A global celebrity — even in an emerging democracy. And the first-ever American president to visit the country formerly known as Burma.

People welcome U.S. President Barack Obama as his vehicle convoy leaves Yangon International Airport, Nov. 19, 2012.

Image by Stringer / Reuters

Young boys and girls line the streets waving flags along the motorcade route in anticipation of the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama in Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, Nov. 19, 2012.

Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

Myanmar students wave miniature Myanmar and American flags as they wait to welcome the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama at Yangon International Airport on Monday, Nov. 19, 2012, in Yangon, Myanmar.

Image by Khin Maung Win / AP

Students hold U.S. and Myanmar's national flags as they wait for U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival in front of Yangon International Airport, Nov. 19, 2012.

Image by Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

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“I want to use the exact word used by the President Obama.” “Forward.”

Image by Jason Reed / Reuters

Myanmar President Thein Sein appropriated President Barack Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward," as Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit his long-isolated country.

With the country on the path to democracy after crippling sanctions, internal unrest, and diplomatic action, Thein Sein, a leader of the former military junta, repeatedly used the phrase in his joint remarks with Obama.

"I want to use the exact word used by the President Obama: We will continue to move forward. We will move forward," he said, as the crowd laughed.

"Forward" was also Obama's theme for the country as it undergoes a transition to governing by the people, embracing many of his campaign themes for a global audience.

"Here in Rangoon, I want to send a message across Asia: We don’t need to be defined by the prisons of the past," Obama said in remarks at the University of Yangon. "We need to look forward to the future."

Aboard Air Force One en route to the final stop of the three-country Asia trip in Cambodia, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes acknowledged the "multiple times" President Thein Sein used the president's campaign slogan.

"He said, I want to do what you have been talking about. I want to move forward," Rhodes said.

Image by David Greedy / Getty Images

Guess we shouldn't be surprised this has surfaced.

This is basically a clone of the McKayla Is Not Impressed tumblr. But with the President. It's not as good, but that might be because the admin isn't allowing submissions. Lame.

This:

Via: mckaylaisnotimpressed

Lead to this:

Via: theprezisnotimpressed

Via: theprezisnotimpressed

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A new Tumblr from C-SPAN's Bill Gray collected some of the greatest hits from Capitol. Your tax dollars at work.

Source: senatecharts

Source: senatecharts

Source: senatecharts

Source: senatecharts

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Fifth graders in some state-sponsored schools in Louisiana study both creationism and evolution as competing theories . “Fact or Theory?”

Marriage equality–related campaigns won in four states this month. The victories, in part, came after a yearlong, behind-the-scenes national research effort.

Image by John Gara/Buzzfeed

WASHINGTON — The surprise sweep for marriage equality efforts at the polls in 2012 came after a dramatic shift in the television ads their backers ran — a change that came about after a yearlong research effort to crack the code of previously successful ads run by marriage-equality opponents that focused on "gay marriage" being taught in schools.

Among the key changes were a shift away from talk of "rights" to a focus on committed relationships; a decision to address "values" directly as being learned at home; and an attempt to give voters "permission" to change their minds, according to elements of the research shared with BuzzFeed.

The research was "instrumental in helping us figure out our path," said Zach Silk, who served as the campaign manager to approve Washington's Referendum 74.

The research was sponsored by Third Way — a centrist Democratic think tank — that conducted an extended round of surveys beginning in September 2010 "aimed at answering a single question: How do we most effectively persuade people in the middle to support relationship recognition for gay and lesbian couples, including marriage?"

National groups like the Human Rights Campaign and Freedom to Marry have highlighted their engagement, direct giving, and fund-raising for the states' efforts — which were significant — noting longtime partnerships and support provided throughout the states. The national groups also have been careful to credit state organizations with tremendous leadership in getting the volunteer base and coalition support necessary to win their ballot measures and for addressing the specifics of the states’ dynamics, from Maryland and Washington, where referenda on marriage laws were passed, to Maine, where a marriage equality initiative was approved, to Minnesota, where a marriage amendment was defeated for only the second time.

Each group ran a different campaign, based on the local demographics, geography, and past experience. Washington advocates, in 2009, had succeeded in approving a referendum to allow the state’s domestic partnership law to go into effect. In Maine, also in 2009, a referendum on a marriage equality law passed by the legislature resulted in the law being rejected by the voters. In Minnesota, advocates had time to prepare, as the measure was put on the 2012 ballot in spring 2011. People in Maryland had been engaged on the issue for more than a year as well, as the legislature had considered a marriage equality bill in 2011 before passing it in 2012.

Faith and, particularly in Maryland, black communities were engaged directly. Fund-raising and field operations were systematic and far outpaced past efforts of marriage equality supporters and this year's efforts by opponents. Social media, in its infancy in 2008, was a key part of campaigns' and outside engagement. President Obama and the Democratic Party, along with prominent Republicans and straight sports stars, were speaking out in support of marriage equality. And, it was the fifth federal election held in the country since some of its residents were legally able to marry someone of the same sex.

All of those very big changes since California voters approved Proposition 8 in 2008 could have made the difference in the four states this time around.

But, for those who have been watching the campaigns — including HRC's new president, Chad Griffin — there was another change too: the ad campaigns.

At a post-election wrap-up on LGBT issues organized by the Williams Institute on November 13, Griffin — who lived in California before returning to DC earlier this year to run HRC — talked about how slow the campaign in California had been to respond to the Proposition 8 campaign's "Princess" ad, which featured a child talking about how she was taught in school that a "prince married a prince" and that she "can marry a princess."

Source: youtube.com

This time around, however, the research conducted behind the scenes by Third Way provided "instrumental" tools for marriage equality supporters, enabling the campaigns to be prepared to respond quickly to the ads should opponents run them again. Third Way conducted four rounds of research, from psychological research to focus group–type message testing to national polling, in its effort.

So, what did Third Way find? A year before the 2012 election, Third Way had completed a confidential report — provided exclusively to BuzzFeed following the election — purporting to provide "The Answer to the Middle’s Questions on Marriage for Gay Couples." This was the starting point, multiple states' campaign managers said, for their own state-specific research.

Third Way's report detailed:

We learned after three years of exhaustive qualitative and quantitative research that those in the middle are grappling with a series of unresolved, conflicting internal values and complex beliefs when it comes to marriage. ...

Those in the middle are not fully resolved on what marriage would mean for kids—not the kids of gay couples, but their own children. Will values about sex and marriage be taught in the home or elsewhere? And they have yet to reconcile their desire to be fair and inclusive toward gay couples with their religious convictions. Can I still be faithful to my religious beliefs and open to marriage for gay couples?

The six key findings highlighted in the November 2011 document were:

• Commitment trumps rights, a point made in prior research by Freedom to Marry as well: “Leading with commitment will show the middle that gay people want to join the institution of marriage, not change it.”

• Kids move voters: “In our past qualitative research, we found that underlying these concerns about children are deeply emotional fears about loss of parental control. These fears were also evident in the poll data.”

• The home is our turf; schools are their turf: “When compared directly to other possible responses to attacks around children, parents teaching core values ranks highest in persuasiveness.”

• On kids — turn down the heat: “One effective way to do that is to remind those in the middle of something they already believe to be true — that 'kids will be kids,' and in reality, they are much more interested in other things than they are in whether gay couples are allowed to marry.”

• Give people permission to change their minds about why gay couple[s] marry: “Using a messenger who could describe changing his own opinion on why gay couples want to marry modeled this positive evolution on the very issue that is most crucial to gaining support.”

• Religion is a hurdle, not a wall: “[E]ven among those groups in the middle who were more concerned about religion, overwhelming majorities said ‘It is not for me to judge.’ … [I]t is crucial to include reaffirmation of religious liberty protections as a significant part of supporters’ message framework.”

Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, the director of social policy and politics at Third Way, told BuzzFeed, "We worked with Freedom to Marry and others to share it with the campaigns right at the beginning of their getting organized," noting that they held multi-hour briefings with the various state campaigns.

As expected, the opponents' campaigns ran ads — the same ads, more or less — orchestrated by Frank Schubert, the man behind the California Proposition 8 "Princess" ad.

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ABC's Tapper takes a detour to a dangerous Afghan base. “It’s difficult to reconcile that harsh reality with Petraeus bringing Paula Broadwell with him to Afghanistan.”

image by Matt Netzel

ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper released his third book last week, a story of a far-flung American combat outpost in the far reaches of northern Afghanistan. The Outpost describes how the soldiers of Combat Outpost Keating, far away from the nearest base and surrounded by insurgents, survived in rotten conditions while trying to reach out to the local community — but were nonetheless attacked by hundreds of local men who killed eight Americans and wounded 22 in October 2009.

Tapper spoke to BuzzFeed over email about The Outpost, Afghanistan, and his favorite war books.

How did you choose Combat Outpost Keating as the subject of the book?

My son was born on October 2, 2009. In the haze in the recovery room at Sibley Hospital, I caught a news report about an October 3rd attack on a vulnerable outpost in an obscure corner of Afghanistan. The story was just bizarre at first – the outpost had been put at the bottom of three steep mountains just 14 miles from the Pakistan border, and no one seemed to have any idea why the troops were put in such a dangerous place. And as I held my son, I learned about eight other sons taken from this earth.

In subsequent weeks and months I tried to find out more about the battle, the bravery of the troops, and about why Combat Outpost Keating had been put there. But there wasn’t much information that came out. So I started making calls, contacting soldiers who had been there.

Their tales were tragic and inspiring and cinematic; every one of the eight U.S. troops killed that day died while either fighting the enemy or trying to help a fellow soldier. The palm of courage. And frankly eye-opening. I’d been covering the war from the comfort of the North Lawn of the White House, but I realized there was a great deal I didn’t know or understand. That desire to learn more, to plug in holes in my own understanding of war, eventually became a book contract to tell the story of the outpost.

So I guess I didn’t choose Combat Outpost Keating; Combat Outpost Keating chose me.

How much time did you spend in Afghanistan in researching the book? What was it like?

I went to Afghanistan twice. Once very briefly with President Obama in 2010. And the other time in October/November 2011 when I was embedded with the 2/27 Infantry Wolfhounds at Forward Operating Base Bostick and with the All-American Dustoff Medevac Unit at Bagram. That was for just over a week.

It was exhilarating and terrifying. It’s easy to see why war reporters get addicted to it. Our Medevac got fired upon on a mission once; makes getting yelled at by an irate press secretary seem even more trifling.

Most of the reporting, however, was conducted in the U.S.: in Colorado or Georgia or Washington, D.C. And in this age of social media and global communications, it was much easier than it would have been even a decade before, with troops sending me Google earth coordinates to show me what a particular patch of road looked like, and even a Skype interview with one of the insurgents who attacked the outpost, conducted with the help of an interpreter/fixer.

What were the biggest mistakes that were made with regard to the outpost; who is most responsible for the position those men were put in?

The outpost was put in its dangerous location in 2006 because it needed to be near the road so troops could monitor the flow of insurgents on that path, and also because there weren’t enough helicopters in Afghanistan to be able to provide consistent re-supply to the camp; they needed to be able to use convoys.

That’s the first and ultimately the biggest mistake – the decision by those running the war in 2006 to not provide the troops there with everything they needed to win the war. All other mistakes flow from that one.

One of the most moving stories in the book for me was when the father of a dead soldier – a posthumous Medal of Honor winner – voices his anger for the president and Defense Secretary for not giving his boy the support he needed. It still haunts me and I know it haunts him even more.

image by Jeremiah Ridgeway

Do you think you could have done more to tell the Afghans' side of the story? Part of the book describes the total destruction of the village of Urmul, which obviously wasn't a small thing for its residents.

Sure, but it would have been a different book. The goal of “The Outpost” is to describe what it is exactly that our troops do, what it’s like for them in war, what their sacrifices are, their successes, failures, tragedies and triumphs.

Have you kept in touch with any of the men or their families? How are they?

I keep in touch with dozens of them, and it’s one of the great benefits of this project that I now have all these new friends – troops, their families, mothers who have lost sons, wives who have lost husbands. Some of them are thriving. Some of them are still struggling with their losses and experiences. We had a book launch in Washington, DC, on November 10 and dozens of troops came. My mom was there – she’s a retired psychiatric nurse and used to work at the Veterans hospital in Philadelphia, dealing mainly with Vietnam veterans. She told me that many times during the event, she would notice troops twitching or their faces tightening up whenever Afghanistan came up in conversation. Some of these scars will never heal.

What do you think of the new commander of Afghanistan forces saying he supports a troop presence there past 2014?

It’s always been the plan that the U.S. would continue to have troops in Afghanistan long past this “exit” date, which is kind if misleading, as was Vice President Biden’s assertion that “we are leaving in 2014, period.” Not true. If you listen to the president and others, they talk about 2014 being the date when “combat troops” will leave—meaning conventional fighting forces. But the plan is to clearly have special forces troops there, and perhaps more.

When I was in Afghanistan, many leaders in the field told me they thought the Afghan National Army and other local security forces would be ok to stand on their own by 2014, but they had grave doubts about the ability of the Afghans to provide those forces with logistical support – fuel and supplies and Medevacs and the like. Well, one can’t put down an insurgency with forces that don’t have fuel and food and medical care. So I suspect there will be more that the U.S. provides in terms of support for the Afghans long after 2014.

One of the heroes in the book appears in 2007: Lieutenant Alex Newsom of Bulldog Troop, 1-91 Cav. Newsom was nicknamed Captain America – he’s this model-looking guy from Beverly Hills, a fitness addict – and he re-appears in the book at the end as a Special Forces soldier still running through the hills of Afghanistan, still convinced the U.S. can win this war. We’ll have a lot of Alex Newsoms in Afghanistan long after the war is “over” in 2014.

What does what happened with Keating say about the challenges (or failures?) of the counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan?

Counter-insurgency, winning over locals through development projects and by connecting them to the government so that they are separated from the enemy, is an intriguing strategy. The problems arise because locals know the enemy will be there in five years; they’re not sure about the U.S. or the Afghan government. The book details many successes that troops had with Counter-insurgency, especially from 2007-2008 under the leadership of Lt. Col. Chris Kolenda, Captain Joey Hutto and 1-91 Cav. But ultimately Kolenda and Hutto were rotated out of the country when his tour was up, and though the next commander of the outpost, Captain Rob Yllescas, had great relationships with the locals, he was targeted for assassination and the cooperative spirit in that area quickly deteriorated. Ultimately hundreds of local men took part in the attack on Combat Outpost Keating.

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The plan was to unmask Obama. It didn't work.

President Obama's decisive reelection has promised the conservative new media four more years of fodder, but it's also left some of its more earnest participants with a gnawing question: What went wrong?

The new online right came roaring out of 2008 convinced that the only reason Obama won was because John McCain's weak-stomached campaign — cowed by the aura of the first black presidential nominee — had failed to document his ties to the radical left. Their mission would be to "vet" the president as McCain hadn't, and convince the American people to reject him.

Now the loose coalition of scrappy bloggers, advocacy journalists, and unrepentant trolls who spent four years writing about Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky are coming to terms with reality: The polls weren't skewed, and their narrative didn't stick.

And with the Republican Party now in full-throttle soul-searching mode, many in the conservative blogosphere are turning introspective as well.

"I think the right media may have erred," Dan Riehl, a contributor to Breitbart News and longtime proprietor of Riehl World News, told BuzzFeed a week after the election. "I think we let Obama get into our heads and we wound up campaigning against him, rather than for the things we believe in."

"It was a trap," he added. "And one I can't say I didn't fall into."

In hindsight, Riehl questioned the wisdom of devoting so much energy to combing through the president's early life for signs of radicalism — a process that yielded few true exposés, but rather a handful of scraps that bloggers tried to spin into scandals. For example, in March, Breitbart News reported that Obama attended a 1998 production of a play about left-wing Chicago activist Saul Alinsky. The story, which was presented as a major scoop on the site, included this memorable lede:

In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama claims that he worried after 9/11 that his name, so similar to that of Osama bin Laden, might harm his political career.

But Obama was not always so worried about misspellings and radical resemblances. He may even have cultivated them as he cast himself as Chicago’s radical champion.

"I just don't know that America cared," Riehl now says of this story genre. "The guy had already been elected, and our message was that Barack Obama's a socialist that wants to control your life. I'm not arguing that he isn't, but is that a message people want to hear?"

The notion that Obama's unusual name, international roots, and time as a liberal Chicago leader would disqualify him was an early fixation of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign, and a running preoccupation of some of her die-hard supporters, who staked their final hopes on the emergence of a legendary, apocryphal recording of his wife using the word "whitey."

Six months later, frustrated conservatives blamed Obama's landslide victory on John McCain's failure to take the fight to his opponent.

The consensus that soon emerged on the right was that if Americans were fully aware of Obama's relationship with extremists like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, they never would have elected him. And since tank-dwelling mainstream reporters couldn't be trusted to expose The Real Obama, it would be left to the crusading online right to get the job done.

Breitbart News efficiently captured this sentiment with a mission statement earlier this year, where they promised to "vet the president."

Prior to his passing, Andrew Breitbart said that the mission of the Breitbart empire was to exemplify the free and fearless press that our Constitution protects—but which, increasingly, the mainstream media denies us...

Andrew wanted to do what the mainstream media would not. First and foremost: Andrew pledged to vet President Barack H. Obama.

The mission of the conservative media, then, became less to "stand athwart history, yelling 'Stop!'" — as National Review's founding editor famously put it — and more to stand athwart The New York Times' White House coverage, yelling, "biased!"

Some conservative writers now worry that their media outlets spent too much time poking and prodding old-guard journalistic institutions rather than digging up dirt on the Obama administration.

"My impression from the outside was that the target of the vetting effort was always the mainstream media, not really the president," said Ben Domenech, a conservative blogger and cofounder of the long-running conservative blog RedState.com.

Domenech said conservative coverage of Obama's first term drifted "too often toward entertainment and mockery, and too little toward the critical and hard work of investigation."

"I think it's a bit disappointing that the major scandals during Obama's administration thus far have all been broken by mainstream media entities, not journalists on the right," he added.

But as 2012 heated up, so did the right's efforts to expose Obama and his lapdogs, with conservative outlets never flinching in their insistence that America wouldn't fall for the great "Obama con" again. When the polls seemed to dispute that narrative, bloggers pushed back by charging that the surveys' results were "skewed."

Dean Chambers, the previously obscure conservative blogger who gained notoriety for re-weighting public polls to make them more favorable to Mitt Romney, was not shy about his motives.

"I've been hearing from people inside the Tea Party movement and Republican movement calling to say that they support what I'm doing," Chambers told BuzzFeed in September. "It's given them a boost of confidence."

But now that the votes have been cast, conservative outlets are left picking up the pieces of their shattered narrative, as the movement they've championed looks to rebuild and rebrand itself.

John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a prolific tweeter, rejected the notion that Obama's reelection represented a failure of the conservative media. But he said that as the GOP tries to widen its tent in the coming months and years, conservative sites will need to stay out of the way — or better yet, cheer on the effort.

He singled out RedState.com, which has earned credibility on the right, in part, by targeting vulnerable moderates in Republican primaries, and directing grassroots readers to defeat them. Podhoretz warned against the site's "hunger and desire to establish an ideological party line and draw boundaries around it, and say anyone who's not in this line should not be elected and should be destroyed."

"A deliberate choice is going to have to be made," he said. "Is RedState a news and information website, or is it an activist partisan Republican website pushing specific politicians? Regrettably, right now I think it's more the latter than the former."

He also distinguished between "high-minded" publications like his own, and the "much more scrappy, low down, tough, take-no-prisoners ad hominem stuff" published on certain websites, and said that the latter's approach was misguided.

"The Daily Caller may have thought that surfacing a speech from 2007 was going to ruin the election for him, but I think that was a foolish hope," Podhoretz said. "He'd already been elected in spite of all that."

The speech in question was actually emblematic of the failed story line many conservative outlets tried to advance during Obama's first term.

The day before the first presidential debate in October, The Drudge Report began teasing a supposed campaign bombshell to be dropped that night, plastering cryptic headlines across the homepage like, "THE ACCENT... THE ANGER... THE ACCUSATIONS... THE SERMON."

As it turned out, the scoop — which belonged to The Daily Caller — was a video recording of a 2007 speech Obama gave bemoaning the injustices suffered by poor African-American communities, and seeming to suggest that the lackluster federal response to Hurricane Katrina was a result of racial bias. The speech had been covered by the press when it was first delivered, but The Caller touted footage of off-script remarks that didn't make it into the official transcript.

The story had all the trappings of a surefire entry into the conservative canon of 2012: racial overtones, confirmation that Obama was concealing his true extremism, and a chance for conservative champions of truth to accuse the mainstream media of covering up Obama's true nature.

But despite half a day of hype courtesy of Drudge, and an A-block unveiling on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, the scoop landed with a thud outside the conservative echo chamber. The video got little pickup in the national media and was quickly overshadowed by Mitt Romney's dominant debate performance.

The Daily Caller's editor-in-chief, Tucker Carlson, defended their coverage of the video to BuzzFeez and said it was a major failure of the "legacy media" that the video didn't get more play.

"Not only did we break stories that no one else would have written, we were mocked and attacked by flacks posing as reporters in the press," Carlson said. "Like Sam Feist, the Washington bureau chief at CNN, immediately attacked us. On what grounds, I don't get it. We shouldn't air footage of a president giving a speech?"

Unlike some of his colleagues in the conservative press, Carlson showed no hint of regret at his site's performance, citing record traffic and crediting Obama's first term with making the company profitable. In fact, he said he founded The Daily Caller out of frustration with the unsatisfactory vetting Obama received in 2008.

"I think we're the ones practicing traditional journalism and I think a lot of legacy media has ceased to," Carlson said, emphatically. "And that's why I think we'll win in the end."

But for all the tough talk of his less reflective fellow travelers on the online right, Riehl, a true believer, remains leery of using click rates and ad revenue as a measure of success. He still wants their work to pay off at the ballot box.

"That's something I said right after the election," Riehl said. "I don't give a shit about all these people talking about their page views. Look at the results. We did something wrong."

This story has been updated.

Campaign Manager Jim Messina suggests enduring political organizing operation for Obama to help on fiscal cliff. “Social movement,” that's here to stay.

Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

WASHINGTON, DC — Former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina pointed to an enduring role for President Barack Obama's campaign operation and social tools Tuesday — but said the president is likely to keep tight control of his technically sophisticated political operation.

“You can’t just hand this to the next candidate for president," Messina said at a Politico Playbook breakfast, referring to the campaign's unprecedented database, grassroots operation, and social tools.

"People want to be involved in supporting the president’s agenda in the next four years," Messina said, noting that exactly how that will be done will have to be decided by Obama's supporters.

Messina said the campaign will not immediately turn over the operation to the Democratic National Committee, but he also suggested Obama will not repeat what is widely seen as a mistake of his first term: switching off his grassroots operation at the behest of Congressional Democrats, who bridled at its organizing in their districts.

This time, Messina suggested that the campaign's vaunted "Dashboard" social media system would be helpful during the fiscal cliff, allowing Obama supporters to call members of Congress.

"People just spent five years winning two presidential elections together, now they’re not just walking away," he said.

On Sunday night, the Obama campaign e-mailed its vast mailing list a long questionnaire asking supporters how they contributed to the campaign and how they hope to contribute to the campaign in the future. The list of areas of focus for the potential future organization ran 24 check boxes long.

Would the Obama campaign move it's operations to the DNC? Messina said, "We don’t know," but hinted at a negative.

Messina said he hoped that other campaigns would use Dashboard-like tools, pointing to it as the campaign tool of the future, but categorically said Obama would not sell access to it.

And Messina shed some light on his own future.

"I think my future is probably outside the White House and helping him," Messina said, saying he would likely be involved in running whatever "social movement" Obama's campaign becomes.

From the Obama For America Survey:

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Switching off the “cacaphony.”

Image by John Moore / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said Tuesday that as airwaves and webpages are flooded by advertisements, personal interactions will be ever more important to winning campaigns.

His comments at a POLITICO Playbook Breakfast, point to a paradox of the age of big political money: the more outside groups spend, on campaigns, the less value their competing efforts have.

Messina said the campaign's internal metrics showed that a staple of old-school campaigning — the door knock — was better at persuading voters than television or internet ads.

"People got so much of it, a simple door knock from a trusted neighbor really mattered more than anything else," Messina said.

"Door knocking is going to be even more important in the future," Messina added. "The diffusion of American media makes it harder to get your message out...and the Citizens United ruling created this huge cacophony of television [ads] in the final months of that campaign," he added.

Messina said in essence a lot of what the Obama campaign's technology team did was building “a whole bunch of things to make door knocking easier," saying the campaign wanted to use its volunteers' time efficiently.

Asked if this was the most expensive door-knocking campaign in history,” Messina replied simply, “Yes.”

Long time no see, old friend.

Source: reddit.com  /  via: @Alex_Ogle

Penn State University appeared to make private a photo on their Flickr feed Tuesday of Elmo receiving a Penn State T-shirt during a visit to the university in March. The rest of the photos of the event remain online.

Meet Florida Reps. Joe Saunders and David Richardson, the first two out gay lawmakers in the Sunshine State's history.

The Florida legislature doesn't wait for the new year to swear in its new lawmakers. More than 50 new legislators took their oath of office on Tuesday in Tallahassee.

Among them were Reps. Joe Saunders and David Richardson, who became the state's first out LGBT lawmakers.

On Sunday, Richardson got to Tallahassee and shared a picture of the old Capitol building.

Via: facebook.com

Here Richardson is on Monday with the chair of the Democratic caucus, Rep. Perry Thurston.

Via: facebook.com

Here's Saunders, with his partner, Donald Rupe, on the floor of House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Via: facebook.com

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With the world's eyes on Gaza, Netanyahu's American gambits bear no apparent cost. Was the right wrong?

Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File / AP

WASHINGTON, DC — President Barack Obama’s reelection was preceded by fears and warnings from some of Israel’s conservative supporters and hopes from more liberal Middle Eastern voices: Obama would show his true pro-Palestinian colors, and he would come down hard on an Israeli Prime Minister who had obviously favored his Republican opponent.

The test came fast, when Israeli reacted to a drumbeat of missile strikes by turning its firepower on the Gaza Strip within days of the election. And the American reaction has, so far, surprised those who expected a post-election pivot. And with the region hoping Hillary Clinton’s visit will bring a ceasefire, Israelis have so far had few complaints.

“If funding iron dome is Obama's way of throwing Israel under the bus, I am praying he will throw us under a train,” tweeted Israeli reporter Barak Ravid, who writes for the center-left newspaper Haaretz, referring to the American-backed missile defense system.

Indeed, the American reaction seems to have provided a kind of odd vindication for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose apparent affinity for Mitt Romney has had no evident cost, and could arguably be seen as forcing Obama to keep Israel closer. One Israeli official close to Netanyahu, who enjoys a working, but cool relationship with the president, said the Obama administration’s response to the conflict “has been everything we could ever hope for.”

“The administration has been very clear in its support for Israel’s right to defend itself — and that Hamas is the problem,” said Josh Block, CEO of The Israel Project. “That has the potential to send a strong message both to Israel's adversaries and her enemies.”

The White House stance — not just to back Israel, but also to put the blame squarely on Hamas — will confound both those, like an Al Jazeera columnist, who imagined Obama would pivot to a “global Progressive Agenda,” but more strikingly Obama’s Republican critics, who had dire warnings about his post-reelection plans.

“Mitt Romney will stand with Israel,” was the mainstream Republican line in the weeks leading up to the election, with the implication being that Obama will not. And Mitt Romney asserted that that Obama had already thrown Israel under the bus — and that was before he was unburdened by reelection.

Conservatives are now left to warn that Obama will yet abandon Israel. At some point.

"It's impossible to judge if people's concerns about Obama's second term treatment of Israel were misguided until the second term is over,” said Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which spent millions this year attacking the president on the subject. “I think everyone appreciates the support the U.S. has given Israel to this point as she has launched this defensive effort in Gaza.”

And gone are the accusations of the emergence of “daylight” between Obama and Netanyahu.

Mitt Romney repeatedly claimed that Obama "explicitly stated that his goal was to place daylight between U.S. and Israel. This is a dangerous situation that has set back peace in the Middle East and emboldened our enemies."

Instead, the White House has gone out of its way to avoid exactly that perception of daylight.

“Without an end to rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, Israel can’t be assured of the security of its people,” said Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes on Tuesday — at least the fifth such time the Obama administration has laid out conditions for an end to violence that echo the Israeli government’s.

And while Obama has spoken out about the need to avert an Israeli ground operating in Gaza, he hasn't specifically opposed it, and Netanyahu has called the operation the last resort if a cease-fire can't be attained.

Obama’s friends on the left, meanwhile, who have long sought to pull him away from a reflexive alliance with the Netanyahu government, have downplayed the significance of this week’s solidarity.

“I would not regard backing Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas rocket fire as a 'left' or 'right' issue,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the liberal group J-Street. “The right to self-defense is simply a core pro-Israel position and is — and should be — outside the politics of the issue.”

Earlier: Mitt Romney fills up his gas tank . UPDATE: Even more photos of the family fun times.

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Delay, common ground, and mutual pain in the high-stakes “fiscal cliff” talks.

Image by Henny Ray Abrams / AP

WASHINGTON, DC — White House officials and Congressional leaders hoping to stave off — or at least postpone — a “fiscal cliff” threatening to send the country into economic disarray could, in typical Washington fashion, opt for a mixture of action and delay in the hopes that this time, another year will give them the time to find a long-term solution.

Negotiators say that an option that has been discussed, though only preliminarily, would be an agreement requiring an upfront “down payment” revenues and spending cuts, the creation of a process aimed at creating a long-term solution, and a back-end “trigger” that would impose severe cuts to spending, particularly on entitlements while increasing taxes.

That's just one possible conclusion, people involved in the talks told BuzzFeed, to negotiations that got off to a slow start this week, with neither Democrats nor Republicans willing to show much of their hand in the opening days.

But with only a few weeks between now and the end of the year, congressional aides in both parties expressed cautious hope that a deal could ultimately come together to punt the bulk of the problem down the road for a year while immediately raising revenues and locking in dramatic reforms to entitlement spending.

All sources stress that it is still too early to make any pronouncements about the negotiations — aides to President Obama, Speaker John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have only held two substantive opening-round sessions.

And everyone agrees there are massive roadblocks still in the way of any sort of deal, ranging from Obama’s demand that upper tax rates go up to Republicans’ insistence that serious reforms be imposed on entitlement programs.

The down-payment-and-trigger combination would be a classic inside-the-beltway solution to an impossible political situation: Push off a final decision for another year, agree to a set of benchmarks to measure negotiations and agree to, at least for now, a series of painful “triggers” designed to ensure a good faith effort.

And if it sounds familiar, it should — Congress and the Obama administration agreed to a similar, if less painful, agreement known as the “sequester” last year that ended up creating the fiscal cliff dilemma in the first place.

But now, as then, the problems are legion and any one detail could easily derail the idea. For Democrats, in many ways including a down payment in a deal is the most crucial piece of the puzzle, since it is likely their best chance to lock in significant new revenues.

"The framework that the leaders and the president decided on on Friday includes a down payment to enact before the end of the year," a Senate Democratic aide familiar with the talks said. Beyond that, however, there is little agreement.

Democrats envision the down payment as letting the tax cut for $250,000 income expire while including significant upfront spending cuts.

Republicans, however, said that there is little chance they will ultimately agree to any deal that includes a change to tax rates; though there could be room for an agreement based on some sort of cap on tax loopholes for upper income earners that would increase their share of the overall tax burden.

Overcoming that hurdle is extremely daunting and has led some Republicans familiar with the talks to express skepticism. Specifically they complain that Obama and top Democrats are little more than a “political win” and will do little to actually swell federal coffers.

“It’s his pride,” said one veteran Republican of Obama’s insistence on including tax increases for the wealthy, noting he has made it a key part of his promises to his bas.

Republicans say they doubt Obama's seriousness, because of the response to the "fiscal cliff" from liberals, who have increasingly sought to downplay the seriousness of the situation facing the country.

With Obama allies like Labor leader Richard Trumpka arguing the economic impacts will be far less painful than thought, Republicans worry Obama is sending a signal he's unwilling to bend to any GOP demands, even if it torpedoes a compromise.

One Republican also noted that the White House has made clear Obama wants any down payment — or indeed any deal at all — to also preemptively address the debt ceiling increase that is expected to be needed in February. But in order to do that, Democrats will have to agree to even more cuts in spending, something that Democrats have resisted in the past.

On the other end of the deal is what aides alternately describe as a backstop or trigger designed to impose significant pain on both parties. Unlike the sequester, which Republicans have bitterly complained hurts their priorities far more dramatically than Democrats' because of cuts to defense spending, in theory this new trigger would include a significantly bigger bang

For instance, rather than focusing on defense and discretionary spending, as the sequester did, the new trigger could include mandatory tax increases, a pressure point for Republicans, while slashing spending on Medicare and Medicaid as a Democratic arm-twister.

Republicans are, so far, the chief proponents of a backstop or trigger. For GOP leaders to sell any deal to their disillusioned rank and file, aides said, the trigger would have to extract major concessions from Democrats. And like the down payment for Democrats, it provides a key guarantee of winning a long-sought-after policy goal in those reductions.

"The second stage is not something we’re opposed to, but it's something Republicans want to focus on in order to sell the deal,” a Democratic aide said.

"That’s not decided yet but in theory it would be ... I imagine Republicans would insist on it," the aide added.

But the details of the trigger are as nebulous, as are those of the down payment, and speculation on the hazy negotiations can be treacherous. Democrats are insisting that Republicans outline the size and type of reductions to entitlements they would insist on, which has rankled some Republicans who want to see a good faith proposal from Democrats to prove they are serious about reforms.

And in between those bookends would be the third piece of the puzzle — a process for overhauling the tax code and to provide a more long-term solution to the nation’s fiscal woes. That part of the plan appears to be the vaguest, with one aide saying it could include specific benchmarks for negotiators to meet between January and the end of the year.

Despite all the uncertainty and lack of details, at least some aides said they have hope a deal can be struck.

“Right now I’m optimistic because the people I’ve talked to who’ve been in these meetings have been projecting optimism,” a senior Republican aide said Tuesday.

More than two dozen activists for transgender rights attended a meeting at the White House on Tuesday. The day was marked with vigils for victims of anti-trans hate crimes.

WASHINGTON, DC — More than two dozen activists gathered at the White House Tuesday to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance to honor transgender victims of hate crimes, the first time such a formal commemoration of the day has happened at the White House.

Vigils were held across the country and globe on Tuesday in commemoration of transgender people killed due to anti-trans violence. This is the 14th year the transgender community and allies have held a day of remembrance.

Office of Personnel Management director John Berry, who is gay and one of the administration's highest-ranking out LGBT officials, led the group in a moment of silence recognizing victims.

Among the attendees were Diego Sanchez, the first out trans Hill staffer, who works for retiring Rep. Barney Frank; Babs Siperstein, the first out trans member of the Democratic National Committee executive committee; Kylar Broadus, the first out trans person to testify before the Senate; and National Center for Transgender Equality executive director Mara Keisling.

"To have a senior administration official like John leading us in commemorating transgender victims of violence is a really good thing," Keisling said. "But to have President Barack Obama’s commitment to solving anti-transgender violence affirmed in today’s meeting is a great thing."

The trans leaders and White House officials discussed "policies that make transgender lives safer" at the meeting, NCTE officials stated in a news release.

Obama has “a duty to the American people to answer the basic questions surrounding the Benghazi attack,” Republican lawmaker says in letter.

Image by J. Scott Applewhite / AP

WASHINGTON DC — Sen. Lindsey Graham Wednesday renewed his demand that President Obama provide details on what he knew, and when, about the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya.

In a letter to Obama, Graham complains about what he views as a lack of cooperation from the administration in investigating the attack.

“While I am encouraged you may be finally ready to assist Congress in its investigations of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, I remain concerned that over the past two months senators have written at least 13 letters requesting information from your Administration and they remain largely ignored,” Graham said in the letter, adding that Obama has “a duty to the American people to answer the basic questions surrounding the Benghazi attack.”

Graham, along with Sen. John McCain, has been one of Congress’s chief critics of Obama’s handling of the Benghazi situation, hammering both the White House and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over it for months.

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Egyptian Foreign Minister and Hillary Clinton announce deal. Egypt elevated to role of regional power broker.

Image by Baz Ratner, Pool / AP

WASHINGTON, DC — A cease-fire agreement has been reached to end the weeklong conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, according Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The agreement removes the possibility — at least temporarily — of an Israeli ground operation in Gaza, and is designed to end the bombardment of southern and central Israel by Hamas-fired rockets and mortars, as well as Israeli airstrikes on Hamas targets.

Clinton arrived in Israel on Tuesday evening for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Palestinian leaders and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. President Barack Obama repeatedly reached out to Morsi over the past week for help to broker an agreement to halt fighting.

According to the White House, Netanyahu called Obama on Wednesday morning, and the president encouraged him to accept the cease-fire. Obama also thanked him for agreeing to work with the Egyptian government "to achieve a sustainable cease-fire and a more durable solution to this problem."

The White House statement and the joint press conference in Cairo announcing the deal also elevated Morsi to the role of regional power broker.

"Egypt's government is assuming responsibility and leadership that has long made it a regional cornerstone of stability and peace," Clinton said in the press conference.

The White House statement added that "The President commended the Prime Minister [of Israel] for agreeing to the Egyptian ceasefire proposal — which the President recommended the Prime Minister do — while reiterating that Israel maintains the right to defend itself." The curious construction of the statement will surely be parsed in the coming hours and days.

Obama also spoke with Morsi on Wednesday, the White House announced, thanking "Morsi for his efforts to achieve a sustainable ceasefire and for his personal leadership in negotiating a ceasefire proposal."

In his call with Netanyahu, Obama also pledged to secure more funding for the Iron Dome missile defense system, which has successfully stopped more than 100 rockets from falling on Israeli population centers.

The full White House statement:

President Obama spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu today and reiterated his commitment to Israel’s security.

The President made clear that no country can be expected to tolerate rocket attacks against civilians.

The President expressed his appreciation for the Prime Minister’s efforts to work with the new Egyptian government to achieve a sustainable ceasefire and a more durable solution to this problem.

The President commended the Prime Minister for agreeing to the Egyptian ceasefire proposal — which the President recommended the Prime Minster do — while reiterating that Israel maintains the right to defend itself.

The President said that the United States would use the opportunity offered by a ceasefire to intensify efforts to help Israel address its security needs, especially the issue of the smuggling of weapons and explosives into Gaza.

The President said that he was committed to seeking additional funding for Iron Dome and other US-Israel missile defense programs.

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The Democratic Representative from Chicago has been on medical leave for bipolar depression since June.

Image by Charles Rex Arbogast, File / AP

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr has submitted his letter of resignation, a Congressional aide told BuzzFeed.

CBS Chicago reports the Chicago Democrat notified his staff and some supporters of his decision this afternoon.

In addition to his extended medical leave, Jackson has been under fire for alleged misuse of campaign funds. He's known for being an eccentric member of Congress, complete with tattoos of family members (and Bruce Lee).

The announcement comes two weeks after Jackson won re-election without campaigning.

Here's the letter:

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