moral | The Obama Diary

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Tuesday (all times Eastern):

10:10 AM: President Obama departs the White House

1:40 PM: Arrives in Phoenix

2:10: Tours Erickson Construction

3:05: Delivers remarks

4:10: Departs Phoenix

6:25: Arrives in Los Angeles

7:30: Tapes an appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

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Fantastic article by @IgorVolsky. Don’t believe the hysteria about #ObamaCare premium spikes. http://t.co/Sk3FZaoX02

— Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) August 5, 2013

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BOOKMARK THIS PAGE. This is the ObamaCare subsidy calculator. It should be your best friend for the next six months. http://t.co/HUyVlfeZey

— YeaYouRite (@YeaYouRite) August 5, 2013

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By now, you may have heard of the campaign to undermine Obamacare that the conservative group FreedomWorks is running. If not, read Sarah Kliff’s article on it in the Washington Post. The article will take you inside the “Obamacare resistance,” as she calls it, where leaders are printing up fake Obamacare cards and urging young people to burn them in protest. The idea is to undermine the law: If only older and sicker people sign up for coverage in large numbers, then insurers will have to raise premiums, increasing costs for the govenrment and for those who buy without subsidies.

More here

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For President Obama’s birthday, @OFA spent the day spreading the facts about #Obamacare: http://t.co/Z4n3tqOyYV

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 6, 2013

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President Obama walks with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on the South Grounds of the White House, Aug. 5 (Photo by Pete Souza)

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Congress needs to #StandWithOurFuture and pass comprehensive immigration reform. Show your support: http://t.co/E4ethHTSfJ

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 5, 2013

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USA Today: President Obama, who has addressed VFW and American Legion conventions over the years, will speak this week to an extra-special group of veterans: The disabled.

Organizers of the Disabled American Veterans National Convention in Orlando announced Monday that Obama will address their group on Saturday.

First lady Michelle Obama will introduce her husband.

More here

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More than 10,000 at Moral Monday today in NC. Folks are mad as hell and are standing up for their rights. pic.twitter.com/SX3gs1oGXX

— Donna NoShock (@NoShock) August 5, 2013

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Zillow

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@AmbassadorRice @AmbassadorPower @UN @twitter You two ladies inspire me. Thank you for your service to our great President Obama.

— LiberalPhenom (@LiberalPhenom) August 5, 2013

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NYT: Someone Tell Cantor: The Deficit Is Shrinking

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, for a preview of what will happen the next time Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling. It was a remarkable exchange, in part because Mr. Cantor made a remarkable error.

…. For your convenience, we’ve highlighted the mistake. Mr. Cantor appeared to be defending his party’s shenanigans by arguing that the “ultimate problem” is the “growing deficit.” The thing is, the deficit is not growing. It is shrinking.

More here

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Better RNC debate plan. Held in hermetically sealed Fox studio. Avoid exposing swing voters to Crazy S*#t My Nominee Says.

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) August 5, 2013

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Steve Benen: Florida’s Scott readies second ‘disgusting’ voter purge

The voting process in Florida last year was a national disgrace, which was unfortunately the result of a deliberate scheme – state Republican policymakers closed the early-voting window, cracked down on voter-registration drives, and created painfully long voting lines, especially for minorities and the poor.

But that’s not all they did.

Last summer, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) launched an aggressive voter purge, which he claimed was necessary to remove non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls. As we discussed at the time, this too was a fiasco …. in an unfortunate twist, Rick Scott apparently enjoys this disaster so much, he’s ready to do it again.

More here

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@WhiteHouse

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Charles Pierce: The Rugged Rhetoric Of Reince Priebus

Obvious anagram Reince Priebus, figurehead high priest of the Silly Party, has decided to butch himself up again.

…. Reince is never more adorable than when he pretends he is an Important Person Of Influence. Really. It’s like watching a toddler in a Mark Hanna suit.

Read here

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Peter King worries Rand Paul presidential run would “set Rs back 50 yrs.” Wrong. There’s no indication Paul would improve the GOP that much.

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) August 5, 2013

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Steve Benen: The wrong message for the wrong issue

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1 yr today a white supremacist killed 6 Sikhs at a temple in WI. That incident should be remembered w other massacres like Newtown & Aurora

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 5, 2013

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Steve Benen: Can a president be a radical socialist and a Wall Street shill?

….. Republicans can tell Americans that President Obama is a radical socialist who hates free-enterprise capitalism, or they can tell us he’s a Wall Street shill, but when they make both arguments at the same time, it’s awfully difficult to take them seriously. Indeed, it reinforces the thesis that, even now, the right still doesn’t know how it wants to criticize the president.

But I also believe there’s another angle to this to keep in mind.

For good or ill, Obama has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to reach compromises with congressional Republicans, frequently offering to accept GOP policy goals that congressional Democrats find abhorrent.

But because so many congressional Republicans have become post-policy nihilists, GOP officials not only reject attempts at compromise, they often announce their opposition to whatever it was they urged Obama to do in the first place.

More here

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I’ll Stop Writing About Glenn Greenwald’s NSA Coverage When He Stops Lying http://t.co/A9eGXuB3O3

— Bob Cesca (@bobcesca_go) August 5, 2013

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Random pic from the last few days because, well, because:

President Obama boards Marine One to fly to Camp David on August 3 at Andrews Air Force Base

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As requested, my Storify: “Breaking [at]breakobama the Unmasking of a Twitter Thug” http://t.co/vSoQ6r8hc2

— Wieland (@lawscribe) August 5, 2013

I think I’ll have to marry @lawscribe. Well, just because…

— Goldie Taylor (@goldietaylor) August 5, 2013

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I completely missed this …. Jim Messina will be working for David Cameron? Seriously? (Michael Tomasky)

This is almost as awful as the prospect of Wayne Rooney playing for Chelsea.

Oh, I need a brandy.

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Woah……

WP: The Washington Post Co. agreed Monday to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations.

Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world’s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to The Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses.

More here

James Fallows: Why the Sale of the Washington Post Seems So Significant – A moment that will define an era’s upheaval in journalism.

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Another exclusive™ from my break in the rain: I now know for certain that I am blood-related to my dog-nephew – he knows bay leaves are evil too. The leftovers from his dinner:

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A huuuuuuuuuuge PS:

Happy Birthday to the inspirational and very, very, very wonderful @GoBrooklyn – we love ya GB!

— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) August 6, 2013

A child of a pro-Gadhafi soldier, Tripoli, March 6

Peter Beinart: There are plenty of smart objections to America’s Libya intervention. But when President Obama addresses the nation on Monday night, he should rebut the stupidest one: that America shouldn’t wage humanitarian war in Libya because we’re not doing so in Congo, Zimbabwe and every other nasty dictatorship on earth.

The consistency argument … has nothing to do with Congo and Zimbabwe. Most of the people who invoke those ill-fated countries showed no interest in them before the Libya debate and will go back to ignoring them once Libya is off the front page. Ask someone who demands moral consistency in humanitarian war how exactly they propose to intervene in Congo and you will quickly realize that the call for moral consistency is actually a call for immoral consistency.

The point of invoking the horrors of Congo is not to convince the US to act to stop the horrors of Congo; it is to ensure that, out of respect for the raped, murdered and maimed in Central Africa, we allow innocents to be raped, murdered and maimed in North Africa as well….

There will always be horrors that outside powers cannot or will not prevent. But the fact that they cannot be stopped everywhere is no reason not to try to stop them somewhere.

….humanitarian war is not possible everywhere because war is never waged for humanitarian reasons alone. There is nothing strange or scandalous, for instance, about considering logistics. NATO is intervening in Libya in part because Libya lies relatively close to the NATO countries that are doing the intervening, as did Bosnia and Kosovo. That means the operation can be done more cheaply, at less risk to American and European lives, and with a greater chance of success, than in Zimbabwe or Congo. Those are all valid considerations, as valid as a doctor choosing to operate on the patient he has the best chance of saving.

…There will always be horrors that outside powers cannot or will not prevent. But the fact that they cannot be stopped everywhere is no reason not to try to stop them somewhere. And showing that they can be stopped somewhere – first in Bosnia and Kosovo, hopefully now in Libya – may make dictators pause to reflect that they could be next. That’s moral progress, which in the ugly, real world is a pretty impressive thing.

More here