Great ad showing Mitt Romney diminishing the capture of bin Laden, as others – more experienced Republicans – praise President Obama’s decision to send our Navy Seal team in when he did.
SRSLY Mitt? You’re going to criticize this?
Newt Gingrich to gay man: Vote for Obama
 |
| Scott Arnold |
Newt Gingrich told a gay Iowan that he should vote for President Barack Obama when the man asked him about gay rights, the Des Moines Register reported.
Gingrich reportedly made the comment during an event Tuesday at Smokey Row coffee house in Oskaloosa.
“I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama,” said Scott Arnold, an adjunct professor of writing at William Penn University.”
Arnold, a Democrat, said he came to the event at Smokey Row coffee house with an open mind. But he wanted to ask Gingrich about how he would represent him as president after reading past comments the former U.S. House Speaker has made about gay and lesbians.
“When you ask somebody a question and you expect them to support all Americans and have everyone’s general interest. It’s a little bit frustrating and disheartening when you’re told to support the other side. That he doesn’t need your support.”
Gingrich recently pledged to two conservative groups that as president he would work against marriage equality by supporting a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and offering a vigorous defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
At an October campaign stop in Iowa, Gingrich said that gay marriage “is a temporary aberration that will dissipate.”
“It doesn’t inspire hope at all,” Arnold added. “And if that’s what he’s trying to do and that’s what he’s trying to say, that this is a collective effort if he’s elected president, yet he tells me to support the other side?”
George Clooney on “selling the Obama administration”
|
| Click to view larger
|
“I’m disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama, quite honestly, I am.
Democrats eat their own. Democrats find the singular issues and go, “Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.”
I’m a firm believer in sticking by and sticking up for the people whom you’ve elected.
If (Obama) was a Republican running, because Republicans are better at this, they’d be selling him as the guy who stopped 400,000 jobs a month from leaving the country.
They’d be selling him as the guy who saved the auto industry.
If they had the beliefs, they’d be selling him as the guy who got rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” who got Osama bin Laden.
You could be selling this as a very successful three years.”
– George Clooney
The First Family portrait 2011
 |
| Click pic to view larger |
Obama: “Ask Osama bin Laden if I engage in appeasement”
At the Republican Jewish Coalition GOP presidential candidates forum this week, Mitt Romney claimed President Obama is ‘appeasing’ America’s enemies.
“Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy,” Mitt Romney said.
Newt Gingrich accused the Obama State Department of “appeasing our opponents.”
A reporter asked the President about the GOP attack line today during a White House press conference.
President Obama’s answer: “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 other out of 30 top al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement, or, whoever is left out there.”
An apology to President Obama
This ‘apology’ to President Obama appeared in the LA Times.
Apparently this woman was very critical of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare as it’s now commonly referred to). She didn’t like the law and clearly had an opinion about people who didn’t have health insurance.
Hit by the economy, this woman now faces the terrible diagnosis of cancer with no health insurance.
With the recession, both of our businesses took a huge hit — my husband’s income was cut in half, and the foundations that had supported my small nonprofit were going through their own tough times. We had to start using a home equity line of credit to pay for our health insurance premiums (which by that point cost as much as our monthly mortgage).
When the bank capped our home equity line, we were forced to cash in my husband’s IRA. The time finally came when we had to make a choice between paying our mortgage or paying for health insurance. We chose to keep our house. We made a nerve-racking gamble, and we lost.
Not having insurance amplifies cancer stress. After the diagnosis, instead of focusing all of my energy on getting well, I was panicked about how we were going to pay for everything. I felt guilty and embarrassed about not being insured.
“I’m not a deadbeat,” I blurted out. “I’m a good person. I have two kids and a house!” The clerk was sympathetic, telling me how even though she worked in the healthcare field, she could barely afford insurance herself.
This hits me on a many levels.
During the health care debates I was facing my own cancer journey. I watched multitudes of TV reports (during rounds of chemo) where people all over the nation who didn’t understand the law screamed and spit at law makers.
At the time, I became aware that most people get their health insurance through their employers, so they had no idea of what it actually costs. Being self-employed, I pay for my own every month – on my own.
I also had the feeling most people who hated the law probably had never experienced a serious disease. Do it once and you really value your coverage.
I’m very sorry this woman faces cancer and I wish her the very best. And I appreciate that she has had this epiphany about the protections for “pre-existing conditions” and how important this is.
One more thing: notice one of the issues the woman brings up is that she wanted people to know she wasn’t a “dead beat.” Probably because that’s what she thought people who didn’t have health insurance were.
I hope a lot of people read this letter and find a bit of the reality check here.
Yes, it can happen to you.
No, it doesn’t mean you’re a “dead beat.”
However, don’t judge those without health insurance as looking for a handout. It happens.
She closes with this:
“So this is my public apology. I’m sorry I didn’t do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I’m sorry I didn’t realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I’m getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says “Got nope.” It will say “ObamaCares.”
Obama issues directive to protect International LGBT rights
President Obama today issued a memorandum “directing all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.”
Among the steps required by the memorandum are efforts to fight the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct, as well as to support the protection of LGBT refugees and asylum seekers.
Obama’s memorandum requires the Department of State to “lead a standing group, with appropriate interagency representation, to help ensure the Federal Government’s swift and meaningful response to serious incidents that threaten the human rights of LGBT persons abroad.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke today in Geneva about the issue. The State Department details that Clinton’s address is a part of Human Rights Day, which it notes “recognizes the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly.
The Declaration outlines the inalienable rights of all people and has since served as the benchmark for the extension and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
(via Metroweekly)
‘Waterboarding is torture,’ says President Obama
Waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, was endorsed by Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann in the latest GOP presidential debate.
‘They’re wrong,’ said Obama in a press conference. ‘Waterboarding is torture.’
Harvey Fierstein on Obama’s accomplishments
“Obama announced the end of American troops in Iraq and NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT? Hello? What does that man have to do to get some credit from people?”
“He ended DON’T ASK…, he’s fighting DOMA, he’s extended marriage benefits to Fed employees, he’s given us a healthcare system we can build on, he saved us from a full blown Depression, he killed Ben Laden and a few other nasty types, and now he’s ending Bush’s idiot war in Iraq. And he’s done it all pretty quietly while fighting back challenges to his every word from the GOP which got us into all these messes in the first place. PEOPLE – A LITTLE RESPECT?” – Harvey Fierstein on Facebook
President Obama announces troops to leave Iraq by year’s end
And there you have it.