President Barack Obama delivers remarks at a reception with U.S. mayors at the White House
****
****
President Barack Obama listens to Vice President Joe Biden as he speaks at a reception with U.S. mayors at the White House
President Barack Obama greets the audience with “shaka” sign, a traditional Hawaiian greeting
President Obama takes a question from a mayor as he address the 82nd Winter Meeting of The United States Conference of Mayors, at the White House
I could say more, and probably will, but for now, Will McAvoy speaks for me. Read the tweets starting from the bottom.
Go read Chez Pazienza’s piece here. And keep chatting.
SUBWAY Famous Fan and 18-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps, joins the First Lady Michelle Obama, and famous fan Justin Tuck, and local area kids for lunch at a SUBWAY store
First Lady Michelle Obama teams up with Subway to promote a revamped kids’ menu. Olympian Michael Phelps, joins her.
****
White House: First Lady Michelle Obama Announces Commitment by Subway® Restaurants to Promote Healthier Choices to Kids
Today, First Lady Michelle Obama joined the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) and SUBWAY® along with SUBWAY® Famous Fans Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, and Justin Tuck at a local Washington, DC, SUBWAY® Restaurant, to announce a three-year commitment by the chain in support of her Let’s Move! initiative to promote healthier choices to kids, including launching its largest targeted marketing effort to date. In addition to strengthening its already nutritious menu offerings to kids, SUBWAY® will launch a new series of campaigns for kids aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable consumption and will set new standards for marketing products to families.
“I’m excited about these initiatives not just as a First Lady, but also as a mom,” said First Lady Michelle Obama. “Subway’s kids’ menu makes life easier for parents, because they know that no matter what their kids order, it’s going to be a healthy choice.” As part of its commitment, the SUBWAY® restaurant chain will: only offer items on its kids menus that meet strong nutritional guidelines informed by federal standards for the national school lunch program, including offering apples as a side and low-fat or non-fat milk or water as a default beverage. deliver $41 million in media value in the next three years to market healthier options to children and families, with a specific focus on increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables. This is the brand’s largest kid-focused marketing campaign to date, and includes general marketing, in-store merchandising, television, social and digital media and public relations.
More here
****
SUBWAY Famous Fans Justin Tuck, and Nastia Liukin work behind the counter to serve up Fresh Fit sandwiches to First Lady Michelle Obama and local area children during an event in Washington, D.C., to announce SUBWAY Restaurants’ recent recognition by the Partnership for A Healthier America. Also pictured at left is Jared Fogle “The Subway Guy”, and famous fan Michael Phelps.
Completely Random Old Pic to show solidarity with our snowed-in TODers 😕
Now, chat on!
On This Day: President Obama places a phone call at his desk in the Oval Office, Jan. 23, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
****
Today (all times Eastern):
12:45: Jay Carney’s press briefing
5:15: President Obama delivers remarks at a reception with U.S. mayors, East Room
.@FLOTUS today visits DC @SUBWAY shop to announce corp’s big new @LetsMove @PHAnews commitment: Marketing healthier food choices to kids
— Eddie Gehman Kohan (@ObamaFoodorama) January 23, 2014
****
TPM: 6 Million People Have Enrolled In Medicaid Since Obamacare Launched
Some 6.3 million people have enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program since Oct. 1, when HealthCare.gov and its state counterparts went live, according to a new report from the Obama administration. The report covers Medicaid enrollments through the end of December.
States that expanded Medicaid saw a boom in enrollments in December, corresponding with a similar surge in private coverage enrollees through the insurance marketplaces. Medicaid enrollments were up 73 percent in those states last month compared to the pre-Obamacare monthly average. In states that didn’t expand Medicaid, enrollment was up 3 percent in December.
Full post here
****
#Obamacare will DESTROY this President & his party!!!!! Oh …. wait …. Obama’s approval up 9 pts since November. http://t.co/sybGYOLpQ1
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) January 23, 2014
****
6 million have signed up for Medicaid since October AKA the greatest victory for the middle class since Medicare. http://t.co/ZfkyyQUqWn
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 22, 2014
****
This is cause for celebration: http://t.co/jY9AzH5rIe pic.twitter.com/nzpVFHDQ9H
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 22, 2014
****
Disclaimer: @KalPenn has only played fake doctors on TV—but he still knows the importance of affordable health care. http://t.co/NuF2I4zyEJ
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 22, 2014
****
ThinkProgress: Mitch McConnell Boasts About Supporting Government Sponsored Health Care In New Campaign Ad
Sen. Mitch McConnell is out with a new campaign ad touting his success in securing free preventive health care services for Kentuckians. The spot, titled “Cares,” tries to paint the Senate Minority Leader as a compassionate Republican who carries a moral obligation to provide sick people with access to government-sponsored health care.
It’s a message you wouldn’t expect from a Republican senate leader who has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and continues to oppose its implementation in Kentucky. But the minute-long ad, featuring Robert Pierce, an energy worker and throat cancer survivor, highlights the Republican Senate leader’s effort to secure “cancer screening programs” for Kentuckians and provide them with government compensation.
The assistance is the result of an entitlement McConnell secured for former employees of a plant in Paducah, Kentucky who were exposed to high levels of uranium throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and who now suffer from cancer or other ailments …. McConnell had initially “kept the plant’s doors open” to guarantee jobs for his constitutes, even as “the plant’s toxins had spread through the air and into the ground, slowly killing its own workers and tainting the surrounding area.”
Full post here
****
****
Women can rest easy knowing preventive care like mammograms & cervical cancer screenings is now covered. Learn more: http://t.co/OPaL52ZAFj
— Covered California (@CoveredCA) January 22, 2014
****
The Daily Beast: The GOP’s Birth-Control Trojan Horse
The right wants to use religion as an excuse to legally discriminate against gays and unmarried women—and, ultimately, anyone who doesn’t share their Christian faith.
Ever since the Obama administration included contraception in the list of services that insurers must cover for clients without a copay, conservatives have been on the attack. As far as most right-wing media is concerned—and definitely as far as the average conservative on the ground is concerned—the problem with the mandate is that it supposedly forces others to “pay for” a woman’s “lifestyle” choice.
Even though the insurance policies in question actually belong to the women, who usually earned them as part of their compensation packages at work or who paid for directly with premiums, conservatives routinely portray women who use their own insurance to pay for their own medicine as layabouts forcing other people pay for their birth control. Some conservatives even go so far as to erroneously claim that taxpayers are footing the bill for insurance companies to cover contraception.
More here
****
It’s time to recommit to protecting women’s access to safe, legal reproductive care. pic.twitter.com/b1uBU3wCNf
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 22, 2014
****
TPM: Virginia AG To Join Fight Against State’s Gay Marriage Ban
Newly-minted Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D) said he will not defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriages after concluding it was unconstitutional.
“As attorney general, I cannot and will not defend laws that violate Virginians’ rights,” Herring said in an interview with NPR airing Thursday. “The commonwealth will be siding with the plaintiffs in this case and with every other Virginia couple whose right to marry is being denied.”
…. Virginia is considered a critical battleground in the nationwide fight to grant same-sex couples the right to wed.
More here
****
“Anyone out there who has ever been assaulted: You are not alone…we have your back” —Obama: http://t.co/Y2PhO1YJog pic.twitter.com/F5PM06Jpw9
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 23, 2014
****
Peter Beinart (Haaretz): The only ‘leader’ who speaks for American Jews on Iran is Barack Obama
Most American Jews support Obama’s policies on Iran – so in whose name are their so-called ‘leaders’ sabotaging his nuclear diplomacy?
… in recent months, the press has been filled with headlines like: “White House Briefs Jewish Leaders on Iran Nuclear Deal,” “American Jewish Leaders Censure Nuclear Deal,” and “Obama Urges Jewish Leaders Not to Back Iran Sanctions.”
The implication is that there’s a conflict between the White House, which want a softer line on Iran, and American Jews who – represented by their “leaders” – want a tougher one. It’s an influential storyline. And it’s utter nonsense.
In truth, the only person who can legitimately claim to speak for American Jews on the subject of Iran is the very guy American Jewish “leaders” oppose: Barack Obama. Look at the evidence. In 2012, Mitt Romney slammed Obama for not supporting tougher sanctions against Iran and for not more explicitly pledging that, if sanctions fail to curb Tehran’s nuclear program, the U.S. will attack. In so doing, Romney road-tested the critique leveled by Benjamin Netanyahu and many American Jewish “leaders.”
The result? Obama won 69 percent of the Jewish vote.
More here
****
WH Speechwriter Cody Keenan takes you #InsideSOTU on the @WhiteHouse Instagram. Follow along: http://t.co/0XGeYlaAW4 pic.twitter.com/PS5Hb7X5ng
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 22, 2014
****
Steve Benen: Election panel eyes reforms
On the night President Obama won a second term, he thanked “every American who participated” in the election, whether they voted “for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time.” He quickly added a line that wasn’t in the written text: “By the way, we have to fix that.”
And as we talked about last March, the president didn’t forget about the issue. Obama referenced the issue again in his inaugural address: “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” A month later, in a State of the Union address, the president went a step further, not only emphasizing the need for election reforms, but vowing to create “a nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience in America – and it definitely needs improvement.”
The White House assembled the commission, which, following six months of effort, released its report this morning. It’s actually better than I expected it to be….
More here
****
c̶h̶r̶i̶s̶t̶i̶e̶ ̶ m̶c̶d̶o̶n̶n̶e̶l̶l̶ r̶u̶b̶i̶o̶ ̶ t̶e̶d̶ ̶c̶r̶a̶z̶y̶ ̶ a̶q̶u̶a̶ ̶b̶u̶d̶d̶h̶a̶ ̶ j̶i̶n̶d̶a̶l̶ ̶ h̶a̶l̶e̶y̶ @̶g̶o̶p̶2̶0̶1̶6̶
— amk4obama (@amk4obama) January 22, 2014
****
Jim Stuart: Our Transformational President
Have you read David Remnick’s article in the current New Yorker? If not, do. Soon. Remnick listens to Obama without apparent lenses. He even discards the almost always present lens of “Are you succeeding or failing?” Healthcare is hardly mentioned. The article almost seems to me to exist without apparent intention or angle. We are invited to experience the President, through his own words, almost in slow motion, as he answers Remnick’s many thoughtful questions. Obama (to my view) neither lectures nor sells. He expresses himself, sometimes taking a long moment before beginning. Remnick notes this characteristic of the President, not as judgment, but rather so we can experience this too. The words. And the space between the words.
A brilliant piece. The first one I’ve found where the author isn’t trying to figure Obama out, and where we are gently told not to bring all our judgments to the reading, but to relax, sit back, simply experience the man.
Remnick does not say that Obama is a transformational leader. That’s my conclusion …. Let me move to my evidence…
More here
****
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ron Paul: http://t.co/jLYs6Mq9Ig | pic.twitter.com/nA02qJ1sPX
— ProgressiveHelpPhD (@CallOut4) January 22, 2014
****
Naughty – but I LOL’ed: Posted on Facebook by Wisconsin State Assemblywoman Christine Sinicki during Scott Walker‘s State of the State address – naturally, the right are OUTRAGED (Mediaite)
****
if you’re asking, “but Rob, why are you posting pictures from a video game cover?” I’m not this is really #Kiev pic.twitter.com/f0MVUkwTvj
— Robert A. Caruso (@robertcaruso) January 23, 2014
****
ThinkProgress: Behind West Virginia’s Massive Chemical Spill, A History Of Poverty And Pollution
“In my childhood, I fished these streams, I spent time in these streams,” Gunnoe, who lives in Bob White, a town in Boone County, said. “That’s what we did. Nobody needed a pool; the streams were our playground.”
In September, the stream where she used to fish and play as a child turned white. The culprit was 2,400 gallons of a chemical called DT-50-D, which is used to cover coal and rail cars to cut down on dust. It had leaked into the river from the Eastern Associated Coal prep plant, and to Gunnoe, it was just one more example of how the coal and chemical industries have polluted West Virginia — the second poorest state in the nation — over her lifetime.
This happens all the time. The coal companies are using stuff here that would absolutely eat the skin off of your body.
Industrial pollution, like what turned the Pond Fork River white, is a constant worry for many West Virginians, but Gunnoe said it took a major chemical spill like the one that polluted the water of 300,0000 West Virginians to get the nation to notice.
More here
****
On This Day:
President Obama talks alone with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Oval Office following Bipartisan meeting, Jan. 23, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama talks with Jon Favreau, Director of Speechwriting, in the Oval Office, Jan. 23, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)
****
MoooOOOooorning!
Completely Random Old Pic: Iowa State Fair, August 2007
****
MoooOOOooorning Early Birds!
Obama White House.gov WH Tumblr The People’s View Smartypants Steve Benen
The Obama Diary 
You must be logged in to post a comment.