Obama Proposes Summit on Entrepreneurship With Muslim Nations

I wonder how right wingers will spin this one to attack Obama:

The White House on Friday announced a “summit on entrepreneurship” to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama’s outreach to Muslims.

The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.

“The summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges while building partnerships that will lead to greater opportunity abroad and at home,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said…

He said that the meeting would “identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.”

Closer economic ties could go a long way to decrease tensions.

I’m sure that any outreach to the Muslims will cause a few conservative heads to explode, and result in some more knee jerk claims that Obama is secretly a Muslim terrorist born outside of the United States. How will they respond to a “summit on entrepreneurship” as proposed? This  just doesn’t fit in well with their idea that Obama is a socialist. Of course Obama’s  actual economic policies contradict that meme as well, but this certainly has never stopped many on the right from claiming this.

Initial reaction from conservative blogs is, as expected, negative. Deep down they prefer war over trade.

Several conservative blogs, such as here and here, are distorting Obama’s criticism of the insurance industry to suggest a hostility towards American business. Stepping in when an industry is engaging in the types of abusive activities seen by the insurance industry is not an act of opposition to American industry–it is necessary to preserve our free market system. Adam Smith would role over in his grave if he could see how capitalism is perverted by the right wing to rationalize the absence of regulation needed for a market system to operate.

GOP Fundraising Documents Cost Them A Donor

The recent accidental release of a presentation for donors prepared by the Republican National Committee continues to create embarrassment. The presentation shows how the GOP, lacking any real policies, tries to fool donors with appeals based upon fear. Ben Smith reports on one former donor who has decided not to contribute to the party:

A prominent Evangelical figure and Republican donor says he will end his contributions to the organized Republican Party in reaction to the leaked fundraising presentation that advised using “fear” to solicit contributions and displayed an image of President Obama as the Joker from Batman.

Mark DeMoss, who heads a major Christian public relations firm in Atlanta and served as a liaison to the Evangelical community for Mitt Romney in 2008, wrote Chairman Michael Steele yesterday that he was “ashamed” of the presentation, calling depictions of Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Majority Leader Harry Reid “shameful, immature and uncivil, at best.”

“I’m afraid the presentation is representative of a culture and mindset within the Republican National Committee,” DeMoss, a past member of the RNC’s “Eagle” program for top donors who gave the party $15,000 in 2008, wrote in the letter to Steele, which he shared with POLITICO. “Consequently, I will no longer contribute to any fundraising entity of our Party—but will contribute only to individual candidates I choose to support.”

Personally I think people should have become wise to the minset of the Republican National Committee when they sent out fund raising letters in 2004 trying to scare people by saying John Kerry would take away their bibles. Better late than never. The full text of the letter is under the fold:

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