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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DanDerr who wrote (57411)	10/19/2012 10:53:23 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Obama Electoral Path Narrows Dramatically Firewall in ruins? Michael Barone October 18, 2012 \| 9:34 am Major Garrett at National Journal has a good post-second debate column in which he reports that the Obama campaign seems to have abandoned most of its three-state (Florida-Ohio-Virginia) firewall. Those are the three states with 60 electoral votes—Obama’s weakest 2008 states except for Indiana and North Carolina—which the Obama campaign has been pummeling for months with anti-Romney TV spots. The idea is that if they could hold these three states and all those Obama carried with higher percentages in 2008 Obama would have 332 electoral votes, and could afford to lose a small state here or there. That’s why they were constantly saying that Romney had only a narrow window to get to 270. My Oct. 7 Examiner column. written after the first presidential debate, I said that early post-debate polls suggested the firewall may be crumbling. Now Major (he used to have an office across the hall from me at U.S. News, next to Mike Gerson) suggests that the Obama strategists have reached the same conclusion. Here are the key paragraphs: “What also became clear after the dust began to settle from the rumble on Long Island was the electoral map has narrowed and Obama’s team, while conceding nothing publicly, is circling the wagons around Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Plouffe said that Obama remains strong in all four states, but he would not discuss the specifics of internal polling or voter-contact analytics, saying only that Obama has ‘significant leads’ in all four places. “It is uncharacteristic of Team Obama to concede any terrain, but Plouffe offered no such assurances about Obama’s position in North Carolina, Virginia or Florida. Romney advisers have seen big gains in all three states and now consider wins likely, although not guaranteed, in all three. They are similarly upbeat about prospects in but not confident enough to predict victory in Colorado. That Plouffe left Colorado off his list of states where Obama’s leading and can withstand a Romney surge might be telling.” Do the Obama strategists think that Romney has North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Colorado in the bag? I doubt it. But the implications are pretty staggering. Give Romney those states and he’s at 257 electoral votes. And with a number of places to get them, maybe including (as Major suggests) Pennsylvania or Michigan. washingtonexaminer.com

To: DanDerr who wrote (57411)	10/19/2012 7:58:54 PM
From: LLCF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I'm just noting what is on here. :)) Further, crazy-ass RwingNut stuff is much more prevalent on the airwaves than anything as far from center on the other side. It's simple history I suppose... there has historically been a general slant to the "liberal" side simply because origionally educated people going into journalism and media were.... SURPRISE, liberal. The type of black-helicopter folks that think there was some evil conspiracy that created that slant are really exhibiting the same wacko thinking as those who think Bush & Cheney started the war in Iraq for money cause they owned oil!! SICK!! Now anyone with a computer can spew, which is great! We can REALLY see what's out there. It's REALLY GOOD that these RwingNutbags have come out of the closet and are showing everyone what they are really all about. Bout time. Currently they are expressing themselves like a nasty rash that will run its course and go into remission. HEY! FWIW: Romney rallies back!! If this market slide gets ugly, which I expect, you may actually have a (well, tiny) chance of staying on the board come November! LOL intrade.com DAK

To: DanDerr who wrote (57411)	3/3/2013 9:09:45 PM
From: greatplains_guy	Respond to of 71588

All the President’s unaccountable men By LINDA CHAVEZ Last Updated: 11:14 PM, March 1, 2013 Posted: 10:57 PM, March 1, 2013 When Bob Woodward, one of Washington’s most distinguished journalists, accuses the White House of rewriting history, even liberals should take note. And when the White House responds by threatening him, you’d think the story would become a national scandal. What makes the story even more important is that it deals with an issue that has dominated the news in recent weeks: the budget cuts that will took effect yesterday. Woodward has accuses the White House of misrepresenting the president’s role in creating the plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the budget over the next decade. In his book “The Price of Politics,” Woodward describes in detail how the idea for the sequester came about. As he puts it in the Feb. 22 Washington Post: “The automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of [then-Budget Director Jack] Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.” Woodward not only names the individuals involved, but also gives exact timelines for when the discussions took place and how the final agreement came about. Woodward’s complaint is not only that the White House is trying to place sole responsibility for coming up with the idea of the automatic cuts on Republicans, but also that it has now demanded that Republicans accept tax hikes as a part of any deal, which was explicitly rejected when the deal was cut. “So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made,” he says. Before the article went to press, Woodward phoned Gene Sperling, chief economic adviser to the president, to get his version of events. According to Woodward, Sperling yelled at him for most of the call then followed up with an e-mail apologizing for raising his voice but also doing something far worse. The e-mail, reprinted in Politico this week, shows Sperling threatening Woodward: ‘‘I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying . . . that Potus [the president of the United States] asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.” Such ominous remarks coming from the president’s economic adviser are meant to intimidate. Reporters need access to pursue stories. And if a top White House official lets it be known that a reporter is persona non grata, the message goes out to others not to talk. Worse, it is an example of this White House’s imperious style — one that hearkens back to another presidency with which Bob Woodward is all too familiar. Woodward became a national figure as a young man reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. His bestselling book, “All the President’s Men,” is a chilling account of what happens when the people surrounding the president decide that protecting their boss is more important than upholding the oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution, which each of them takes. In the Nixon White House, the corruption emanated from the Oval Office. Woodward isn’t accusing President Obama of directing his men (and they are mostly men) to try to squelch legitimate journalistic inquiry — but if the president is not at fault, he has an obligation to clear the record. And Obama is doing just the opposite. In the days leading up to the automatic cuts, Obama campaigned against Republicans, laying on their shoulders full blame for failing to reach a deal. But it’s the president who has rewritten the terms of the agreement reached in 2011. Sperling’s threat against a senior journalist was not made in a vacuum: It is an attempt to cover up the president’s own dissembling. The only cure is for the president to admit his misstatements and hold accountable those who would flaunt their power to keep the truth from emerging. nypost.com