President Obama during a press conference at the conclusion of the APEC Summit in Kapolei, Hawaii, Nov. 13
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Star Advertiser: President Barack Obama on Sunday declared the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit a success that will strengthen the U.S. economy, and he expressed gratitude to his hometown for hosting representatives from the 21 APEC nations.
…. “Usually when Michelle and I and our daughters come back to visit, it’s just one president, and this time we brought 21. So thank you so much for the incredible graciousness of the people of Hawaii – and their patience, because I know that traffic got tied up a little bit.”
… while APEC took a toll on Oahu drivers, the meetings produced substantial results that will help strengthen relations throughout the Asia-Pacific, increase trade and help create jobs for Americans while promoting “green growth,” Obama said…..
Today: The President holds a fundraiser in the morning. That will be his only event for the day before he leaves tomorrow morning for Canberra, Australia.
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President Barack Obama and other leaders wait to move to the site of the official Family Photo at the APEC summit in Honolulu, Hawaii, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2011. From left: His Royal Highness Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah; Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan; President Obama; President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia; Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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Washington Post: The Obama administration will announce Monday as much as $1 billion in funding to hire, train and deploy health-care workers, part of the White House’s broader “We Can’t Wait” agenda to bolster the economy after President Obama’s jobs bill stalled in Congress. Grants can go to doctors, community groups, local government and other organizations that work with patients in federal health-care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid…..
EJ Dionne: ….. Cain and his defenders have settled on a strategy to rally conservatives by assailing the “liberal media” and “the Democrat machine.” Politico ran the first stories about the allegations, and to argue that Politico is “liberal” requires an extraordinary leap of the imagination. Most liberals see Politico as leaning over backward to give conservatives more than their share of journalistic spin.
…. that so many other members of a movement theoretically devoted to traditional values on sexual matters would eagerly jump into this mess on Cain’s side speaks volumes about its condition …. where’s the outrage about a conservatism that is losing both its intellectual moorings and its moral compass?
3:30 PM: First Lady Michelle Obama welcomes Caroline Kennedy and representatives of other first families and members of the White House Historical Association for a reception in honor of the organization’s 50th Anniversary.
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NYT: Obama Tries to Speed Response to Shortages in Vital Medicines
President Obama will issue an executive order on Monday that the administration hopes will help resolve a growing number of critical shortages of vital medicines used to treat life-threatening illnesses, among them several forms of cancer and bacterial infections.
The order offers drug manufacturers and wholesalers both a helping hand and a gloved fist in efforts to prevent or resolve shortages that have worsened greatly in recent years, endangering thousands of lives.
It instructs the F.D.A. to do three things: broaden reporting of potential shortages of certain prescription drugs; speed reviews of applications to begin or alter production of these drugs; and provide more information to the Justice Department about possible instances of collusion or price gouging.
Greg Sargent: ‘GOP tightening election laws across the country’
My pick for read of the morning is this very well reported Los Angeles Times piece detailing what is now an undeniable national trend: Republican legislatures and governors are making it harder for people to vote in multiple states across the country.
When you see these examples piled up in one place, as the L.A. Times has done, you get a clear sense of the national scope and potential impact of all these state-by-state initiatives.
As one expert puts it, the presidential race could hang in the balance: “These laws will have an effect on the margin on who votes. And in a state like Florida, a small difference matters. It could easily decide the outcome.”
USA Today: A Republican lawmaker who has criticized the Department of Energy’s $529 million loan guarantee to an electric car company that is manufacturing vehicles overseas has championed U.S.-backed loans to a company headquartered in his home district that does business around the globe.
Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., has called for the House Energy and Commerce’s oversight subcommittee to investigate the DOE decision to award the loan to Fisker Automotive, which is manufacturing its first line of vehicles in Finland.
…. Murphy, however, has backed financing for the Westinghouse Electric, which owns facilities in countries including Sweden, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Spain, Germany and the Ukraine and is headquartered in Murphy’s district. In May, Murphy introduced legislation that would provide loan guarantees up to $450 million to Westinghouse for the construction of two new nuclear power plants in the United States.
…. Murphy has received more than $40,000 in contributions from Westinghouse employees and the company’s political action committee, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Murphy did not respond to a request for comment…..
Steve Benen: …. So, what happens now? The Cain campaign is either lying about the candidate’s alleged misconduct or it’s not. And with the two accusers restricted by their settlement agreements from speaking, it’s possible Cain and his team feel like they can weather the storm without new details emerging. We’ll see.
But the larger political storm is just starting to brew. Cain’s reaction to direct questions yesterday – after being asked four times about the allegations, he sighed, glared at a reporter, stayed silent, and refused to respond – signaled to reporters everywhere that the Republican candidate has a real problem on his hands.
As for efforts to blame the “liberal” media, this may have some salience in GOP circles, but it’s not much of a strategy. For one thing, Politico hardly leans to the left. For another, the article was co-authored by a reporter who used to work for National Review. (Part of me wonders if it was members of the Republican establishment who leaked this, just to make Cain go away.)
What’s less clear is whether rank-and-file Republican voters will care. There’s reason to believe they won’t – the GOP has a track record of looking the other way when sexual misconduct allegations affect their own (Vitter, Clarence Thomas, et al).
I went over to the dark side last night to see the reaction to the Cain story – I (literally) laughed out loud when the Teabaggers claimed it was the Obama administration that leaked the story to GOPolitico.
These people just aren’t very bright. I’d imagine there’s nothing the Obama administration would love more than for Cain to win the GOP nomination – because the President wouldn’t have to break in to a sweat to win four more years.
Karl Rove, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney ….. methinks we have our suspects.
PS The single funniest comment on the dark side last night: that the allegations against Cain were “racist” and were probably invented by the “Kenyan’s” thugs. Seriously.
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Cain is even leading Perry in Texas! (See Texas Tribune)
Crikey, an awful lot of people on this planet were born after me 😳
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President Obama will have at least three bilateral meetings while in Cannes, France, this week for the G-20, and he plans to end the week with a press conference.
On Thursday, he’ll meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and on Friday he will meet with Argentine President Cristina Kirchner.
The President’s press conference will be on Friday, before he returns to Washington.
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There are strange goings-on in the comments, be afraid.
At a time when even some Republicans are conceding that Michele Bachmann is bat-shit crazy, King says this:
Yep, “You have taken what I would describe as a reasonable position……”
It gets worse…..
Let’s have a look at that exchange again:
Bachmann: We need to have the fight on Obamacare … I think it is a crime against democracy because Speaker Pelosi and President Obama failed to even tell the members of the House and Senate, much less the American people, that if a member casts a vote for the Obamacare bill they would also be voting to spend $105 billion…..it is my opinion that that money should be given back because it was passed fraudulently, no one knew that money was there…..
King: As you know, a lot of Democrats dispute your numbers on the healthcare bill, but I want to save that one for another day….
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No, no John, it’s not that Democrats dispute her numbers, it’s that every single independent observer has concluded that she was talking complete and utter shit about this “bombshell, hidden $105 billion”. eg:
Washington Post (Fact Checker) …. Bachmann’s main points have been that “this money was broken up, hidden in various parts of the bill” – something akin to a “slush fund” – and that it was done “secretly, unbeknownst to members of Congress.”
This is bordering on ridiculous.
…The Obama administration insisted that the health care bill be “paid for” through various revenue raisers and cost cuts in order to not increase the deficit. In the end, CBO declared that the health care bill would reduce the deficit over the next decade.
… it is disingenuous of Bachmann to talk only about the costs without noting that, in theory, all of this spending is fully funded.
There is a further problem with Bachman’s charge of “hidden” spending … the administration has not tried to hide this money at all; instead, it has trumpeted each dollar spent in a press release.
As for the claim that “this money was broken up, hidden in various parts of the bill,” we think she means that there were different sections in the legislation, depending on the issue. This is common practice for virtually all major bills, and it is not unusual or nefarious at all….
The Pinocchio Test: There is no “bombshell” except Bachmann’s bombast.
She is correct that Congress already has appropriated some spending in future years, but her claim that this money was “hidden” does not have credibility. The money for these programs was clearly described and analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office before the legislation was voted into law…..
Four Pinocchios:
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With Beck’s imminent departure from Fox, you have to wonder if King is looking to fill the gap. He was already a joke, but after suggesting that the racist nutjob that is Bachmann had taken a “reasonable position” on anything … and failing to challenge her on her debunked lies about that ‘fraudulent’ $105 billion …. oh dear, oh dear.
Crooks and Liars: You know, there are just some things that look and sound ridiculous … this is one of them. John King looks like a fool with his touchy-feely screen while fantasizing about what one billion dollars could do.
His reference to one billion dollars goes to the current meme about what the Obama campaign 2012 might end up spending. Of course, he forgets to note a few things, like the absence of corporate cash funneled through anonymous 501(c)(4) associations, and the DNC’s announcement that they won’t accept corporate funds for the convention. I also thought it was interesting that King chose red states’ deficits as his comparison point for what that billion could do. Poor red states. They won’t see much of that money.
But you know, one billion dollars is an insane amount of money to have to raise to keep ahead of the TeaBirchers’ funding paths. As I write, I’m busily tracking over $5 million funneled through one public donor-advised fund to right-wing “policy” organizations. So while the Republicos want to make a big stinking deal out of the money spent by Obama’s side of things, just remember they’ll end up spending more between their secret money tunnels, their anonymous corporate donors’ ad buys, and the inevitable stirring-up of the “angry base” by the Tea Party.
Now, it is my fervent wish that the President’s campaign will raise several billion dollars to see off the Republicans’ anonymous corporate donations (much of it from the likes of the Koch brothers and from overseas).
But, naturally, the President is being attacked – from the right and far left – for being associated with something as ‘obscene’ as a billion dollar campaign.
So, who in the President’s team boasted that his campaign would raise a billion dollars? The truth? No one. But King suggests it was David Axelrod:
King: Listen to top Obama political advisor David Axelrod telling us over lunch recently the fundraising goal could top one billion dollars.
Check the transcript:
King: What’s the ball park we’re talking about, you see people throwing around figures like a billion dollars. More than a billion dollars.
Axelrod: I’m not going to put a number on it, obviously that would be more than we spent last time, I don’t know in this economy if that’s going to be that case. But it will be a lot of money, more than anybody would like to see spent…. (CNN cuts tape)
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So, it’s King – and only King – who mentions “a billion dollars”, not Axelrod – who actually shows some sensitivity about the issue in light of the fact that these are difficult times for many Americans.
So, King distorts what Axelrod said, then, em, delights his viewers with a snarky piece based on his distortion. Quality journalism, Mr King! Can’t wait for your piece on the Koch brothers and overseas funding of the Republicans’ election efforts 😉
The Obama Diary 
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