's erased jobs. Unemployment hit 10.2 percent last month even though the administration has promoted glimmers of improvement and most economists say the recession is over.
Those jobless figures help explain why as many people said the economy got worse in the past month as said it got better — and it's not many people who thought it got better, just 22 percent. Most say the economy stayed the same, and most don't approve of how Obama is handling it — just 46 percent approve compared with 50 percent last month.
The country also has grown even more lukewarm on Obama and the wars as he tries to wind down the one in Iraq and considers ramping up the one in Afghanistan.
Compared with October, 45 percent of people now disapprove of Obama's handling of Iraq, up from 37 percent, while 48 percent now disapprove of his handling of Afghanistan, up from 41 percent; a majority of people in the country opposes both wars. And more than half — 54 percent — now oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan, an increase from 50 percent last month.
Obama in tough spot
All that puts Obama in a tough spot as he nears a decision on whether to add tens of thousands more forces to Afghanistan. His top general there is seeking 40,000 more.
On health care, about half of the country approves of how Obama is doing on his signature domestic issue — virtually unchanged from October. In a major victory for Obama, the House passed a sweeping reform of the U.S. medical system over the weekend. But the fate of the measure is uncertain in the Senate, where moderate Democrats who are necessary for passage are balking at the cost and various provisions.
Only a third of the country approves of how Congress is doing.
The AP-GfK Poll was conducted November 5-9 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,006 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Sources: MSNBC, Huffington Post, TIME
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