Hair-raising …… a year ago: President Obama plays with Katia Wolfsthal, daughter of departing staffer Jon Wolfsthal, July 11, 2012. (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
****
Presidential Daily Schedule (All Times Eastern):
10:15AM: President Obama and VP Biden meet with Senators McCain and Schumer to discuss immigration reform
12:10PM: The President meets with the 1963 Loyola University of Chicago Ramblers championship basketball team
12:45: Jay Carney briefs the press
3:45PM: President Obama and VP Biden meet with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi
4:45PM: VP Biden administers the oath of office at a ceremonial swearing-in for Anthony Foxx at the Department of Transportation
5:30PM: President Obama attends a DNC event, Washington (Closed press)
****
Retweet this if you will get up, stand up for a woman’s right to choose. #standwithTXwomen #TXlege pic.twitter.com/j4FfSWKr8b
— OFA TX (@OFA_TX) July 9, 2013
****
USA Today Editorial: GOP poisons ObamaCare, then claims it’s sick: Our view
Making ObamaCare work was always going to be hard, which is exactly what you’d expect for a complex new program that affects one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
…. That explains — but hardly excuses — Republicans’ latest assault on ObamaCare. Having lost in Congress and in court, they’re now using the most cynical of tactics: trying to make the law fail. Never mind the public inconvenience and human misery that will result.
Their assault is under way on several fronts. The most disturbing is a concerted attempt to keep the public ignorant about how to use the health care exchanges where uninsured people will be able to sign up for coverage beginning Oct. 1.
More here
****
Media Matters: The Sunday Morning Shows Are Still White, Conservative, And Male
In the first six months of 2013, white men dominated the guest lists on the broadcast network Sunday shows and CNN’s State of the Union. MSNBC was the only network achieving notable diversity in its guests, particularly on Melissa Harris-Perry’s show. Republicans and conservatives are hosted significantly more on the broadcast Sunday shows than Democrats and progressives.
…. During the first six months of this year, white men were no less than 58 percent and as high as 66 percent of guests on This Week, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday, and State of the Union. Melissa Harris-Perry stands out as having a much more even distribution between white men and women and African-American men and women than all other shows.
More here
****
President Obama talks with Military Aide LTC Owen Ray during his departure ceremony in the Oval Office, July 10 (Photo by Pete Souza)
****
NYT (March 2013): Fifty years ago, as the 25th N.C.A.A. men’s final began at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky., basketball fans saw for the first time something they take for granted today. As the two top men’s teams in the country, Loyola of Chicago and Cincinnati, prepared for the opening tip, most of the players on the floor, 7 of 10, were black.
… All-black colleges were not yet welcome in the N.C.A.A. tournament … but the Bearcats, the favorites in the 1963 final, had three black starters … they were hoping to become the first team to win three consecutive national titles.
They faced the Ramblers of Loyola, a Jesuit school that had never been to the tournament. They had four black starters … In the final, Loyola staged one of the most surprising comebacks in tournament history. Trailing by 15 points with less than 12 minutes to go …. they won, 60-58, with a buzzer-beater at the end of overtime.
… During the regular season, the players on both teams had endured prejudice and humiliation: awkward moments in restaurants and hotel lobbies; hostile crowds hurling garbage and abuse; social isolation on their own campuses.
Jerry Harkness, Loyola’s star and captain, felt pressure from two sides, from the characters who sent him hate mail signed “KKK” and from the neighborhoods and churches of black Chicago.
“We were winning, we were four blacks, and boy, the black community was excited about us,” Harkness said. “We go to a dance: ‘Man you guys are great, you can’t lose now. Please don’t lose’.”
More here
****
****
Dana Milbank: Last week, the administration announced it was delaying by a year the implementation of one of Obamacare’s provisions, the requirement that large employers provide health insurance. You’d think the opposition party, which has spent four years denouncing the health-care reforms, would be delighted by the reprieve. But on Wednesday, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing to condemn the administration — for incomplete enforcement of the law they hate.
President Obama was called a dictator and a socialist for passing Obamacare. Now he’s a dictator and a socialist for postponing it? “The irony of objecting to the delay of a program you’ve been trying to stop is no doubt lost on this room,” observed Rep. Jim McDermott (Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee.
This unqualified opposition is counterproductive for House Republicans. On health care, as on immigration, their approach amounts to a search-and-destroy mission. They could work with Democrats to remove problematic pieces in the health-care law, and they could compromise with Democrats on legislation that would secure the borders. But instead they are devoted to shutting down both.
More here
****
This is MUST WATCH video. In two minutes Sara (@VictorianPrude) exposed Republicans for the cretins they are
****
****
Becca Aaronson: The House voted 96-49 on Wednesday to give final approval to proposed abortion regulations in Texas. House Bill 2, which would ban abortion at 20 weeks and enact some of the strictest regulations in the country on abortion providers and facilities, now heads to the Senate. “If we’re going to ask for more children to come into this world, we should provide for them,” said state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio. She offered an amendment, which lawmakers tabled, that would have extended state benefits to children put into the foster care and adoption system by women who could not access abortion as a result of the legislation. She added, “We know there are going to be lots of cases where the mothers just cannot, even though they may want to, they cannot take care of them.”
During the final vote, a woman screamed from the gallery that she objected to the proceedings. She refused to quiet or leave, and state troopers carried her out of the gallery by her hands and feet.
House Administration Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, said five women were arrested and taken to jail by state police who were stationed in the House gallery. Several of them sat through the opening prayer and pledges of allegiance to the national and state flags. When the abortion bill came to a final vote in the House, they began shouting, “We will not be silenced,” but the vote proceeded, uninterrupted.
More here
***
On this day….
***
Sara Kliff: In Connecticut, selling Obamacare involves airplanes flying banners across beaches. Oregon may reel in hipsters with branded coffee cups for their lattes. And in neighboring Washington, the effort could get quite intimate: The state is interested in sponsoring portable toilets at concerts. The advertisements, developed with political consultants and communications firms, illustrate the ability of the health-care law’s supporters to pinpoint the precise group they want to sign up for Obamacare — young and healthy Americans who won’t weigh down the system with high medical bills.
Oregon will run a $2.9 million campaign leading up to the October launch of the state’s marketplace, called Cover Oregon. Ads went live Tuesday on television and radio featuring local musicians extolling the benefits of enrolling “every logger and lawyer and stay-at-home dad” in health insurance coverage. The state is finalizing plans for other kinds of outreach, such as putting ads in bus shelters or producing branded coffee cups
More here
***
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama visit the La General Hospital in Accra, Ghana, July 11, 2009
****
Julie Rovner: A trade group for Catholic hospitals says a new Obama administration policy on birth control is just fine. That’s in sharp contrast to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which continues to battle against the policy, which exempts churches, synagogues and mosques, but requires other institutions run by religious organizations to cover birth control under employees’ health insurance. Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, said the administration’s final birth control rule wasn’t what her organization would have preferred for the hospitals and other health facilities it oversees.
SISTER CAROL KEEHAN: But it was a solution that we could make work, because it allows our members not to have to buy, contract for, refer or arrange for contraceptive services.
ROVNER: Under the rule, churches and other houses of worship are exempt. Women who work for Catholic or other religious hospitals, universities and social service agencies will still get the no-cost birth control, but the religious entity won’t have to be involved in providing it. The insurance company or insurance administrator will instead.
More here
***
***
Alec MacGillis: Immigration reform was supposed to be different than health care reform. A few wonks aside, Republicans have never had any real interest in expanding health insurance coverage to those who lack it. But there are plenty of influential figures in the Republican coalition who are motivated to reform immigration laws—whether political tacticians like Karl Rove who can read demographic charts or business owners who want more reliable streams of immigrant labor. But it’s now looking increasingly as if the never-ending Republican war on health care reform could be helping block immigration reform just when it finally had a real chance.
What does this have to do with immigration reform? Well, because of the absolute refusal by congressional Republicans—and many GOP governors and state legislators around the country—to accept the Affordable Care Act as law of the land and reckon with any complications that might arise in its implementation, the Obama administration has been forced to carry off necessary tweaks and adjustments on its own, via regulatory fiat.
Such unilateral tweaks by the administration, in turn, have Republicans decrying what they see as extra-constitutional nigh-dictatorial overreach. And it’s taken no time for declamations against the administration’s regulatory freelancing on Obamacare to turn into general paranoia about what the administration might conspire to do with an immigration law.
More here
****
President Obama remarks to an African boy on the similarity of their ears as he greets diners at a breakfast during his visit to the Presidential Castle in Accra, July 11, 2009
Cape Coast Castle, Ghana, July 11, 2009
****
Have A Dance Like No One’s Watching Day! 😀
****
The Obama Diary 
You must be logged in to post a comment.