Las Vegas

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Full speech:

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Eva Longoria with White House Speechwriter Jon Favreau and White House senior adviser David Plouffe

…. and David Axelrod

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Florida, Nov 1

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Today’s Green Bay speech – must-see:

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Next:

9:0 ET: President Obama delivers remarks at Coors Events Center, Denver

PBO at the Rubin Museum of Art, NY

More poor quality video, with abysmal sound/vision synching – it might be better to close your eyes and listen 😕

Ricky Martin introduces President Obama at a campaign event at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, May 14

Eva Longoria watches as President Obama speaks during a campaign fundraiser at the Rubin Museum of Art

evening all

Human warmth ….. watch and learn, Romney

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TPM: A lesser-known but important provision in “Obamacare” that regulates how health insurance companies spend their money is yielding benefits for consumers, a new study finds.

By this August, insurers are projected to send consumers a total of $1.3 billion in rebates, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis released Thursday – $541 million to large employers, $377 million to small businesses and $426 million to people with their own insurance plans.

The rebates are the result of a rule in the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent or 85 percent of premium earnings on health care – as opposed to marketing and administrative activities – or otherwise provide rebates to their consumers.

More here

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Steve Benen: Joe Weisenthal published a pretty remarkable chart today noting economic growth in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe over the last nine years….

…. Once President Obama took office and the Recovery Act/stimulus began putting capital back into the economy, the U.S. economy began growing again. In the U.K., the economy started to improve, right up until British officials began implementing an austerity agenda – at which point the national economy stagnated and slipped back into a recession.

Obama rejected austerity, and as a result, American growth, while fragile and insufficient, is easily outpacing Europe’s and UK’s, where austerity measures have ruled the day.

….When David Cameron’s austerity policies began, Republicans were not only certain they would work, they pleaded with American policymakers to follow the Tories’ lead …. The remarkable thing is, Republicans aren’t the least bit chastened by the track record of failure.

More here

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President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will visit Fort Stewart Friday …. The event will not be open to the general public according to the White House.

No other details were available except that the president and first lady will “meet with troops, veterans and military families”.

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President Obama has announced 13 new recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom:

Madeleine Albright, John Doar, Bob Dylan, William Foege, John Glenn, Gordon Hirabayashi, Dolores Huerta, Jan Karski, Juliette Gordon Low, Toni Morrison, Shimon Peres, John Paul Stevens, Pat Summitt.

More here

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ThinkProgress: …. The Romney campaign organized a conference call today with three of Romney’s foreign policy advisers to push back (against VP Biden’s foreign policy speech). During the call, Romney adviser Ambassador Pierre Prosper attacked President Obama for dealing with Russia, albeit using geographical terms from the Cold War era:

PROSPER: ….. The United States abandoned its missile defense sites in Poland and Czechoslovakia….

Aside from the fact that “Czechoslovakia” broke up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia nearly 20 years ago, the Obama administration never “abandoned” missile defense sites because they were never there to begin with….

More here

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Michael Tomasky: It seems clear that the main issue Mitt Romney is going to use to try to reestablish himself as a moderate is immigration …. Can Romney, who staked out an immigration position during the primaries that left him sounding like Pat Buchanan, really pull this off? My bet: He’ll be smooth, he’ll do almost everything right, he’ll say all the right things — and he’ll end up with something very much like the 31 percent of the Latino vote John McCain got, maybe two or three points more, tops. The reason is simple: Romney, like his party, is just too white.

…. There is no signal, at least yet, that Rubio would make a whit of difference. Last weekend, a poll came out in which 1,000-plus Latinos were asked about Obama-Biden matchups against Romney-Rubio, and Romney paired with various other Hispanic Republicans ….. in Florida, Obama did better among Latinos against Romney with Rubio on the ticket, suggesting that maybe to know him isn’t to love him.

More here

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NYT: The group Americans for Prosperity just went up with a $6.1 million ad buy in swing states that accuses the Obama administration of squandering American taxpayer dollars on green energy projects, asserting that some of the money actually went to foreign entities….

In making the general assertion that “billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries,” the ad cites as evidence $1.2 billion that went “to a solar company that’s building a plant in Mexico.” In fact, the company involved in the plant, SunPower, said that the $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee was for its solar ranch in California….

The ad also says that the Obama administration sent “half a billion to an electric car company that created hundreds of jobs in Finland.” …. Loans under the agency’s alternative vehicle program went to Fisker Automotive, an American electric car company based in California that has facilities in Finland, as well as China and Germany. The agency provided $169 million for engineering and tooling work, all carried out in the United States….

More here

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Six weeks later, I still can’t see this video enough:

Background to the video here

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Twitter

Thanks Dotster

evening all

President Barack Obama talks on the phone with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the Oval Office, March 19, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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Tuesday:

10:10: PBO and VP Biden meet with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

12:0: PBO, VP Biden and Kenny attend a St. Patrick’s Day lunch.

7:00: PBO and Michelle Obama host a St. Patrick’s Day reception, VP Biden also attends.

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Wednesday: PBO will begin a two-day trip to highlight American energy in Boulder City, Nevada where he will visit the Copper Mountain Solar 1 Facility, the largest photovoltaic plant operating in the country with nearly one million solar panels powering 17,000 homes. The President will then travel to oil and gas production fields located on federal lands outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico, an area home to more than seventy active drilling rigs.

Thursday: PBO will travel to the Cushing, Oklahoma area to discuss his Administration’s commitment to improving and supporting the infrastructure that helps us leverage our domestic resources, while also ensuring these projects are developed in a safe and responsible way. The final stop on the trip will take place at Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio, home to some of the country’s most advanced energy-related research and development. In the evening, he will host a reception in recognition of Greek Independence Day.

Friday: PBO will attend meetings at the White House.

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Thanks Bobfr

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Andrew Sullivan: This is the kind of reality that makes Sean Hannity’s head explodes. So far, the GOP candidates have been running against a fictional president with a fictional record. Obama didn’t campaign to increase government spending, but inheriting what was in the final quarter of 2008 an annualized contraction of 9 percent of GDP, he opted for a stimulus. That accounts for much of the spending.

I know we are supposed – along with Fox News – to have total amnesia about the spending record of George W. Bush, who had nothing like the recession Obama inherited to counter. But there it is. Along with the fact that of the last seven presidents, the top three spenders are all Republicans.

More here

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ThinkProgress

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Jamelle Bouie: As Greg Sargent, Steve Benen, and others have amply demonstrated, Mitt Romney has a problem with the truth. Throughout his campaign, he has openly lied about his previous positions, his beliefs, and the records of his opponents, Republican or otherwise. In a speech today on economic freedom at the University of Chicago, Romney continued the trend, building a mostly substanceless case against President Obama on the basis of half-truths and falsehoods. You can read the whole speech if you’d like. For now, I’d like to highlight a few passages that sum up Romney’s case against Obama in fact-free aplomb.

Full article here

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First Lady Michelle Obama talks with Late Show host David Letterman during Monday’s 3/19/12 taping in New York.

See a clip from the interview at CBS – and tune in tonight.