President Obama’s This Week Interview

President Obama’s Thoughtful Response On Mizzou Protesters

President Obama on This Week

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Full transcript here

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As UT picked out, the line:

“I welcome [Mr Putin] being involved. I welcome him saying, “I will take responsibility for pushing my client, the Assad regime, to deal with these chemical weapons”.”

Too good.

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catching up

Greatest ad ever?

Steve Benen last August: “‘Corporations are people’? In this little figure of speech, wouldn’t that make Mitt Romney a metaphorical serial killer?”….. 😉

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Thanks saintroscoe

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Michael Tomasky (The Daily Beast): Why Mitt Romney Will Prove To Be a Feeble Presidential Nominee …. I wrote about his reactionary tax plan and his refusal to release his own taxes, and what an unfortunate (for him) cocktail those two ingredients will make for him …. Now, the Bain attacks put into sharp relief another reason for his weakness. He has just one argument, and the Bain “creative destruction” narrative comes close to killing it.

…. Toss in that ghastly remark about it being all right to discuss inequality in “quiet rooms,” which I feel certain we haven’t heard nearly the last of …. He meant corporate board rooms, where everyone would agree with him. An astonishingly frank moment, like the comment about liking to be able to fire people. I know he was talking about insurance companies, but here in the 99 percent, we don’t “fire” insurance companies, or usually doctors and certain other service professionals. We change them. It was a word choice that really did reveal a world view.

….Oh, he’ll get 47, 48 percent of the vote, because we’re a divided country …. but a majority will not want to change horses, especially when the other horse is carrying Romney’s kind of personal baggage and is promising policies that are warmed over versions of the policies that created the economic crisis in the first place. I have no great confidence in the brilliance of Obama’s political team, but this should not be too hard, even for them, and Mitt can find himself a nice quiet room in La Jolla to go ponder the what-if’s.

Full post here

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This Is Our Time

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Slate

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The UK Independent: As we’re sitting down to lunch at a restaurant in Washington DC, a smartly dressed man approaches Candace Gingrich-Jones. “I just wanted to say hello,” he announces, cheerfully, “because I know your brother.”

Ms Gingrich-Jones has two stock responses to people who greet her in this fashion. The first, to those who seem friendly, is to politely say how nice it is to make their acquaintance. The second, to anyone who claims to be among her famous half-sibling’s enemies, is to smile archly and respond: “You are not alone!”

…. Regardless of whether Newt Gingrich ends up as the GOP contender in November’s election, Ms Gingrich-Jones will be working tirelessly to ensure victory for his opponent, Barack Obama.

“No matter who the Republican candidate is, I will do everything I possibly can to ensure they don’t win,” she says. “President Obama has done so much for the gay community. From repealing ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’, to getting a hate-crime prevention act passed in 2008, to anti-discrimination policies in the workplace, to laws giving gay couples hospital visitation rights. It would be a disaster if he were to lose.”

Full article here

‘i’m used to being an underdog’

Transcript of interview here

(a very, very early) heads up

George Stephanopoulos will interview President Obama at 2:35 p.m. ET.

The interview will be on both Yahoo! News and ABCNews.com

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Have to go out for a few hours, but will catch up later 😉

the jobs bill “is not an a la carte menu”

Read Steve Benen on what David Axelrod had to say here

enough’s enough

Anne E. Kornblut (Washington Post): After his major address on the deficit two weeks ago, President Obama sat down for an interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos expecting a conversation about fiscal issues.

Instead, Obama faced repeated questions about the controversy surrounding his place of birth … the interview added to the growing sense within the White House that the mainstream media was perpetuating a dangerous myth.

Obama had grown incredulous at the overall debate. He had watched as even Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan had been sucked into the discussion of his birthplace, aides said … on April 19, in a meeting with White House counsel Bob Bauer, the president asked about the feasibility of getting his long-form birth certificate at last …..Last week, it was Obama who made the call to proceed. “He was the driving force,” the official said.

…the process began early in the week of April 18, after Obama raised the subject. White House counsel Bauer reviewed the legal steps necessary to obtain the long-form document, which is not routinely released by authorities in Hawaii …..When administration officials released the paperwork on Wednesday morning shortly after 9 a.m., it came as a shock to the political establishment….

….Aides acknowledged that there would have been a potential upside to keeping the obviously outrageous myth alive. “He did that despite the fact that it probably was…probably in his long-term political interests to allow this birther debate to dominate discussion in the Republican Party for months to come,” Pfeiffer said. “But he thought even though it might have been good politics, he thought it was bad for the country. And so he asked counsel to look into this.”

Full article here

what’ll the tea people say now? “dump the chump”?

Thank you Bobfr, this is pure gold 😉

Let’s listen to the very pro-life (very pro-choice) guy one more time:

Thank you Me4obama … I’m not an O’Donnell fan, but this was seriously excellent

Yup, The Chump is a business genius!

the stephanopoulos interview

George Stephanopoulos: I thought the president would take a pass when I asked him about Donald trump’s rise to the top of the Republican field in my exclusive interview today.

Far from it.

He grabbed at the chance with a big smile – saying he thinks the whole issue will be a problem for Republicans.

“I think that over the last two and a half years there’s been an effort to go at me in a way that is politically expedient in the short-term for Republicans.  But [it] creates, I think a problem for them when they want to actually run in a general election where most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii. (Laughs) He doesn’t have horns. We’re not really worrying about conspiracy theories or birth certificates,” President Obama told me.

And in all my talks with Obama I think it was the first time he was one the same page as Karl Rove who thinks the “birther” controversy is hurting the GOP.

“The truth of the matter is that I think that the vast majority of Americans across the country – Democratic or Republican – really want this election to be about growing the economy, getting control of the deficit, preparing the future for our kids. And my suspicion is that anybody who is not addressing those questions…Is going to be in trouble. I think they may get a quick pop in the news. They may get a lot of attention. But ultimately, the American people understand this is a serious, sober time,” he told me.

Full transcript of the interview here (part one) and here (part two)