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Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association ("We Sell Fear"©) is gearing up for the election year fundraising blitz. Imagine, if you will, President Barack Obama carrying out a full-scale national crackdown on guns. Now that you're done laughing, read just what paranoid flames Wayne is willing to fan to keep his million-dollar paycheck:

Obama administration officials are deliberately keeping gun owners in the dark about the president’s gun-control agenda as we head into next year’s national election, because administration officials know that when NRA members and gun owners show up at the polls en masse, anti-gun candidates lose.

The Obama campaign’s strategy goes like this:

Neutralize gun owners and NRA members as a political force in the upcoming national election by pretending to be pro-gun or at least not focused on pushing a gun-control agenda;

With gun owners neutralized, Obama will be able to win the election. After the president is re-elected, he won’t have to answer to voters because he won’t have to face another re-election battle;

Launch a full-scale, all-out assault to rip the Second Amendment out of the Bill of Rights through legislation, litigation, regulation, executive orders and international treaties — in short, every lever of power at the administration’s disposal.

Barack Obama spent his entire political career proudly and publicly pushing for the most radical anti-gun positions you can imagine. He endorsed a total ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. He opposed right-to-carry laws. He voted to ban nearly all commonly used hunting-rifle ammunition.

During the presidential primary debates, Obama even vowed to re-impose the discredited Clinton gun ban, which banned many commonly owned firearms used for hunting and self-defense.

Obama hasn’t had a sudden change of heart; rather, he’s making a purely political calculation by staying quiet on the gun issue until the time is right. In the meantime, he’s gearing up for his second-term assault on the Second Amendment in a number of ways.

Hah! It's more than a tad ironic that the CEO of the NRA is selling the same line Obama true believers do: "He's keeping his powder dry! Just wait until his second term!" The truth is, the president has shown no interest in actually doing anything to control guns, although he occasionally offers tepid verbal support, like after Gabby Gifford's shooting.

But the NRA hasn't lived in the fact-based world for several decades now. Richard Feldman, former NRA lobbyist, is a public affairs lawyer who wrote "Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist". He points out that the name of the game for NRA leadership is keeping themselves highly compensated:

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It's so crazy, isn't it? Scary black man in the White House! If Obama had ever actually done a thing to control guns, I could see it. But he's been missing in action on the topic for a very long time. Amazing, the things people use to scare themselves:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CBS Washington) — A gun company advertisement that warns of impending gun control compares President Obama to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

The USAAmmo ad shows side-by-side pictures of Obama with Hitler, Stalin and other dictators who committed atrocities across the world. The ad, which is also accompanied by a video, warns that gun control is imminent and foreshadows that the U.S. could face millions in casualties if they are not allowed to defend themselves.

USAAmmo states that “tyranny is knocking down the doors of American cities daily” and that Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and other gun control advocates “are secretly conspiring American Citizens of the right to bear arms.”

Trace Williams, director of operations for USAAmmo, defended the ad that was emailed Monday. He told CBS Washington that “Obama and his various czars are infringing on the rights of Americans to own guns.”

“He’s anti-gun and he’s obviously a socialist cramming health care down American’s throats,” Williams said. “That is exactly how those people in that ad rose to power.”

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

This is really good news - it will not only generate paychecks, it will save a lot of energy. (Props to President Obama!) Bill Clinton talked about this at length at the blogger meeting I attended a few years ago, I was surprised at the huge potential savings in retrofitting:

WASHINGTON, DC – President Obama today announced nearly $4 billion in combined federal and private sector energy upgrades to buildings over the next 2 years. These investments will save billions in energy costs, promote energy independence, and, according to independent estimates, create tens of thousands of jobs in the hard-hit construction sector.

The $4 billion investment announced today includes a $2 billion commitment, made through the issuance of a Presidential Memorandum, to energy upgrades of federal buildings using long term energy savings to pay for up-front costs, at no cost to taxpayers. In addition, 60 CEOs, mayors, university presidents, and labor leaders today committed to invest nearly $2 billion of private capital into energy efficiency projects; and to upgrade energy performance by a minimum of 20% by 2020 in 1.6 billion square feet of office, industrial, municipal, hospital, university, community college and school buildings.

This announcement builds on a commitment made by 14 partners at the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in June to make energy upgrades across 300 million square feet, and to invest $500 million in private sector financing in energy efficiency projects.

A huge obstacle to progress in this country is that most voters are oblivious to the sophistication of the right-wing message machine -- and even when you point it out, they pooh-pooh it, saying they're too smart to be manipulated like that! Sigh. [via]

Karl Rove’s organization American Crossroads, which functions as a kind of privately run Republican Party organization, has a memo laying out how the party ought to oppose President Obama’s jobs bill. It’s a telling window into the contours of the jobs debate. The specifics of Obama’s proposal are all highly popular, and the Republican challenge is to oppose it anyway. The memo offers a fascinating look at the mechanisms of political spin in general, and the particular dilemma of the Republican Party as it blocks economic action in the face of crisis.

The key fact to understand about the bill, delicately left unmentioned by the American Crossroads memo, is that Americans want to do all the things Obama proposes. By a twenty-point margin, they favor funding new road construction and a payroll tax cut. By a 30-point margin, they agree with higher taxes on the rich to cut the long-term deficit. They supporthelping stave off layoffs of police officers, firefighters, and teachers by a 50-point margin. How do you fight that?

You redefine the issue as a generalization. People don’t like firing police officers and teachers? Fine, just call them “union workers”:

Similarly, 70% of respondents initially favor Obama’s proposal to “give billions to states to stop layoffs of teachers and firefighters.” But when the same idea is described as “giv[ing] billions to states to keep government union workers on the payroll,” 52% turn against the idea.

Likewise, people may like payroll tax cuts and spending money to build roads, but they don’t like “stimulus”:

Fully 64% of respondents, including 70% of ticket-splitters, agree that: “The new stimulus bill is nearly identical to President Obama’s first stimulus, which spent $830 billion, yet the unemployment rate went up, so we don’t need to waste even more money.”

You can see the method here. Most people pay little attention to policy details. The logic that Obama passed a stimulus and the economy still stinks, therefore the stimulus failed, is highly intuitive. Arguments that the stimulus prevented a deeper crisis are not.

Isn't this just too cute by half? The budget architect of some of the worst, most divisive policies around (remember, as seen in the video above, his policies are too extreme for Newt Gingrich!) is attacking the president in a speech today for... pointing out the effects of those policies!

Reminds of that old joke about the guy who killed both his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court - because he was an orphan. Little Orphan Paulie!

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will take direct aim at President Barack Obama in a speech Wednesday morning, accusing him of “preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment” as he travels the country to sell his jobs plan.

In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, Ryan plans to say that Obama’s method of rallying public support for his $447 billion jobs package was “sowing social unrest and class resentment” and could be “just as damaging as his misguided policies,” according to excerpts obtained by POLITICO.

“Instead of working together where we agree, the president has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past,” Ryan will say, according to speech excerpts. “He is going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments, as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators.”

“Pitting one group against another only distracts us from the true sources of inequity in this country – corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless,” Ryan also plans to say.

Sez one of the chief purveyors of the Party of Corporate Welfare!

The speech at the Heritage Foundation marks another high-profile moment for the rising GOP star who many conservatives publicly longed for as their party’s nominee to challenge Obama in 2012. Ryan also gave a health-care heavy speech at Stanford University last month, calling for a comprehensive “replacement” to the health care law – not just a repeal of Obama’s signature domestic policy feat.

My father used to say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." So I have no comment:

President Obama submitted three free trade bills with South Korea, Colombia and Panama to Congress today after a years-long holdup of the deals since the most recent Bush administration. Speaker John Boehner announced immediately that the House will act on them quickly along with Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) for displaced workers.

"Now that all three agreements have been transmitted, they will be a top priority for the House," Boehner said in a statement. "We will quickly begin the required process to consider these bills and intend to vote on them consecutively and in tandem with Senate-passed TAA legislation."

Earlier today, Majority Leader Eric Cantor told reporters "we intend to address this and hopefully put a win on the board for the people of this country."

He said the House would act on the bills next week.

"I am glad President Obama has finally sent Congress the long-awaited free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea which will help create thousands of new jobs and spur economic growth," Cantor said in a Monday statement. "Moving forward on these agreements will provide manufacturers with the help they need to increase exports and increase production. The more manufacturers produce, the more workers they need and that means job creation."

The agreements would ease trade restrictions between the United States and the three countries. According to the International Trade Commission, the easing of tariffs with South Korea alone would boost exports by up to $10.9 billion. The agreement with Colombia would mean around 75 percent of all U.S. exports to that country would be duty free.

The three pacts have been held up for years over disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over the need to extend Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a government program that provides job training, income support and health care assistance for workers displaced by free trade agreements. Passage of TAA is a requirement for the White House before they will send to Congress trade bills with South Korea, Columbia and Panama. But Republicans see the program as duplicative, expensive and ineffective.

Public Citizen, however, has a lot to say - none of it good.

Looks like the new approach by the administration is a lot closer to what the rest of us have been calling for. We'll know the details in President Obama's speech today -- in the meantime, HuffPo reports Obama will veto anything from the Super Committee that’s all Medicare cuts and no tax hikes - not exactly reassuring, so I'd need to see the details:

President Obama on Monday will unveil a plan to tame the nation’s rocketing federal debt that will draw a sharp contrast with the Republican vision and amount more to an opening play in the fall’s debate over the economy than another attempt at finding common ground with the opposing party.

The president will propose $1.5 trillion in new taxes as part of a plan to find at least $3 trillion in budget savings over a decade, according to a person familiar with the matter. Combined with his call earlier this month for $450 billion in new stimulus, the proposal represents a more populist approach to confronting the nation’s economic travails than the compromises he advocated this summer.

Obama will propose new taxes on the wealthy and a special new tax for millionaires, according to White House officials. But he won’t call for any changes in Social Security, officials say, and may seek less-aggressive changes to Medicare and Medicaid than previously considered. In particular, people familiar with the matter say he is unlikely to call for an increase in the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.

Coming as a congressional super­committee goes to work to find budget savings this fall, Obama’s position will probably delight Democrats, who have fretted for months that he is doing too little to solve the nation’s jobs crisis while being too willing to embrace major changes to Medicare and Social Security.

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Oh, come on. Of course Obama's trying to cut Medicare and raise the eligibility age. Why do you think he talked about protecting "current beneficiaries?" You'd have to believe in unicorns if you heard that speech and still think otherwise. But you know what the problem with that is? First, our middle-aged, stressed-out, uninsured bodies are giving out. If we don't die first, but manage to hang on to age 67, we'll be moving into the Medicare system with much more serious (and expensive) illnesses that could have been treated more cheaply in the prevention stage. The other problem is, we'll have to work much longer -- and that will take up jobs that young people desperately need.

Other than those little problems, I'd have to say that having a Democratic president embracing Republican talking points on Medicare (even for a bill that has almost no chance of passing) is a fabulous idea! What's not to love?

WASHINGTON -- In his jobs speech before Congress Thursday night, President Barack Obama appeared to call on congressional Democrats to cut Medicare, a politically toxic proposal that undercuts a previous Democratic campaign strategy.

Obama pushed to cut Medicare during the debate over raising the federal debt ceiling, urging lawmakers from both parties to accept a "grand bargain" that involved cutting both Social Security and Medicare. Obama's move upset congressional Democrats, who saw a proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to radically cut Medicare as an attack ad opening going into the Nov. 2012 elections. House Republicans voted for the Ryan proposal en masse, just months after hordes of GOP freshmen were swept into office amid advertisements vowing to protect the hugely popular entitlement program.

[...] "Now, I realize there are some in my party who don’t think we should make any changes at all to Medicare and Medicaid, and I understand their concerns," Obama said during his speech Thursday. "But here’s the truth. Millions of Americans rely on Medicare in their retirement. And millions more will do so in the future. They pay for this benefit during their working years. They earn it. But with an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don’t gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won’t be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it. "

Yep, he went there. We have to burn the village in order to save it!

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Thom Hartmann discusses the likely debt ceiling deal.

Here's an update from Ezra Klein this morning:

What set off yesterday's debt-deal panic among congressional Democrats wasn't so much information about a new deal as a better understanding of the old deal. What Boehner and Obama appear to be discussing is the $4 trillion deal they were discussing a few weeks ago. In that deal, $1.5 trillion in immediate cuts would be followed by processes for making a further $1.5 trillion in deeper cuts -- many of them to entitlement programs -- and reforming the tax code to raise a trillion more dollars than it does now. The plan would also include some sort of enforcement mechanism that would make sure the future spending cuts and tax increases manifested.

Congressional Democrats spent much of yesterday complaining that this plan doesn't really have revenues while the White House spent much of yesterday swearing that it did. On this, congressional Democrats are mostly right. The revenue in this plan is approximately equal to the revenue from letting the Bush tax cuts on the rich expire -- which is something Democrats could do with zero Republican votes in 2012, when the Bush tax cuts are set to expire automatically. In other words, Democrats are demanding, as part of this deal, that Republicans agree to let them do...something they could do even if Republicans refused to agree to it.

The best way to understand the revenue in this plan, in fact, is that it's a concession to Republicans, not Democrats. It effectively takes the 2012 expiration of the Bush tax cuts and all of the leverage that gives Democrats off the table, but doesn't ask for more revenue in return. Rather, there's about 25 percent as much revenue in this plan as there is in simply doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and half as much revenue in this plan as in the Simpson-Bowles/Gang of Six plans recommended, and this plan also gives up Democrats ability to go for more revenue in 2012 when the Bush tax cuts expire. See this graph/post for a clearer comparison.

To understand why there are different spins on revenue from this deal, read this. H/t JB.

Also this morning: The Times says a deal is close, USAToday says both sides are far apart -- and the Washington Post reports Democrats aren't happy:

With more concerns than details, Democrats lashed out, saying that deep cuts to federal agency budgets and entitlements were too steep a price to pay. They questioned whether Obama shared their core values, and they sought reassurance — at a hastily arranged evening meeting at the White House that lasted nearly two hours — that the final legislative package would be the balanced approach that the president had promised.

“There has to be a balance. There has to be some revenue and cuts. My caucus agrees with that. I hope that the president sticks with that," said Harry Reid. “It would concern me greatly if these folks—the tea party group—have been able to convince the president to go along with a deal that basically gives them everything they want but yet still takes away from those who are our most vulnerable,” said Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings.

Also: Once again, The Onion reports on the continuing debate in a conclusion a little too close to home.

David Dayen really throws down the moral gauntlet with this piece titled "The Last Lecture," in which he identifies Obama's core principle as compromise. It's really good, I hope everyone reads the whole thing:

In March, Obama spoke to college students of a range of political beliefs – Democrats, Republicans and independents – after a speech in the Boston area. In this video, released by the White House this weekend and given prominent treatment, including a blast of the video to supporters by David Plouffe, Obama explains what I have to assume is his core belief about politics in America. It is that compromise is necessary in our democracy, even virtuous. You cannot get 100% of what you want at any time, no matter if you’re in the majority or the minority, Obama says, and all that we can expect is to move forward incrementally, believing that others will pick up the ball down the road and carry on.This is Obama’s last lecture. It’s what he wants to impart to the next generation. He outright says that:

One of the challenges of this generation is I think to understand that the nature of our democracy and the nature of our politics is to marry principle to a political process that means you don’t get 100% of what you want. You don’t get it if you’re in the majority, you don’t get it if you’re in the minority.

You can be honorable in politics understanding you don’t always get what you want.

While there’s talk of marrying principle to compromise, in this clip Obama does not define that principle. In the whole of his public life, actually, he has not fully defined that principle. He has, however, defined compromise as the necessary element of the most important thing a politician can do, which is to get something done. To “do big things,” as he has been saying throughout the debt limit fight. And you cannot separate the appearance of this last lecture, produced four months ago, on the heels of his efforts to engineer a grand bargain, a compromise that would include major cuts to the social safety net.

[...] I don’t think anyone would disagree that Obama deeply believes this in his core. The man who came to power on a message of hope is saying that there’s no real hope in implementing the full governing agenda in the American system. That’s true, apparently, even if you have a large majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate, which Obama had for several months of his first term. That’s true, apparently, even if we’re talking about issues and policies where the President has full authority on his own, with HAMP being the best example.

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