Herman Cain’s bizarre bunny-shooting video
Former pizza magnate Herman Cain has been out of the presidential race for months, but don’t tell him that. Cain, who held the lead among Republican candidates before a series of sexual harassment allegations surfaced – admittedly, well before a single vote was cast – continues to seek relevance by pumping out campaign-like material on his web site and various social media outlets.
On Monday, a new Cain Solutions spot under the current umbrella of “Sick of Stimulus” drew the ire of animal lovers and was briefly pulled from the website YouTube.
The 37-second “Sick of Stimulus” spot, entitled “Rabbit,” showed a young girl holding a large, cute, black and white Easter bunny. “This is small business,” says the girl. “This is small business under the current tax code,” she adds, placing the rabbit into what looks like a cozy straw bed but is in fact a catapult. The bunny – now animated, not real – is then hurled into the air, where an actor dressed in a suit blows it to pieces with a shotgun.
On his website, Cain assures that “no actual bunnies were harmed” in the making of the spot. “Animals are still safer appearing in Herman Cain’s web advertisements than they are in PETA’s care,” he boasts.
YouTube pulled the Cain Connections spot and put up a notice saying its community of viewers had flagged the spot as “inappropriate.” That brought a furious response from Cain: “This is free speech. This is free speech under YouTube. I have some questions!” A triumphant Cain later returned to Facebook and Twitter to say that he had come back from his “YouTube time-out.”
The Cain Train, when it was rolling toward the White House, had a history of unconventional advertising. In a famous spot, campaign manager Mark Block ended a testimonial toward Cain by taking a drag on a cigarette and blowing smoke at the camera.
The first Sick of Stimulus ad, released in February, had the same slightly strange little girl tossing a goldfish – said to represent “the economy” – out of a bowl and then dumping dirt on the fish as it gasped for breath on the ground. “This is the economy on stimulus,” she said, and with a final shriek, “ANY QUESTIONS??”
Republican Issa backs off Obama corrupt comment
What a difference an election makes to one’s perspective.
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa now says it was in the “heat of the campaign” that he shot off the comment about President Barack Obama heard around the blogosphere.
Memory refresher: It was on Oct. 19 that Issa said on the Rush Limbaugh show: “There will be a certain degree of gridlock as the president adjusts to the fact that he has been one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times. He has ignored the very laws that he said were so vital when he was a senator.”
Now that Republicans have won control of the House of Representatives, Issa is set to become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has softened the rhetoric.
George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Good Morning America tried every which way to press Issa on whether he stood by his Obama comment.
Issa, who opposed the financial bailout, complained that the Obama administration had “failed to be accountable” about the “$700 billion worth of walking around money in the stimulus…”
(The pricetag for the stimulus package is actually $814 billion).
I’d still like to know why Issa never ran for California governor after he sponsored the Gray Davis recall vote. Was he too afraid to run himself, or was it all really just a charade to put Ahnold in the gov’s mansion?
Washington Extra – Painful choices
When it comes to framing economic policy, it looks increasingly as though Republicans are winning the debate. Not only have they made “stimulus” almost a dirty word but there seems to be a growing feeling that deficit-financed spending is not a great way to pull the economy out of a recession. Forget the conclusions of the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office about how the bailouts and stimulus of 2008 and 2009 saved millions of jobs. Forget the global consensus around the need for coordinated stimulus after the financial crisis. The American public is simply not convinced.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll released today found 57 percent of Americans believe that, when economic times are tough, cutting the deficit is a better way to create jobs than deficit-financed stimulus.
With the U.S. congressional elections just six weeks away, this finding is bad news for President Barack Obama as he struggles to convince people that Republicans drove the economy into a deep ditch and Democrats are hard at work pulling it out.
But there could be a silver lining, if broad public concern about the deficit forces Americans to confront some tough choices after the Nov. 2 election.
Right now, Democrats and Republicans seem to be miles apart on economic policy. But there is at least a chance they may find common ground in 2011 over the need to get government spending under control. Tough choices mean politicians are going to have to be honest about economic realities and about the need for shared sacrifices because, as Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Reuters Washington Summit, “it’s not going to be a pain-free exercise.”
“At some point you’re going to move beyond these kinds of sound bite throwaways, pull the pin out of the grenade and throw it across the table and scare the bejeezus out of everybody — and get real,” Josten said.
Finally today, as predicted by Washington Extra a couple of weeks ago, Larry Summers is on his way out. Summers will step down from his job as director of the White House National Economic Council at the end of the year and return to his position as professor at Harvard University, officials say.
from Maggie Fox:
Stimulus package does provide some jobs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 25 years into the AIDS pandemic, scientists finally have a vaccine that protects some people -- but instead of celebrating, they are going back to the drawing board.
The vaccine, a combination of two older vaccines, only lowered the infection rate by about a third after three years among 16,000 ordinary Thai volunteers. Vaccines need to be at least 50 percent effective, and usually 70 to 80 percent effective, to be useful.
Worse, no one knows why it worked.
"Additional studies are clearly needed to understand how this vaccine regimen reduced the risk of HIV infection," Dr. Eric Schoomaker, surgeon general of the U.S. Army, which helped pay for the study, told reporters.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, "We need to bring the best minds together and map the way forward."
The vaccine is a combination of Sanofi-Pasteur's ALVAC canarypox/HIV vaccine, which includes synthetic versions of three HIV genes, and the failed HIV vaccine AIDSVAX, made by a San Francisco company called VaxGen and now owned by the nonprofit Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases.
"It is likely that significant efforts will be needed to fully understand the study results and to appreciate how they will inform the next steps to develop and deliver a safe and effective HIV vaccine," Dr. Peter Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories, said in a statement.
Bill Clinton to Obama: Don’t be so gloomy on economy
Bill Clinton has some advice for President Barack Obama — lighten up a little on the economic comments, dude.
In an interview with ABC News, the former president said he likes the fact that Obama does not engage in happy talk when he says “the economy could get worse before it gets better,” and that the $787 billion economic stimulus plan is only a start on the road to economic recovery.
“I’m glad he shot straight with us,” the husband of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
But, he added, “I just want the American people to know that he’s confident that we are gonna get out of this and he feels good about the long run.”
American presidents often have a tendency to talk up the good things about U.S. policy as a way of trying to encourage Americans, but sometimes that can go too far, as evidenced by President George W. Bush’s repeated reassurances about progress being made in the Iraq war when clearly things were going down hill there.
Clinton, as he did when he was president, took a few shots at the Republicans after most of them voted against the stimulus.
“I think there are some of them who really believe that just-say-no politics is good politics,” he said. Photo credit: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann (Clinton speaks in Davos, Jan 29)
tc you have to watch the signs,i was never a clinton fan, but he is a very smart man.this might be his game plan now,to try and rewrite his legacy.,he is sitting on the perimeter making suggestions,you can guarantee that if any thing hits the fan not part of it,but any accolades out there he is savey enough to join in the celebration. biden is potentiality always going to screw up,and i can see clinton now quietly saying well i recommended hilliey,and most of obama,s cabinet are clinton segregates.this guy can,t help himself he is going to try and give the impression that he is pulling obama,s strings.
Stimulus cash not so bad after all, some find
Last week, Republicans were nearly united in their opposition to the massive $787 billion stimulus bill. But now that it’s been signed into law, many are changing their tune.
Nine Republican House members from Florida, who all voted against the stimulus bill, are now asking the government to send money to their state quickly, Politico reports.
North Carolina Representative Heath Shuler, who also voted against the bill, has also told his constituents he’s going to fight for federal dollars.
And Michigan Republican Pete Hoekstra, who voted against the bill, is encouraging people to take advantage of its $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.
“If you know of someone thinking of buying first home, now may be the time. Stimulus incentive is very generous! Up to 8k! Check it out,” he wrote in his Twitter feed.
Even South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford, one of the bill’s most ardent critics, is backing away from his earlier suggestion that he might refuse stimulus cash.
Photo credit: REUTERS/Jason Reed
SF. With only 52 percent of the vote, there is no mandate. Nearly half the country does not want his brand of change.
Say what you want, but the current liberal political majority (the country is still just right of center) won’t last.
Whenever this happens, those who side in with the majority say the other side is dead. It isn’t and it won’t take long for the conservatives to come back and lead this country to true financial and military strength in this dangerous world. Micheal Steele was an excellent choice to lead the charge. If you have ever heard the man speak, you would realize he speaks for the majority of this country.
The First Draft: Ghost Town
On the day that the government gives itself $787 billion to hand out, turns out there’s nobody in Washington to print it up and hand it out.
After a long Presidents’ Day weekend, President Barack Obama will load the 1,000-page stimulus bill onto Air Force One today and fly it to Denver to sign it into law.
Congress has adjourned for the week after passing the bill on Friday, so lawmakers are likely back home taking credit for — or distancing themselves from — the record-setting spending package.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ditched town as well, on her first foreign trip. She’s in Japan today, before continuing on to Indonesia, South Korea and China.
Automakers hope that the $787 billion isn’t the end of the story. General Motors and Chrysler will submit their restructuring plans to the government today with the hopes of securing additional billions in government aid.
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo: REUTERS/Larry Downing (Republican Minority Leader John Boehner and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor look on following the passage of the stimulus package in Washington)
people should think through why they are for this spending bill,a lot of posting that i am reading suggests that they have not a clue what is in it,but they are for it because the republicans are against it.as a republican i honestly believe republican opposition is because of the size of the money involved,and because they have some check how obamb,s cabinet wanted it pushed through with out the necessary scrutiny. is the recklessness because their expectations of obama is so great? that they are prepared to throw all caution to the wind?and the reality is that the people who drafted this bill in congress,have proven they are not the smartest guys in town.
Obama family heads for first trip to presidential retreat
In another first for the new First Family, President Barack Obama and his brood left the White House on Saturday for a helicopter trip to Camp David, the presidential retreat outside Washington.
Dressed casually and looking relaxed, Obama left the executive mansion with his wife Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, mother-in-law Marian Robinson and an unidentified friend of the girls.
They boarded the awaiting helicopter and took off over the White House grounds. Spectators gathered outside the gates to watch.
The president and his family planned to stay at the retreat in Maryland until Sunday afternoon.
Camp David, in Catoctin Mountain Park, has been used as a relaxation spot for presidents since the era of Franklin Roosevelt and also hosts foreign leaders for visits and summits.
Obama has indicated he feels cooped up a bit in the White House, which the family has lived in for just over two weeks.
If he misses the travel of the presidential campaign, next week will feel familiar. Obama embarks on a roadshow of sorts on Monday to advocate for his economic stimulus package, with stops planned in Indiana and Florida.
Wow 3 weeks in to his Presidentcy and he needs a berak? Com on you wanted to get stuff done. So man up and get things going.
Obama mobilizes grassroots supporters
President Barack Obama is mobilizing his grassroots supporters to help build support for his $825 billion economic stimulus package.
In an e-mail sent out Friday, former Obama campaign worker Mitch Stewart urged the campaign’s most ardent activists to host house parties on Feb. 6 to build support for the plan, which must still clear the Senate after passing the House on a sharply partisan vote on Wednesday.
“The economic crisis can seem overwhelming and complex, but you can help the people you know connect the recovery plan to their lives and learn more about why it’s important,” Stewart said.
It will be a first test for the new organization, Organizing for America, that was built to capture the momentum from Obama’s record-setting presidential campaign to help him enact his policies now that he’s president.
The new group, housed in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, retains Obama’s database of 13 million campaign supporters and has enlisted Stewart and several other campaign veterans to oversee it.
Stewart’s message suggests that the group will take a soft touch, at least initially, by seeking to build support at the grassroots level rather than getting members to lobby lawmakers directly.
Stewart sent the message to those who have already hosted Obama house parties. The organization said 4,200 members hosted house parties in December – how many will heed the call next week?
More than 11 countries, including Germany, Japan and now the UK are in recession and the Republicans think they’re still in office.
House Republicans see Obama as sincere, just misguided
WASHINGTON – Republicans in the House of Representatives say they appreciate Democratic President Barack Obama’s efforts to win their support for the economic stimulus bill, which is now approaching $900 billion. But they have made it clear that the partisan divide remains extremely hard to bridge.
“He’s sincere. I think he’s passionate,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, said on Thursday at a retreat for House Republicans at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Virginia.
“When he spoke to House Republicans, it was clear to me his sincerity and passion about the level of debt,” he said. “Clearly, we disagree on the economic stimulus effect of the government spending.”
Obama met with the House Republicans on Tuesday but failed to win a single vote from them on House passage of the stimulus plan the next day. With the fight over the legislation now focused on the Senate, Republicans have insisted on a greater emphasis on tax cuts and less on federal spending to reverse the deepening recession.
The House Republican plan includes cutting the lowest income tax rates, expanding tax breaks and incentives to small businesses and eliminating most of the spending House Democrats have put forward.
“It seems to me it’s more either ideological, or it’s just power politics in Congress and spending money on pent-up constituencies that haven’t had a ton of spending for a long time,” said Representative Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican.
Ryan, who is the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said that while a bipartisan deal on the stimulus package is probably elusive, Obama “did a good job of laying the groundwork for the future collaboration on other projects by coming to us.”
Danielle. Actually, many of the things you call a disaster were actually good policies/laws/appointments. Just naming off a list of what “you” think are disasters doesn’t really add to the discussion. Thank you for your list though.
BTW, when Bush was first in office, he did exactly what Obama is doing now. Bush did court the democrats and had several of them over to the White House just like Obama is having republicans over to the White House. In the end, it didn’t help Bush and in the end it won’t help Obama. The only real difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama speaks more smoothly (like a snake). He is trying to get the republicans to eat the apple.
In reality, Obama is not a “new kind of politician” like he said all through his campaign. So far he has shown he is just the same as every other politician who wins the White House. Bush and Obama are really cut from the same cloth, just on different sides of the isle.
that video is actually kind of funny