(Video) Ha! Obama Hilariously Destroys the GOP

A pal just sent me this vid and I think it pretty accurately and hilariously illustrates what we've been seeing this year and what we can expect to happen for the next 8 months. Obama has figured out the Republicans are gonna to demand the opposite of everything he wants......they can't help themselves. And Obama is finally using that. They're going to take the bait Every Single Time:

Exhibit A) payroll tax holiday.
Exhibit B) Birth control legislation
Exhibit C) I have a feeling he's going to start making hay over congressional resistance to ending oil and gas subsidies...

Enjoy this extremely accurate vid:

Obama Gets It: Proposes $8 Billion To Help Community Colleges Meet Local Employment Needs

I admit I get a bit of a thrill exploring places where I'm probably not supposed to be...particularly empty and dark parts of buildings. So I kind of enjoyed calling in on a White House press conference call. Now if you're gonna say "Uh...you're totally allowed to do that." My response would be to you "Hush up, now! You're ruining my fun!" It sure as heck FELT exciting.

The receptionist person was all like "And what news organization are you with sir?"

"News organization? I....of course...I'm with Muskegon Critic." **TEE HEE HEE** I told her I'm a NEWS ORGANIZATION...MUAAA HA HA HA HA HA HAAA! AAAHHHH HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA....

"Hold on a moment, let me patch you in...."

AHA! My cunning disguise as an actual DC reporter mucky muck was successful! And I didn't even have to wear pants! The FOOLS!

As I sat outside in my living room I listened in on the deepest darkest, darkest, filthiest secrets the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Education were wiling to share in this here press conference. Stuff like "The president's budget proposes 8 billion dollars for community colleges to partner with businesses to provide training in job skills that are in demand."

The new fund, announced at an event at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., would support community college-based training programs that would expand training to meet the needs of employers in high-growth sectors, provide workers with the latest certified training and skills, and invest in registered apprenticeships and other on-the-job training opportunities.

The fund would also support paid internships for low-income community college students that would allow them to simultaneously earn credit for work-based learning and gain relevant employment experience.

This, of course, is huge. It's particularly critical for communities hit with a massive upheaval and transformation in how their economies function, such as manufacturing communities. Within the space of just a few years people have lost high paying jobs jobs where they'd been most of their lives and were either thrust into low wage jobs or they now have no jobs at all. It's a trend that's been going on for decades, and has come to a fine point in the past half decade.

A lot of manufacturing communities once offered jobs for folks right out of high school...and in many instances jobs right out of 9th grade. So there's often a low level of higher degree holders, and a low level of skilled labor. That's a problem.

For example...on the national level, about 39% of Americans over 25 have an Associate's degree or higher. Muskegon County, a historically industrial region, is almost half that 22% holding an Associates degree or higher.

In addition to there being a reduction of jobs overall, the drag on the local economy here is exacerbated by the fact that a low percentage of workers have the skill set many modern businesses need. So industrial regions are at a competitive disadvantage.

The local community college is sort of the forefront of the effort to bring the workforce up to speed AFFORDABLY and in direct response to and in communication with the needs of local businesses.

This is something THIS administration understands. The direct infusion of cash to help community colleges connect with businesses and create programs and curriculums that train people to meet the needs of local employers is ENORMOUS. And it's a clear sign our President GETS it.

Occupy Wall Street Seems to be Drawing Fire Away from the Prez

I've been pondering Occupy Wall Street this morning, post 2011 elections.

Yesterday we say

• The first Michigan State level representative recalled in 28 years
• Folks in Mississippi reject a "life starts at conception" law
• The architect of the extreme Arizona immigrant crackdown recalled
• Ohio's union busting law overturned by public demand

Overall, great news. Somehow it seems the tide is turning. Some of that tide shift is definitely due to Occupy Wall Street highlighting the problems of America's wealth disparity and corporate corruption.

Where main stream media outlets once shied away from wealth disparity talk, they are now venturing into that territory. Where media outlets once shied away from talk of bank and mortgage fraud, they are now venturing into that territory -- my father, for example, was contacted by Bloomberg News who wanted to interview him about his experiences as a lawyer helping people through bank fraud.

OWS has signaled that talking about wealth disparity and the trouble in the middle class isn't just acceptable...but that it's on the minds of millions of Americans.

I'm starting to think OWS has had one more side effect on American political discourse: It's redirected the attention of the conservative noise machine to Occupy Wall Street instead of at Barack Obama. As much of a juggernaut as the conservative noise machine is, it's designed to pound on one idea at a time. Over and over, repeating and repeating. Though it's never seemed to me to be terribly good at walking and chewing gum at the same time, not great at pounding out more than one message at a time.

Now with OWS to draw the fire, the endless stream of fabricated conservative nonsense against Obama seems largely to have taken a back seat. He's able to spread the message that the Conservatives have been deliberately sabotaging our economy for short term political gain...and it's an idea gaining traction, with 50% of Floridians believing Conservatives are selling America out this way.

Plus it certainly helps everybody involved that Obama is now starting to pick up the populist message OWS has been laying down.

Republicans sure do love to raise taxes on regular Americans

And as usual we see a Republican party not just willing to raise taxes on regular Americans, but EXCITED and PASSIONATE about doing it. Republicans can't wait to raise taxes on regular Americans.

The same folks who dug their heels in on rescinding the Bush Tax Cut on millionaires and billionaires are NOW DEMANDING that the payroll tax holiday for regular American workers be rescinded...they're blocking Obama's attempts to renew the payroll tax holiday for Americans receiving paychecks, which reduces the amount Americans pay in payroll taxes...

...the cynical game going on here is, Obama cut Americans' taxes and the Republicans in DC sure would LOVE to see those tax cuts go away on Obama's watch. But hey, if throwing hard working Americans under the bus in a hard economy is what it takes to win....you can be certain the current Republican leadership is willing to do it.

That goes for the State as well as the Federal level. While Michigan's Republican leadership slashed taxes for large corporations they paid for those tax cuts by removing child tax credits for young families, the earned income tax credit for low wage WORKERS, the homestead tax credit for people who actually live in their homes and then started taxing pensions on older, retired Michiganders...

...Even as the Republican Party was screaming foul on removing tax credits for private jet owners they were taking a hammer to tax credits for families with children.

There's simply no middle class tax hike Republicans can say no to lately.

And Here's Obama Roughing up a "White Woman" Plus Joe the Plumber

Sure, it's no George Bush massaging German Chancellor Angela Merkel's shoulders



But the Right is all about making a stink over Obama lightly touching the shoulder of a woman who was questioning him, with the race bating title "Obama grabs white woman to make her shut up." The title of the vid has been changed since the original posting. Watch the "grab" for yourself...



IN other news, Obama also roughed up Joe the Plumber when they spoke. Watch this similarly aggressive shoulder touch.



The man's a MANIAC! He's just so full of rage!

Looks like we're looking at a 2008 redux with Republicans trying to brand Obama a Muslim, a terrorist who hates America, a thug...anything to stir up suspicion in some racist nonsense, half cloaked in ultrasheer hate.

It didn't so much work then. Won't work now. I may turn out to rally around him liberals who had previously been luke warm or disillusioned.

Good luck, Republicans.

Obama Fighting to Take Rightful Credit for Job Creation

The problem with being an actual job creator like Obama is that if you don't speak up and explicitly say "Yeah, those 600 new jobs in your city...that was from the policies I put forward. Remember that huge stimulus you love to hate? Right...yeah, that's where these jobs came from.." then people will just assume their favorite candidates did it, right or wrong. In the case of socially-conservative Holland, Michigan...that would be wrong.

Explicitly because of Obama's policies, BECAUSE of them, there are over 600 new jobs in Holland, Michigan making advanced batteries for electric cars at two new advanced battery manufacturing plants in Michigan.

BECAUSE of Democratic policies and the Obama administration's policies and Granholm's policies and support for renewable energy, Holland, Michigan, is ALSO home to a successful wind turbine blade manufacturing company called Energetx which employs hundreds more people in Holland.

Holland, by the way, isn't famous for its love for Democrats. But holy smokes are they major benefactors of Democratic policies. They sure do love the jobs Obama and Granholm dished out. Well over a thousand of them. And the DeVos family, also very anti-Democratic sure is willing to cash in on a new industry whose demand was fostered and established by Democratic policies....

Holland —
The Windquest Group, a private investment group headed by Dick and Betsy DeVos, has made an investment in Energetx Composites in Holland, Windquest announced Thursday.

The investment will be used to continue the scale-up of Energetx Composites’ manufacturing equipment for the production of utility-scale wind turbine blades, according to a news release from Energetx. Details of the transaction, including the amount of the investment, were not disclosed.

And now Gentex, an automotive parts manufacturer, is expanding in the area with plans to hire over 1100 new workers AGAIN in the Holland area. Zeeland to be specific. Gentex, courted by the Grahnolm administration with tax credits and abatements...then given a stable industry by Obama's rescue of the domestic auto industry. Again, another 1100 jobs created in an EXTREMELY conservative area based on Democratic policies and industrial and manufacturing support while Republicans screamed about picking winners and losers and the free market.

Thousands and thousands of jobs lured to a single region based almost exclusively on Democratic policies and incentives and support. And the kicker is, unless they are made ACUTELY aware that their city's well being and growth is coming on the backs of Democratic policies...this hyperconservative city will still probably vote Republican. They'll vote for the very people who once stood to obstruct every single step that lead to thousands of jobs in the Holland area.

It's infuriating.

And perhaps our President knows that. Perhaps that's why he's been to Holland, Michigan TWICE in the past year to speak at the opening of two different battery manufacturing plants in Holland.

Because if Obama doesn't do it...Bill Huizenga and Rick Snyder will take credit for the very things they tried to kill.

And we can't let them do that.

The Tea Party Recession

I wish I could have been at Obama's speech today in Holland, Michigan. It's just 20 miles to the Sounth of me, but darnit, I had a raptor center I had to bring my kids to, and besides I didn't have a ticket. But It seems Obama's got the snare drum out and he's steadily laying down a beat about the Tea Party Recession. The Tea Party Recession...

...This isn't a man on the defense making talking points to shoot down criticisms of his leadership or economic stewardship.

This is a man going on the offense. He's chiseling his own talking points into the rock slab halls of the media juggernaut. No, no...he does not tell the marble what it will reveal. The marble tells him what it is...what must be revealed.

In this case, it's The Tea Party Recession. The current economic troubles aren't from some years long coke fueled banker manic gambling phase, like our last major crisis. And they're not from uncertainty in the middle east, or from wars, or from jobless figures.

No...the current economic troubles are entirely fabricated from whole cloth, tailored to drag America down until it can be dried and crumbled and smoked in a crack pipe to induce the euphoric illusion of some delusional, fanciful notion of an America that never existed, nor ever should exist.

And the Tea Party is so wonderfully and unabashedly proud of its willingness to drive America into oblivion so they can get their fix, that they are just too easy a target for this new type of framing....the Tea Party Recession. Because, after all, it was the very same Tea Party principles that lead us into the recession in the first place: lower taxes for millionaires and billionaires, deregulation, and a twisted obsession with focusing the entire national dialog on how they intend to change the US Constitution with amendments they want to add and amendments they want to scrap.

In an energetic speech to workers at a Holland, Michigan, hybrid car battery plant helped by government stimulus funds, Obama said the U.S. economy and American workers are capable of being the best in the world, but were being held back by political stalemate in Congress.
"There is nothing wrong with our country. There is something wrong with our politics," Obama declared to applause.
Last week's first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's "could have been entirely avoided if there had been a willingness to compromise in Congress," the president said, adding: "It didn't happen because we didn't have the capacity to pay our bills. It happened because Washington doesn't have the capacity to come together and get things done."

A Don't Buy Chinese [Solar Panels] Clause in the Military Authorization Law

Ah yes, another win for green manufacturing and yet another victory from the productive 111th congress lame duck session...

The military authorization law signed by President Obama on Friday contains a little-noticed “Buy American” provision for the Defense Department purchases of solar panels — a provision that is likely to dismay Chinese officials as President Hu Jintao prepares to visit the United States next week.

The new Military authorization law contains a Buy American (generally speaking) clause, requiring that any solar panels purchased by the military, and the military is quite the purchaser of solar panels, be purchased from US companies.

Rad.

Now to be more detailed, it's not purely a Buy American clause, though it's effectively that. There's a work-around that more or less amount to that, though, in that it restricts purchasing from China while staying compliance with WTO rules:

Two prominent trade lawyers said in e-mails over the weekend that the law’s language meant that in practice, the Defense Department must buy solar panels from any country that signs the W.T.O.’s side agreement on government procurement. Earlier American trade laws require compliance with that agreement.

Virtually all industrialized countries have signed the side agreement, which requires free trade in government purchases. China vowed to sign it as soon as possible when it joined the W.T.O. in November 2001, but still has not done so.

[snip]

Inland Chinese provinces and cities have strongly lobbied Beijing not to sign the agreement because they want to retain the legal right to continue steering government contracts to local companies, said a trade policy adviser to the Chinese government who insisted on anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

It's nice to see the Obama administration taking a more determined stance against China's one-sided trade practices in the realm of renewable energy. For one reason, these new technologies need to be nurtured in a fair and safe environment if the US intends to be competitive in them in the long run. And another reason, it's high time China be called out on its own protectionist crap with a stern school-marmish ruler across the knuckles.

The solar panel provision in the defense appropriations law comes as President Obama has ordered a broad investigation into whether Chinese export subsidies, local content requirements and other rules have violated W.T.O. rules. As a result of the investigation, the United States started a W.T.O. case on Dec. 22 against what it said were Chinese wind turbine manufacturing subsidies.

American trade officials said then that they were still examining other Chinese clean-energy subsidy policies to decide whether to file additional W.T.O. cases.

Michigan one of the fastest growing producers of solar cells i America, an industry growing even faster in the state than the production of wind turbine parts...which also seems like it's going to have some protections soon.

This new Buy American law is going to directly benefit the manufacturing states.

Along the same topic...Hey look! Ford is installing a massive 500 kw solar array into one of its Michigan automobile plants. It's estimated that it will save the company 116 grand.

When the plant is inactive, such as holidays, the collected solar energy will go into the energy storage system for later use, providing power during periods of insufficient or inconsistent sunlight, says Ford. In addition, the energy storage system will be able to recharge from the grid during off-peak hours when energy is available at a lower cost.

The combined systems are expected to save an estimated $160,000 per year in energy costs. Installation of the system begins later this year.

Cool.