Finally.

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

There will no doubt be a freakout on the right (big surprise – yawn) as well as by a few liberals with deep religious beliefs but the latest poll indicates that 57 percent of independents (50 percent overall, 65 percent Dems, 22 percent Republicans) are in favor of same-sex marriage. So, as with most issues, Obama is on the right side of this one so let the homophobes and bigots scream and yell to their hate-filled, ugly, little heart’s content. Screw ‘em.

Numbers and politics aside, the President has shown that he possesses the courage of his convictions and a willingness to do or say the right thing. And endorsing same sex-marriage and equality for all regardless of sexual orientation is, without a doubt, the right thing to do.

Having the President endorse same-sex marriage does not end the battle but it does carry the struggle to another level and that is a good thing.

A good day for freedom-loving, fair-minded Americans. A bad day for every other type of American.

UPDATE:

Here we go.

Fox has since changed the headline to “‘OBAMA FLIP FLOPS ON GAY MARRIAGE’

(h/t: Dish)

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

It happened to Kerry. Can it happen to Obama? Nope says Margaret Carlson.

Obama’s belief system — in that hopey-changey business and the post-partisanship thing — has been altered by reality. He doesn’t seem as inclined to turn the other cheek, as he did in the debate about the debt ceiling.

Bring it on, as Bush would say. In an ad for the Obama campaign, Bill Clinton makes the strongest case for the “decider-in-chief,” who would be dog meat if the mission had failed. “Suppose the Navy SEALs had gone in there, and it hadn’t been bin Laden. Suppose they’d been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him.”

Kerry may have been Swift-Boated, but Obama is not going to be SEALed. Republicans are used to calling Democrats cowards and worse. Not this time. Republicans have the squishy, soft, cosseted, consensus-building candidate, while Democrats have the fighter. Finally.

This is true. As Carlson points out in her piece (and David Corn outlined in his book Showdown), Biden and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were both skeptical about the bin Laden kill mission succeeding. Jimmy Carter’s failed 1980 Iran rescue as well as the Black Hawk Down 1993 disaster in Somalia were worrisome reminders of what could go wrong. Despite the skepticism, Obama issued the kill order. It’s not too hard to imagine how a failed mission would have played out in the conservative media.

Given what Romney has already said about his reluctance to go into Pakistan to take down bin Laden, imagine the same scenario with Romney at the helm. There is no way Romney would have risked his good name and gone against the wishes of his Defense Secretary and VP. After checking in with his attorney and stockbroker to determine his personal liability, the mission would have been called off.

But here’s the thing…who gives a damn what Romney would or would not do? The Commander-in-Chief is a guy named Obama and he’s already shown what he’s made of. Let the right throw all the crap they want at him. If ever there was a Democrat prepared to deal with the next six months of lies, innuendo and misinformation, it’s this guy. And if there’s any good that’s come out of three years of Republican bullshit politics, it’s that they’ve toughened up this President to the point where there is virtually nothing more they can say or do which can possibly be worse than what they’ve already said or done.

Let the games begin.

___

( The Obama source photograph is a public domain image. The Romney source photograph is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.)

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

It’s been fun watching conservatives and Romney twist themselves into pretzels trying to undo Mitt’s past words on GM and bin Laden.

Romney, April 2007:

It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. [...] the country would be safer by only ‘a small percentage’ and would see ‘a very insignificant increase in safety’ if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power.

Romney, April 2012:

Of course I would have ordered the taking out of Osama bin Laden. Of course. This is a person who had done terrible harm to America and who represented a continuing threat to civilized people throughout the world. If I had been president of the United States, I would have made the same decision the president made, which was to remove him.

Romney, November 2008:

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually ]guaranteed.

Romney chief strategist, Eric Fehrnstrom, April 2012:

His [Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. He said, ‘If you want to save the auto industry, just don’t write them a check. That will seal their doom. What they need to do is go through a managed bankruptcy process.’

Consider that the crown jewel. The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.

Mitt Romney – a living, breathing cartoon if ever there was one.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Beyond the rhetoric, the political BS, the lies – that is, the concerted effort by the right-wing noise machine to distort and misinform at every opportunity – is the very real progress made by the Obama administration.

You might want to send the following video to every conservative on your email list. It probably won’t change their minds but it will give you the opportunity to rub the truth in their faces while having them jump through hoops trying to explain why none of it is true.

Send it to every lib on your email list too. Three and a half years of dirt from the right can play havoc with one’s recollection of this guy’s accomplishments.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Here’s the package Mitt Romney and his cohorts on the right are trying to sell to swing voters. Jonathan Bernstein views it as a strategy likely doomed for failure.

Want to see a great example of the closed GOP information feedback loop, and why it may prove dangerous for the Republican candidates?

Think about the two Barack Obamas that Republicans are running against. One of them is basically a fraud; he’s never held a job before he somehow wound up the Democratic nominee in 2008. Or, as Mitt Romney asserted today: “It’s hard to create a job if you never had one.” Oh, and he’s entirely dependent on a teleprompter.

The other Obama is the scheming, nefarious, stealth left-winger who any day now is going to unleash his radical socialist agenda. This Obama requires Republicans and conservative to chase down every radical “association” and every allegedly radical thing he’s ever said, no matter how mild.

As many have noted, these two Obamas are somewhat at odds with each other. But the more important point is that neither version builds a convincing case against supporting Obama in 2012. No one is going to buy that Obama is too inexperienced to be president; no one is going to buy that he has some secret agenda that remained secret during four years in the White House.

No one is going to buy it aside from hardcore conservatives who “live in the world where reality is defined by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.” Facts and truth are never going to get through the impenetrable bubble in which these people exist.

All that said, it bears repeating that once Republicans choose their nominee Romney, they will unfailingly coalesce around him and proclaim Mitt Romney to be the One who will save a country and its people from the evil clutches of Obama. With Obama Derangement Syndrome solidly entrenched, confronting the avalanche of lies and misinformation coming in from the right is going to be a battle all the way to November.

The left’s response to all this? No surrender, I hope.

Love that song. Live acoustical version here.

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

In case you’ve forgotten the kind of campaigner Barack Obama can be, take a listen.

That’s some good stuff.

No one should take anything for granted in this election. One huge economic downturn in late October and a President Mittens becomes a real possibility. That said, one can’t help but be anxious to get Barack Obama back on the campaign trail to counter the barrage of lies and misinformation Republicans have been throwing out there for the last year. No one, Democrat or Republican, delivers a message better than this president…and it becomes a whole lot easier when he has truth and facts to back him up.

How good a campaigner is Barack Obama? Well, in the words of Ezra Klein, “That’s how he went, in four years, from Illinois state senator to first African-American President of the United States.”

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

When I’m in need of a chuckle, I point my browser to Conservapedia, the supposedly conservative alternative to Wikipedia. Conservapedia is basically where the far right fringe wackos turn to when they’re in need of ‘encyclopedic’ proof of the lies and bullshit they just heard on Fox News. In short, Conservapedia is to knowledge what the Creationist Museum is to science.

From the Conservapedia entry for 'Barack Hussein Obama'

Anyway, I was doing a Google search for something and accidentally stumbled upon the Conservapedia entry for Barrack Hussein Obama. Not only is it as stupid as stupid gets, it’s hilarious. Here’s the opening paragraph for the entry.

Barack Hussein Obama II also known by the alias Barry Soetoro during his time in Indonesia (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th President of the United States and the controversial recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Overcoming a short political career, Obama defeated Republican nominee John McCain for the presidency in 2008, campaigning on promises of “hope” and “change”. In effect, that change has been an embrace of socialism and liberal policies. Barack Obama has been widely criticized by the American business community and others for his anti-business policies that are killing American jobs during a period of high unemployment. Trend forecaster Gerald Celente indicates that Obama administration’s response to the the failed American economy is more war and the creation of misleading economic statistics.

Can’t you just feel the love? After that, it only gets better. Here’s what they have printed under the sub-heading Early Life.

It has been disputed by some groups whether Obama was actually born in the United States; some people allege that he was born in Kenya. On April 27, 2011 Obama officially released his long form birth certificate, which many experts have determined to be a fake and no legal body has determined its authenticity .

More…

Ayers and Dohrn used their celebrity status among leftists to launch Obama’s career. Ayers, Dohrn and Jeff Jones are authors of Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism, the title taken from The Sayings of Mao Zedong. The book declares “we are communist men and women.” Ayers later jokingly, publicly admitted to ghostwriting Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father and Obama was to appoint several openly avowed Maoists to prominent White House and Executive Branch positions.

And in case you didn’t know…

By Obama’s third year as Commander-in-Chief, over 1200 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan – significantly more than the number who died during President George W. Bush’s term of office.

What about those 4100 soldiers who were killed in Iraq while George Bush was Commander-in-Chief, you ask? Shhh…never happened.

Conservapedia likes to brag that it is used as a learning tool for many children in conservative households who are homeschooled. So the next time someone asks you how a child can grow up to become a Rick Santorum an ignorant, misinformed, bigoted, self-righteous moron, now you know.

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

So you take a year to write a book on your heroic life and few people are interested in reading it. It’s at 343,222 on the Amazon ranking and sinking fast. What to do?

Easy. Take a page out of Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer’s playbook and start a confrontation with the President of the United States the next time he comes by for a visit. Make sure photographers get a good pic of you wagging your finger at the President in a manner which suggests he’s getting a well deserved scolding. And should the President not take the bait and instead remains cool and calm, follow Jan’s lead: spin the hell out of the story and tell the world how tense and awful it all was.

If you do all that, here’s what can happen to that book of yours.

…the governor has used her version of the encounter to get plenty of air time, seeing an increase in sales of her book which she has called a “truth telling” tome. Amazon ranked “Scorpions for Breakfast” at No. 7 on its best sellers list on Friday. The day of the event, the book had been at No. 343,222.

It’s that easy.  So go out there and put together that book you’ve always dreamed of writing. Worry little about the writing style and even less about making it truthful. It matters not. Brewer has been going around saying that her dad died fighting Nazis in WWII even though he died from lung cancer in California in 1955. So don’t get caught up in thinking your book has to be factual. It doesn’t. All that counts is that the book makes you look good and everyone else comes off as a putz.

Once the book is published, practice your ‘ooh, the big black man is scaring me’ look in the mirror. Do all that and you’re ready to invite Barack Obama for Sunday brunch and watch your book sales soar.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

There’s a lot out there on the President’s SOTU, so I’ll keep my thoughts short and sweet.

• The speech did what it had to do which was target liberals and independents and set in motion the 2012 election campaign.
• It took on the right’s case against him (weak, job-killing socialist) and threw it back in their face as the job-creating, bin Laden-killing, commander-in-chief willing to tackle the big problems facing the country.
• Made the case that the economy IS improving. Slow as the recovery might be, the numbers point to an economy which is in a better place than it was in 2009.
• Painted the opposition as the obstructionist, power hungry entity it is.
• And all this while coming off as the adult in the room.  What more do you want?

Whatever criticism liberals might have of this President, he did not disappoint last night and gave every indication that he’s more than ready to face Mitt or Newt.

UPDATE

Draw your own conclusions from this.

An overwhelming majority of Americans approved of the overall message in President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, according to a CBS News poll of speech watchers.

According to the poll, which was conducted online by Knowledge Networks immediately after the president’s address, 91 percent of those who watched the speech approved of the proposals Mr. Obama put forth during his remarks. Only nine percent disapproved.

Last year, 83 percent of viewers approved of Mr. Obama’s State of the Union remarks.

This year, 82 percent of those who watched the speech said they approve of the president’s plans for the economy, up from 53 percent who approved before the speech. Eighty percent said they approved of Mr. Obama’s plans for the deficit — in contrast to 45 percent before the speech. Eighty-three percent approved of Mr. Obama’s proposals regarding Afghanistan, which received only a 57 percent approval rating beforehand.

The sight of Democrats and Republicans sitting side by side gave speech watchers more confidence about the possibility of bipartisan cooperation: 62 percent said they expect more bipartisanship now than in years past.

Encouraging but the 62 percent who are expecting Republicans to play nice and compromise on some issues, sorry but it won’t happen. If you can be sure of anything in this election year, it’s that Republicans are going to obstruct any and all measures to create jobs and improve the economy.  Their only hope for victory in November, regardless of whom they choose as nominee, is that the economy deteriorates and unemployment climbs back up over 9 percent.

Bipartisanship?  Not from this crew of cutthroat, lying Republicans who refuse to place country before party.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

The following letter from a Dish reader is printed in its entirety.

Personally, I am praying that Obama’s messaging improves drastically. (It has failed on multiple occasions – not the least of which was during August/September of 2008.)

The truth is that this President has done a good job in what has been one of the most difficult periods of modern history. He saved the economy from ruin (until the Tea Party took over Congress) with a stimulus that was as large as possible given the political realities, presided over a stock market that fairly quickly recouped many of its losses, presided over almost consecutive monthly increases in private sector job growth (unfortunately balanced by monthly decreases in public sector jobs which I attribute to the GOP further starving government), enacted the only meaningful healthcare reform ever in our history, passed financial reform (no matter what the Left says, he did this), saved the auto industry (which Romney is on record opposing), fired the first salvo of the Arab Spring with his address in Cairo no less, drawn down our footprint in Iraq in a responsible way (and headed toward almost total withdrawal), stopped numerous terrorist attacks in this country, stopped torture as policy, repealed DADT, joined the international community in a measured and responsible way to bring down an odious tyrant in Qaddafi, and killed a whole generation of al Qaeda leaders. And taking out Osama bin Laden the way he did will go down as one of the bravest military actions in American history.

I know this President is not popular, and it is very unpopular to defend him in such a way. I don’t care. For this country to dump him for anyone on the other side would be a terrible thing. Progress is slow and painful, but we are doing it. Is that fashionable to say? No. Again, I don’t care.

Bottom line: If the administration fails to find a way to get the message out on its accomplishments and the economy shows no sign of recovery in the next 12 months, winning a second term will be iffy.  But if the White House does find a way to be heard above the noise, bullshit and misinformation, then regardless of the state of the economy, Barack Obama wins in 2012.  And doubly so given the pathetic field of candidates vying to become the Republican nominee.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.