Though many of the state margins were narrow President Obama ran the table winning every swing or battleground state with the possible exception of Florida where votes are still being counted as of 5:30 this morning.
President Obama also won the popular vote by 2 million votes. The President won 303 electoral votes to 206 for Romney. We knew about 11 pm that the President had won when Ohio was called for him.
Democrats also held the Senate. Elizabeth Warren won with a good margin in Massachusetts. Claire McKaskill won in Missouri beating Akin-he of the legitimate rape comment. Joe Donnelly also won in Indiana beating Republican Mourdock. Warren won by eight percentage points. Donnelly won in Indiana by 6 percentage points. Sherrod Brown won re-election. Tammy Baldwin won becoming the first openly gay Senator. Democrats picked up seats in the Senate.
Progressives like you worked their hearts out all over America for our people, our country, our president, and progressive Democrats. We fought and beat the tea party, the oligarchs and massive rich, Karl Rove's strategy, ALEC, the Koch Brothers, and all those who would tear down democracy and destroy the middle class and the labor movement. Women spoke strongly. Latinos spoke strongly. The LGBT community spoke strongly. And AFRICAN-AMERICANS fought back against the neo-poll taxes and disenfranchisement.
And as always our labor movement provided the President a foundation of support, energy, and strong presence.
Posted by Southern on Wednesday, January 16, 2013 @ 23:47:07 EST (141 reads)
Mexican newspapers carry front page photos and stories about the U.S. presidential election and President Barack Obama's re-election, the day after the U.S. presidential election in Mexico City, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012. (AP Photo)
Mexican newspapers carry front page photos and stories about the U.S. presidential election and President Barack Obama's re-election, the day after the U.S. presidential election in Mexico City, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012. (AP Photo) Photo - A newspaper vendor sells dailies with the front page showing President Barack Obama that reads in Spanish "Obama Wins" one day after U.S. elections in Mexico City, Wednesday Nov. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) Photo - People look at newspaper for sale at a newsstand, one with a front page showing President Barack Obama with a headline that reads in Spanish "4 More Years!" one day after U.S. elections in Mexico City, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) Photo - The front page of a Venezuelan newspaper features a picture of U.S. President Barack Obama with a headline reading in Spanish; "Obama: I won!" at a newstand in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012. Newspapers across the globe featured photos of Obama who was re-elected for a second presidential term, defeating his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Tuesday's election. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) Photo - A woman walks past a damaged bus with an image depicting President Barack Obama in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday Nov. 7, 2012. Obama was re-elected for a second presidential term, defeating his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Tuesday's election. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) Photo - Resident Thony Jeff, 14, poses for pictures in front of an image depicting President Barack Obama in Petion-Ville, Haiti, Wednesday Nov. 7, 2012. Obama was re-elected for a second presidential term, defeating his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Tuesday's election. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
Posted by Southern on Wednesday, January 16, 2013 @ 23:21:15 EST (86 reads)
Among the well-wishers for President Obama’s triumphant re-election is Chicago pal and domestic terrorist-turned-professor Bill Ayers.
Writing on the website good.is, Ayers writes:
“Dear President Obama: Congratulations!
“I’m sure this is a moment you want to savor, a time to take a deep breath, get some rest, hydrate, regain your balance, and take a long walk in the sunshine. It might be as well a good time to reflect, rethink, recharge, and perhaps reignite. I sincerely hope that it is, and I urge you to put education on your reflective agenda.”
While Ayers has in the past joked that Obama launched his political career in Ayers’ house, he has been dismayed over Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education and the administration’s use of mild “corporate” reforms that involve competition and accountability.
He continued:
“You have opposed privatizing social security, pointing out the terrible risks the market would impose on seniors if the voucher plan were ever adopted. And yet you’ve supported—in effect—putting the most endangered young people at risk through a similar scheme. We need to expand, deepen, and fortify the public space, especially for the most vulnerable, not turn it over to private managers. The current gold rush of for-profit colleges gobbling up student loans is but one cautionary tale.
Posted by Southern on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 @ 00:34:12 EST (142 reads)
Hitler told Himmler that it was not enough for the Jews simply to die; they must die in agony. What was the best way to prolong their agony? Himmler turned the problem over to his advisers, who concluded that a slow, agonizing death could be brought about by placing Jewish prisoners in freight cars in which the floors were coated with...quicklime...which produced excruciating burns. The advisers estimated that it would take four days for the prisoners to die, and for that whole time the freight cars could be left standing on some forgotten siding.... Finally it was decided that the freight cars should be used in addition to the extermination camps. ----Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
By genocide, the murder of hostages, reprisal raids, forced labor, "euthanasia," starvation, exposure, medical experiments, and terror bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis murdered from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people, most likely 20,946,000 men, women, handicapped, aged, sick, prisoners of war, forced laborers, camp inmates, critics, homosexuals, Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Germans, Czechs, Italians, Poles, French, Ukrainians, and many others. Among them 1,000,000 were children under eighteen years of age.1 And none of these monstrous figures even include civilian and military combat or war-deaths.
Posted by Southern on Thursday, January 03, 2013 @ 22:57:01 EST (181 reads)
The federal government calls them FEMA Corps. But they conjure up memories of the Hitler Youth of 1930’s Germany. Regardless of their name, the Dept of Homeland Security has just graduated its first class of 231 Homeland Youth. Kids, aged 18-24 and recruited from the President’s AmeriCorp volunteers, they represent the first wave of DHS’s youth corps, designed specifically to create a full time, paid, standing army of FEMA Youth across the country.
On September 13, 2012, the Dept of Homeland Security graduated its first class of FEMA Corps youth, aka the Homeland Youth. Image courtesy of DHS.gov.
On September 13, 2012, the Department of Homeland Security graduated its first class of FEMA Corps first-responders. While the idea of having a volunteer force of tens of thousands of volunteers scattered across the country to aid in times of natural disasters sounds great, the details and timing of this new government army is somewhat curious, if not disturbing.
DHS raising an armed army
The first problem one finds with this ‘new army’ is the fact that they are mere children. Yes, 18 is generally the legal age a person can sign a contract, join the military or be tried as an adult. But ask any parent - an 18, 20 or even a 24 year-old is still a naïve, readily-influenced kid.
The second problem with this announcement and program is its timing. Over the past two years, President Obama has signed a number of Executive Orders suspending all civil and Constitutional rights and turning over management of an America under Martial Law to FEMA. Also in that time, domestic federal agencies under DHS, including FEMA, have ordered billions of rounds of ammunition as well as the corresponding firearms. Admittedly, these new weapons and ammunition aren’t to be used in some far-off war or to fight forest fires in California, but right here on the streets of America.
Strange Armored Fighting Vehicles
Individuals around the US have begun reporting the site of strange, new, heavily-armed FEMA fighting vehicles. What would a disaster relief agency like FEMA need with 2,500 brand new GLS armored fighting vehicles? According to the agency’s own mandate, as well as President Obama’s recent Executive Order, the answer is ‘population control’ during a time of Martial Law.
Posted by Southern on Thursday, January 03, 2013 @ 22:38:47 EST (109 reads)
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's legal term in office expired nearly four years ago. But his supporters don't care. In Israel, Washington and throughout the world, Abbas's supporters extol the authoritarian leader as a great moderate. In 2002, desperately searching for a face for the Palestinians that wasn't Yasser Arafat's face, the Left pushed Abbas out from behind Arafat's shadow. Abbas, who served as Arafat's deputy for 39 years, was upheld as a great moderate and placed in the invented position of Palestinian prime minister.
The fact that Abbas was an inveterate Jew-hater who spent four decades in the senior leadership of a terrorist organization and whose doctoral dissertation was a long denial of the Holocaust, was brushed aside.
His leftist supporters don't care that he says Israel has no right to exist. They are untroubled by his 2008 rejection of then-prime minister Ehud Olmert's unprecedentedly generous offer of peace and Palestinian statehood. They don't mind that Abbas has refused to negotiate peace with Israel for the past four years. They don't care that he has signed two unity government deals with Hamas or that he seeks to gain sovereignty for a Palestinian state through the UN and so establish a Palestinian state in a formal state of war with Israel.
They don't care. But most Israelis do. Due to their recognition of his hatred for Israel and due to the terrorism Abbas has condoned and financed for decades, the vast majority of Israelis do not consider him a potential partner for peace. They do not believe that either Abbas or the Palestinians as a whole are remotely interested in being appeased by Israel.
As a consequence, most Israelis greeted Abbas's speech at the UN General Assembly last week with indifference. In that speech, Abbas made clear - yet again - that he remains Arafat's loyal deputy. The majority of Abbas's speech involved a litany of libels against Israel, which he accused of everything from terrorism to apartheid, colonialism, racism, murder, theft, etc., etc., etc.
Posted by Southern on Wednesday, December 19, 2012 @ 21:57:00 EST (98 reads)
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