[Note from the Editor: Update at the end of this post.]

Still trying to figure out what happened on Thursday night in Oakland? It isn't any wonder if you follow mainly the msm, like the above local ABC affiliate above. Here is the "report" that went along with this video:

A window at President Barack Obama's Oakland campaign office was smashed Friday night as a group of protesters marched through downtown.

A group of 100-200 Occupy Oakland protesters began marching down Telegraph Avenue after being denied a permit to protest near the First Friday event at Art Murmur.

A few Obama campaign volunteers were working inside the office when the window was smashed in with a brick. No one was hurt.

Police made no arrests.

An error in this report states Friday, when it was actually Thursday.

Continue reading »

Republicans are blocking gun reform but now they are criticizing President Obama for not passing it? The DNC is fuming over a new RNC ad that shows Obama consoling the mother of a victim of the Newtown school shooting -- but criticizes Obama for not passing gun reform in the wake of the shooting. The RNC insisted they used a clip from an ABC News package, with RNC spokesman Sean Spicer tweeting “I don’t think we control ABC.” It’s just another instance of the high-stakes fight over gun reform, coming just two days after New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte was confronted at a town hall meeting by the daughter of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal, who was killed in the shooting.

The Hill:

The ad, called "The First 100 Days," criticizes Obama on the failure of his legislative agenda, including gun control, so far in Congress. It features a voiceover saying that Obama’s agenda has “already suffered a string of defeats,” and a black and white photo of the president reaching to embrace Nicole Hockley, the distraught mother of a victim in the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse called the ad “disgraceful” in a tweet and “disgusting” in another.

"The bottom feeders behind this one should be embarrassed ," said Jeremy Funk, a spokesman for the Democratic organization Americans United for Change.

In 2009, the RNC also released a video marking President Obama's first 100 days in office, and it was in such poor taste that the RNC pulled it.

How long until this one backfires on them? 3...2..1...

[Probably not suitable for work, language]

This is your Moment of Clarity #224: Congress and Obama passed a bill to gut the STOCK Act, which was specifically designed to stop Congress from benefitting from insider trading. And surprise, it passed unanimously.

Keep fighting,

Lee

The Kickstarter campaign for the Moment of Clarity show is in full swing, and there are prizes left.

Chicago police on Sunday that said they are questioning two people in the shooting death of a young mother whose sister stood behind President Obama during his speech on gun violence on the same day. Janay McFarlane, 18, was shot to death on Friday night while walking through North Chicago with a friend, who police said may have been the intended target. MacFarland’s death came just hours after her 14-year-old sister, Destini Warren, attended a speech by President Obama decrying the city’s gun violence.

McFarlane's mother, Angela Blakely, said Sunday: "I really feel like somebody cut a part of my heart out."

Blakely said the bullet that killed McFarlane was meant for a friend. McFarlane was supposed to graduate from an alternative school this spring, her mother said, and wanted to go into the culinary arts.

"I'm just really, truly just trying to process it, knowing that I'm not taking my baby home any more," Blakely said.

Among the survivors, Janay MacFarland leaves behind her three-month-old son, Jayden, pictured below in a family photo:

The election is finally over, so what happens next? Reihan Salam, a conservative blogger at National Review Online’s “The Agenda”, and long-time New York Times columnist Bob Herbert join Bill to assess and debate how the election revealed changes in American social and political culture. They also discuss what Obama’s re-election means for working families and people at the bottom of our economic ladder.

“I think this election really did demonstrate that there’s been a dramatic change particularly with regard to social issues and how folks talk about them,” Salam tells Bill. “I think that that has proven very sobering for a lot of folks on the right.” Salam is the co-author, with Ross Douthat, of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.

Herbert says, “I think the Republican Party is accurately defined as a party that looks out for the interests of the very wealthy. The Democratic Party less so, but I think they look out for the interests of the wealthy, too, before they look out for the interests of working Americans.” Herbert has been traveling the country for the past two years, reporting for his forthcoming book Wounded Colossus. He is now a distinguished fellow at the think tank Demos.

A full transcript of the show is available here.

[Warning: NSFW]

This is your Moment of Clarity #184: Obama, Akin, Warren, legitimate rape, marriage equality, marijuana, and more. By the end of this four minutes, you will know everything you need to about what happened last night in election 2012.

Keep fighting,

-Lee

I think Nate Silver just tossed in all these decimal points to mock Politico and Joe Scarborough.

The One Percent is not only increasing their share of wealth — they’re using it to spread millions among political candidates who serve their interests. Example: Goldman Sachs, which gave more money than any other major American corporation to Barack Obama in 2008, is switching alliances this year; their employees have given $900,000 both to Mitt Romney’s campaign and to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. Why? Because, says the Wall Street Journal, the Goldman Sachs gang felt betrayed by President Obama’s modest attempts at financial reform.

To discuss how the super-rich have willfully confused their self-interest with America’s interest, Bill is joined by Rolling Stone magazine’s Matt Taibbi, who regularly shines his spotlight on scandals involving big business and government, and journalist Chrystia Freeland, author of the new book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.

Following the conversation, Bill shares his thoughts on corporate executives who — enabled by the Citizens United ruling — are strong-arming their employees to vote as they say, from the Murray Energy CEO who reportedly made his workers spend unpaid time at a pro-Romney rally; to David and Charles Koch, who sent anti-Obama and pro-Romney materials to the 45,000 employees of their subsidiary Georgia Pacific; to ASG Solutions boss Arthur Allen, who sent an intimidating email to his employees.

The full transcript is available here.

Via ThinkProgress:

Student Loan Debt Has Ballooned Since 1990: Many of the faces of Occupy Wall Street and the blog “We Are the 99 Percent” are former students saddled with huge college debt. These individual stories and public protests have made the nation take notice, including President Obama who announced a plan that would lower some debtors’ monthly payments. The following graphic shows how student loan debt has skyrocketed over the last 21 years, topping $1 trillion in unpaid debt:

With so many students - who are known to tend to vote liberal - what's a Republican to do but try to keep them from the polls?

The New York Times reports:

Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote.

Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.

Seven states have already passed strict laws requiring a government-issued ID (like a driver’s license or a passport) to vote, which many students don’t have, and 27 others are considering such measures. Many of those laws have been interpreted as prohibiting out-of-state driver’s licenses from being used for voting.

It’s all part of a widespread Republican effort to restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs. On Friday, the Justice Department, finally taking action against these abuses, blocked the new voter ID law in South Carolina.

Creating an explanation for the new ID laws, as Republicans don't generally want to actually say the purpose is to turn away voters, they've claimed the stricter laws are "to prevent voter fraud." However, this explanation falls flat since there is almost no voter fraud in the nation to prevent.

The stricter voter ID laws aren't just having a negative impact on the rights of students to vote: Think Progress reports that "A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations."

"Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate."