Rise and Shine

President Obama meets with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the Oval Office, Jan. 23 (Photo by Pete Souza)

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Today:

10:45: The President and Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

1:45: VP Biden participates in a live Google+ Hangout about gun violence

2:30: President Obama will announce the nomination of Mary Jo White to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission

4:35: The President meets with Secretary of State Clinton

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Business Insider: Initial jobless claims have crushed expectations. They have fallen to lowest level since January 2008, falling to 330K. This is well below expectations of 355K ….

Amazing news – more later

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I haven’t had a chance yet to read much on the Inaugural speech, but I liked this column:

Harold Meyerson: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek,” candidate Barack Obama said in 2008 … in the aftermath of Obama’s 2012 reelection and his second inaugural address, his 2008 remarks seem less a statement of self-absorption than one of prophecy. There is an Obama majority in American politics, symbolized by Monday’s throng on the Mall, whose existence is both the consequence of profound changes to our nation’s composition and values and the cause of changes yet to come.

…. His speech reclaimed U.S. history from the misrepresentations of both constitutional originalists and libertarian fantasists….

…. The Obama Majority – its existence and mobilization – is what enabled the president to deliver so ideological an address …. secure in the knowledge that the nation’s minorities had joined with other liberal constituencies to form a new governing coalition, he voiced their demands to ensure equality and to preserve and expand the government’s efforts to meet the nation’s challenges. As he left the stage, he stopped and turned to marvel at the crowd, at the new American majority they represented. They were the ones he, and we, were waiting for.

Full article here

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Morning everyone. Another teeny (miserable) Rise and Shine, but I’m hoping to finally – 😕 – keep my promise to catch up some time today, just trying to finish off some work. So, chat away, and I’ll see ya in a bit.

This and That

President Barack Obama talks on the phone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in the Oval Office, Sept. 28, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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See the full speech at C-Span

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Student Rose Daugherty introduces first lady Michelle Obama at the University of Northern Iowa, Sept. 28

C-Span will have Michelle Obama’s Appleton speech soon

Text of University of Northern Iowa speech here

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Uh oh…..

CBS

See the longer version here – from around 7:0 minutes

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“We have to take care of each other, that’s what it’s about this November.”

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Cagle

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We’ve already seen this, but hey, once wasn’t enough:

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Cagle

Orlando

President Obama at the Harold & Ted Alfond Sports Center at Rollins College in Orlando

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Orlando International Airport

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….. with patrons during a stop at Lechonera El Barrio restaurant in Orlando (Photo by Pete Souza)

…. with children from the New Beginnings Worship Center summer camp

catching up (again)

Paris Match

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Harold Pollack (Washington Monthly): ….. Many progressives – me, for instance – worry that OWS will promote destructive alienation from the hard and sustained work of conventional politics. If a sizeable chunk of progressive youth are passive in 2012, that is the functional equivalent of a Nader candidacy.

The best way to prevent this is to find an aspect of conventional politics that can genuinely excite and move these protesters into positive action that serves their own values and long-term goals …. Perhaps earnest substantive emails about health reform should do that – given the Affordable Care Act’s impact on millions of low-income people….

Ari Berman’s fantastic reporting describes Republican efforts across the country to establish subtle (or not-so-subtle) roadblocks to hinder voting among minorities, poor people, ex-felons, and the young … This is an obvious effort to turn the 2012 electorate into an older and whiter group that resembles the 2010 electorate rather than the 2008 electorate that brought Barack Obama to the White House.

…. Occupy Wall Street organizers: I believe you should resonate with this issue. GOP officials are trying to disenfranchise people like you: college students with university IDs not gun permits, young people and minority urban residents who don’t drive, and so on.

Full post here

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Original video here

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President Barack Obama talks with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a break at the G20 Summit in Cannes, France, Nov. 4. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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The Week

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surprise, surprise!

HughBoyOhBoy (DK): I did some checking this afternoon on the Federal Election Commission’s database of financial contributors to political candidates. Within minutes I found that Harold W. McGraw III, the Chairman, President, and CEO of Standard & Poor’s parent company, is a big money contributor to lots of Republicans.

Repeat recipients of McGraw’s largess include Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, something called the Bush-Cheney Compliance Committee, and many more Republicans …. He has never given any money to the Obama campaign nor any to the Democratic Party.

Gee, how convenient. Standard and Poor’s issues a politically biased rating with a $2 trillion error. Republicans wave that rating around like Moses just brought it down from the mountain as verification of their defamation about the Obama presidency. And the head of the company making those ratings happens to give money to the likes of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party…

Thanks Fred

‘republicans continue to be their own worst enemy’

Harold Meyerson (Washington Post): If you think it is Rep. Paul Ryan’s gutting of Medicare that is pulling the Republicans down, you need to think bigger … his proposal to convert Medicare into a private insurance-voucher plan is indeed a political calamity for the GOP, as the results of last week’s congressional special election in Upstate New York showed. But it’s far from the only disaster that the party has visited upon itself.

For even as Republicans have imperiled themselves on the national level, they also seem to be committing political hara-kiri in one statehouse after the next. Republican governors who took office this year or last – the ones as determined as Ryan to do a wholesale rewrite of America’s social contract – have approval ratings that we normally associate with strains of bacteria. What’s more, they’re tanking in many of the swing states that will be key in next year’s presidential election.

In Florida, only 29 percent of voters approve of Gov. Rick Scott’s five-month tenure in office …  In Wisconsin, Scott Walker would now lose in a recall election to either of two Democrats: former senator Russ Feingold and former Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett….Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s approval rating is a bargain-basement 33 percent, while his disapproval rating had risen to 56 percent….And so it goes in state after state. In Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder had a 33 percent approval rating, against a 60 percent disapproval rating … Gov. Chris Christie’s favorables had slumped to 40 percent, while his unfavorables had risen to 60 percent.

….the Democratic governors of the nation’s two biggest blue states – California’s Jerry Brown and New York’s Andrew Cuomo – both have approval ratings higher than their disapprovals….

But the Republican governors – like Ryan and his fellow Republicans in Congress – have pursued a more radical course that sharply disadvantages most Americans. Even worse, they have sought to enact their agendas without warning their constituents. Republicans did not run last year on a platform of ending collective bargaining, slashing school budgets and gutting Medicare – in essence, favoring society’s most powerful at the expense of everyone else – yet that’s precisely what they’ve done since gaining power. That’s not merely bad policy; it’s bad faith – and bad news for Republicans’ electoral prospects.

Full article here

morning

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NYT: President Obama travels to ground zero in Lower Manhattan Thursday afternoon … he plans to lay a wreath at a memorial to the nearly 3,000 victims of the 9/11 attacks. He will also meet privately with family members of the victims, firefighters and other rescue workers who died in the September 2001 attacks.

…On Friday, the president will go on the road again to Fort Campbell in Kentucky for a less somber occasion: to pay tribute to those who flew the Navy Seal team to Bin Laden’s compound deep inside Pakistan. The Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which provided air transportation for the Navy assault team, is based at Fort Campbell.

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E.J. Dionne (Washington Post): Barack Obama is not the man many Americans thought he was. This sudden realization has transformed American politics … The sheer audacity of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden has forced Obama’s friends and foes alike to reassess what they make of a chief executive who defies easy categorization and reveals less about himself than politicians are typically drawn to do.

Obama is hard to understand because he is many things and not just one thing. He has now proved that he can be bold at an operational level, even as he remains cautious at a philosophical level. His proclivity to gather facts and weigh alternatives does not lead automatically, in the venerable phrase, to the paralysis of analysis. It can also end in daring action tempered by prudence – for example, making sure that additional helicopters were available to our Navy SEALs.

… one of his close aides told me long ago, there is inside a very cool, tough, even hard man. Obama is not reluctant to use American military power …. because he ordered this attack, and because it was successful, no one will ever view Barack Obama in quite the same way again.

Full article here

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(Thanks Lee)

Jo-Ann Armao: Right call on bin Laden photos …. I have to confess to breathing a sigh of relief on hearing the White House’s decision not to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s bloodied corpse. Just as I found the dance-on-his-grave celebrations that followed Sunday’s announcement of his death a tad unseemly, the idea of America proudly displaying its kill was unsettling.

….what purpose would be served by releasing these photos, said to be profoundly gruesome? Those who say it would eliminate questions about whether bin Laden actually died are kidding themselves that the bin Laden doubters would accept photos released by the U.S. government as real proof.

….the only purpose served by the photos’ release would have been to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a public that’s become accustomed to blood and violence as entertainment. The cost could well have been inflaming public opinion in places where American troops are serving and that’s simply – as the administration wisely determined – too high a price to pay.

Full article here

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Eugene Robinson: Why I would’ve released the bin Laden photos … I understand why President Obama decided otherwise, and of course I respect that decision. But I think showing the world evidence – however gruesome – of the terrorist butcher’s death would have been the better call.

Why? Because while gory photographs would have inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others. A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden….Showing him in death would definitively refute any notion that bin Laden enjoyed some kind of divine protection. The myth would die with the man.

It’s also true that photographic evidence would silence most, but not all, of the conspiracy theorists … but this is just a secondary consideration, because the wing nuts won’t get any traction. I doubt that even Donald Trump is going to endorse a theory that requires calling Navy SEALs a bunch of bald-faced liars – not to mention the entire military and intelligence chains of command.

The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved.

Full article here

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The Fix (Washington Post): In the days since the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama has adopted a simple strategy: be big.

Big as in magnanimous. Big as in bipartisan (or, better yet, nonpartisan). Big as in inclusive.

…Let’s first revisit some of the decisions Obama has made in recent days.

* Obama’s speech announcing the death of bin Laden was somber and short – devoid of triumphalism or credit-taking.

* In making the decision not to release a photo of the deceased bin Laden … Obama made an appeal to a shared American value system. “That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies. We don’t need to spike the football.”

* Obama invited former President George W. Bush to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at Ground Zero tomorrow (Bush declined) and took a pass on making remarks at the event…

Full article here