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Beautiful –> President Obama: “To the dedicated and hard-working employees of the United States Government….” pic.twitter.com/KdYPmNXGo0
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) October 18, 2013
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FLOTUS is back!
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https://twitter.com/GinaEPA/status/390857822545526784
“You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election.”
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From GoBrooklyn:
Hi Everyone!
Appointments went smoothly today. I will probably get results during next week’s appointment. Good news of the day is that I was approved for Medicaid. I was worried because here in Florida you have to have children, be over 65 or disabled to get Medicaid. I applied as disabled, they verified my info/medical records and I’ve been approved. Now I don’t have to worry about being bankrupted by medical bills.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
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‘Ted Cruz Reacts To End Of #GOPShutdown‘ pic.twitter.com/l7hmWjxQ1h
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) October 17, 2013
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Against that backdrop, the private gatherings among the sisterhood are a source of both power and perspective. They occur every few weeks or months, depending on the need. Venues include the Senators’ homes—and occasionally the unlikely confines of the Capitol’s Strom Thurmond Room, a space named for one of the chamber’s most notorious womanizers. “We started the dinners 20 years ago on the idea that there has to be a zone of civility,” says Mikulski. Once a year the group also dines with the female Supreme Court Justices. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence, holds regular dinners for women in the national-security world. Even the female chiefs of staff and communications directors have started regular get-togethers of their own.
In April the Senate women breached their no-outsider rule by agreeing to dine at the White House with President Obama. Going around the table, California Senator Barbara Boxer remarked that 100 years ago they’d have been meeting outside the White House gates to demand the right to vote. (“A hundred years ago, I’d have been serving you,” Obama replied.)
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This excerpt is from a TIME Magazine article about the adults in Washington being women. The interaction between Sen. Boxer and President Obama stood out to me. You can read the rest of the piece here
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President Barack Obama makes remarks regarding the reopening of the U.S. Federal government
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President Barack Obama speaks on the reopening of the U.S. Federal government
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President Obama arrives to speak about the government shutdown and debt ceiling standoff in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, October 16
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Today (All Times Eastern):
10:35: President Obama delivers a statement
11:30: Holds a bilateral meeting with Italian Prime Minister Letta; Biden also attends
12:45: Holds a working lunch with Italian Prime Minister Letta; VP Biden also attends
1:30: Jay Carney briefs the press
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“No”:
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Holly Yan: Obama Signs Bill To End Partial Shutdown, Prevent Debt Ceiling Crisis
After all the bickering and grandstanding, the billions lost and trust squandered, it was much ado about nothing. The partial government shutdown’s finally over. The debt ceiling debacle has been averted. Obamacare remains virtually unscathed. The hardline House Republicans, whose opposition to the President’s signature healthcare law set this all in motion, got pretty much zip — except maybe their reputations marred.
The Senate brokered a bill to end the 16-day-long shutdown and raise the debt limit. The GOP-led House passed it. And early Thursday morning, President Barack Obama signed it into law. But it wasn’t Republicans who made it happen; a majority of that party’s caucus actually voted against the measure. The bill passed 285-144, with overwhelming Democratic support and the approval of about 80 House Republicans.
More here
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E.J. Dionne: A Lesson For Moderates In The Shutdown Denouement
Those who genuinely want a more moderate approach to politics must also reflect on what just happened. Obama and an astonishingly unified Democratic Party insisted that there could be no negotiation over raising the debt ceiling. It was time, they said, to stand up against government by intimidation. This made many who chase the political center, no matter how far to the right conservatives might drag it, uneasy. Their critiques took many forms: that Obama should “lead” more, that he should be more “involved,” that refusing to negotiate sounded so ill-tempered.
The irony the centrists must confront is that there is now a larger opening for moderate governance precisely because foes of the far right’s extra-constitutional abuses of the congressional process stood firm. In doing so, they brought a large majority of the American people with them.
More here
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Zachary Roth: Breaking Black: The Right-Wing Plot To Split A School Board
Alleging mismanagement and cronyism stemming from the stadium project, a group of white conservatives has used a series of audacious political and legal maneuvers to try to seize control of the board from its black majority. The attempted power grab is just one flash-point in a bitter and racially-charged feud over control of the school board. The local courts, and many white residents of Beaumont, have made it easy for the conservatives. And they have been helped by developments more than 1,000 miles away in Washington.
In June, the Supreme Court badly weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act which had been signed into law to make places like Beaumont—places that often fly under the national radar—more equal. Whatever the outcome, the no-holds-barred struggle to control a provincial southeast Texas school board is shaping up as a test of something deeper: whether communities once plagued by the ugly rule of Jim Crow have truly changed, or if the Voting Rights Act was the check needed even today.
More here
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NYT: Hands Empty But Spirit Unbowed, House Republicans Take Stock
Speaker John A. Boehner strolled into a late-afternoon meeting with House Republicans and gave them one key directive: go home after it was all over on Wednesday night and get some sleep. Their fight was done.
In the two and half years since they took control of the House, Republicans have gone from early legislative victories that cut government spending to a string of defeats that have grown worse over time. The latest ended with a bill that was expected to pass early Thursday and that would leave the country almost exactly where it had been before, only billions of dollars poorer and as a puzzlement to the world.
More here
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Jonathan Chait: Stop Fretting: The Debt-Ceiling Crisis Is Over!
The mistaken impression of chaos and collapse was left by the collapse of the House Republican plan. But the House Republicans are the hostage-takers. It’sgood that their plan collapsed. Their plan was to insist on winning at least some concession from President Obama, testing his resolve not to be extorted, and, at least, pushing the crisis until the last moment. The Senate bill is a deal to lift the debt ceiling and reopen the government, without a ransom payment.
Most of the analysis has focused on the mind-boggling stupidity of Republicans in Congress, who blundered into a debacle that failed in exactly the way they were warned it would. But it also represents a huge Democratic success — or, at least, the closest thing to success that can be attained under the circumstances. Of the Republican Party’s mistakes, the most rational was its assumption that Democrats would ultimately bend. Democrats seemed to share a genuine moral revulsion at the tactics and audacity of a party that had lost a presidential election by 5 million votes, lost another chance to win a favorable Senate map, and lost the national House vote demanding the winning party give them its way without compromise.
More here
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Jennifer Bendery: GOP Didn’t Gain Anything By Forcing Shutdown
So did Republicans gain anything by forcing the showdown? “No,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said flatly. “I think the answer is no.” “That we know not to go down this road to a shutdown again?” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) proposed with a weak smile. “That may be something, at least.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who previously referred to tea party lawmakers as “wacko birds,” said the only good thing may be that Republicans are now forced to confront their intra-party differences. “I didn’t think this strategy was smart from the beginning,” Ayotte said. “The fact that the exchanges opened while the government was shut down demonstrates on its face that it wasn’t going to succeed.”
More here
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Washington Post: Recent *Rate* Of Growth In U.S. Debt Is Not Exceptional
What is so interesting about the figure is that it shows that the Obama years – despite a large rise in the nominal quantity of debt – are far from extraordinary in terms of the rate of debt growth over the preceding four years. In fact, if we extend the data series back to 1810, we find that prior to 2009, debt grew in the preceding four years at a faster rate than the rate at which it has increased since Obama took office in all of the following years: 1815-1817; 1839-1844; 1848-1851; 1859-1867; 1917-1921; 1942-1947; 1934-1937; 1978; 1983-1988.
More here
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On This Day:
First Lady Michelle Obama participates in a taping with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan for “Live! with Kelly and Michael” at the Live with Kelly Studios in New York, N.Y., Oct. 17, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Sonya N. Hebert)
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President Barack Obama visits Mast General Store in Boone, N.C., during a stop on the American Jobs Act bus tour, Oct. 17, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Barack Obama waves to a crowd gathered along a road in Boone, N.C., during the American Jobs Act bus tour, Oct. 17, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Barack Obama boards Air Force One at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 17, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
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On This Day – Pete Souza: “Waiting backstage to be introduced, the President wrapped his arms around the First Lady before an outdoor rally in Columbus, Ohio.” Oct. 17, 2010
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MooooOOOOoooorning!
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