A YouTube video produced by the Romney for President campaign got hit by a takedown request on Monday, highlighting the challenges that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act can pose for free speech. For days, President Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney have been trading barbs over Romney’s role in layoffs initiated by Bain Capital…
Tag: obama
Mitt Romneys painfully bad week
Thursday morning, the Obama campaign released a tough ad attacking the record of downsizing and outsourcing at Romney’s old firm, Bain Capital. The Romney campaign reacted with outrage. That same day, it announced a multimillion-dollar purchase of airtime for an ad that bluntly accused President Obama of lying. In support of the ad, Romney’s team…
Under Obama, Taxes Hit A 30-Year Low
To hear conservatives and Tea Partiers tell it, President Obama is a serial tax-raiser who has increased taxes on “millions of Americans.” But according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office, tax rates under Obama hit a 30-year low in 2009, in part because of the tax cuts he implemented in response to…
Islamophobia: A Bipartisan Project
When the New York Times ran its story on Obama’s “kill list,” showing the president poring over names of people to potentially assassinate in drone strikes, it sparked a controversy. The content of that controversy was not over this extraordinary revelation about Obama’s use of power but rather over the leaking of state secrets, which…
Obama Fires Back On Spending Accusations : NPR [transcript]
DAVID GREENE, HOST: Lets stay with money and politics. On the campaign trail, President Obama and Mitt Romney have been feuding recently over the deficit. At issue is just how to characterize the Obama administrations record on spending. Depending on who you listen to, the president is either an out of control spender or hes…
Obama calls Romney speech a cow pie of distortion
Speaking directly to Iowans, Obama used local lingo to slam Romney: “Governor Romney came to Des Moines last week and warned of a prairie fire of debt,” he said. “But he left out some facts. His speech was more like a cow pie of distortion.” Then he quipped, “I don’t know whose record he twisted…
Young Voters, Once Buoyed By Obama, Turn Away [audio]
In 2004, then-candidate Barack Obama campaigned on a message of hope and gained overwhelming support from young voters. In an op-ed in the Los Angles Times, Neal Gabler writes that many of those young voters are disappointed with his tenure, and they’ve turned to “DIY politics” instead. SOURCE Young Voters, Once Buoyed By Obama, Turn…
Obama Made A Strong First Impression At Harvard
Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe is a sort of legal rock star, particularly among liberals. First-year law students he has never met don’t just show up at his door saying, “I want to work for you.” At least they didn’t until March 31, 1989. Tribe recently retrieved his daily calendar from that year and pointed to…
President Obama Makes an Argument for Rebuilding America
Speaking to 3,000 attendees of the Building and Construction Trades Department conference in Washington, DC this morning, President Obama made an argument for investing in rebuilding America. He told the crowd: [As] a share of the economy, Europe invests more than twice what we do in infrastructure; China about four times as much. Are we…
Obama: “As long as I’m president, we’re gonna keep moving forward…You’ve got my signature on it”
Here’s President Obama talking about Lilly Ledbetter, fair pay, and change. He also doesn’t miss the chance to take a quick jab at Mitt Romney.
Predict Obama’s odds in the 2012 election
Political scientists at George Washington, Yale and UCLA believe most elections can be predicted with just a few pieces of information. They created a formula that uses economic growth, presidential approval ratings in June and incumbency to forecast President Obama’s share of the two-party vote in the Nov. 6 election. SOURCE: Predict Obamas odds in…
Military Shift Campaign Donations From Ron Paul To Obama In March
The Army Times reported in February that anti-war GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX) was at that time, “by far,” getting the most in campaign contributions from members of the United States military. According to a review of Federal Election Commission data, Paul received nearly $250,000 in donations from servicemembers, President Obama, $130,000 and GOP…
Obama: Some in GOP Forget How America Was Built
Pounding home the theme of his re-election race against Mitt Romney, Obama said he wants to ensure tax fairness for all while Republicans want to “shower the wealthiest Americans” with tax cuts they don’t need. Obama said the public doesn’t like to see tax dollars wasted, but does want to see money spent in areas…
Obama: ‘I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth’
“Somebody gave me an education. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn’t. But somebody gave us a chance,” Obama said in a speech at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. “Right now we have two competing visions of our future, and the choice could not be clearer,” said the…
Americans Disagree with the Ryan Budget’s Priorities
Conservative politicians have eagerly embraced Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) radical fiscal year 2013 budget proposal, which would slash social spending to the bone while preserving or extending all tax breaks for the wealthy. President Barack Obama, in contrast, is trying to make the case that the Ryan budget has its priorities completely wrong and that…
Conservatives Wince At 5th Circuit’s Retaliatory Move
The legal battle over the constitutionality of the health care law was always going to be hard-fought. But in the aftermath of Supreme Court arguments, Republican-appointed appellate judges have taken the unusual step of publicly confronting President Obama after he bristled at the notion that the high court would overturn the law. That wouldn’t be…
President Obama Signs the Payroll Tax Cut
President Obama signed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 — extending the payroll tax cut and emergency jobless benefits through the end of the year. Last week, the President called on Americans from across the country to add their voices to the debate and let us know what they would…
Senators Take Emergency Oil Reserve Hostage to Force Keystone Approval
The Senate is trying to force a pipeline route through Nebraska that is not yet identified, let alone evaluated to determine whether its impact on air and water quality. Because much of the tar sands oil refined in the U.S. would go overseas, Americans would bear the environmental risks while other nations get the oil….
The best way to judge Obama’s first term — and his second
Of course, the presidency is not a lab experiment. We cannot tweak a few variables and rerun the last few years to test their effect. In that way, reviewing the flaws in a presidency is a hard thing to do well, and an impossible thing to do perfectly. Every political pundit — indeed, every citizen…
Poll: Obama Hits 50% Approval, Leads All GOP Rivals, For Now
The new CBS News/NY Times poll definitely contains the kind of information that could put a little spring in any president’s step. The poll, released Tuesday, found President Obama’s approval rating had bounced back up to 50 percent from 47 percent in January. Not a huge improvement but in presidential politics, getting to at least…