It's a very sad commentary on the Obama administration when they can't tout their successes. Rather, the only way to try and win an election (after a dismall record is to:By BEN SMITH & JONATHAN MARTIN Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.
The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job, and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for reelection in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Listen Gavin on Obama's plan Romney on super PAC contribution Romney attacks Obama policies Latest on POLITICO Kansas returns $31.5M health grant Rick Perry's 'positive intensity' Fed to keep rate low for 2 years POLITICO Influence: Energy wars U.S. hits Israel on settlements W.H. manufacturing adviser departs POLITICO 44 In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied former President George W. Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.
“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.
The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”
“First, they’ve got to like you, and there’s not a lot to like about Mitt Romney,” said Chicago Democratic consultant Pete Giangreco, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign. “There’s no way to hide this guy and hide his innate phoniness.”
A senior Obama adviser was even more cutting, suggesting that the Republican’s personal awkwardness will turn off voters.
“There’s a weirdness factor with Romney, and it remains to be seen how he wears with the public,” the adviser said, noting that the contrasts they’d drive between the president and the former Massachusetts governor would be “based on character to a great extent.”
The second aspect of the campaign to define Romney is his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that was responsible for both creating and eliminating jobs. Obama officials intend to frame Romney as the very picture of greed in the great recession — a sort of political Gordon Gekko.
“He was very, very good at making a profit for himself and his partners but not nearly as good saving jobs for communities,” said David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist. “His is very much the profile of what we’ve seen in the last decade on Wall Street. He was about making money. And that’s fine. But often times, he made it at the expense of jobs in communities.”
Romney officials shrug off the tough talk, arguing that there’s nothing Obama can do that will turn the campaign away from functioning as a referendum on his stewardship of the economy.
If obama can win on this lame strategy, more power to him.
Obamy fancies himself to be some kind of FDR! Guess he doesn't know how bad that Guy screwed up the economy with the same measures The Exalted One doing these days!
President Barack Obama makes a statement at the Blue Heron Farm on Martha’s Vineyard, August 26, 2009. (CBS) – There was a small fire early Tuesday morning at the farm where President Obama and his family are expected to spend their vacation later this month.
According to the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette, a fire broke out in a wall of the main house at Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark around 3:30 a.m.
“Very small, very contained, extinguished quickly,” Chilmark fire chief David Norton told the paper.
jvaski: All of you Obama Haters need to get professional help with your obscessions that Obama is the creator of every mess your kind initiates
There's a distinction between hating and 'disliking one's policies'. It's not that complicated, but it would take too much time to explain the difference.
Dude must have crossed state lines and went to help out in Wisconsin tonight. Probably busy bribing homeless to vote Democrat.
Meanwhile:
* Kansas governor sends back "early innovator" HHS grant
* Brings returned grants amount to some $90 million
* HHS likely would have to set up Kansas exchange
By Alina Selyukh
WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Kansas became on Tuesday the second U.S. state to return a large federal grant meant to help it create a prototype health insurance exchange as part of the Obama administration's healthcare overhaul.
Republican Governor Sam Brownback said the state would give back the $31.5 million it received from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to become an early leader, along with six other states, in establishing health insurance exchanges that other local government could use as a model.
Exchanges are meant to provide an open marketplace of competing insurance plans that allow uninsured people and small businesses to band together to negotiate cheaper rates.
Kansas's move brings the total amount of the returned exchange-related federal grants to almost $90 million as Republican governors seek to block implementation of the healthcare law supported largely by Democratic lawmakers.
Experts warn that many states are falling far behind schedule for a smooth and timely roll-out of the reform.
States are facing a deadline of Jan. 1, 2013, to submit detailed plans for their exchanges or see HHS come in and build one itself. Returning grants increases the likelihood that HHS would have to do the work.
I watch the stock market reports yesterday....on one of those channels....you know those ones.
They were giddy with excitement with the rally. But I saw the short term T-Bill taking a beating and the dollar was crushed.
Today they say....the foreign parties are buying T-Bill and don't recognise S and P's devaluation. Did they see the beating T-Bill and the Dollar took yesterday? Hwo read this stuff and interprets for them?
ttom500: Oh my my ........coming direct from the White House Bunker.......President Obama sure has aged. Do I hear a sense of frustration in his voice?
just a teency weenzy bit of frustration! Wonder if Dude was there to listen to the Tirade!
Conrad73: just a teency weenzy bit of frustration! Wonder if Dude was there to listen to the Tirade!
I think we should do a muscial.....you know like South Paciifc or Oklahoma....or the best of them....Music Man
The one song in Musis Man.....were Merdith Wilson sings..."Ya got Troubles " if you don't remember it ...it goes like this.
well, ya got trouble, my friends right here, I say trouble right here in River City why sure I a billiard player, certainly mighty proud to say I'm always mighty proud to say it
Only we substitute...crisis...for troubles....:-)
So it goes like this
well, ya got crisis, my friends right here, I say say crisis right here in America City us of A why sure I am a political player, certainly mighty proud to say I'm always mighty proud to say it
oh we got crisis we are in terrible terrible crisis that money making market game is the devil's tool aahhhh, we got crisis, crisis, crisis, (oh yes, we got crisis, here we got big, big crisis with a C (with a Capitol C) that gotta rhymes with DC that (rhymes with Washington DC) and that stands for CRISIS
ttom500: I think we should do a muscial.....you know like South Paciifc or Oklahoma....or the best of them....Music ManThe one song in Musis Man.....were Merdith Wilson sings..."Ya got Troubles " if you don't remember it ...it goes like this.
well, ya got trouble, my friends right here, I say trouble right here in River City why sure I a billiard player, certainly mighty proud to say I'm always mighty proud to say it
Only we substitute...crisis...for troubles....:-)
So it goes like this
well, ya got crisis, my friends right here, I say say crisis right here in America City us of A why sure I am a political player, certainly mighty proud to say I'm always mighty proud to say it
oh we got crisis we are in terrible terrible crisis that money making market game is the devil's tool aahhhh, we got crisis, crisis, crisis, (oh yes, we got crisis, here we got big, big crisis with a C (with a Capitol C) that gotta rhymes with DC that (rhymes with Washington DC) and that stands for CRISIS
well they are going to win the white house because the people are fed up with that person. he has no leadership skills and shys away from problems that are in this nation, plus the fact that he is so anti-military.
“Ridiculous, disgusting, stupid, frustrating, poor, terrible, disappointing, childish, messy and a joke,” were just a few of the words used by Americans to describe the recent fiasco that enabled a higher (more astronomical) debt limit for the USA: $14 Trillion wasn’t enough. Coincidentally, that is about the size of the deficit!
If that isn’t “Enough,” then recall that the Democratic Congress has not passed a budget for over 800 days—more than two full years. But the country keeps on spending, at the rate of about $1.40+ for every dollar of revenue that comes in. That’s right.
We have about $2.5 Trillion of revenue coming into the government; a bit over $200 Billion a month (but obviously from the panic stricken pleas from President Obama and his Treasury Secretary Geithner, they couldn’t manage to operate the government on “only $200 Billion a month.” It’s just not “Enough!” Why? Because spending is about $3.6 Trillion—40% higher than income....
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Or another way to ask are we in a major depression?
We're rapidly headed that wat Ttom if we don't dump the political idealism that's causing us to go into the toilet economically