A year ago …… July 16, 2012: President Obama kisses First Lady Michelle Obama for the “Kiss Cam” while attending the U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team’s game against Brazil at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.
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Today (All times Eastern):
10:0 Vice President Biden will swear in Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) as the freshman Massachusetts senator at the U.S. Capitol
11:0: President Obama is interviewed by Spanish language news anchors
12:45: Press Briefing by Jay Carney
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On Thursday, the First Lady, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule, will visit Urban Alliance Chicago, a year-long career education and employment program for underserved high school seniors which enriches students’ lives through paid internships, formal training, and mentoring. The visit is part of the First Lady’s focus on youth empowerment and providing more opportunities for young people to achieve their full potential.
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George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush present President Obama with a pair of socks, July 15 (Photo by Pete Souza)
Steve Benen: For three-and-a-half hours last night, nearly every member of the Senate met behind closed doors in the Old Senate Chamber to discuss a political crisis of sorts: whether the minority would continue to block President Obama’s executive-branch nominees and what the majority intended to do about it.
The meeting itself was rather odd. Senators already have a forum in which they can hold a debate — it’s called the Senate. But their usual chamber has cameras and public seating, and last night, for whatever reason, members wanted to debate in private for a candid conversation.
By all accounts, it was a constructive conversation, but there was no resolution. As I type, there are some back-channel talks underway, but barring a breakthrough, the Senate Democratic leadership intended to move forward with its “nuclear option” plans.
Eugene Robinson: Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed him again Saturday night, with a verdict setting his killer free. Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about race that we desperately need to have — but probably, as in the past, will try our best to avoid. Jurors knew that Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that he profiled Martin — young, black, hooded sweatshirt — as a criminal. They heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.
If anyone wonders why African Americans feel so passionately about this case, it’s because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It’s because we know their adolescent bravura is just that — an imitation of manhood, not the real thing. We know how frightened our sons would be, walking home alone on a rainy night and realizing they were being followed. We know how torn they would be between a child’s fear and a child’s immature idea of manly behavior. We know how they would struggle to decide the right course of action, flight or fight. And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well have threatened the man’s pride but likely not his life. How many murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?
1:45: Tours classrooms at Manor New Technology High School
2:05: Delivers remarks
4:15: The First Lady Hosts Mother’s Day Tea
6:0: The President tours Applied Materials Inc.
5.40: Delivers remarks
6:35: Departs Austin, Texas
9:45: Arrives the White House
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Steve Benen: For the fourth consecutive week, the figures on initial unemployment claims from the Department of Labor offered unexpectedly good news:
The number of people who applied for regular state unemployment-insurance benefits ticked down 4,000 to 323,000 in the week ending May 4, hitting the lowest level since January 2008 ….. Economists had expected initial claims to rise slightly …. The four-week average of new jobless claims fell 6,250 to 336,750, hitting the lowest level since November 2007, near the start of the recession.
Greg Sargent: One party is threatening the recovery far more than the other is – It’s been widely pointed out by liberals that much of the discussion of fiscal issues conducted by supposedly “neutral” reporters actually does take sides in a pernicious way. It often treats it as a given that near term deficit reduction is a good thing — sometimes even cheerleading for that outcome – when in fact there is an actual policy dispute over this point, with many arguing that immediate deficit reduction is destructive to the recovery, and that dealing with the deficit should be deferred until the economy is stronger.
And that’s why today’s big New York Times piece quoting a range of economists arguing that Washington’s deficit obsession has proven a drag on the recovery is so important and welcome….
USA Today: Starting a series of “Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tours,” Obama travels to Austin to visit high-tech facilities and promote his plans for education and basic research funding.
…. Among his announcements: A competition to create three “Manufacturing Innovation Institutes,” partnerships among businesses, colleges, and government to help create new manufacturing jobs. The president has asked Congress for $1 billion to create a total of 15 such institutes.
Obama will also discuss plans to require the government to make its data more easily available to business people, researchers and others.
Bob Cesca: 13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush’s Watch Without a Peep from Fox News
The Republican inquisition over the attacks against Americans in Benghazi has never really gone away, but it appears as though in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the House Oversight Committee’s Benghazi hearings this week there’s renewed psycho-histrionics over Benghazi…..
8:20 AM: President Obama and Michelle Obama depart the White House
9:55: Arrive in Boston
11:0: President Obama delivers remarks at Healing Our City: An Interfaith Service dedicated to those who were wounded or killed in Monday’s bombing. Michelle Obama also attends
2:55: Depart Boston
4:30: Arrive at the White House
5:30: President Obama hosts a reception for Greek Independence Day; VP Biden also attends
Gabrielle Giffords: Senators say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.
On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.
First Lady Michelle Obama speaks alongside actors Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman as she welcomes high school and college students from across the country for a workshop with the cast and crew of the film 42
10:45 President Obama will call on Congress to avert the automatic spending cuts coming next week
3:30: VP Biden participates in a Facebook Town Hall on gun violence
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President Obama returning to the White House, Feb 18
USA Today: President Obama will urge congressional Republicans to avoid automatic budget cuts next month by appearing Tuesday with a group of emergency responders who might have to absorb some of those cuts.
The group of emergency responders who will stand beside Obama at 10:45 a.m. are “the kinds of working Americans whose jobs are on the line if Congressional Republicans fail to compromise on a balanced solution,” said an addition to the White House schedule.
Michael Tomasky: Whose “idea” was the sequester, and why should it matter? My Twitter feed these last couple of weeks has been overflowing with people going beyond the usual “communist” and “idiot” name-calling that I get every day and throwing the occasional “liar” in there because I “withhold” the information that the sequester was the Obama administration’s idea. Very well, consider that nugget hereby unwithheld. Let’s grant that this is true. But it’s true only because the Republicans were holding a gun to the administration’s head—and besides, the Republicans immediately voted for it. In any case the important thing now is that outside of Fox News land, it’s an unimportant fact whose “idea” it was. The Republicans are partial owners of this idea, and as the party that now wants the cuts to kick in, they deserve to – and will – bear more responsibility for the negative impacts.
Steve Benen: Over the weekend, USA Today published the leaked blueprint of the White House’s comprehensive immigration reform plan, built around an eight-year pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), demonstrating the kind of devotion to serious policymaking we’ve come to expect over his brief career, immediately condemned the unfinished plan he had not yet seen.
Deaniac (The People’s View): So, after USA Today reported on a White House draft legislation on immigration reform – something the president has always said he would do in the event Congress follows its usual path of doing nothing – Republicans began melting down faster than wax in a lit candle. Suddenly after months of complaining that the president won’t put his own plan out to deal with the debt, Republicans are seething that the president has his own plan on immigration.
Sen. Hydration, I mean Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida accused the White House proposal of following some sort of failed path even though he wouldn’t say just what in the White House draft he disagreed with……
Comment on YouTube by ‘Jack194343’: Before Mississippi could ratify the amendment, they had to learn how to read the amendment. That only took 147 years. Wait until they discover addition. That will knock their socks off. Imagine, not having to count by their fingers. What a leap forward that will be. But first, they have to learn to count to ten, so they know how many fingers they have. First things first, you know.
😯
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Join Organizing for Action’s Stephanie Cutter and other supporters online at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time this Wednesday for a policy briefing on gun violence prevention – see here
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The First Lady will be on the Rachael Ray Show tomorrow
Shortlisted for a Sony World Photography Award: President Barack Obama speaks in the rain during a campaign rally in Glen Allen, Virginia, July 17, 2012. Photo by Brooks Kraft
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Today:
1:15 ET: The President will deliver remarks at the White House calling on Congress to pass a short-term budget package that would delay automatic, across-the-board cuts known as the sequester
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USA Today: President Obama will seek to build support for another ambitious agenda item – a major immigration bill – on Tuesday when he meets with labor and business leaders at the White House.
…. “… the president will hold meetings at the White House with labor leaders and progressive leaders, as well as a number of CEOs from across industries, to discuss his commitment to getting a bipartisan bill passed in 2013, and how immigration reform fits within his broader agenda for economic growth and competitiveness,” a White House statement said.
This morning, Vice President Biden and Dr. Biden met with U.S. Embassy staff and families in London. Afterwards, the Vice President visited 10 Downing Street for meetings with British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Prime Minister David Cameron.
This afternoon, the Vice President will attend a meeting of the United Kingdom National Security Council. In the evening, he and Dr. Biden will depart London en route Washington, DC.
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Eugene Robinson: The moment that most deserves to be remembered from Sunday’s thrilling Super Bowl came before the game, when Jennifer Hudson joined students from Sandy Hook Elementary School in singing “America the Beautiful.” It was a heart-rending elegy for the fallen — and a stirring call to action.
…. It was a reminder that life goes on but also that we must not lose sight of unfinished business: reducing the awful toll that barely regulated, insufficiently monitored commerce in powerful weapons takes on innocent victims, day after day after day.
Despite the best efforts of the NRA and like-minded groups to make sure this business remains unfinished, reducing gun violence remains stubbornly high on the nation’s agenda. This is partly due to the ravings of Wayne LaPierre …. who almost single-handedly, or single-mouthedly, is making the pro-gun argument sound even crazier and more irresponsible than it is. And that’s saying something.
ThinkProgress: What We Can Learn From Minneapolis’ Progressive Approach To Reducing Gun Violence
Monday afternoon, President Obama [delivered] his first speech on a tour promoting his plan to reduce gun violence in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The choice of location is anything but accidental: Minneapolis has, in recent years, developed a progressive, highly effective approach to gun violence prevention that has seen firearm crime plummet.
Trayvon Martin would have been 18 today. Rest in peace.
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Three years ago today: President Barack Obama greets a young visitor in the Oval Office, Feb. 5, 2010 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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“…. unless you’re a secretly gay married Muslim bulldozing Reagan” …. love it.
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ThinkProgress: Eight Senators on Monday voted not to consider the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a bill that protects victims of domestic violence. The Senators who voted against moving to debate on the bill were: Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Tim Scott (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Rand Paul (R-KY), Pat Roberts (R-KS), and James Risch (R-ID)
Steve Benen: In its decision last year on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court majority ruled that Medicaid expansion can proceed, but it must be entirely optional for states. Almost immediately, right-wing groups delivered a stern message to Republican governors: to accept expansion would be an outrageous betrayal of conservative principles.
Some GOP governors are doing it anyway, and yesterday, Ohio’s John Kasich joined the group….
Steve Benen: We’ve no doubt had plenty of Supreme Court justices who’ve been widely recognized, and some who’ve kept a relatively high public profile, but I can’t remember the last time a sitting justice reached a level of celebrity on par with Sonia Sotomayor.
…. The NYT piece is a fascinating read, largely because I can’t think of a modern judge who can illicit the kind of reactions Sotomayor is currently receiving….
Reading about these public receptions, I kept thinking back to Sotomayor’s 2009 confirmation process, and the ugliness of some of the criticisms she received from the right …. Given her popularity, I wonder how many of them would care to explain their opposition to Sotomayor’s confirmation now?
Charles Pierce: I guess I’m supposed to be rolling around in schadenfreude at the news that Karl Rove has found a new brand of cheap aluminum siding to sell to the rubes and suckers of what is laughingly referred to as the Republican Establishment. It seems that the money boys are getting tired of losing winnable Senate races because the Help keeps hiring candidates out of the Chronic ward, so Karl’s going to (reluctantly) take their money this time to teach them how to craft winning campaigns on the general theme of Ix-Nay on the Apey-ray. That the Republican party actually should need to pay someone to explain this to its candidates is a measure of a rather more systemic problem. That the feral children in the wilder precincts are birthing cows all over the landscape is entertaining as all hell, but it doesn’t move us any greater distance along toward the day when we once again will have two sane political parties.
LA Times: Jon Favreau’s career took off when, at age 23, he interrupted U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama during a speech rehearsal to offer some suggestions for improvement.
That cheeky move led to a seven-year tour as Obama’s lead speechwriter, an assignment that ends March 1 as Favreau considers trying his hand at another form of drama — as a screenwriter, perhaps in Los Angeles.
Four years ago today: President Obama wears a AF1 jacket on his first flight aboard Air Force One from Andrews Air Force Base to Newport News, Va., Feb. 5. 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama signs an accompanying letter to Congressional leaders after signing H.R. 152, which provides fiscal year 2013 supplemental appropriations to respond to and recover from the severe damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Jan. 29, 2013. (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today:
10:0 Senate Judiciary Hearing on Gun Violence: Live on C-SPAN
3:55: President Obama is interviewed by Jose Diaz Balart of Telemundo
4:15: Interviewed by Maria Elena Salinas of Univision
(Interviews will be released at 6:30)
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Washington Post: President Obama is riding a wave of personal popularity into his second term, with his highest favorability ratings since his first year in office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Fully 60 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama in the new poll, up slightly from October but a clear shift in opinion from an election year in which his ratings hovered in the mid-to-low 50s.
Washington Post: In hailing an emerging bipartisan consensus in the Senate on immigration reform, President Obama added Tuesday to the momentum to fix a broken-down system that long ago stopped making sense and serving the country…
….. the president did the sensible thing by standing aside, for the time being, to let Congress take the lead on crafting a bill in the coming months…..
But Mr Obama also made clear that if progress slows toward a deal, the administration will submit its own bill. The implication, and the threat to Republicans, is clear: Act soon to forge a reasonable deal, or risk being seen — once again — as impeding progress on the issue that will shape political attitudes for the nation’s fastest-growing group of minority voters.
On Thursday, learn more about President Obama’s vision for a 21st century immigration system as the White House hosts the next in an ongoing series of conversations with administration officials on Google+. Starting at 1:00 p.m. ET on January 31, Cecilia Muñoz, the Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, will join the latest “Fireside Hangout”– a 21st century take on FDR’s famous radio addresses – to talk about immigration reform.
The conversation will be moderated by Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of Define American….
Washington Post: Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) is expected to testify Wednesday at a Senate hearing on gun violence, lending the emotional resonance of her experience with the issue to what had already promised to be a dramatic exchange between lawmakers and advocates for and against stricter gun-control laws.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing on gun-related violence in 14 months on Wednesday morning, and observers expect that it will help set the tone for congressional debates over legislation introduced in the wake of the deadly shooting last month at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 people, including 20 young children.
Washington Post: By Mark Barden and Jackie Barden, parents of Daniel who died in the Sandy Hook shootings
Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence is the latest in a series of events following the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Our 7-year-old son, Daniel, 19 of his first-grade classmates and six educators were killed in the tragedy. We believe this hearing is an opportunity to rise above the hard-line rhetoric and intransigence that too often lead to inaction and hopelessness, and we hope that our leaders and our nation will start a new conversation with a chance of achieving real change.
…. We have joined with other families, neighbors and friends in making the Sandy Hook Promise (www.sandyhookpromise.org). We hope every member of Congress and Americans nationwide will join us in pledging to honor the lives lost last month by coming together to end these violent tragedies.
BuzzFeed: January marked Fox News Channel’s lowest 25-54 demo delivery for Monday-Sunday Primetime and Sales Prime (M-Su 7p-2a) since August 2001.
January was also the worst month ever for FNC’s On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren in the 25-54 demo. It was also Fox’s lowest total at 10 pm since July ’08.
January saw MSNBC up 11% in the 25-54 demo from Jan. 2012.
MSNBC remained #1 with African American viewers during primetime for the 36th consecutive month.
The Obama Diary 
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