This and That

Pete Souza: Pres Obama speaking in Jacksonville, Florida

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Steve Benen: AG Holder to fight Texas on voting rights

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act, Republican policymakers acted with remarkable speed – literally, less than 24 hours – to approve new voting restrictions, most notably a controversial voter-ID law.

When the Voting Rights Act was intact, changes to voting laws in the Lone Star State would need to be cleared with the Justice Department in advance of being implemented, but with the law gutted by a narrow Supreme Court majority, GOP officials in Texas assumed the Justice Department is no longer relevant, and they could do as they pleased.

The nation’s Attorney General apparently believes otherwise….

More here

And see TPM: Holder’s Move Against Texas Could Send The Voting Rights Act Back To The Supreme Court

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Steve Benen: Among voter-suppression bills, ‘This is the single worst’

Over the last few years, we’ve seen quite a few states take up new voting restrictions, immediately on the heels of Republican gains in the 2010 election cycle, so much so that the notion of a “Republican war on voting” was widely recognized and understood. After the 2012 elections, despite the failures of voter suppression, state GOP officials renewed their efforts.

But it’s probably fair to say we haven’t seen anything quite as astounding as the proposed restrictions in North Carolina. Barbara Arnwine, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said, “This is the single worst bill we have seen introduced since voter suppression bills began sweeping the country.”

More here

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I am sick and tired of Cornel West’s race and poverty pimping, and I am calling him out. http://t.co/5curU3yXnE

— The People’s View (@thepeoplesview) July 26, 2013

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BlackAmericaWeb: Is Anyone Black Enough for Cornel West?

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shock! “@BlackCanseco: #GeorgeZimmerman’s “heroic” car crash rescue may be fraudulent after all. http://t.co/ktNe1UsG3U #thanksgeorge #syg”

— Wieland (@lawscribe) July 25, 2013

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Zimmerman Juror B29 in her own words… http://t.co/VA0y5nRJ89

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) July 25, 2013

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Trayvon Martin’s parents: Juror B29′s revelations ‘devastating’ http://t.co/J3EezZa8FJ

— theGrio.com (@theGrio) July 26, 2013

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More here

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To see the whole list of 25 Thoughts on Conservative Policies, visit http://t.co/amvoTfLJRR …,

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) July 26, 2013

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This really is beyond belief:

ThinkProgress: Ohio Plans Unspeakably Cruel Appeal Of Dying Man’s Last Wish

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President Obama tours Jacksonville port with, from left, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx; Dennis Kelly, TracPac Regional Vice President and General Manager; Ray Schleicher, CEO of the Jacksonville Port Authority, and Fred Wakefield, International Longshoreman’s Association Representative

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Text of the President’s remarks in Jacksonville today here

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EXCLUSIVE: Inside Groundswell, the right-wing group where activists & journalists coordinate messaging http://t.co/9GZRllKxED #groundswell

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 25, 2013

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President Obama talks with Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx aboard Air Force One during the flight to Jacksonville, July 25 (Photo by Pete Souza)

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Republicans Launch A Campaign to Convince The Uninsured NOT to Buy Health Insurance http://t.co/jYpAor88Bi via @politicususa #p2 #p2b #ctl

— Sarah Reese Jones (@srjones66) July 25, 2013

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Norm Ornstein: The Unprecedented, Contemptible GOP Quest to Sabotage Obamacare. What the Republicans are doing now goes beyond mere hardball politics – and could hurt millions of Americans affected by health-care reform.

And from Steve Benen: None dare call it sabotage

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So many OFA vols are calling @SpeakerBoehner today demanding action on #Immigration they are waiting on hold 40 min to leave a message

— Jon Carson OFA (@JonCarsonOFA) July 25, 2013

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What’s most telling re @thehill‘s f**k-up is their eagerness to create anti-Obama story when he wasn’t even mentioned pic.twitter.com/re95CMaBod

— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) July 25, 2013

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President Obama reaches up to touch a media microphone while talking with people along a tarmac ropeline after arriving at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., July 24 (Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

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New CBO report finds sequester cuts will cost up to 1.6mill jobs by Sept. 2014. Time for GOP to move fwd on a budget: http://t.co/xioecdOjEB

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) July 25, 2013

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A southern strategy for the 21st century http://t.co/fcfDS4ZOjW

— Smartypants (@Smartypants32) July 25, 2013

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ThinkProgress: Washington Nationals Use Teddy Roosevelt Mascot To Promote Obamacare

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A MUST READ “@joshuafoust: I made a timeline of Edward Snowden’s flight from the U.S. It raises a lot of questions. http://t.co/MVbbc8jxYF”

— Jeff Gauvin (@JeffersonObama) July 25, 2013

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If you’ve ever wondered what landing on the South Lawn of the White House was like…here you go —> pic.twitter.com/QrqGpUlzEq

— The White House (@whitehouse) July 25, 2013

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USA Today: President Obama is declaring Saturday to be Korean War Veterans Armistice Day.

“I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities that honor our distinguished Korean War veterans,” Obama said in a proclamation signed Thursday.

Obama will commemorate the event with a speech on Saturday at the Korean War memorial in Washington, D.C.

More here

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Pete Souza: Pres Obama signing photos backstage in Jacksonville

This and That (short-ish version)

Text of remarks here

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It was pretty flippin’ delicious watching the Twitter meltdown after this:

Jeffrey Toobin: Edward Snowden Is No Hero

Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old former C.I.A. employee and current government contractor, has leaked news of National Security Agency programs that collect vast amounts of information about the telephone calls made by millions of Americans, as well as e-mails and other files of foreign targets and their American connections. For this, some, including my colleague John Cassidy, are hailing him as a hero and a whistle-blower. He is neither. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

…. he describes himself as appalled by the government he served … what, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? ….

…. he wasn’t blowing the whistle on anything illegal; he was exposing something that failed to meet his own standards of propriety. The question, of course, is whether the government can function when all of its employees (and contractors) can take it upon themselves to sabotage the programs they don’t like. That’s what Snowden has done.

More here

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Text of remarks here

@PeteSouza: Photo of Pres Obama w Alan Krueger, chair of CEA, trailed by just-nominated chair Jason Furman and his family

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@VP: VP ceremonially swears in @ErnestMoniz as Sec. of @ENERGY in the Roosevelt Room of the @whitehouse

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Newsie stuff in the morning – chat away.

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PS Happy birthday Sasha …..

President Obama Speaks on the Equal Pay Act

11:30 AM EDT: President Obama Speaks on the Equal Pay Act

White House Live

C-Span * CBS

Rise and Shine

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Today:

1:40: President Obama delivers remarks calling on Congress to stop interest rates on student loans from doubling on July 1

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Thanks amk

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NYT Editorial: The political feud between the White House and Congressional Republicans has now culminated in a House oversight committee vote to cite Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for criminal contempt. His supposed crime is failing to hand over some documents in an investigation of a botched gunrunning sting operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

The Republicans shamelessly turned what should be a routine matter into a pointless constitutional confrontation. And the White House responded as most administrations do at some point: it invoked executive privilege to make a political problem go away.

…. Mr. Issa has relished making this investigation a political fight….There was no reason the House committee and the Justice Department could not work out a deal to produce the documents requested, or some form of them. Instead, they show again that every issue, large or small, can be turned into ammunition for political combat.

Full editorial here

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Cagle

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OFA

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TPM: Mitt Romney’s campaign asked Florida Gov. Rick Scott to downplay his state’s job growth after several press releases from the governor’s campaign and messages from the Florida Chamber of Commerce trumpeted gains for the month of May, according to Bloomberg News.

Florida’s unemployment rate dropped from 8.7 percent in April to 8.6 percent in May, though still significantly above the national rate of 8.2 percent.

A Romney adviser reportedly requested that Scott’s office say that Florida’s unemployment rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency….

The development is perhaps one of the clearest examples of the messaging predicament the Romney campaign finds itself in …. when you ask Republican governors how things are going, especially in swing states, the economic picture starts to brighten considerably…

More here

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Cagle

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First Lady Michelle Obama greets patrons before eating lunch at Nacho’s Restaurant in Pueblo, Colo., June 20, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Sonya N. Hebert)

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Morning everyone 😉

As usual, I’m waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind in replying to emails, will try to catch up soon.

Sen Barbara Mikulski on the defeat of Paycheck Fairness Act

keeping his word

meanwhile, back in the non-two-cadillacs-owning real world…..

every day, it gets better

“president obama is against what just happened”

I know you’ve all discussed this already today, but some on other sites were claiming Rachel Maddow didn’t say “President Obama is against what just happened”. Well, she did:

This is seriously disappointing dishonesty from a woman as smart as Maddow. Whatever she feels about the President’s personal views on same-sex marriage, she cannot deny (but chose to ignore it last night) that he declared in February that DOMA violates the Constitution and decided that his administration would no longer defend it in the courts.

He would therefore, logically, have fully supported what happened in New York last night.

June 23, 2011 – President Obama: “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country….That’s why we’re going to keep on fighting until the law no longer treats committed partners who’ve been together for decades like they’re strangers.

That’s why I have long believed that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act ought to be repealed. It was wrong. It was unfair. And since I taught constitutional law for a while, I felt like I was in a pretty good position to agree with courts that have ruled that Section 3 of DOMA violates the Constitution. And that’s why we decided, with my attorney general, that we could no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the courts.”

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Truly, I never thought I’d see the day Rachel Maddow would be as dishonest as Choi & Co on this issue. Depressing.

equal credit?!

ThinkProgress: Politico reports that supporters of George W. Bush are “irked” that the former president isn’t getting more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, despite the droves of conservatives lawmakers and pundits who have been rushing to give Bush equal credit as Obama.

But this praise for Bush relies on rewriting history to obscure the fact Obama re-prioritized the hunt for Bin Laden after Bush had largely abandoned the effort to focus on Iraq.

…Asked about the hunt for Bin Laden at a March, 2002 press conference, Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq.” “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you,” Bush added.

By 2006, the trail for Bin Laden had gone “stone cold” … That year, it was revealed that the administration had shuttered the CIA’s Bin Laden unit in late 2005…

…the Bush administration blew a critical opportunity to capture Bin Laden in 2001. Bin Laden was wounded and on the run, but top Bush national security officials rejected repeated pleas for reinforcements from commanders and intelligence officials fighting the terrorist leader in the caves of Tora Bora, despite the availability of resources…. decisions made by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputies, and other top administration officials allowed Bin Laden to escape.

The consequence of this missed opportunity are tremendous. As Lt. Col. Reid Sawyer, the director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, told NPR yesterday, “if bin Laden had been killed in Afghanistan eight years ago in the caves of Tora Bora, al-Qaida might well have died with him. Now the organization is diversified enough it could weather bin Laden’s death – and hardly miss a beat.”….

Read full post here

Thank you Bobfr

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Comment of the day! – LOL: So let me get this straight….Obama has to stop blaming Bush for the bad economy he inherited because it has been 2.5 yrs, BUT Obama has to give credit to Bush for capturing Bin Laden even though Bush hasn’t seen the inside of the Situation room in 2.5 yrs- yeah, I Must have forgotten (IOKIYAAR)- Its OK If You Are A Republican)