Archive for August 7th, 2013
To Laugh Or Not To Laugh
News Of The Day
Pete Souza: President Obama shakes hands with troops at Camp Pendleton
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AP: Obama To Speak At ‘Let Freedom Ring’ Ceremony
President Barack Obama will speak later this month at a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The White House says the speech will be delivered during the “Let Freedom Ring” ceremony on the Lincoln Memorial steps on Aug. 28. No other details were released.
Obama’s speech will come 50 years to the day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led approximately 250,000 to the National Mall in a march for jobs and freedom. King also delivered his signature “I Have a Dream” speech from the memorial steps. The March on Washington helped pressure Congress to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in 1964 and 1965, respectively.
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President Obama’s America. It’s Math, GOP!
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Conservatives Really Really Really Hate Women
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Way To Go North Carolina! This Is How You CRUSH The GOP
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What Do We Want? Immigration Reform. When Do We Want It? Now!
https://twitter.com/FardigJudith/status/365253047535939585
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Yay ObamaCare!
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The GOP is a J-O-K-E
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President Obama’s Response
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President Obama delivers remarks at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton at 3:50PM ET / 2:50PM CT / 12:50PM PT
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Rise and Shine
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Clare Kim: Obama Talks Surveillance, Hillary, And Trayvon Martin With Leno
On The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, President Obama talked with host Jay Leno about everything from the Affordable Care Act and NSA leaker Edward Snowden to the economy, his relationship with Hillary Clinton, and the death of Trayvon Martin. Leno asked the president about the ongoing skepticism for the NSA surveillance program that collects phone record metadata in order to prevent terrorist attacks. Obama firmly stated that the government has not encroached on the privacy of citizens, and that they have not “abused these powers” in any way. He added that America does not “have a domestic spying program,” but intelligence gathering is “a critical component” for a counter-terrorism program.
‘What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat, and, you know, that information is useful,” Obama said. “But, you know, what I’ve said before, you know, and I want to make sure I repeat and that is we should be skeptical about the potential encroachments on privacy. None of the revelations show that the government has actually abused these powers, but they are pretty significant powers.” Jay Leno also brought up the recent crackdown on gays in Russia, comparing the country’s treatment of homosexuality to the way Nazi Germany persecuted Jews. President Obama said he has “no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.”
Leno told the president he’d spoken eloquently about the death of Trayvon Martin. “I could tell you were speaking from the heart,” he said. “Tell me about that.” He told Leno that he spoke about the case because he “wanted to try to explain why this was a particularly sensitive topic for African-American families because a lot of people who have sons know the experience they had of being followed and being viewed suspiciously…what we also believe in is people, everybody, should be treated fairly and the system should work for everyone. And so what I’m trying to do is just make sure that we have a conversation and that were all asking ourselves ‘are there some things we can do to foster better understanding’ and to make sure we don’t have laws in place that encourage the kind of violent encounter that we saw there that resulted in tragedy.”
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Presidential Daily Schedule (All Times Eastern)
1:00PM: Pres. Obama is interviewed by Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff
3:50PM: Pres. Obama delivers remarks at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton
5:20PM: Pres. Obama departs Los Angeles
9:50PM: Pres. Obama arrives Joint Base Andrews
10:05PM: Pres. Obama arrives at the White House
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Julie Pace: In Rebuke, Obama Cancels Moscow Summit With Putin
In a rare diplomatic rebuke, President Barack Obama on Wednesday canceled his Moscow summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The decision reflected both U.S. anger over Russia’s harboring of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and growing frustration within the Obama administration over what it sees as Moscow’s stubbornness on other key issues, including missile defense and human rights.
Obama will still attend the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, but a top White House official said the president had no plans to hold one-on-one talks with Putin while there. Instead of visiting Putin in Moscow, the president will add a stop in Sweden to his early September travel itinerary. “We’ll still work with Russia on issues where we can find common ground, but it was the unanimous view of the president and his national security team that a summit did not make sense in the current environment,” Rhodes said.
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Steve Benen: PolitiFact Finds Its Pants On Fire
What Cantor said was the opposite of the truth — he said the nation has a “growing deficit,” when in reality, we have a shrinking deficit. We can have a discussion about whether the House Majority Leader was deliberately trying to deceive the public — Republicans have an incentive to convince the public that U.S. finances are in worse shape than they really are — or whether Cantor simply doesn’t know the basics of current events. But I’m afraid it’s either one or the other. Unless, that is, you’re PolitiFact.
I would have hoped for a “Pants on Fire” rating, but would have settled for at least a “False” conclusion. But the House Majority Leader can make a claim that’s the polar opposite of reality and it’s “half true”? Seriously? In theory, I’m not reflexively opposed to the idea of websites fact-checking important claims made by political figures, but if you’re going to have the word “fact” in your name, you have a responsibility to get the details right. And too often, PolitiFact just isn’t good at its job.
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President Barack Obama listens during a health care reform meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, on Aug. 7, 2009.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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Greg Sargent: The GOP’s Fundamental Miscalculation About ObamaCare
What if Republicans — in their drive to repeal and even defund Obamacare — are making the same mistake they made in 2012 about the economy? Last year, Republicans gambled that high public dissatisfaction with Obama’s economic performance meant majorities had concluded that the President had been an abject failure, meaning there was simply no chance he’d be reelected. Instead, exit polls suggested voters didn’t hold Obama to blame for the economy in high enough numbers to ensure his defeat. One possible explanation — advanced by Ron Brownstein, yours truly and others — is that despite their disappointment, they found the sluggishness of the recovery understandable, given the circumstances, and saw the election as a nuanced choice between sticking with a disappointing status quo and a worse alternative. Republicans appeared caught off guard by this.
A similar miscalculation may be guiding the current GOP drive to repeal Obamacare — and the conservative drive to shut down the government to force its defunding. polls that offer a more nuanced range of options — such as changing the law or repealing parts of it — find only minority support for the GOP position of full repeal. This pattern has been clear for years now. Meanwhile, polls that ask directly whether Republicans should keep blocking the law find majority opposition to that. It seems reasonable to surmise that dissatisfaction with the law may not necessarily translate into broad support for getting rid of it entirely (let alone replacing it with nothing). As in 2012, voters may be taking a longer, more nuanced view than Republicans think.
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President Barack Obama meets with the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in the State Dining Room, on Aug. 7, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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Jonathan Capehart: Blacks Could Rock The Vote In 2014 – If They Vote
There was a line in Dan Balz’s terrific analysis of the Republican Party’s political dilemma that kind of bugged me. Not because he was wrong, but because he could be easily disproven. All that’s needed is for black folks to vote. During the 2012 presidential election, Republicans certainly thought past patterns would prevail. Specifically, they thought the coalition of minorities and women, many of whom were first-time voters, wouldn’t return to the polls for two reasons. First, there was a strong belief that because those first-time voters didn’t have a tradition of voting, many of them would stay home on Election Day. Second, there was an even stronger belief that President Obama’s coalition was so disillusioned by what their guy was unable to achieve that they would be too demoralized to vote. Wrong and wrong, again.
Blacks were the only race or ethnic group to show a significant increase between the 2008 and 2012 elections in the likelihood of voting (from 64.7 percent to 66.2 percent). The 2012 increase in voting among blacks continues what has been a long-term trend: since 1996, turnout rates have risen 13 percentage points to the highest levels of any recent presidential election. A House of Representatives returned to Democratic control and the Democratic majority hanging on in the Senate would allow Obama to get his agenda through and get something done for the American people. All that’s required is for the 2014 electorate to be less white than it has ever been.
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President Barack Obama gestures during a roundtable discussion with Hispanic print and web media in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, on Aug. 7, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Barack Obama talks with members of the 2012 Summer White House intern class before a group photo in the East Room of the White House, Aug. 7, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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The Obama Diary 
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