If you thought you could enjoy the new year without hearing from the Obama Campaign, you thought wrong.  The campaign found time to send not just one, but two emails, begging for last minute donations.  Because … the real purpose of New Year celebrations is to ensure the Obama Campaign has the billion dollars he’s planning to spend between now and November.

Here are the emails:

To: [XXXXXXXXXXXXXX]
From: “Patrick Gaspard, Democrats.org”
Reply-to: democraticparty@democrats.org
Subject: Did we win?

[XXXXXX] –

It’s Wednesday, November 7th 2012, the day after Election Day. Did we re-elect the President? Keep the Senate? Take back the House?

There’s a lot of work to do to make sure the answer to all these questions is yes, but here’s something you can do to tip the odds our way right now:

Step up and donate $5 or more today.

Unlike the other side, who relies on super PACs and lobbyists to do their work, we rely on grassroots supporters like you pitching in what you can, when you can.

I know, it may seem crazy to think that donating $5 or $10 today could actually affect something 11 months down the road, but it does.

Because once the clock strikes midnight tonight, we’ve hit our end-of-year deadline and our planning time is over. It’s 2012. And what we have to work with then determines what we do from now until November.

So now’s the time. Go all in today:

http://my.democrats.org/Midnight

Thanks,

Patrick

Patrick Gaspard
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee

Just in case you were already headed to a New Year’s Eve party, another email went out at about 9 PM with instructions on how to donate from your phone.  Quick .. before the ball drops:

To: [XXXXXXXXXXXX]
From: Obama for America
Reply-to: info@barackobama.com
Subject: Is this your phone?

[XXXXXXXX] –

We’re just a few hours from 2012 and our deadline.

If you’re out celebrating and away from your computer, you should know that we’ve made it incredibly easy for you — or anyone you’re with — to make a donation from your mobile device.

Give it a shot before midnight local time:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Try-it

Happy New Year,

Obama for America

Read more in Obama, Elections, 2012 Elections.

The most obvious reason Obama isn’t using his “superpowers” is because he has none.  To borrow Hayes’ own rhetoric, the pro-cyclical media created the illusion of “an extremely able, deft, confident, exceptional …. amazingly powerful politician,” an illusion which imploded with Obama’s record.

Video via Newsbusters.

Read More in Media, Obama, Liberalism.

Do you remember flag@whitehouse.gov.  Now it has a whole website, but at least this time Obama is running the initiative through his campaign.  The following is the most recent Obama campaign email to hit my inbox.  While it’s worth reading, the email deserves no response.

If you’re someone who cares about seeing a campaign focused on substance between now and November 2012, I need you to become a part of one of our most important teams.

It’s called AttackWatch.com, and it launches today.

Here’s the deal: We all remember the birth certificate smear, the GOP’s barrage of lies about the Affordable Care Act, and the string of other phony attacks on President Obama that we’ve seen over the past few years.

There are a lot of folks on the other side who are chomping at the bit to distort the President’s record. It’s not a question of if the next big lie will come, just when — and what we’re prepared to do about it.

AttackWatch.com is exactly what it sounds like: a resource that allows us to nip these attacks in the bud before they show up on the airwaves and in emails — and then fight back with the truth.

By signing up, you’ll be on the front lines — you’ll hear about false claims as soon as they come up, and we’ll count on you to spread the truth to your friends and personal networks and let us know about new smears whenever you hear them.

Will you sign up now to be a part of AttackWatch.com?

Yes, I want to be on the team that fights back.

Not right now, but I’ll donate $5 to fund the 2012 campaign and support this work.

I remember the smears from 2008 well, and I’m sure you do, too.

They didn’t just attack Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They went after everything this movement is built on, and everyone who supports it.

This time, they’re not just out to personally attack the President — they’re also out to mislead Americans about the record of accomplishments that he’s compiled. Just the other day, a Republican financier actually quoted Saddam Hussein in telling a group of millionaire donors that defeating President Obama will be “the mother of all wars.”

We’re launching AttackWatch.com today to make sure we’re ready for the attacks we know are coming — and armed with the ability to fight back quickly.

Sign up for AttackWatch.com now, and let’s get the facts out:

http://my.barackobama.com/Join-Attack-Watch

Thanks,

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

There are two railroads.  They are both transcontinental.  The first railroad is built quickly.  But it fails just as quickly.  The railroad has massive inefficiencies.  It has high grades as it snakes through the mountains.  The tracks are built poorly, and quickly need replacement.  It has no tributaries to bring product to the main line.  Beyond these structural flaws, the company has major management problems.  The owners of the company have set up a shell corporation.  They are skimming from the investors—overcharging their own railroad company for basic supplies.  Ultimately, the line is unprofitable, the company goes bankrupt, and the system collapses.  Many jobs are lost, but a few—the owners—escape with a massive new fortune courtesy of their investors.

The second line grows more slowly.  Although its architect plans well into the future, the line only expands when the necessary capital has been accrued and a plan developed to cultivate business along the rail line.  The architect gives free grain, cattle, and land along the line to individuals who will uproot and move west to farm.  He even sets up experimental farms to test new techniques and provide training to farmers in the area.

This line is financially and structurally solid.  The architect hires his own team of explorers to rediscover Lewis and Clark’s lost pass through the Rockies—many believe the pass is a myth; they are proven wrong.  This line takes direct routes and minimizes gradient saving vast amounts of fuel and increasing the shipping speed on each trip.  This is the only transcontinental line that won’t go bankrupt.

In Obama’s “jobs” speech, he called Lincoln “a leader who looked to the future—a Republican president who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad.”   I can only assume Obama included this line because he thought it might coax Republicans to “invest” in more railroads.  After all, “Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us an economic superpower. And now we’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads, at a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America?”

But what is the history of government’s investment?  Which of the two railroads did Lincoln force taxpayers to “invest” in?  If you think it was the second, successful line, I’m sorry, but you have too much faith in government.  Now that you know it was the first, failed railroad; now that you know this “investment” failed to serve the people while handing a fortune to a small group of cronies, is this the kind of “investment” you would like government to repeat?

Read More in Liberalism, Obama, Spending & Entitlements.

The following video was recently released by American Crossroads. How many jobs have Obama’s policies destroyed?

The following are a couple of clips from yesterday’s radio shows.

In the first clip, Mark Steyn—guest host for Rush Limbaugh—talks to an incompetent Obama supporter.  Steyn first attempts to explain why its funny for Obama to stand around telling Congress to “pass the bill” when the bill in question does not exist.  After this failed escapade he attempts to explain that we don’t have the half trillion Obama wants to spend anyway.  He is unsuccessful again.

The second clip is disturbing rather than comical.  ”Chuck” lets us all know that, unfortunately, the “truthers” are alive and well.

And just in case you thought Chuck was alone in this sentiment, here’s “Frank” to set you straight:

President Obama is not a King; Congress is a co-equal branch of government. Many have focused on the unprecedented nature of Boehner’s response to Obama’s “request” to speak before a joint session of Congress. But an unprecedented request deserves an unprecedented response.

The White House insists they didn’t intentionally schedule the president’s address at the same time as the Republican debate at the Reagan library. That’s hogwash. If the speech wasn’t important enough to take some time off from his extravagant vacation in the Hamptons, then there’s no reason why it couldn’t have waited for another day, or even another week.

Instead, the President thought he could just announce that he’d be giving a speech, and Congress would make all the necessary preparations for his latest teleprompter recital. I have no doubt he expected Boehner to cave, and even I was afraid he might. Fortunately, Boehner had the fortitude necessary to remind Obama that Congress doesn’t work for him. When addressing Congress, he is their guest, not their host. Obama’s political positioning has backfired completely, and now if he wants a prime-time appearance, he’ll be going head to head with the NFL opener. I know what I’ll be watching.

The above video was from the Ed Schultz show.  (The same delusional leftist who once claimed, “NPR is about as down the middle as you can get.“)  Schultz claims, “this is a racist budget; I mean, anybody with a brain knows that those 82% of the kids that are under the poverty level are never going to go to a private school, and yet the Governor wants the parents of those kids to take a portion of their tax dollars and fund private schools.”  Sharpton calls it “the epitome of an insult.”  Ignore for a moment Shartpon’s ridiculous implication that the unions agreed to “take collective bargaining off the table, the “Rev.” claims, “they want to now spend public dollars to give a vouchers to private schools for kids that will never ever come from the neighborhoods that most need public education.”

There is so much that is factually incorrect about that brief statement that it’s hard to know where to begin.  For starters, I don’t know where Ed Schultz gets his numbers.  He seems to claim that 82% of children in Wisconsin are living in poverty.  But according to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 83% of Wisconsin children are “not poor” while 17% live below the poverty line.  Even if we gave Schultz the benefit of the doubt and included “low income” children, the number would be 37%, significant, but still less than half of Schultz’s claimed 82%.

As to Schultz’s claim of “racism.”  When did poor become an ethnic group?  While it’s true that a greater percentage of poor children are in minority ethnic groups, correlation does not imply causation.  It’s also true that children who have moved in the past year are three times more likely to be poor, but Schultz isn’t calling this bill “anti-U-Haul.”  Children who live with a single parent are 3.1 times more likely to be poor, but the bill isn’t derided as “anti-single-mom.”

Both Schultz and Sharpton claim, in their own way, that poor children will never go to private school.  That’s probably true without vouchers, but to pretend a voucher system won’t change that demonstrates this dynamic duo is either exceedingly naive or  willingly distorting the truth to defend the status quo.  (I’m leaning towards the latter).  Newsflash: “rich kids” already have school choice.  Their parents can afford to send them to private school with or without a voucher.  Poor kids, on the other hand, don’t have the same options.  When the compassionate™, caring™ Democrats bowed to DC public school unions, it wasn’t the “rich kids” who were affected.  Obama’s children remain at the private Sidwell Friends Academy, but poor children, children whose parents had begged legislators to keep the program, were sent back to their violent, rundown, failing, inner-city public schools.  It was left to Republicans to attempt to revive this program.  Hopefully, they will succeed.

Vouchers may send taxpayer dollars to private schools, but they do so to the benefit of poor students who otherwise couldn’t attend these institutions.  The only people who don’t benefit from vouchers are bad teachers at failing schools.  Suddenly, their cash supply is threatened.  Either Schultz and Sharpton are thoroughly uninformed, or they’re using poor children as human shields to defend failing teachers at failing schools.

Read more in Education, Liberalism, Unions.

According to an email from the campaign arm of the White House, Charlotte has been selected to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention which has been dubbed “The Peoples Convention,” a catchy misnomer. In other words, barring a Hillary coupe d’etat, Charlotte will be the place where the Democrat Party re-announces Obama as its frontrunner. Frankly, I’m not surprised. Charlotte was a wise choice given that it’s probably the most liberal city in North Carolina, a state which the President won in 2008 by a margin of less than 1%.

Here’s to hoping the Charlotte area pulls in a lot of cash from the event, only to have North Carolina vote for the Republican despite hosting the Democrats’ convention. (Let’s also hope the Republicans have a decent candidate, but that’s a separate issue.)

Here’s the text of the campaign email:

I am thrilled to make sure you are the first to hear some very exciting news. Charlotte, North Carolina, will host the 46th Democratic National Convention in 2012.

Charlotte is a city marked by its southern charm, warm hospitality, and an “up by the bootstraps” mentality that has propelled the city forward as one of the fastest-growing in the South. Vibrant, diverse, and full of opportunity, the Queen City is home to innovative, hardworking folks with big hearts and open minds. And of course, great barbecue.

Barack and I spent a lot of time in North Carolina during the campaign — from the Atlantic Coast to the Research Triangle to the Smoky Mountains and everywhere in between. Barack enjoyed Asheville so much when he spent several days preparing for the second Presidential debate that our family vacationed there in 2009.

And my very first trip outside of Washington as First Lady was to Fort Bragg, where I started my effort to do all we can to help our heroic military families.

All the contending cities were places that Barack and I have grown to know and love, so it was a hard choice. But we are thrilled to be bringing the convention to Charlotte.

We hope many of you can join us in Charlotte the week of September 3rd, 2012. But if you can’t, we intend to bring the spirit of the convention — as well as actual, related events to your community and even your own backyard.

More than anything else, we want this to be a grassroots convention for the people. We will finance this convention differently than it’s been done in the past, and we will make sure everyone feels closely tied in to what is happening in Charlotte. This will be a different convention, for a different time.

To help us make sure this is a grassroots convention — The People’s Convention — we need to hear from you. We want to know what you’d like to see at next year’s convention, how and where you plan on watching it — and the very best way we can engage your friends and neighbors.

[name], please share your input with us right now — how can we make The People’s Convention belong to you and your community?

I can’t believe it has been more than two years since my brother Craig introduced me at the 2008 Convention in Denver. It truly feels like it was yesterday.

As I looked out at a sea of thousands of supporters that night, I spoke about my husband — the man whom this country would go on to elect as the 44th President of the United States. I spoke about his fundamental belief — a conviction at the very core of his life’s work — that each of us has something to contribute to the spirit of our nation.

That’s also the belief at the core of The People’s Convention. That the table we sit at together ought to be big enough for everyone. That the thread that binds us — a belief in the promise of this country — is strong enough to sustain us through good times and bad.

Barack talked at the State of the Union of his vision for how America can win the future. That must be the focus now, and I know so many of you will help talk about our plans with your neighbors — that through innovation, education, reform, and responsibility we can make sure America realizes this vision.

But, conventions take time to plan, so please help us make sure that your thoughts and your ideas will ring all the way to Charlotte. Get started now:

http://my.barackobama.com/PeoplesConvention

Looking forward to sharing this together,

Michelle

Read more in Democrats, Elections, Obama.

Note: Bachmann appears to be looking off camera in this video. CNN’s Sam Feist reports that this impression was created because she was focused on the event sponsor’s camera rather than press pool camera which was broadcasting. FOX News was running the pool camera for this event.

TRANSCRIPT

BACHMANN: Good evening; my name is Congresswoman Michele Bachmann from Minnesota’s 6th district.  I want to thank the Tea Party Express and Tea Party HD for inviting me to speak this evening.  I’m here at their request, and not to compete with the official Republican remarks.  The Tea Party is a dynamic force for good in our national conversation, and it’s an honor for me to speak with you.

Two years ago when Barack Obama became our President, unemployment was 7.8%, and our national debt stood at what seemed like a staggering 10.6 trillion dollars.  We wondered whether the President would cut spending, reduce the deficit, and implement real job creating policies.  Unfortunately, the President’s strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program fueled by borrowed money.  The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8%, but not only did that plan fail to deliver, but within three months, the national jobless rate spiked to 9.4%.  It hasn’t been lower for 20 straight months.  While the government grew, we lost more than 2 million jobs.

Let me show you a chart.  Here are unemployment rates over the past 10 years.  In October of 2001, our national unemployment rate was at 5.3%.  In 2008, it was at 6.6%, but just eight months after President Obama promised lower unemployment, that rate spiked to a staggering 10.1%.  Today, unemployment is at 9.4% with about 400,000 new claims every week.  After the 700 billion dollar bailout, the trillion dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money that we don’t have, but instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt.  It was unlike anything we’ve ever seen before in the history of the country.

Deficits were unacceptably high under President Bush, but they exploded under President Obama’s direction, growing the national debt by an astounding 3.1 trillion dollars.  Well what did we buy?  Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy, and which may put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama’s health care bill. Obamacare mandates and penalties may even force many job creators to just stop offering health insurance altogether.  Unless of course, your’s is one of the more than 222 privileged companies or unions that’s already received a government waiver under Obamacare.  In the end, unless we fully repeal Obamacare, a nation that currently enjoys the world’s finest health care might be forced to rely on government-run coverage.  That could have a devastating impact on our national debt for even generations to come.

For two years, President Obama made promises just like the ones we heard him make this evening, yet still, we have high unemployment, devalued housing prices, and the cost of gasoline is skyrocketing.  Well, here’s a few suggestions for fixing our economy: the President could stop the EPA from imposing a job-destroying Cap & Trade system; the President could support a balanced budget amendment; the President could agree to an energy policy that increases American energy production and reduces our dependence on foreign oil; the President could also turn back some of the 132 regulations put in place in the last two years, many of which will cost our economy 100 million dollars or more, and the President should repeal Obamacare and support free market solutions like medical malpractice reform and allowing all Americans to buy any health care policy they like anywhere in the United States.

We need to start making things again in this country, and we can do that by reducing the tax and regulatory burden on job creators.  America will have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.  Think about that.  Look no further to see why jobs are moving over seas, but thanks to you, there’s reason for all of us to have hope that real spending cuts are coming because last November you went to the polls, and you voted out the big spending politicians, and you put in their place great men and women with a commitment to follow our Constitution and cut the size of government.  I believe that we’re in the very early days of a history-making turn in America.  Please know how important your calls, visits, and letters are to the maintenance of our liberty.  Because of you, Congress is responding, and we’re just beginning to start to undo the damage that’s been done the last few years.  Because we believe in lower taxes, we believe in a limited view of government and exceptionalism in America, and I believe America is the indispensable nation of the world.  Just the creation of this nation itself was a miracle.  Who can say that won’t see a miracle again?

The perilous battle that was fought during World War II in the Pacific at Iwo Jima was a battle against all odds, and yet this picture immortalizes the victory of young GIs over the incursion against the Japanese.  These six young men raising the flag came to symbolize all of America coming together to beat back a totalitarian aggressor.  Our current debt crisis we face today is different, but we still need all of us to pull together, but we can do this.  That’s our hope.  We will push forward. We will proclaim liberty throughout the land, and we will do so because we the people will never give up on this great nation.

So God bless you, and God bless the United States of America

END TRANSCRIPT

Note: In fairness, the light bulb ban will be enacted under President Obama, but it was signed into law by President Bush.  There’s enough to criticize Obama over without attempting to tack this to his record.  That said, it should still be repealed, and if (or when) Obama stands in the way of repeal, then this criticism will be wholly appropriate.

Read more in GOP, Obama, Spending & Entitlements.

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