President Obama during a tour of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, Nov. 19, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today (All Times Eastern):
10:45: President Obama meets with a bipartisan group of senators to discuss Iran
12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press
3:15: President Obama delivers remarks and answers questions at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council annual meeting
6:00: First Lady Michelle Obama’s interview with 106 & Park airs on BET
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A word from Donna Dem:
Mr. President, I am forever grateful for your patience, tolerance, intelligence, kindness, thoughtfulness and service to our Nation at a time in history when we so desperately needed your distinct leadership. How you have been able to do this in the face of constant hate from the right, non-stop negative focus by our media and at times what appears to be people in your own party who let the media and the right cause them to lose their spine is beyond my comprehension.
The enemy hates you but you continue to fight for them even while they don’t deserve your hard work and effort. I will ALWAYS have your back. ObamaCare is your signature legislation and you will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidents of all time because of it. Your adversaries know this and it drives them crazy. You make all those in the media and on the Right appear so small minded. They focus on petty, negative things that in the big picture mean absolutely nothing to the average person seeking affordable health care. All the noise surrounding the launch of ACA will be forgotten because we your supporters will work our hearts out to make sure that everyone who needs insurance signs up (by whatever means necessary) to get insurance. We will promote ACA until we are blue in the face, if that is what it takes to make ObamaCare a complete success.
I’ve watched over these past six years as the media, the right and some on the left question time and again as to who you are. I’ll end this by sharing with the rest of the public what those of us who have been paying attention already know.
You are a man of strong character. You have the biggest heart of any politician I have ever seen. You are a family man. Family means everything to you. The service and sacrifices you are making today are all being done so that you will leave this world a better place for Malia and Sasha. Your spine is reinforced by a great, brilliant and beautiful woman in Michelle Obama. You look out over the universe and although there is so much negativity and ugliness to weigh you down you see the good in people. Somehow you are able to push past the filth and pinpoint the positive.
Obamacare is a gift that will keep on giving well into the future. No amount of media bashing, rightwing thrashing or some spineless Dems gnashing is going to stop this train from rolling on down the track.
The Obamacare train has left the station and its destination is affordable health care for all.
You can count on me and millions of others to make this a reality!!
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Think Progress: The Obama Administration Just Gave Nine Tribal Nations $7M To Fund Clean Energy Projects
The U.S. fossil fuel boom has not been easy on American Indians. Pollution is one problem, hunger for coal is another. While the people of the Moapa Paiute Reservation in Nevada wait for a promised solar energy center, smokestacks from the Reid-Gardner coal-fired power plant cake local homes with black dust. West of the Mississippi, Indian reservations contain almost 30 percent of the nation’s coal, but regulations from the Bureau of Indian Affairs limiting reservation energy development prevents tribes from fully capitalizing.
So even when coal is developed, tribes don’t see the money — they just see soot. But American Indian land — which makes up only 2 percent of the country — also has the potential to produce more than 5 percent of total renewable power generation, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which on Thursday announced an investment of $7 million into nine tribal clean energy projects.
More here
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Igor Volsky: The Obamacare Cancellation Notices You Haven’t Heard About
As lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are endorsing legislation to allow Americans purchasing health care coverage in the individual market to stay in their existing insurance plans, they’re ignoring a far more pressing coverage problem in the 26 states that have yet to expand their Medicaid programs. There, five million working poor Americans could be denied access to affordable insurance altogether.
They are the working poor cashiers, cooks, nurses’ aides, waiters and waitresses who were intended to benefit the most under reform, yet will continue to struggle to afford coverage as a result of the GOP’s political calculations. Yet the very same Republican lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups who have seized on the cancellation notices to argue that the law has failed are actively campaigning to prevent states from expanding public health insurance to these people.
More here
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CBS: JP Morgan Chase, Feds Agree To $13 Billion Settlement
The Justice Department and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have reached agreement on all issues in a $13 billion settlement of a civil inquiry into the company’s sales of low-quality mortgage-backed securities that collapsed in value during the 2008 financial crisis. The settlement is the largest ever reached between the government and a corporation.
It eclipses the record $4 billion levied on the huge oil company BP in January in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. A person close to the talks told CBS News that the settlement addresses all civil issues in the case, but the Justice Department retains the right to continue a criminal investigation being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, Calif.
More here
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Jonathan Cohn: Obamacare Policy Cancellations: Media Mythology, Republican Spin
The Obamacare cancellation stories have dominated the media for the past two weeks. And it’s easy to understand why. People losing their insurance is a bigger story than people getting insurance for the first time. But how big a story should it be? To answer that, you need to know how many people actually fit these descriptions—and what might have happened to these people if the Affordable Care Act had never become law.
1. People With These Policies Frequently Don’t Like Them: The best estimates suggest that about 12 to 15 million people buy insurance on their own. In other words, they are part of the “non-group” market. The best survey on this subject I’ve seen comes from the Center for Health Research and Transformation. In it, nearly half of all people surveyed rated their non-group coverage “fair or poor.”
More here
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Bryce Covert: Unequal Pay Is Even More Unequal For Women Of Color
While women overall still made just 77 cents for each dollar men made last year, that gap is far wider for women of color. In an analysis of recent Census data, the National Women’s Law Center finds that an African-American woman working full time, year round made just 64 cents for every dollar a white man made and Hispanic women made just 54 cents.
NWLC notes that these racial and gender wage gaps mean that black women lost $18,650 compared to white men and Hispanic women lost $24,111. Even worse, the gap seems to be growing. The year before, black women made 69 cents for every dollar made by a white man and Latinas made 60 cents. They also face racial discrimination that means black workers earn $22,552 less than white workers a year on average and Hispanic workers earn $16,861 less.
More here
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Jonathan Bernstein: No, Democrats Are Not Turning Against The Affordable Care Act
The press hype about Affordable Care Act troubles shows no sign of letting up today;Politico and National Journal both have features that seem absolutely detached from political reality. National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar has Democrats practically lining up to vote for repeal if Healthcare.gov isn’t working well in a couple of weeks. The problem with Kraushaar’s fantasy — and it is a pure fantasy, one which winds up with an imagined vote count on a repeal veto override — is that no actual Democrats in Congress can be found who are even hinting at anything resembling such a dramatic reversal.
Oh, there are plenty of Democrats who want to be on record as opposing the costs of Obamacare while still supporting the benefits. Especially when it’s a safe vote on something that has no chance to become law. That’s the real story behind the 39 House Democrats who voted for GOP Rep. Fred Upton’s “fix” to the law last week. Either way, what’s not going to happen is repeal thanks to Democratic panic from short term media frenzies. That’s not how politics works, it’s not what’s happening now, and it’s not what’s going to happen in the future.
More here
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NYT: Tennessee Governor Hesitates On Medicaid, Frustrating Many
Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee describes it as “trying to thread a needle from 80 yards.” Mr. Haslam is only the latest Republican tailor trying to figure out whether to expand the state’s Medicaid rolls as prescribed by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. In his case, it involves trying — so far unsuccessfully — to balance some sharply conflicting concerns: struggling hospitals, local business groups, dwindling state resources and fierce conservative opposition to the new health care law
“Sometimes you’ve got to make a tough call,” said Craig Fitzhugh, the State House Democratic minority leader, who is pushing for expansion. “It’s time to say yes or no. I don’t want to get morbid or dramatic about this thing, but it’s lives we’re talking about here. It’s human beings.” Though Mr. Haslam has said he felt under no time pressure, the state faces a Jan. 1 deadline to qualify for the first $300 million in Medicaid money for the coming year. The Tennessee Hospital Association, the state Chamber of Commerce and Democrats say Mr. Haslam cannot afford to wait much longer.
More here
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Roger Simon: President Obama: Lying Liar Or Media Target?
The reviews are in, and Obamacare is a disaster. No, it is worse than that. Obamacare is a debacle, a shambles, a wreck, a fiasco, a flop, a failure and a farce. To the media, Obamacare is such a catastrophe that mere words cannot describe it. Only comparisons can. So Obamacare is Hurricane Katrina (The New York Times), the Iraq War (“Meet the Press”), Watergate (Bill Kristol) and “the worst thing since slavery” (Dr. Ben Carson, a columnist and Fox News contributor).
A lie, however, is an intentionally false statement. An unforgivable screw-up may be unforgivable and a screw-up, but it is different than a lie. The Iraq War comparison was floated by David Gregory, host of “Meet the Press,” on Sunday. “And people will say this is like Katrina; I think it’s more like Iraq,” Gregory said.
“That was about life and death, this is not. The comparison is everybody looked at Bush through the prism of Iraq. Here, I think people are going to look at Obama through the implementation of Obamacare.” Maybe it’s just me, but I still find it difficult to compare a dismally functioning website to a war that resulted in more than 100,000 violent deaths and cost nearly a trillion dollars.
More here
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Michael Hiltzik: The Myths Of Obamacare’s ‘Failure’
Attacks on the Affordable Care Act have stepped up over the last week or so. You’d think that the healthcare reform known as Obamacare is leading to the wholesale loss of affordable insurance by huge sectors of the American public, many of whom will be impoverished by being forced into low-quality health plans at exorbitant prices. You’d think the entire reform is on “life support,” as the usually judicious National Journal put it today, speculating that Democrats may soon start calling for its repeal.
Don’t buy the hype. The numbers tell an entirely different story. What they also demonstrate is that the myth of Obamacare’s “failure” is a product of the same Republican noise machine that has been working to undermine this crucial reform since Day One. It’s assisted by news reporting about canceled health policies that typically ranges from woefully misinformed to spectacularly ignorant, and even at its best is incomplete.
The fact is that Obamacare is here to stay. Its customer protections are worth real money to tens of millions of consumers, and it’s vastly expanding the insurance market. The politicians claiming that they’re only out to “fix” a broken program are playing you for suckers, and not for the first time.
More here
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LA Times: Healthcare Plan Enrollment Surges In Some States After Rocky Rollout
Despite the disastrous rollout of the federal government’s healthcare website, enrollment is surging in many states as tens of thousands of consumers sign up for insurance plans made available by President Obama’s health law. A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials.
“What we are seeing is incredible momentum,” said Peter Lee, director of Covered California, the nation’s largest state insurance marketplace, which accounted for a third of all enrollments nationally in October. California — which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month — nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month.
Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the federal website lag far behind. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials said. Washington state is also on track to easily exceed its October enrollment figure, officials said.
More here
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President Obama talks with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough while sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Nov. 18, 2013 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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On This Day:
President Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak during an arrival ceremony at the Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 19, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
…. speaking to US troops at Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, on November 19, 2009
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…. at the East Asia Summit plenary session in Nusa Dua in Bali, on November 19, 2011
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First Lady Michelle Obama greets Lianyun Wu as she awards an International Spotlight Award to The 100 Dong Songs Program of China, during the 2012 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Awards in the East Room at the White House, November 19, 2012
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A Burmese student at Yangon International airport awaiting President Obama’s arrival, Nov. 19, 2012
Nov. 19, 2012 – Pete Souza: “Police hold back the crowd as residents line the streets of the motorcade route to welcome the first sitting President of the United States to visit Burma. This photograph was taken through the bullet-proof window of the vehicle just in front of the President’s. I love that three of the police are also trying to sneak a glimpse, one with a smile on his face.” (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama poses for a photo in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, Nov. 19, 2012. All visitors must remove their shoes and socks while touring the pagoda. (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama, guides, and Secret Service agents walk barefoot during a tour of the Shwedagon Pagoda (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama pours water over the left shoulder of the Friday Buddha during a tour of the Shwedagon Pagoda (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama signs a guest book during a tour of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, Nov. 19, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)
Crowds line a street outside the home of Aung San Suu Kyi as President Obama arrives to meet her in Yangon
President Obama greets Burmese Opposition Leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a visit to her private residence in Rangoon (Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama receives a floral tribute upon his arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport for the ASEAN Summit, November 19
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MoooOOOooorning! A gazillion thanks to UT for providing all the links for today’s R&S, I only had the pics done when I got stuck on a call for 30 minutes, and then had someone interfere with my TODing because he wanted to play.
The Obama Diary 
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