Pete Souza: Flexing with Superman before today’s trick-or-treat at the White House. Superman is Walker Earnest, son of press secretary Josh Earnest
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2PM: President Obama speaks at a rally for Hillary Clinton; Unversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
After the rally, President Obama will fly to Miami where he will remain overnight
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Pete Souza: President Obama says hi to Walker Earnest, son of White House press secretary Josh Earnest and Natalie Wyeth Earnest
President Barack Obama smiles while golfing at Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs, Mass., on the island of Martha’s Vineyard
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NBA Basketball player Ray Allen steps into a golf cart driven by President Barack Obama
President Barack Obama speaks with Cyrus Walker, cousin of White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett
https://twitter.com/DropkickMurphys/status/559170864420507648
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President Barack Obama shares a laugh with Ashton Carter, his nominee for defense secretary, during the announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House
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President Barack Obama greets former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft
President Barack Obama meets with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the Oval Office at the White House. President Obama and King Abdullah II discussed regional issues and the ongoing fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
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President Barack Obama delivers brief remarks to reporters before meeting with a group of newly elected governors in the Oval Office at the White House and said the group would talk about issues where the states and the White House have common ground.
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(L-R): Governor-elect Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Governor-elect Bruce Rauner of Illinois, Governor-elect Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, Governor-elect Greg Abbott of Texas, Governor-elect Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, Governor-elect Larry Hogan of Maryland and Gov. Bill Walker
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10:55: President Obama meets with Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand
1:0 Josh Earnest briefs the press
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… On Monday, June 23, the President and Mrs. Obama will host a Working Families summit in Washington, D.C. to discuss the need for affordable childcare and paid family leave, raising minimum wage, and achieving equal pay for all. In an interview conducted by Parade, the Obamas opened up about their personal connection to these issues and what they hope to accomplish during their remaining time in the White House.
President Barack Obama and wife Michelle have never been your typical working stiffs. With four Ivy League degrees between them, they’ve enjoyed high incomes and strong job security. But before and during college, they each worked minimum-wage jobs. And there was a time when they felt the same kind of financial aches and marriage strains that today’s dual-income families know all too well. As a young married couple in Chicago, they were mired in student debt, juggling multiple jobs and two kids, and bickering over who did what housework. “I wouldn’t fold,” remembers the president. “I didn’t separate, and Michelle’s point was, that’s not laundry.”
More here
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President says we “need to ask hard questions before we take military action abroad…” Unlike the belligerent ignorance of previous admin.
— Martin Bashir (@MartinBashir) June 19, 2014
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The Obama administration announced that it would direct the Department of Labor to begin issuing regulations to extend the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to same-sex couples, according to a White House official.
After the Supreme Court’s struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act last year, Attorney General Eric Holder and other members of the administration began to reviewing relevant statutes and laws to extend federal benefits to same-sex couples. The administration said that its extension of FMLA is simply part of that process. The new regulations will clarify that an employee is eligible to take leave to care for a same-sex spouse in the instance of an illness, regardless of whether that employee lives in a state where same-sex marriage is legal.
More here
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McCain & Graham: Obama should fire NatSec team and bring in Petraeus. Petraeus: I agree with POTUS. McCain & Graham: Look! Squirrel!
— Liberal Librarian (@Lib_Librarian) June 20, 2014
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…. it’s important to understand that the Veterans Affairs scandal, while real, is being hyped out of proportion by people whose real goal is to block reform of the larger system.
…. A scandal is a scandal, and wrongdoing must be punished. But beware of people trying to use the veterans’ care scandal to derail health reform.
And here’s the thing: Health reform is working. Too many Americans still lack good insurance, and hence lack access to health care and protection from high medical costs — but not as many as last year, and next year should be better still. Health costs are still far too high, but their growth has slowed dramatically. We’re moving in the right direction, and we shouldn’t let the zombies get in our way.
Full post here
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Obama said y’all cling to your guns and religion and lookit y’all just a’ clingin’ to them guns and religion.
— Trill, Baby, Trill (@eclecticbrotha) June 19, 2014
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Ukraine announced Friday that it has regained full control of its border with Russia, which the government has set as an important precondition for a unilateral ceasefire in its conflict with pro-Russian separatists in the east.
The sealing off of the border, which could not be independently verified, would be significant because it would rob the rebels of an important supply route for new fighters and weapons.
The announcement that troops had recaptured the border area near the village of Izvaryne in the Luhansk region comes as President Petro Poroshenko is set to unveil the details of his 14-point peace plan.
More here
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For years black academics criticized the Obama administration for not targeting programs to the African American community. Obamacare didn’t count – even though it has disproportionately affected people of color. All of his talk about income inequality didn’t matter, neither did his proposal for universal pre-K. What they wanted to see were initiatives that directly (and only) affected African Americans.
Then along came the announcement about President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” program targeting boys of color. It didn’t take long for many of the same critics to go after that one because it didn’t include girls. As I see it, this is what most efforts to target a specific community will eventually face…the “what about me?” syndrome.
That’s not to say that its wrong to initiate and promote targeted programs. Sometimes they’re needed. Its more about the fact that when they are proposed, we need to remember WHY they’re targeted and – by definition – will exclude.
More here
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“George Bush fucked up SO bad, he made it hard for a white man to run for President.” –@chrisrock #dying #crying
— Abeer Syedah (@HaveYouHadAbeer) June 20, 2014
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New federal court documents released Thursday reveal that Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) is the subject of a “Joe Doe” investigation. Prosecutors allege Walker was part of a “criminal scheme” to circumvent state election laws. While the courts are still mulling a motion by the dark money outside groups at the center of the allegations to stop the investigation, the facts of the case are yet another demonstration of the folly of the Supreme Court’s assumptions in the infamous Citizens United ruling.
The documents show that prosecutors believe illegal coordination occurred in the 2011 and 2012 Wisconsin Senate and Gubernatorial recall elections and that groups like the Wisconsin Club for Growth worked with Scott Walker’s campaign arm (“Friends of Scott Walker”) to arrange undisclosed spending by an array of pro-Walker tax-exempt organizations. They note that several individuals were working both for Friends of Scott Walker and Wisconsin Club for Growth at the time, and that Walker himself boasted of the coordination in an email to Karl Rove.
More here
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#bushblaming. pic.twitter.com/JKjVOwc7cD
— amk4obama (@amk4obama) June 20, 2014
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Indictments against four cronies are near certain, sources say. Only question is if David Samson, Christie’s longtime mentor, will flip.
“It’s over, it’s done, and I’m moving on.” – Chris Christie, reassuring potential donors in Utah on June 14th
Back on planet Reality, meanwhile, Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, wades through the sewage of Christie’s stewardship. Two sources with intimate knowledge of the case say Fishman’s pace is quickening – he has empaneled a second grand jury, and the U.S. Justice Department has sent assistant prosecutors and FBI agents to work the case.
“What’s taking the most time,” according to one source, “is separating what’s viable from all the bad stuff they’re finding that may not be viable.”
More here
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#ThrowbackThursday ‘When we grow up, we’re gonna do awesome things – and live in a Big White House’ pic.twitter.com/FuQZ3QS0M2
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) June 20, 2014
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In an exclusive interview, the MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell reveals how he survived a head-on car crash, and why afterwards he cut himself off from the negative litany of the news cycle.
“What a stupid way to die,” Lawrence O’Donnell thought to himself.
A split-second earlier, the host of MSNBC’s 10 p.m. program, The Last Word, had been gazing down at a map on his iPhone, following the progress of his taxi, a Chevy van, as he and his older brother Michael rode to dinner on the resort island of Tortola. It was around 7:45 p.m., Saturday, April 12, the start of what promised to be a lovely vacation in the British Virgin Islands with his big brother, a Boston lawyer.
The vacation didn’t happen. Instead, O’Donnell, 62, underwent a life-altering crucible that he’s still trying to make sense of, while figuring out how to explain it to viewers when he returns to his show on Monday night after two-and-a-half months off the air.
More here
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Pueblo, June 20, 2012
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MoooOOOooorning!
@vj44: Perfect day in DC for the start of the season and visit to the @whitehouse
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Today:
10:20: Live From the Kids’ State Dinner: Entrances (WH Live)
10:30: The President meets with members of the Congressional Black Caucus
10:45: White House Public Health and Climate Change Champions of Change (WH Live)
11:25: Live From the Kids’ State Dinner (WH Live)
11:55: First Lady Michelle Obama hosts the second annual Kids’ State Dinner (WH Live)
12:45: Press Briefing by Jay Carney (WH Live)
1:0: Kids State Dinner: Rachel Crow Musical Performance (WH Live)
2:0: Vice President Biden Speaks at Fire Fighter Memorial Service, Prescott Valley, Arizona (WH Live)
2:35: The President meets with Secretary of the Treasury Lew
4:30: Meets with Secretary of Defense Hagel
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President Obama meets with his Cabinet and senior officials in the Cabinet Room of the White House, July 8 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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NYT: U.S. Considers Faster Pullout in Afghanistan
Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.
Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.
Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
More here
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“I wish Muslims across America & around the world a month blessed with the joys of family, peace & understanding.” —President Obama #Ramadan
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 9, 2013
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Steve Benen: …. We’re left with a dynamic that the political establishment still finds difficult to fully grasp: GOP officials could make the federal health care system better and more to their liking, but they see no value in that. They’d rather sabotage it, regardless of the real-world consequences. They could help get rid of a mandate they oppose, but they’d rather keep the policy they hate in the hopes it won’t work, people will feel adverse consequences, and there will be new fodder for 30-second attack ads a year from now.
Some people pursue public service want to build things, and some pursue public service because they just want to watch things burn.
…. The most generous thing I can say about their approach is that it’s fundamentally unserious about helping anyone. The least generous thing I can say is probably inappropriate for a family-friendly blog.
Full post here
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Ezra Klein: Obamacare just got easier to implement, not harder
This hasn’t been a banner news week for Obamacare. But can it really be true, as my colleague Jennifer Rubin writes, that “Everyone now agrees: Obamacare can’t be implemented”?
Er, no.
I asked around …. Larry Levitt, vice president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation: “….. If anything the delay removes some potential administrative complexities from the plates of the implementers……” …. Timothy Jost, a health law expert at Washington and Lee University’s School of Law, was even blunter. “Implementation just got easier rather than harder,” he said.
Well, so much for “everyone.”
As those interviews indicate, the thinking among health-care experts is closer to the precise opposite of Rubin’s bombastic headline: The Obama administration has decided to accept some bad media coverage now, and some higher costs later, in order to make Obamacare much, much simpler to implement next year…..
More here
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Steve Benen: On Friday, when he hoped no one was looking, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) approved sweeping new restrictions on reproductive rights, including a requirement that women receive a medically unnecessary ultrasound before terminating a pregnancy, and regulatory measures that would close half of the state’s abortion clinics.
The law was supposed to go into effect statewide yesterday. A federal court had other ideas…..
More here
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So proud to announce that I have joined the @BrownforMD team. Anthony will make an amazing governor. Join us. http://t.co/bZjIArBrCl
— Jim Messina (@Messina2012) July 8, 2013
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ThinkProgress: Sorry, Republicans, Your Own Investigation Proves No Dead People Voted In South Carolina….
South Carolina never found a single dead voter in recent elections. At least, that is the final word from the State Election Commission investigation into whether 900 people voted using a dead person’s name….
…. When Attorney General Alan Wilson demanded the original investigation, he cited “an alarming number” of cases reported by the DMV that “clearly necessitates an investigation into criminal activity.” ….
…. [This] will not prevent state Republicans from redoubling strict voter ID efforts, invigorated by the recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act. In fact, Wilson celebrated the decision, calling the Voting Rights Act an “extraordinary intrusion” and pledging to implement voter ID ….
More here
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The secret weapon that could save the Voting Rights Act http://t.co/LnXWoobyOx
— TheRittenbergReport (@TheRReport) July 9, 2013
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ThinkProgress: Bush-Appointed Judge Slams Decision Striking Voting Rights Act — Court’s Reasoning Was ‘Made Up’
If a leading conservative scholar and former judge were now on the Supreme Court instead of Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito, it is likely that the Voting Right Act would remain intact.
Judge Michael McConnell was a leading conservative law professor at the time President George W. Bush named him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2002 …. McConnell was also widely viewed as a possible Supreme Court nominee during the Bush Administration.
In an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg, McConnell has harsh words for the five conservative justices’ recent decision neutering much of the Voting Rights Act — labeling the reasoning that drove that decision “made up.”
More here
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The ‘Solidarity Singers’ play union songs in support of recalling Governor Scott Walker on the Capitol Square, June 5, in Madison, Wisconsin
MSNBC live streaming here
Chat away
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President Obama sits for interviews today with stations from Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, Des Moines, Orlando, Cincinnati, Las Vegas and Pittsburgh.
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LA Times: Mary Brown, whose case against the 2010 healthcare reform law is pending before the Supreme Court, argues that the government shouldn’t be able to force her to carry health insurance. Joined by three other individuals and a small-business trade association, she’s asking the justices to rule that the law’s insurance mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the act should be thrown out with it. But new revelations about her own situation make the case for the other side.
….. Brown and her husband have fallen on hard times since filing the lawsuit, largely because their auto repair business in Florida failed. The couple have filed for bankruptcy protection, asking a federal court to wipe out close to $60,000 in consumer debts. Significantly, their unpaid bills include $2,750 owed to a local hospital and physicians group and $1,735 to out-of-state medical specialists.
The disclosures are political gold for the Obama administration, transforming Brown from a champion of individual liberty into an exemplar of a problem the new law was designed to address.
More here
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TPM: What if “Obamacare” not only helped save Medicare from fiscal doom, but also quashed the GOP’s longstanding goal of privatizing the program? It’s too early to know what will ultimately happen, but new evidence suggests that nightmare scenario for conservatives is within the realm of possibility.
In a development with potentially profound implications – both for Medicare itself and for the broader ideological fight between the two parties over the role of government – researchers writing in the New England Journal of Medicine believe that the growth in per patient Medicare costs has slowed, contra earlier projections that spending would soar at an unsustainable rate. More importantly, the researchers believe this trend will hold over time, thanks largely to the Affordable Care Act’s sweeping cost-control policies.
More here
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Charles Pierce: ….. We can help by pointing out relentlessly the one thing that every one of the graphs, and every one of the monthly jobs reports, have had in common: namely, that the president was handed a multimegaton dungbomb of an economy when he took over.
No, nobody’s happy with 8-percent unemployment as the new normal … Still, every month, there’s another one of these (graphs), and the one abiding characteristic they all have is that they show vividly that the recession was a helluva lot deeper than anyone thought, or that anyone was led to believe. I’m not entirely sure that “He Helped Stave Off A Great Depression” isn’t a bad plank to run on.
More here
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Maddow Blog: An estimated 65,000 people gathered at the Wisconsin state capitol yesterday to mark the one-year anniversary of Governor Scott Walker’s bill stripping union rights from public employees.
More here
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Morning everyone 😉
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