Showing posts with label hometown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hometown. Show all posts

Thursday, August 1, 2013

President Obama in Chattanooga

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MY President came to MY hometown of Chattanooga! It was a great day with people lining Lee Highway and Bonny Oaks Drive with welcome signs hoping to catch a glimpse of the great man.

The Tea Party staged their own rally with "Impeach Obama" signs, but were restricted to the old Target Parking Lot for "security reasons" far away from Bonny Oaks and Amazon where the President made his speech. Ha - was it something they said, perhaps?

The Tennessee GOP made a silly video talking about how the President should "learn something" from the "Real Muricans" in our state - a state that gets plenty of government money, farm subsidies, etc. Luckily, Obama for America (OFA) had their own video welcoming video. The good definitely cancelled out the bad on this day.

































































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Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke Describes Limo Ride with Obama
After being one of the first people to welcome President Barack Obama to Chattanooga, Mayor Andy Berke described his ride from the airport to the Amazon fulfillment center in the presidential limousine, known as "the beast."

"No big deal," Berke joked.
But although the ride may have been brief, Berke said the face time with the president was invaluable for the city. Berke said that during their transit from the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport to Amazon, he shared stories of the city's success with Obama.

"The opportunity to spend a few minutes with the president of the United States comes only once in a lifetime," Berke said. "I certainly wanted to make sure that I portrayed Chattanooga in the best possible light because I think the president was genuinely curious about what we're doing here. It was a fantastic opportunity."

Berke said he and the president discussed items such as the city's record Internet speeds, efforts to reform education in the state and Chattanooga in general.

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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Campaign 2012 ~ Defining Hometown

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Downtown Janesville, Wisconsin

For years Republicans have enjoyed pointing out that if Al Gore had won his home state of Tennessee in the presidential election, he wouldn't have needed Florida, and the vote wouldn't have been decided by the Supreme Court in favor of George W. Bush.

Let's ignore the fact that Gore was much more a citizen of Washington D.C. than Nashville, plus the fact the he knew he seemed further to the left than Bill Clinton on most issues so Tennesseans wouldn't vote for him. He never had an illusions of sweeping all areas of the country, and some would say that Gore actually won Florida, but moving on . . .

This year, Obama won not only his birth-state of Hawaii, but his adopted home state of Illinois. Hawaii matters because of the crazy birthers who seem to forget that Hawaii IS a state of the union, but also because it is a diverse state reflecting the demographic changes that are coming for the rest of the country.

Romney lost Michigan, his birthplace, where he bragged no one needed to ask for his birth certificate. He can blame it on his previous statement that "Detroit should go bankrupt," but the fact remains that he made multiple trips to Michigan and named-dropped his father George, who was once Governor of Michigan, yet it did him absolutely no good.

Romney lost Massachusetts where he was governor once back in his "moderate left-leaning" days. Once Romney swung far to the left and began rubbing elbows with Donald Trump and quoting Rush Limbaugh, he was never going to win the Bay State.

Romney lost New Hampshire where he has the "lake house" even though he campaigned hard there and never took it out of his equation to get to 270 electoral votes.

Romney lost California where the cars in his special elevator garage live. But obviously - he was never going to win there in Blue Land.

He did win Utah, where he graduated summa cum laude from Brigham Young University and "saved the Olympics" as they say. But seriously - any Republican on the ticket was going to win Utah, a solidly red state full of Mormons. Did I mention Romney is a Mormon? So yeah, he won Utah.

But his running mate Paul Ryan had even more trouble connecting with the hometown crowd, if that's possible.

Part of Ryan's stump speech for months - and really for all of his career - was "I'm from the small-town of Janesville, Wisconsin, where my family has lived for decades," or something of that nature. He said it in every interview, in every town-hall meeting, in every speech. His wife and kids live in Janesville instead of Washington and I suspect part of that is so his children can grow up there and use it in their own campaign speeches someday.

But on election night, Janesville said "thanks but no thanks" to Paul Ryan. He not only didn't win the town of Janesville, he didn't win the district, or the state of Wisconsin.

Yet in post-election interviews Ryan is blaming the "urban" voters for his loss, which is ridiculous. Janesville isn't "urban" and I assume most of the town is as white as Paul Ryan. He can't accept that he is out of step with his own hometown.

The L.A. Times Story
. . . the Romney-Ryan ticket didn’t exactly connect with the voters back in Janesville, either.

A struggling blue-collar manufacturing town of 63,575, Janesville lies on the eastern edge of Rock County, Wis., and unofficial election tabulations from the county clerk there show that only 37% of Ryan’s hometown neighbors voted for him and his running mate. Meanwhile, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got 62% of the Janesville vote.

The results were even slightly worse for Ryan from his own polling place at the Hedberg Public Library. Out of 1,428 votes cast there, 65% went for Obama-Biden and just 34% for Romney-Ryan.

. . . in Janesville proper, Ryan fared only a little better in his congressional run than he did in the vice presidential one. Zerban grabbed 54% of the Janesville vote to 44% for Ryan. And at the Hedberg library polling spot, Ryan was the choice of just 41% of voters to 58% for Zerban.

Ryan explained it this way, admitting he lost Janesville due to being too far right, but coming back to this "urban" thesis to explain it away (I guess he is talking about Milwawkee?. Whatever - the truth hurts.

Huffington Post
"Well, as you know, Janesville is a very Democratic town, but I'm a Republican," Ryan said in an interview with Janesville radio station WCLO. "But I've always done very well here, because more people saw me not as a Republican but just as a Janesville guy."

"When you join a national ticket for a party, you become more seen as a Republican guy than necessarily a Janesville guy," he continued. "So I think my image, or the thought people had in their minds of me once I joined the Republican ticket, was more 'Paul Ryan, Republican,' than 'Paul Ryan, Janesville guy.'"

At 11.5 points, Ryan's congressional victory margin in the state was the smallest of his eight House campaigns.

During the interview, Ryan also admitted that President Barack Obama's reelection team ran a better campaign than the Romney/Ryan folks, chalking the Democrats' win up to their ability to mobilize the "urban" vote.

"What the president and his campaign excelled at doing is mobilizing turnout in their critical base areas, and they expanded the turnout above the norms," he said. "They had record turnout in urban areas and all of our polling did not project that kind of turnout, and that's why we thought we had a very good chance at winning this race going into election day."



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Friday, October 19, 2012

Salt Lake City Tribune Rejects Mitt Romney, Endorses Obama

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A major news organization in Utah passed over Mitt Romney today in favor of endorsing Barack Obama for President of the United States.

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This is a big flipping deal for Mitt, who prides himself on his Mormon heritage. Wow. And the Salt Lake Tribune editors were not complimentary to their Olympics-saving Native Son either. This must be devastating to the Romney family. Ann must be talking Mitt down right now, trying to "stabilize" him as she worries about his mental health.
Perhaps reading what's left of his bank book would do it? Or maybe Tagg can threaten to take a swing at Obama again? Or perhaps perusing that binder of women. *wink*



Some excerpts from this breathtaking document . . .

SL Tribune: Too Many Mitts
PhotobucketNowhere has Mitt Romney’s pursuit of the presidency been more warmly welcomed or closely followed than here in Utah. The Republican nominee’s political and religious pedigrees, his adeptly bipartisan governorship of a Democratic state, and his head for business and the bottom line all inspire admiration and hope in our largely Mormon, Republican, business-friendly state.

But it was Romney’s singular role in rescuing Utah’s organization of the 2002 Olympics from a cesspool of scandal, and his oversight of the most successful Winter Games on record, that make him the Beehive State’s favorite adopted son. After all, Romney managed to save the state from ignominy, turning the extravaganza into a showcase for the matchless landscapes, volunteerism and efficiency that told the world what is best and most beautiful about Utah and its people.

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BUT . . .

From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: "Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?"

. . . Where, we ask, is the pragmatic, inclusive Romney, the Massachusetts governor who left the state with a model health care plan in place, the Romney who led Utah to Olympic glory? That Romney skedaddled and is nowhere to be found.

Therefore . . .

PhotobucketThe Salt Lake Tribune editorial board had hoped that Romney would exhibit the same talents for organization, pragmatic problem solving and inspired leadership that he displayed here more than a decade ago. Instead, we have watched him morph into a friend of the far right, then tack toward the center with breathtaking aplomb. Through a pair of presidential debates, Romney’s domestic agenda remains bereft of detail and worthy of mistrust.

Therefore, our endorsement must go to the incumbent, a competent leader who, against tough odds, has guided the country through catastrophe and set a course that, while rocky, is pointing toward a brighter day. The president has earned a second term. Romney, in whatever guise, does not deserve a first.

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