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...

According to most of the polls right after the presidential debate on Wednesday night, Mitt Romney was the big winner, including according to this CNN poll. Yet in this new ad put out by the DNC in response to the debate, Mitt Romney came across as an overbearing buffoon who doesn't understand the rules of debate, or more likely -- doesn't think the rules apply to him.

But according to Twitter, the moderator was the clear loser. Jim Lehrer and "Poor Jim" were both trending topics on Twitter an hour into the debate. An anonymous Twitter account was quickly created in honor of "silent Jim Lehrer" and quickly topped 3,000 followers.

Sarah Palin, in an interview with the Fox Business Report, responded to Senator John Kerry's mention of her during the Democratic National Convention:

"I think he diminished himself by even mentioning my name. How does he even know my name? I mean aren't these guys supposed to be these big wig elites who don't waste their time on the little people like me."

During his DNC address Thursday night, Kerry slammed Romney's foreign policy experience by referencing an infamous remark made by Palin during the 2008 presidential race.

"Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from Alaska," said Kerry. "Mitt Romney talks like he's only seen Russia by watching Rocky IV."

In the interest of fairness, I'll have to agree with Sarah Palin. I think Senator Kerry "diminished" himself by mentioning her name.

The President of United Auto Workers local 5285, Ricky McDowell, said that organized labor supports President Barack Obama because he saved their jobs.

“With the help of President Obama saving the Big Three, with the stimulus money, it saved the GM and Chrysler brothers and sisters. So without the support of the international union from Detroit, and if we had let Chrysler and Chevrolet and GM go down, there wouldn’t be a Big Three, there wouldn’t be an international union,” he told PBS during a Labor Day parade in Charlotte, North Carolina. “So he did save our jobs.”

Several hundred union members, drummers and step teams marched in the parade while chanting pro-union and pro-Obama slogans, hoping to draw attention to the fact that North Carolina is the nation’s least unionized state.

The Democratic National Convention is being held in Charlotte this year, beginning Tuesday, September 4th, and UAW president Bob King and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka are both scheduled to speakers.

Courtey of Tim Pool (@timcast):

A Brief tour of camp Obamaville at the DNC in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Via OccupyWallSt.:

There’s just a few days left until the March on Wall Street South mobilization kicks off! See below for a schedule of events and many other updates. You can also find transportation leaving from your area to bring folks to Charlotte!

Schedule of Events

Saturday, September 1: Festivaliberación begins the mobilization! There are many great workshops being planned, and an amazing concert at night featuring local artists, Jasiri X, and Rebel Diaz. Check out this great video Jasiri X just recorded to help get the word out!

And we’ve got some exciting news: the Undocubus will also be arriving at the festival in the evening and joining us for the march the next day! You won’t want to miss this!

Sunday, September 2: Thousands will flood the streets of Charlotte for the March on Wall Street South, beginning at 11am in Frazier Park. We’ll march together at 1pm to the big banks, and past the sites where the Democratic National Convention will meet during the week. We say: YES to jobs, housing, healthcare, education, the environment, workers rights and justice, NO to wars, cutbacks, racism and bigotry, and deportations.

The main targets of the march include Bank of America’s world headquarters, Wells Fargo’s eastern headquarters, the Time Warner Cable Arena, and the Bank of America Stadium. Additionally, there will be two stops along the route for a peoples’ tribunal and speak out against these banks and corporations. We’ll stop in front of the international headquarters of Bank of America and hear from people who have been directly impacted by home foreclosures, student debt, and BofA’s bankrolling of the private prison system, war, and environmental destruction. Then, we’ll stop in front of the headquarters of Duke Energy. We’ll hear from folks impacted by Duke’s funding of dirty energy, and how Duke funds the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the right-wing bill mill.

Monday, September 3, 1pm: We’ll join the Labor Day Parade in the morning, and gather in the afternoon for the historic Southern Workers Assembly, starting at 1pm at Wedgewood Baptist Church. More info on the Southern Workers Assembly:

Join Southern unions, workers organizations, civil/human rights groups, immigrant rights groups, unemployed, young workers, faith and community for a workers speak-out that uplifts our on-the-ground actual workers’ rights struggles in the US South.

The Southern working class must encourage our workers and organizations to have an independent presence at the Democratic National Convention as an opportunity to discuss, plan and organize around our own working class needs and struggles for independent political action as we continue to challenge Right-To-Work (for less) & Taft-Hartley laws, low wages, denial of collective bargaining, and workers’ human rights connected with the historical demands against the South’s legacy of Jim Crow laws, anti-immigrant scapegoating and racism.

The Southern region is the least unionized region in the country. NC is the single least unionized state and is home of Wall Street South as headquarters of Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank East with the largest concentration of finance capital outside NYC. Workers must let the big banks, corporations and both parties know that we as workers will continue building our powerful Southern movement that addresses our needs as workers and not corporate greed! Enough is enough! We will Organize, Unionize and fightback!

Continue reading »

The Republican National Convention is taking place in Tampa starting August 27th. The Coalition to March on the RNC encourages you to join us and stand in solidarity as we march at the RNC to fight back against the political elite and the 1% agenda.

As of now, we are a Coalition uniting groups from around the country to say NO to this political system that only works for the 1% and therefore are marching at the Republican National Convention to let our voices be heard. Together we stand to march for good jobs, healthcare, affordable education, equality and peace. On top of this, we stand against all parties of the 1% and have also endorsed the March on Wall St. South, who will protest the DNC in Charlotte, NC. For too long people have suffered while the rich got richer. We say money for human needs, not on wars overseas and corporate greed. Together, we are planning a 5000 strong march at the first day of the convention on Aug 27th. We have hundreds of national and local organizations such as Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Get EQUAL, Dream defenders, United National Antiwar Coalition, Occupy Tampa, Occupy USF, Occupy Pensacola, Occupy Tallahassee and more (See here for full list) endorsing us and we would love for all Occupy Assemblies to come down to Tampa to join and/or endorse our coalition. Only through unity is there strength.

We will be encouraging people to sleep at Occupy Tampa's Voice of Freedom park or at these parks that allow camping for a nominal fee [Editor's note: Please be aware that a tropical storm system, potentially a hurricane, is expected to effect Tampa during the Convention. The RNC isn't telling people not to go to Florida, so neither are we. But you should check with organizers about alternatives in case of flooding.] We will be rallying at Perry Harvey Sr. Park, located at 1200 N. Orange Ave Tampa, FL, at 10 am and will be marching from the park through the streets of Tampa to "Protest RNC Square" at around noon. See here for the parade route.

Thanks and please e-mail us at marchonthernc@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

Also visit:
http://www.marchonthernc.com
https://twitter.com/marchonthernc
http://marchonthernc.tumblr.com/

In solidarity, -Coalition to March on the RNC-

For more info about the RNC and the Occupy movement's plans, see also: Occupy Tampa's Official Statement Regarding the RNC

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced today in a press release that it has recently moved its primary banking relationship to Amalgamated Bank, America's Labor Bank. The DNC will use Amalgamated Bank's cash management services to handle its day-to-day banking needs.

Amalgamated Bank was founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America so that workers, labor unions, and progressive organizations would be able to bank with an institution that represented their interests. Today, Amalgamated Bank's largest shareholder is Workers United, an SEIU affiliate.

In announcing the new alliance with Amalgamated, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, "We are proud to join forces with Amalgamated Bank, an organization with a 90-year legacy of reflecting the values of our nation's middle class. Amalgamated and the Democratic Party share a common heritage of advocating for positive changes in our economy and society to help working men and women achieve their fair share of the American dream. Furthermore, at the DNC, we have a fiduciary responsibility to those who invest in our party; it is critical that we honor their efforts to strengthen our infrastructure and build our organization by partnering with an institution that shares our commitment to standing with America's working families and small businesses, who we believe are the backbone of our country."

Mitt Romney is going to have some unwanted company on his upcoming bus tour across several swing states.

The Democratic National Committee announced on Thursday that it will stage its own four-day bus tour alongside the Romney campaign’s trip through Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. The tour, called “Romney Economics: The Middle Class Under the Bus Tour,” will begin on Friday with a news conference in Alexandria, Virginia.

Organizers said they will highlight Mitt Romney’s record of failure as Governor of Massachusetts, the lack of support small businesses received from Governor Romney’s Administration and Romney’s proposed tax hike on middle-class families to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The DNC’s latest tour represents a reprise of the successful tour by the same name that the DNC conducted in June to respond to Mitt Romney’s tour at the time, which included stops in NH, PA, OH, IA, WI and MI.

“Throughout Mitt Romney’s career, middle-class families have frequently found themselves thrown under the bus as a result of his failed record and top-down economic policies,” the committee said in a news release. "When Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, the number of business start-ups fell by 10 percent and hit its lowest point during his last year in office. Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, and Romney hiked taxes and fees by $750 million a year in addition to saddling the Commonwealth with the highest debt per person in the country."

The committee further stated that "Policies Mitt Romney has embraced as a candidate would only further erode middle-class security. Mitt Romney would hike taxes on the middle class to pay for massive tax cuts for wealthy Americans like Romney. Independent economists found that Romney’s plan would raise taxes on the average middle-class family with children by $2,000 in order to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires."

They also hammered Romney for favoring a tax plan that benefits millionaires and billionaires like himself while raising taxes on the middle class, as he continues to refuse to release more of his own tax returns. The DNC tour organizers insist that "Americans have a right to learn more about why Romney had a Swiss Bank Account, how low a tax rate he has paid and if he even paid taxes at all some years, and what his finances looked like while he was outsourcing jobs, offshoring his own money and laying off workers in the private sector."

Speakers on the tour include Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the committee, Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and Chet Culver, a former governor of Iowa. Two state representatives from Massachusetts will speak at the opening news conference: Kathi-Anne Reinstein and David Linsky, both long-serving Democrats.

The Romney campaign announced its bus tour earlier this week, leading to speculation on what the itinerary might say about his pick for vice president. The final stop is in Ohio, the home state of the rumored front-runner, Senator Rob Portman.

The side of the committee’s bus features tire tracks over the words “Middle Class” and the slogan: “Romney Economics: Outsourcing, Offshoring, Out of Touch.”

Courtesy of the DNC, highlights from #RomneyShambles. In case you missed David Cameron's stinging comeback to Romney's implication that London wasn't prepared for the Olympics:

"We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world," the prime minister said, pointedly. "Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere." (Romney ran the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake Ciy, Utah.)

I just hope that Romney isn't headed to any other nations overseas to show off his foreign diplomacy skills. We really can't spare any allies.