11 | November | 2013 | The Obama Diary

Richard Overton, a 107 year old World War II veteran, arriving in Washington yesterday – he will meet with President Obama today (see here)

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Today (all times Eastern):

9:0: President Obama hosts a breakfast to honor veterans and their families

11:0: The President participates in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery; The First Lady, Vice President and Dr Jill Biden also attend

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Tuesday: The President will attend meetings at the White House

Wednesday: Delivers remarks at the 2013 Tribal Nations Conference

Thursday: Travels to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to participate in a DSCC event

Friday: Attend meetings at the White House

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by Jacquelineoboomer (@JOBoomr)

I’ll meet you at the parade on Main today

We’ll see the old men and women
Still wearing their military covers and medals
They show up at parades, waving hand-held flags
Sometimes seated, next to a grandchild
They look so distant and proud.

It is years since they became veterans
Their hair wasn’t white, their vision was better
They could stand straight and tall at attention
And follow orders to go in harm’s way
They were so very young, unprepared for most of it.

Men and women of every race and creed
Raised their hand to take an oath
To all of us, the young and the old,
To keep our country safe, to keep us free
They were an inspiration to me.

If they made it back, they never forgot
The battle, the war, the comrades-in-arms
They never forgot the friendships or the horrors
They never forgot the ships or the tanks
They savored, and internalized, their call-to-duty.

We’ve been to gatherings
Where they play their songs
And they all rise, if they can, to their branch’s music
And we clap and honor them for a minute
They haven’t forgotten one minute of their service.

We can’t either, and we must rise, today on Main
To honor them, and to hold out our hands
To shake their hands, in friendship and thanks.
Thanks to these patriots. These veterans.
These men and women parading before us.

These men and women watching from the stands
With their white hair and their clouded vision
With tears in their eyes, tears of remembering
Thinking of a comrade, long fallen
Thinking of the places they’ve traveled in their souls.

Years and years in time
And, for some, long, long ago
They earned the name veteran
They’ll someday leave us with our own memories of them
They are the men and women of valor, and we are the parade-goers.

And years and years in time, we’ll still call them patriot
And remember how we loved them.

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month … We remember!

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Oldest Living Veteran Cites Whiskey, Cigars, ‘Staying Out Of Trouble’ As Key To Longevity http://t.co/oVc6TC2eVW #p2

— CaptivatingNews (@CaptivatingNews) November 11, 2013

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NYT: ’60 Minutes’ Airs Apology On Benghazi

The apology lasted only 90 seconds and revealed nothing new about why CBS had trusted Mr. Davies, who appeared on the program under the pseudonym Morgan Jones. Off-camera, CBS executives were left to wonder how viewers would react to the exceptionally rare correction.

However, the apology was deemed inadequate by a wide range of commentators Sunday night. Craig Silverman, of the correction blog Regret the Error, predicted that it would not “take the heat off CBS News.”

“Aside from the fact that it struck a very passive tone and pushed the responsibility onto the source, Dylan Davies, it said nothing about how the show failed to properly vet the story of an admitted liar,” Mr. Silverman said in an email. “There are basic questions left unanswered about how the program checked out what Davies told them, and where this process failed.” “In the short term, this will confirm the worst suspicions of people who don’t trust CBS News,”

More here

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Journalism: @60Minutes edition: A year maligning Pres. Obama's character with fake Benghazi story 90 seconds spent on the apology Bravo!
—
Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) November 11, 2013

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TPM: Lara Logan’s Bogus “Correction”

I just watched the 60 Minutes “correction”/apology tonight and thought was pretty amazing for its brevity, lack of substance and general obfuscation. If you didn’t watch 60 Minutes tonight, it won’t take long. It only lasted 90s or so.

Logan said 60 Minutes had found out Thursday that they had been “misled and it was a mistake to include him in our report.” Include him in their report? He was the report. And even in conceding that her team had been “misled”, Logan tiptoed around the real news, which is that it seems clear that Davies’ entire story was a fabrication.

More here

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ACTION: we must call @60Minutes send email & snail mail, not just rant Twitter abt #Benghazihoax #retractionFAIL. pic.twitter.com/2PRqApWEo7

— zizi2 (@zizii2) November 11, 2013

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Let @CBSNews know how you feel about their @60Minutes ‘apology’: http://t.co/HbepQz4gwo pic.twitter.com/n1O4jCO6kQ

— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) November 11, 2013

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Media Matters: Will Media Let 60 Minutes Off The Hook After Hollow “Correction”?

60 Minutes aired an inadequate apology that not only failed to address fundamental questions about the CBS news magazine’s vetting of an admitted liar who served as a key eyewitness in a story that the network has since retracted, but actually conflicts with CBS’ prior explanation of that error.

Logan’s claim that it was only after the 60 Minutes report aired that questions arose about the truth of security contractor Dylan Davies’ account is undermined by what she said during an apology she issued over the same segment just two days earlier. Logan’s slippery apology glosses over a key question that remains unanswered: why did 60 Minutes fail to inform its audience during the initial segment that its key eyewitness had told two contradictory accounts of what he did the night of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks?

More here

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agenda only explanation; MT @mmfa .@BrianStelter: 60 Min’s mistakes raise Q’s abt whether CBS came in with an agenda: http://t.co/r63rKlBZ0A

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) November 11, 2013

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Steve Benen: The effects of a discredited Benghazi report

Two weeks after airing a lengthy report on last year’s attack in Benghazi, CBS’s “60 Minutes” acknowledged late last week that its segment – celebrated by a far-right conspiracy theorists – was wrong….

It almost certainly won’t end the controversy. As the New York Times noted, the apology was not only brief, it “revealed nothing new” about why CBS managed to get the story so very wrong. Complicating matters, “60 Minutes” launched an expansive recovery effort after getting a 2004 story about George W. Bush’s military record wrong, but the show apparently has no intention of responding in kind now – a CBS spokesman “indicated that the program was going to let its televised apology be its last word on the issue.”

There are a wide variety of pressing questions about this discredited report, but at least for now, CBS doesn’t intend to answer them.

More here

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@BarackObama

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Jonathan Cohn: The Huge Obamacare Story You Aren’t Reading

Today it’s a few hundred thousand people. By next year, it will be at least a few million. Their health insurance status is changing dramatically: What they have in 2014 and beyond will look nothing like what they had in 2013 and before. For many of these people, the difference will be hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year. In a few cases, it may be the difference between life and death.

You probably think I’m talking about the people getting cancellation notices about their private insurance policies. I’m not. I’m talking about the people getting Medicaid. Both stories are consequences of the Affordable Care Act. But one is getting way, way more attention than the other. It’s no mystery why. Stories of people losing something are more compelling than stories of people gaining something.

More here

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Think Progress: Major Insurance Company Faces Lawsuit For Allegedly Tricking Customers Into Canceling Their Policies

A major California insurance company is being sued by two consumers alleging that they were tricked into dropping their health coverage when they could have remained on their preferred plans under Obamacare. Obamacare allows insurance policies that were issued before the law was signed in 2010 to remain in place as long as they don’t change their benefits in a way that harms consumer

For customers who don’t have “grandfathered plans,” things are a little different. Their insurance providers must comply with Obamacare’s more robust benefit requirements. California’s Anthem Blue Cross may have convinced their customers that they fall into the second category — even though they’re actually in the first.

“Blue Cross successfully enticed tens of thousands of its individual policyholders to switch out of their grandfathered health plans and forever lose their protected grandfathered status,” states the lawsuit. “Blue Cross concealed information about the consequences of switching plans and intentionally misled its policyholders to encourage the replacement of grandfathered policies.”

More here

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Christie Now Refuses 2 Say Whether He Supports A Pathway 2 Citizenship http://t.co/FmvqEGOREK | U Voted 4 Him NJ pic.twitter.com/15Ytdjo2St

— Sean Bond (@iam_seanbond) November 11, 2013

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Steve Benen: A thinner-than-thin margin in Virginia

Democratic candidates fared quite well in the commonwealth of Virginia last week, winning the races for governor and lieutenant governor. But about the remarkably close race for state attorney general? As of this morning, it’s the kind of nail-biter we don’t see often.

…. Unless the tallies have changed over the last couple of hours, Obenshain’s lead is 17 votes – out of over 2.2 million votes cast in the race. It suggests a recount is all but inevitable and we won’t know the final outcome before December.

But in case the thinner-than-thin margins weren’t interesting enough, there was also some unexpected drama in Fairfax County, which is generally friendly towards Democrats, and where Herring was expected to pick up some additional votes from provisional ballots. WTOP, a prominent local radio station, reported over the weekend that a “last-minute change” may leave some provisional ballots uncounted.

More here

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Veterans eat free at these restaurants today. Retweet and spread the word. http://t.co/Gq0kY79deH

— Dollar (@callmedollar) November 11, 2013

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On This Day:

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Aboard the USS Carl Vinson, docked at North Island Naval Station in San Diego, Nov. 11, 2011

President Obama greets Korean War veteran Private Hector Cafferata, who received the Medal of Honor for his heroic service at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, following his remarks at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, Korea, Nov. 11, 2010 (Photo by Pete Souza)

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Morning! Thank you to Jacqueline for the beautiful poem and to UT for all the newsie links help!