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Official Barack Obama Twitter Account Invites People to ‘Stick It to Climate Change Deniers’

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Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB / AFP / GettyPresident Barack Obama’s official Twitter account late Tuesday asked people to help ‘stick it to climate change deniers’ by signing a petition in support of Obama’s plan to cut carbon pollution.

“This is a big moment in the fight against climate change — stick it to climate change deniers by adding your name,” the tweet asked.

The account is mostly run by staffers for Organizing for Action, a group that supports Obama’s policy agenda, although the president does occasionally tweet on it. Still, the decision to tweet out such a pointed, partisan message under Obama’s official Twitter account is a far cry from Obama’s message as a candidate that he wants to unite the country.

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Snowden Movie Indicts Obama

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Photo Credit: Showbiz 411Edward Snowden Doc Premieres: Shocking inside look at how he did it

Citizen Four is the shocking doc about Edward Snowden made by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Just screened tonight was the two hour film will be released by the Weinstein Company this month. It doesn’t paint the Obama administration in a very good light as Snowden explains how the government has violated privacy rights on a massive scale. Also the filmmakers clearly indicate that all roads lead to POTUS, a fairly serious accusation. There may be serious repercussions.

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In This Election, Obama’s Party Benches Him

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Photo Credit: Doug Mills / The New York TimesWhen he soared to victory by almost 10 million votes in 2008, President Obama won in states like Virginia that Democratic candidates had not captured since 1964. He was trumpeted as a transformational leader who remade American politics by creating a new electoral map and a diverse voter coalition to shape the Democratic Party for the 21st century.

But for now he has been reduced to something else: an isolated political figure who is viewed as a liability to Democrats in the very states where voters by the thousands had once stood to cheer him.

When Mr. Obama entered the campaign fray last week, he did so by returning to the unconditional embrace of his own hometown, in a blue state where the incumbent Democratic senator faces scant opposition and the Democratic governor is running in part on his support for the Affordable Care Act. On Tuesday, the president attended private fund-raisers in Manhattan, to be followed by similar events in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Arkansas it is not.

As November nears, Mr. Obama and his loyalists are being forced to reconcile that it is not only Democrats in conservative-leaning states, like Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who are avoiding him. The president who became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to twice win a majority of the vote is flying in politically restricted airspace.

Democratic senators in Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia — states that were pivotal to his success and whose demographics reflect his winning coalition of young, minority and female voters — do not want him. Nor does his party’s Senate nominee in Iowa, where Mr. Obama won twice and whose youth-filled 2008 Democratic caucuses vaulted him toward the nomination.

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Voter Opposition to Obama at 16-Year High, Worse than Bush, Clinton

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Angry and frustrated voters are planning to use the midterm elections in one month to tell President Obama they oppose his agenda, the highest “no vote” percentage in the last 16 years measured by Gallup.

The polling outfit found that 32 percent of voters want to send a message of opposition with their vote, compared to just 20 percent who are sending a signal of support.

That is 13 points higher than in 1998 when former President Clinton was headed to impeachment for lying about his sex affair with a former White House intern and even a smidge higher — 2 points — than in 2008, when Americans were tired of President Bush’s military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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WATCH: Fired Up Obama to Immigration Activists: 'No Force On Earth Can Stop Us'

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Photo Credit: YouTubeBy Daniel Halper.

A fired up President Barack Obama had a message to immigration activists at a dinner this evening in Washington, D.C.: “no force on earth can stop us.”

“The clearest path to change is to change [the voter turnout] number,” said Obama “Si se puede, si votamos! Yes, we can, if we vote!”

“You know, earlier this year, I had a chance to host a screening of the film Cesar Chavez at the White House, and I was reminded that Cesar organized for nearly 20 years before his first major victory. He never saw that time as a failure. Looking back, he said, I remember the families who joined our movement and paid dues long before there was any hope of winning contracts. I remember thinking then that with spirit like that, no force on earth could stop us.

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Photo Credit: John Moore / GettyImmigration News Today: US Mayors Agree to ‘Support and Welcome’ Refugee Central American Children

A dozen U.S. mayors have agreed to support immigrant children from Central America seeking refuge.

Welcoming America, a nonprofit organization that promotes cooperation between foreign-born and U.S.-born Americans, released a letter signed by 12 mayors and a county executive promising to “compassionately support and welcome the young children from Central America seeking refuge in the U.S.”

“As we reflect back on the initial concerns raised around children fleeing violence, we see that our values have prevailed,” said Welcoming America Executive Director David Lubell. “These leaders are demonstrating that communities have responded with compassion, and can successfully help children in need, now and into the future.”

The letter acknowledged young children from Central American countries have traveled thousands of miles to seek shelter in the U.S. According to Welcoming America’s letter, the Central American minors have encountered abuse during the travel north. Despite the minors’ surrender to U.S. border patrol agents, the children still pursue help.

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Pentagon Official: The President Is Lying To America — About Us, And About ISIS

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By Joseph Miller.

President Barack Obama has taken a lot of flack since his Sunday night “60 Minutes” interview, in which he blamed the intelligence community for his failure to tackle the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. And that is right and proper. Because not only was his excuse of blaming us a lie, but when questioned on his lie, White House press secretary Josh Earnest doubled down with a whole new lie — both of which are easily, publicly proven false.

On Sunday, Obama said the intelligence community had underestimated the rise of ISIS, saying in an interview with CBS, “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.”

But we know that isn’t true, as nearly a dozen administration officials have testified to the threat posed by ISIS publicly over the last year.

The fact that the president chose to use the word “they” instead of “we” immediately drew condemnation from friend and foe alike, who saw it as the president’s attempt to pass the buck.

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Prominent Democrat: The only people who ‘underestimated’ ISIS were in the White House

BY NOAH ROTHMAN.

“I think, our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.”

That was President Barack Obama’s response to CBS reporter Steve Kroft who asked the president if he was surprised by the rapid rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria – a group which he had previously dismissed as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee” team.

As Ed Morrissey observed, it took only hours for The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake to find well-connected sources willing to denounce the president’s dishonest buck passing. Using some rather coarse language, one frustrated former Pentagon official accused the president of either being mendacious or ignoring his intelligence briefings. Morrissey observed that even New York Times reporters found the president’s testimony in his own defense wanting.

Now, even some Democrats are jumping ship. Former Rear Admiral Joe Sestak, a two-term Democratic member of the House of Representatives, a House Armed Services Committee member, and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010, was asked on Monday how it was possible for the intelligence community so gravely underestimate ISIS. Sestak appeared to surprise his MSNBC interlocutor when he noted that the only people who got ISIS wrong work in the Obama administration.

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In Partisan Pitch, Obama Tells Hispanics ‘I Need You to Have My Back’

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Photo Credit: AP / Jacquelyn MartinWith frustration mounting, President Barack Obama sought Thursday to quell doubts he’ll use his presidential powers to act on immigration, telling Hispanics and immigration activists it’s “not a question of if but when.”

At the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual gala, Obama warned activists that his eventual actions will spark intense political opposition that could threaten the durability of what he does. In a partisan pitch a month before Election Day, he urged Hispanics across the U.S. to use their votes to improve prospects in the future for a legislative fix.

“The moment I act — and it will be taking place between the November election and the end of the year — opponents of reform will roll out the same old scare tactics,” Obama said. “When opponents are out there saying who knows what, I’m going to need you to have my back.”

Once hailed as a champion for Hispanic rights, Obama’s relationship with the Hispanic community has become strained since he decided last month to abandon his earlier pledge to act quickly after summer’s end to help some immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Instead, he said he’d wait until after the Nov. 4 elections, exasperating immigration activists who accused the president of putting politics ahead of their families and said they had waited far too long already

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Kudos to Panetta for Telling Truth About Obama and Iraq

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Photo Credit: Cliff OwenFormer CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s new memoir, “Worthy Fights,” promises to be much like other books from former Obama administration officials. It will provide insight normally reserved until after a president leaves office.

Panetta couldn’t wait. Like former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he wants to get his side of the story out there before it’s cast in concrete by sycophants who will write their own versions of events in books lauding Obama’s handling of virtually everything he’s touched since becoming president.

Kudos to Panetta for revealing how Obama’s inner circle sabotaged any chance to leave a residual military force in Iraq in 2011. Iraq, the United States and allies throughout the region and indeed the world are now caught up in the consequences. ISIS, born from the ashes of Al Qaeda in Iraq, is now a force the world must deal with.

In his book Panetta says he argued behind the scenes for a small number of troops to be left to continue training Iraq’s military. To no avail. “Those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests,” he writes. It was politics at its best.

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Mark Levin Calls for Investigation into Obama Intel Briefings

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Photo Credit: White HouseBy Wynton Hall.

On Tuesday, conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin called for an investigation into the contents of President Barack Obama’s daily intelligence briefings that warned of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rise years ago–a claim substantiated by Obama’s own national security staff in comments to the Daily Mail.

“He was aware of all of it, if he had read his intelligence briefings,” said Levin. “He is the commander-in-chief. The reason they put together that daily intelligence briefing–Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and sometimes two or three times a day, depending–is so he’ll read it. That’s the least he can do, because most presidents, all previous presidents, have had it explained to them, so they can ask questions right there on the spot and interact. But not Obama.”

Levin said an investigation is needed to find out “what Obama knew and when he knew it” about the Islamic State’s rise to power.

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Photo Credit: Mark Levin: ‘Have You Noticed Nothing Really Works Under This President?’

By Susan Jones.

“[H]ave you noticed really works under this president, from the Secret Service to immigration to the economy?” conservative talk-radio host Mark Levin asked Fox News’s Sean Hannity Wednesday night.

“Is there anything this president, from your perspective, has done well?” Hannity asked Levin.

“No. There’s not a thing he’s done well,” Levin replied. “And here’s the problem, Sean. People who support big government, centralized government, liberalism — well, congratulations, you have it. And it’s an absolute disaster.

“And here’s what’s remarkable to me. He doesn’t go back and actually look at something, have some circumspection, say, You know, we’re going to fix Obamacare. Let’s pull back. Maybe we bit off more than we can chew. It’s full speed ahead, the foot on the gas pedal.

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Flashback: Senator Obama Rips Bush for Being Unprepared for Avian Flu Epidemic

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Photo Credit: Pete SouzaA nice catch from our friends at Grabien, who got it from Ace [update] and who had to go all the way back to 2005 to find this nugget and the contemporaneous coverage at the NYT. At the time, the US prepared for a predicted epidemic of the avian flu, also known as H5N1, of global proportions. The virus had been identified for 18 years by that time, but by the end of 2004 had only resulted in 36 deaths and 50 known cases over the prior two years, according to WHO data. In 2005, the number of cases would jump to 98 and deaths to 43, and the prevention of a pandemic became a high priority. At that time, then-Senator Barack Obama scolded the Bush administration on the Senate floor, and quarterbacked a protest letter from his fellow Democrats over the slow response and lack of preparedness by the White House:

This lack of planning is compounded by the fact that we still don’t have a FDA approved vaccine against avian flu, and the one drug that many countries are relying on—Tamiflu—may be less effective than experts had thought. The manufacturer is also struggling to meet the demand, and it could take up to 2 years for it to make enough for the U.S. stockpile, presuming this Administration finally puts in an order for the drug. …

The failure to prepare for emergencies can have devastating consequences. We learned that lesson the hard way after Hurricane Katrina. This nation must not be caught off-guard when faced with the prospect of an avian flu pandemic. The consequences are too high.

The flyways for migratory birds are well-established. We know that avian flu will likely hit the United States in a matter of time. With the regular flu season coming up shortly, conditions will be favorable for reassortment of the avian flu virus with the annual flu virus. Such reassortment could lead to a mutated virus that could be transmitted efficiently between humans, which is the last condition needed for pandemic flu.

The question is will we be ready when that happens? Let’s make sure that answer is yes. I urge my colleagues in the Senate and the House to push this Administration to take the action needed to prevent a catastrophe that we have not seen during our lifetimes.”

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