Posts Tagged ‘treaty
‘How’s Your Agenda?’ Oh Snap!
The President’s Thinking Hours
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Michael D. Shear: Obama After Dark: The Precious Hours Alone
“Are you up?” The emails arrive late, often after 1 a.m., tapped out on a secure BlackBerry from an email address known only to a few. The weary recipients know that once again, the boss has not yet gone to bed. The late-night interruptions from President Obama might be sharply worded questions about memos he has read. Sometimes they are taunts because the recipient’s sports team just lost. Last month it was a 12:30 a.m. email to Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, and Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, telling them he had finished reworking a speechwriter’s draft of presidential remarks for later that morning. Mr. Obama had spent three hours scrawling in longhand on a yellow legal pad an angry condemnation of Donald J. Trump’s response to the attack in Orlando, Fla., and told his aides they could pick up his rewrite at the White House usher’s office when they came in for work. Mr. Obama calls himself a “night guy,” and as president, he has come to consider the long, solitary hours after dark as essential as his time in the Oval Office.
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He works on speeches. He reads the stack of briefing papers delivered at 8 p.m. by the National Security Council staff secretary. He reads 10 letters from Americans chosen each day by his staff. “He is thoroughly predictable in having gone through every piece of paper that he gets,” said Tom Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser from 2010 to 2013. “You’ll come in in the morning, it will be there: questions, notes, decisions.” One night last June, Cody Keenan, the president’s chief speechwriter, had just returned home from work at 9 p.m. and ordered pizza when he heard from the president: “Can you come back tonight?” Mr. Keenan met the president in the usher’s office on the first floor of the residence, where the two worked until nearly 11 p.m. on the president’s eulogy for nine African-Americans fatally shot during Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. Three months earlier, Mr. Keenan had had to return to the White House when the president summoned him — at midnight — to go over changes to a speech Mr. Obama was to deliver in Selma, Ala., on the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” when protesters were brutally beaten by the police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “There’s something about the night,” Mr. Keenan said, reflecting on his boss’s use of the time. “It’s smaller. It lets you think.”
More here
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This and That
President Obama meets with members of the Governors Association Executive Committee, including Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, December 4
(Judging by other pics, PBO was looking at Scott Walker in this one …. me likes the ‘four more years’ grin)
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Wednesday:
10:50: President Obama delivers remarks to members of the Business Roundtable and answers questions
3:05: Delivers remarks at the 2012 Tribal Nations Conference at the Department of Interior
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Kevin Drum (Mother Jones): Here is PPP on their finding that 49 percent of Republicans think ACORN stole the election for Obama….
This is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.
…. In other news, they found that 25 percent of Americans claim to have an opinion about the Panetta-Burns plan, which they just made up. Fun times.
More on the, eh, Panetta-Burns plan at the Washington Post
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Charles Pierce: …. the senior members of the Republican party reminded us today that, no matter how much lipstick they slather on the pig in order to fool the more credulous members of the courtier media, the heart of their party is still black and withered and smells of death and corruption.
…. This is what prevails when you scratch down beneath the pretty surface — a party so completely fking unhinged that it thinks that a treaty on the rights of disabled people is some sort of one-world plot to steal the liberty of a third-rate moron like Jim Inhofe. …. They simply do not care. Their prejudices and their paranoia must have pride of place over any help to be given to the less fortunate among us….
…. I can hardly wait for the next Beltway hummer in which Rubio is promoted as “the changing face of the Republican party.” They can’t stand up to the lunatic base because the lunatic base is all they have.
Full post here
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Steve Benen: Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole made a rare Senate appearance this morning, sitting in a wheelchair just off the floor so that members would have to see him as they entered the chamber. Why? Because they were poised to vote on ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and Dole hoped to send a message.
It didn’t work. The Senate killed the treaty this afternoon, with a final vote of 61 to 38, which seems like a lopsided majority, but which fell short of the two-thirds necessary for ratification. Eight Republicans broke ranks and joined Democrats in support of the treaty, but the clear majority of the Senate GOP voted to block it.
Full post here
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Wey hey, one of Reuters photos of the year:
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Lines of the day ….
Charles Pierce: “Mike Huckabee …. the de-bloated god-bothering whackaloon who is occasionally mistaken for a nice guy.”
Bob Costas responds to Fox News attacks: “Sometimes The Quality Of The Thinking Of Those Who Oppose You Speaks For Itself.” (See video at Media Matters)
…. Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades said as soon as Ryan and Romney started campaigning together, during his daily calls with Romney “it was like talking to your buddy who just met a girl and is giddy.” Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said when he saw the chemistry of Ryan and Romney together, he thought, “it was like a bromance.” (Lynn Sweet)
😕
john & joe
Vice President Joe Biden talks with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., after President Barack Obama signed the New START Treaty in the Oval Office, Feb. 2, 2011. Behind them, the President talks with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
a great start
President Barack Obama signs the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, February 2. Looking on are Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry and Senator Richard Lugar
Six short years ago ….
During the August recess of 2005, Richard Lugar and freshman Senator Barack Obama visited Russia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine to inspect nuclear facilities there. In January 2007, President Bush signed into law the Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative
Check the microphones, the media didn’t seem too interested in what the freshman senator had to say then 🙂
Baku, Ajerbaijan August, 2005. Photo: Pete Souza
More photos from that 2005 trip, all by Pete Souza:
Inside a dismantled nuclear missile. Photo: Pete Souza
it’s a starter
President Barack Obama talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during a phone call in the Oval Office, Jan. 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
CNN: Russia’s lower house of parliament ratified Tuesday the first post-Cold War nuclear disarmament treaty with the United States, the Interfax news agency said.
The sweeping arms reduction pact, known as New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) replaces START 1, which expired in December 2009.
The treaty, considered a critical component of nuclear non-proliferation efforts, was signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last April and approved by the U.S. Senate in December.
It is designed to slash the stockpile of strategic nuclear weapons in both countries to 1,550 warheads — down from a current cap of 2,200 — and 700 launchers.
The treaty also calls for a resumption of inspections of nuclear arsenals that ended when START 1 expired and helps move forward with White House efforts to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations.
Obama has called the treaty “the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades” and the U.S. Senate’s approval in December gave Obama a key victory on what has been considered one of his top foreign policy priorities.
a good start
President Barack Obama shares a toast in the Oval Office with National Security Staff members who worked on the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Dec. 22, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Lots of new official White House photos released today – see them here
the toast of the town
President Barack Obama shares a toast in the Oval Office with the members of his National Security Staff who worked on the New START nuclear arms control agreement, Dec. 22, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
it passed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HuffPost / Frank Schaeffer: With the Senate closing in on voting to ratify the “New Start” treaty with Russia, and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Obama’s critics from the Left and Right have — once again — been proved dead wrong…..
Once again, the president has proved smarter than his critics, let alone than the Republican “leadership.”
….As for the Left it’s also trying to undermine the president with talk about a sellout to Wall Street, “failed” tax policy etc., etc. (Somewhat perversely these days some of Obama’s Lefty critics even seem to be rooting for Julian Assange with a lot more enthusiasm than for their president.) Or as Bob Cesca put it in the Huffington Post:
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to participate in a [progressive] movement where so many colleagues have careened off the rails. We’re supposed to be the smart ones, the reality-based people.
And yet, out of some sort of manic-depression or desire for hipster cred, we’ve become overly preoccupied with tearing down the most liberal president in decades using non-reality-based criticisms instead of laser-focusing our efforts and resources on tearing down the real killers — conservatives, Tea Party people and the GOP.
And that’s not the half of it. Before he’d served even one year, President Obama lost the “support” of the easily distracted, terminally impatient, American “Left” and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled Right.
But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds … are sticking with our president.
Why? Because he is, has been, and will continue succeeding. Obama’s critics from the Left and Right are being proved dead wrong, again and again.
We Obama supporters trust our first impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us. We also trust our belief that he is the smartest man in any room.
Full article here
Thanks for the link Chi 😉
The Obama Diary 
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