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.

‘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