Monday: The President will travel to New York City to participate in the 67th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). While in New York City, the President and First Lady will also tape an appearance on “The View.”
Tuesday: The President will deliver remarks to the UN General Assembly; the First Lady will attend the event. The President will then speak at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. He will return to the White House in the evening.
Wednesday: The President will travel to Bowling Green and Kent, Ohio for campaign events.
President Obama walks with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in the West Wing of the White House, July 11 (Pete Souza)
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Richard Adams (The Guardian): What will be overlooked in discussion of the booing of Mitt Romney is what he actually called healthcare reform: a “non-essential programme”.
Here’s the quote:
“I will eliminate all the expensive non-essential programmes I can find, that includes Obamacare”
Healthcare is “non-essential,” is it Mitt Romney? Maybe that’s what people were booing: the idea that federally-funded health provision for America’s poorest such as Medicaid was “non-essential”.
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ThinkProgress: To hear conservatives and Tea Partiers tell it, President Obama is a serial tax-raiser who has increased taxes on “millions of Americans.” But according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office, tax rates under Obama hit a 30-year low in 2009, in part because of the tax cuts he implemented in response to the country’s economic downturn…
ThinkProgress: In a vote of 244 to 185, the House of Representatives has repealed the Affordable Care Act — just days after the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality.
This is the 31st attempt by Congressional Republicans to eliminate the measure. The GOP has spent an estimated “88 hours and 53 minutes” since January of 2011 trying to undo the reform, an analysis by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) office finds, though this latest bill is expected to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
David Usborne (UK Independent): Mitt Romney received an embarrassingly rough reception from members of the NAACP, the country’s oldest black civil rights organisation yesterday, which erupted into boos and shouts of disapproval when he said he meant to overturn Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms.
His rocky ride at the NAACP convention in Houston came as he faced a wave of new assaults from the campaign of President Obama over his apparent failure fully to disclose the extent of and the reasons for his multiple holdings overseas, including now or in the past in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
The murkiness of his personal financial affairs is emerging as a potential drag for Mr Romney who so far has released tax returns for only 2010 and an estimate for 2011. Democrats are contrasting him with his father, George Romney, who, when he ran for the White House in 1967, released 12 years of returns.
…. The tax filings released during the primaries last winter forced Mr Romney to revise earlier financial disclosures, which had made no mention of some 20 newly revealed overseas holdings – a fact highlighted in a harsh New York Times editorial yesterday….
….Chip off the old block? No, his father divulged his wealth…
ABC: Mitt Romney offered a slightly inaccurate version of his tax return history in an interview today, saying he’s released two years of tax returns and that he has released the “same level of information” as John McCain and John Kerry.
…. The presumptive GOP nominee has released one year of his returns and an estimate of his 2011 returns…
John McCain released two years, but John Kerry actually released more than that in his 2004 race, going back to 1999. He released many more returns as a United States senator, as many as twenty. McCain released a total of six documents, two for himself, two for his wife Cindy McCain, and two for the McCain Family Foundation.
…His father, George Romney, started the precedent of presidential candidates’ releasing returns when he released 12 years during his 1968 run for president, but Mitt Romney has so far resisted calls for to release more years. President Obama has released 12 years.
In the interview, Mitt Romney changed the subject in order to hit the president for the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal…
Politicususa: … On October 7th, 1998, Matthew Shepard accepted a ride from Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson … they drove Matthew into the country, tied him to a fence post and beat him severely … they attacked Matthew because he was gay. They left him there in the cold dark, bleeding and unconscious until a cyclist found him, almost 18 hours later. Matthew died from his injuries on October 12th, 1998…
Eleven years after Matthew’s death, President Barack Obama signed into law The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act … this bill makes it a federal crime to assault people based on their gender, sexual orientation and gender identity … Judy Shepard had visited President Obama in the Oval Office and he had made her a promise that this day would come. By signing The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act into law, President Obama kept his promise to Matthew’s family.
…. I asked many people to share their memories of Matthew Shepard with me, including Captain Stephen Snyder-Hill … the Army officer who was booed at the Republican debate…
Joshua Snyder-Hill: … A year later I was taken to DC for my first equality event. I was still not out to my family or friends. The one thing I remember most were the people picketing the concert hall cheering Matthew’s death and celebrating it as a victory. I remember all my fear of coming out melted away. I had spent three days in DC seeing nothing but hope and activism until that moment; it was then and there I decided, I had to be part of the fight for equality. Matthew’s death and the energy behind it, made me want to be proud of who I was and show love conquered hate.
On the Violence Against Women Act: “The single most significant thing I have ever done in my life.”
On the Republican debate audience booing a gay soldier: “Reprehensible.”
On Suskind’s allegations about sexism in the administration: “Obviously they didn’t talk to Michelle Obama or Joe Biden. If there is sexism in the White House, the person engaging in it is in trouble. Look, I am not suggesting there is not some instance where a staffer thought they were not treated well.” He went on to say his own high-ranking staff is mostly female, and he asked them, “had they seen it?” “Nobody is aware,” he said. “I don’t see any of it.”
On whether or not he’d be on the ticket next year: “I haven’t figured out how not to be.”
NJ.com: Gov. Chris Christie used his address at Seton Hall University’s commencement ceremony yesterday to urge the graduates to follow his lead and become “disrupters” who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo.
But before he could begin the speech, part of the 2,281-member graduating class did a little disrupting of their own and loudly booed the governor as he walked to the podium.
The chorus of jeers echoing through the Izod Center in East Rutherford mostly came from arts and science graduates and students in Seton Hall’s education college, whose dean had questioned whether Christie was an appropriate graduation speaker. Other graduates countered the boos by giving the governor a standing ovation.
…Near the end of his speech, someone in the arena yelled “Shut up!”…..
The Obama Diary 
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