SacBee: General Motors Co. says its U.S. sales rose 11 percent in May on strong sales of trucks and the new, pint-size Chevrolet Sonic.
GM sold 245,256 cars and trucks in May, its highest monthly total since the Cash for Clunkers deal in August 2009.
Sales of small cars rose 16 percent compared with last May thanks to the Sonic subcompact. Buick sales rose 19 percent due to demand for the new Verano small car.
Pickup truck sales were also strong as construction activity picks up. Chevrolet Silverado sales rose 22 percent.
Obama campaign co-chair and ex-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland:
“Today’s report that the auto industry is surging ahead is good news for our state and the 1 in 8 Ohioans who depend on the auto industry for their livelihood. Despite what the polls, pundits, and prominent Republicans like Mitt Romney said, President Obama bet on the American worker to spur the comeback of the American auto industry. Now, we have a critical choice in this election between President Obama, who is fighting for us and working to create an economy built to last, and Mitt Romney who would have ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt,’ with devastating consequences for Ohio.”
ThinkProgress: In a CNBC interview with Larry Kudlow Mitt Romney defends his decision to release only two years of tax returns — both filed after he decided to run for President — by claiming that 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry also released two years….
…. In fact, John Kerry released not two years of returns, but 20.
Washington Post: New poll data from the Pew Research Center suggests that not only does President Obama enjoy a clear edge over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among women but that younger women favor the incumbent overwhelmingly, a data point that suggests a potential long term problem for the GOP.
…. The number that really stands out is that among women between the ages of 18-29, Obama is beating Romney by 45 points. Yes, 45. While Obama is leading Romney among all 18-29 years old by 28 points (61 percent to 33 percent), the fact he is down by such a vast margin among young women has to set off red flags in Republican world.
…. lose women by any more than 11 points and it’s difficult for a Republican to get elected to the White House…. Republicans have to hope the yawning gender gap – particularly among young women — is temporary. If it’s not, it could mean big trouble not just for Romney but for Republican presidential nominees in four, eight or even twelve years time.
Des Moines Register: A week after he quit the presidential race, fundraising mailers from Rick Santorum arrived in Iowa mailboxes Monday with a strongly-worded warning.
“It truly frightens me to think what’ll happen if Mitt Romney is the nominee,” says the letter signed by Santorum and paid for by his campaign.
The undated letter says there’s still time for conservatives to make sure the GOP doesn’t nominate “a Massachusetts Moderate” and that Republicans would be “crippled” if Romney were to become the nominee.
The blunt message quickly had Republicans here speculating: Did Santorum order up the mailer right before he suspended his campaign on April 10, so its timing was just a simple and understandable mistake? Or, did Santorum, who is still raising money and possibly not quite ready to come to grips with his loss, send this wording out deliberately?
Steve Benen: Even before the race for the Republican presidential nomination effectively ended, many of Mitt Romney’s most notable supporters expressed deep misgivings about him. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for example, said a day after endorsing the former governor, “There are a lot of other people out there that some of us wish had run for president — but they didn’t.”
On Capitol Hill, the dissatisfaction is considerably more acute. More than a dozen far-right House members chatted yesterday with reporters, and as Sahil Kapur reported, the group had “a hard time finding anything praiseworthy to say about their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.”
11:40: PBO departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews
1:15: Arrives in Ohio
1:55: Holds a roundtable with unemployed workers who are students in Lorain County Community College job training programs
2:30: Delivers remarks on the economy
3:45: Departs Ohio en route Michigan
4:30: Arrives in Michigan
6:00: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Henry Ford Museum
7:50: Delivers remarks at a campaign event
9:15: Departs Michigan
10:55: Arrives at the White House
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First Lady Michelle Obama smiles as she greets members of the 911th Airlift Wing of the Air Force Reserve Command and the 171st Air Refueling Wing at their base near Pittsburgh on April 17
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President Barack Obama looks at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Championship trophy as he approaches Tony Stewart’s car during an event on the South Lawn of the White House, April 17, 2012. NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers Tony Stewart, center, Kyle Busch, and Ryan Newman, right, watch nearby. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
Charles Pierce: …. my fellow Papists … if you all would be so kind, please shut the fk up about birth control, abortion, and this neverending madness about what ladies do with their lady parts without the pope’s permission.
….. please stop going on my television set and telling me what “the Catholic position” is on the fact that the president has told various Catholic institutions – and told them quite gently, too – that, yes, if they want all those nice juicy tax advantages, they must abide by the federal law and, in their capacities as employers, make contraceptives available to their employees under the new Affordable Care Act.
There is no “Catholic position” on this issue. There are the opinions of the clerical bureaucrats and the members of the Clan of The Red Beanie, and then there is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of Catholic laypeople, who stopped listening to anything the Vatican said on the matter of birth control back in 1965.
…. For that matter, there is no real “Catholic vote” out there to be mined, either. A breakdown of how American Catholics vote on one particular issue or another pretty much tracks with how the country in general breaks down … Catholics made up their mind on this issue long ago. They stopped listening to Rome, and to the Chancery, and most of them are much better off.
Kevin Drum: …. I guess I’m tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises (hospitals, schools), hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars – and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy …. I imagine the “religious community” in the United States would be a wee bit more understanding if the Obama administration refused to condone the practice.
…. if Catholic hospitals don’t want to follow reasonable, 21st century secular rules, they need to make themselves into truly religious enterprises. In particular, they need to stop taking secular taxpayer money. As long as they do, though, they should follow the same rules as anyone else.
Josh Kraushaar (National Journal): If President Obama wins re-election, he’ll point to the last couple of weeks as a turning point. He’s sharpened his economic message, emphasized fairness for the middle class, and most importantly, he’s benefited from an economy that’s showing some signs of improvement.
But the most underplayed development are signs that the president’s approval rating is ticking upwards with the group most resistant to him, non-college educated, working-class whites. Over the last week, several surveys have suggested that Obama is gaining some ground with this group, in both national and statewide polling. If these gains stick, it’s something that should be very concerning to the Romney campaign, which is dependent on winning overwhelming support from blue-collar white voters as part of a winning GOP coalition.
…. As Buffalo Springfield once sang: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Pay very close attention to Obama’s numbers with the white working-class. The assumption was that they were hardened against the president. But there’s some fresh evidence that could be changing.
Bloomberg: President Barack Obama nominated Air Force Lieutenant General Janet Wolfenbarger to be the service’s first female four-star general and the military’s second woman to reach the highest rank.
Wolfenbarger, the Air Force’s top uniformed official for weapons development, was also nominated as commander of the Air Force’s Materiel Command, according to a Defense Department statement today. The positions are subject to Senate confirmation.
The first woman with four stars in the U.S. military, Army General Ann Dunwoody, was confirmed in 2008 and is commanding general of that service’s Materiel Command.
Obama Foodorama: Expect some hilarious Let’s Move! hijinks on Tuesday night when First Lady Michelle Obama cameos in a video segment on NBC talk show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The comic visited Mrs. Obama last week at the White House to film the outing, which will air as part of this week’s celebration of the second anniversary of the Let’s Move! campaign. Among other fitness activities, the First Lady had Fallon running up and down the historic White House stairs, he said when he announced the upcoming cameo…..
The State Column: Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman was reportedly bitten by a goat during his latest campaign trip to New Hampshire…..
“As Jon Huntsman stumped in New Hampshire this weekend, trying to give voters a taste of what a Huntsman presidency would be like, a local goat named Izak quite literally got a taste of the former Utah governor when he nibbled on his knee at an event in Dover”….
….. Speaking Monday, Mr. Huntsman joked about the incident, saying he hopes the goat is not an indicator of things to come.
“He took a bite out of my kneecap,” Mr. Huntsman said “Is there a better indicator in the state of New Hampshire than how well you do with the goat
Thanks Hopefruit
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Jimmy Kimmel will host next year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner (April 28) – they sure make these announcements early
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Dorothy Rodham, the mother of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has died at 92. Clinton had canceled a trip to London and Istanbul to stay with her mother, who had become ill.
Rodham died shortly after midnight, the Clinton family said in a statement.
“Her story was a quintessentially American one, largely because she wrote it herself,” the statement said. “She overcame abandonment and hardship as a young girl to become the remarkable woman she was – a warm, generous and strong woman; an intellectual; a woman who told a great joke and always got the joke; an extraordinary friend and, most of all, a loving wife, mother and grandmother.”
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Gallup: Herman Cain is the only candidate whose Positive Intensity Score has increased in comparison to Gallup’s initial measurement earlier this year. In fact, each of the eight candidates Gallup tracks began with scores in the double digits, but now only three remain in that range.
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Ted Sorensen (May 8, 1928 – October 31, 2010)
But this guy knew JFK better, right? ……
Huge thanks to Rock (@Tigerfists88) for this video and the other ones he posted in the comments
President Barack Obama presents the 2009 Medal of Freedom to Kara Kennedy, accepting the award on behalf of her father, Sen. Ted Kennedy, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House August 12, 2009
MSNBC: The only daughter of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, Kara Kennedy Allen, died suddenly Friday evening, NBC News has confirmed.
The 51-year-old mother of two teens died while at a health club in Washington, D.C.
Kennedy Allen had been a survivor of lung cancer and family friends say she had been in remission for a few years.
Ted and Joan Kennedy with Kara, circa 1962
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Eleanor Mondale, daughter of Walter, and Charles Percy, the former moderate Republican senator, have also died. R.I.P.
