Esquire | The Obama Diary

Posts Tagged ‘Esquire

Feb

afternoon all

Categories: All Photos, All Videos, Articles and Michelle Obama
Tags: Barack, base, behind, bishops, catholic, charles, child, contraception, contraceptives, economy, eric, Esquire, holder, housing, italian, Italy, jacksonsville, jobs, left, little, Mario, Michelle, minister, missouri, mitt, monti, mortgages, No, Obama, photos, Pierce, President, prime, rock, romney, Schneiderman, toon, vatican, video

Charles Pierce: …. Emboldened by enablers, the bishops have expanded their demands for exemptions from simply Catholic institutions to every business in America. There’s a reason for this …. they’ve been sitting back on their ermined duffs, believing that they were done so very wrong in the investigation of their crimes, and nursing the mother of all grudges, for over a decade. Now they’ve decided to strike back for the power they’ve lost. Women’s health is the issue they’ve chosen, because, in their little unindicted world, women don’t count, and never have….

There were a couple of ways all of this could have been avoided. One … would have been to toss a whole lot of bishops in jail for conspiracy to obstruct justice, enough of them so their power to influence the secular law was destroyed forever. They needed to be humbled, unmercifully, until the hubris was wrung out of every damn one of them. Now, a woman working a low-income service industry job under the supervision of a Catholic boss will have her access to essential health-care truncated by a discredited encyclical to which no Catholic has paid any heed since the administration of Lyndon Johnson. These bastards needed to be broken, publicly, and into a thousand pieces that were scattered to the winds. Instead, they are “voices of conscience” again. It is to weep.

Full post here

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Greg Sargent (Washington Post): Is media getting politics of contraception all wrong?

Since the controversy over the White House’s new contraception policy broke, it’s been widely assumed that the battle is terrible politics for Obama, because it will cost him among Catholic swing voters.

But some polling from August suggests a majority of Americans supports the White House position – and that the opposition to the provision from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops makes no difference to them. Even a majority of Catholic respondents said the same.

….. The White House very well may buckle in this fight. But these numbers do suggest at least the possibility that leading commentators have been far too quick to declare this a certain political loser.

Full post here

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You can sign the petition here

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Greg Sargent: Since details of the big foreclosure settlement began leaking out, liberals have been watching to see how New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would react, as a sign of whether the deal is a giveaway to big banks – or whether it contains the promise of real accountability.

In an interview with me just now, Schneiderman – who has gained a national liberal profile for his insistence on true accountability for financial institutions – conceded the settlement announced today was “small” in financial terms, given the struggles of underwater homeowners and people who lost their homes.

But he insisted that time will show that today’s settlement was a win – that it secured a framework that will ultimately result in a true accounting of the role big banks played in sparking the economic meltdown…..

More here

Attorney General Eric holder listens as President Obama speaks about a mortgage settlement in the Eisenhower Executive Office building

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President Obama arrives to deliver remarks on the No Child Left Behind law in the East Room of the White House

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Jonathan Bernstein (Washington Post): Today’s economic news is that new claims for unemployment benefits have fallen again, with the four-week average now at the lowest point since spring 2008. That’s not all; the stock market is also at its highest point since spring 2008, and Gallup’s economic confidence numbers are also approaching post-recession highs.

It’s no coincidence that the run of good economic news – and employment is only a part of that – has been accompanied by a climb by Barack Obama in the polls. Indeed, the Pollster average now has Obama with an average 5.5 point lead over Romney.

….. It’s certainly possible that the new economic momentum will, again, dissipate. But the signs are mounting that people are being a bit too pessimistic. And if so, there’s a chance that Democrats and the president could be about to receive a whole lot of unexpected good news indeed.

Full post here

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Steve Benen: How many counties did Romney win in Missouri’s doesn’t-really-count primary this week? Zero:

TPM

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President Obama and Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti meet in the Oval Office, February 9

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First lady Michelle Obama greets U.S. Air Force personnel in the dining facility at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville

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Feb

afternoon all

By Chipsticks 308 Comments

Categories: All Photos, All Videos, Articles, Joe 'Big Deal' Biden and Michelle Obama
Tags: about, affordability, airlines, american, Arianna, Barack, Biden, boy, breakfast, charles, child, college, cost, drugs, education, Esquire, Fox, Gingrich, girl, gopolitico, holding, holmes, israel, Joe, kid, Lawrence, Michelle, mitt, national, news, Newt, o'donnell, Obama, of, pete, photo, photos, Pierce, politico, poor, prayer, President, question, rick, romney, santorum, souza, sweet, the, toons, unconcerned, video

President Barack Obama holds Arianna Holmes, 3, before taking a departure photo with members of her family in the Oval Office, Feb. 1, 2012. Arianna’s mother, Angela Holmes, is a departing Special Assistant in the International Economic Affairs office of the National Security Staff. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

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Text of the President’s remarks here

President Obama holds up a book that he was given by author and keynote speaker Eric Metaxas at the National Prayer Breakfast

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Steve Benen: The general trend on initial unemployment claims over the last few months has been largely encouraging, though there have been setbacks. Last week, for example, was a step in the wrong direction. This week’s report, however, was a little more heartening:

U.S. jobless claims dropped by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 367,000 in the week ended Jan. 28, the Labor Department said Thursday….

…. when these jobless claims fall below the 400,000 threshold, it’s considered evidence of an improving jobs landscape. When the number drops below 370,000, it suggests jobs are actually being created rather quickly.

More here

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The Week

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Washington Post (editorial): Higher education is both crucial to America’s economic competitiveness and hard for many students and their families to afford … As President Obama quite rightly insisted in his State of the Union address, institutions of higher learning must do more to hold down their costs if college education is to remain affordable for the next generation of young people. What’s more, he’s talking about using the federal government’s financial clout to encourage cost containment.

…. he is proposing long-overdue reforms to existing formulas for distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in campus-based aid, such as Perkins loans and work-study funds. Current policy skews in favor of better-off students at relatively pricier colleges. The president wants to shift dollars in favor of schools that restrain tuition and graduate more low-income students. Meanwhile, he would establish a $1 billion fund to encourage cost-saving innovations, complemented by $55 million for research, evaluation and dissemination of the best practices….

Needless to say, a lot depends on how the president and Congress would end up defining what constitutes a good value in higher education … what’s important is that the president has put the prestige and power of his office behind this effort.

More here

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Jonathan Cohn: Romney’s political strategy here seems clear to me: He’s trying to drive a wedge between the poor and the middle class, convincing the latter that they lose out to the former when Democrats are in charge. And the strategy may work. It’s certainly helped Republicans before. But the big beneficiary of Romney’s plan to reorder fiscal priorities is not the middle class. It’s the very wealthy, who would get substantial tax benefits and who will usually be fine with weakened public services.

More here

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TPM

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MSNBC: ….. presidential hopeful Rick Santorum took a hard line on Wednesday against government getting involved in offsetting the cost of drug prices. Before exiting the stage, Santorum was prodded by members of the 300-person crowd to take one last question from a young boy standing in the front row. The child asked what the candidate would do to lower the cost of medicine. But the former Pennsylvania senator said it was the cost of drugs that allowed for the innovation that keeps Americans with life-threatening illnesses alive.

“People have no problem going out and buying an iPad for $900. But paying $200 for a drug they have a problem with – that keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned in thinking health care is something you should get and not have to pay for. Drug companies, health care companies need to have a profitability, because if they don’t, then how are we going to regulate costs?…..”

While some of in the audience applauded Santorum’s tough stance against government involvement in drug prices, others protested. The mother of the child yelled out that she was going bankrupt just to pay for her child to keep breathing.

More here

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Charles P. Pierce (Esquire) read a a swooning piece about Fox ‘News’ in Politico…. he didn’t like it very much:

“Stuff in Politico That Makes Me Want to Guzzle Antifreeze…. I say only that, in my own, personal, constitutionally protected opinion, this may very well be the worst bag of pulverized, unexpurgated, beat-sweetening chickenshit in the history of American political journalism. It makes Peggy Noonan read like Thuycidides….

More here

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Charles P. Pierce (Esquire): No matter what Willard Romney said on Tuesday night, a tough primary can really damage you. If these latest PPP numbers are in any way accurate, the rockfight between Romney and N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization’s Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of the Civilizing Forces, has pushed Romney’s unfavorability ratings in Ohio northward toward 60 percent……

….. Eighty-four percent of the respondents are white and, even with that, Romney is six points down with a 57 percent disapproval rating. He better tack like hell, is all I’m saying.

More here

Feb

rise and shine

By Chipsticks 152 Comments

Categories: All Photos, All Videos and Articles
Tags: about, African, al, Americans, Barack, charles, concerned, cool, David, Esquire, florida, Gingrich, green, let's, Letterman, maddow, Mark, mitt, Newt, not, Obama, Pierce, poor, President, rachel, racism, rev, romney, sharpton, singing, sings, stay, together, toon, toons, tyler, very, video

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10:45: VP Biden delivers remarks at American Seating Company’s factory in Grand Rapids, Mich.

11:00: PBO delivers remarks on the economy at the James Lee Community Center in Falls Church, Va.

5:00: Michelle Obama delivers remarks at a Democratic National Committee luncheon in Los Angeles.

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Gallup

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WSJ: The private sector added 170,000 jobs in January, in line with expectations, as small-business hiring fueled the increase …. The latest ADP report showed large businesses with 500 employees or more added just 3,000 employees in January, while medium-size businesses added 72,000 workers and small businesses, those that employ fewer than 50 workers, hired 95,000 new employees. Service-sector jobs increased by 152,000 last month, and factory jobs rose by 10,000.

More here

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The Week

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USA Today: The closer we get to the fall campaign, the more President Obama sharpens his stump speech. At a fundraiser last night in Washington ….Obama argued that the Republicans will take the economy back to where it was before the 2008 crisis, and have “the wrong vision for America.”

“Their basic argument is that if we strip out regulations, if we disregard environmental concerns, if we take away protections for consumers, if we lower taxes even further for the kind of folks who are in this room, that somehow growth and the American Dream will be restored,” Obama said.

That said, Obama warned supporters that this will be a tough election, and they can’t take anything for granted.

“We’re all going to have to be focused on making sure that every single day the American people understand not only where we want to take the country but also that we’re willing to fight for them,” Obama said.

More here

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Charles Pierce (Esquire): …. I’m not going to sit there and listen to (Willard Romney) …. the cosseted plutocrat son of a millionnaire auto dealer – one who is running on a platform that will make himself and everyone like him richer while warning the rest of us, as he did in his victory speech in Tampa, that “If you’re looking for cradle-to-grave help from the government, I’m not your candidate” – go and dragoon into that effort Tom Paine, who would have spat in Willard Romney’s face if he’d ever met him.

Mitt Romney is someone whose children have a trust fund totaling $100 million. His great-great-grandchildren are not ever going to have to worry about money from their cradles to their graves. Thomas Paine? I’m sorry, but there are levels of bullshit to which I will not agree to descend.

Romney won because he had the most money. And because he had the most money, enough of the Tea Party “base,” which was supposed to hate him like gum disease, decided thusly: What the hell? The important thing is to get the Muslim Kenyan Usurper Negro out of the White House, so this is the horse we have to ride…..

…. it was how Romney delivered the speech that was so revelatory. This is a rich kid who likes flogging The Help. There were just enough shit-eating, country-club grins as he delivered his rancid material to show you what the guy must have been like in those golden moments when he realized that there was more dough in wrecking a company than in investing in it.

Full article here

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David Firestone (NYT): ….. nearly half the nation now holds an unfavorable view of Mr. Romney, much higher than last year. The number is even higher among independents. If Mr. Gingrich can raise enough money to stay in the race, Mr. Romney will have to spend valuable time, resources and good will to keep countering him.

All of that subtracts from his ability to pivot to Mr. Obama, and makes his criticism of the president seem like more of the same endless negativity. Mr. Romney’s victory speech tonight was less than uplifting, suggesting the United States had sunk to “the worst of what Europe has become.” If he means the Euro crisis, it’s not even close, and he will not get very far persuading voters that Washington is turning into Athens.

He even made a crack about Mr. Obama and his “faculty lounge” colleagues who think they know better than everyone else. That sounds hollow, coming from one of the country’s best-educated elitists, and it’s precisely the wrong message for a country that knows it must improve education at all levels.

It was left to Rick Santorum, who barely competed in Florida, to express the real lesson of Florida’s knife fight, and the dangers of letting it continue. “What we’ve seen the last few weeks in Florida,” he said tonight, “is not something that is going to help us win this election.”

Full post here

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The Week

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CBS

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Morning everyone

Jan

evening all (updated)

By Chipsticks 449 Comments

Categories: All Photos, All Videos and Articles
Tags: Abdullah, ad, apology, Barack, carolina, charles, debate, Esquire, funny, Gingrich, gop, halperin, harper, huntsman, jon, Jordan, King, Mark, million, mitt, Newt, Obama, of, one, pacs, Pierce, President, republican, romney, roscoe, saint, saintroscoe, Scott, signatures, sorry, south, super, superpacs, toon, toons, valerie, video, walker, Wisconsin

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Greg Sargent: Mark Murray reports on Twitter that the Obama campaign is out requesting rates from TV stations for a potential – and possibly very significant – ad buy. I’ve confirm that this is the case; Obama aides are requesting rates in key states, where there are millions and millions of dollars in anti-Obama ads already up on the air.

One has to wonder whether the Obama campaign is looking to do this in order to reclaim a debate that’s been largely ceded to his Republican rivals, one that will drive the election: Whether Obama succeeded or failed on the economy.

More here

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The Hill: The Obama administration has signaled to allies that it will take a more aggressive role this year in protecting homeowners from foreclosure, a posture that fits with Obama’s populist campaign stance.

Housing is poised to become a significant issue in the 2012 campaign season and President Obama’s allies acknowledge the administration’s efforts to help homeowners, while well intentioned, have fallen short.

More here

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Business Insider – Thanks Loriah

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Happy birthday, too, to The Greatest: Muhammad Ali

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Charles P. Pierce (Esquire): On Sunday evening the Republicans held the 10,000-infinity’th of their scheduled 56,675-quintuple-infinity debates, in which everybody picked on Willard Romney and Ron Paul, and in which Rick Santorum was still pretty much a dick, but he was a dick to Willard, who would have encouraged dickitude in Francis of Assisi, so there’s that. And, of course, Rick Perry said something really stupid. South Carolina really isn’t the place where you want to make loose talk about being “at war” with the federal government. Honestly, Governor Goodhair, why don’t you just go down to the harbor, throw a rock at Fort Sumter, and make it official?

And, alas, Jon Huntsman finally succumbed after his long, brave struggle against chronic invisibility. In lieu of flowers, the campaign requests that donations be sent to the Weepy Pundits Clinic, 525 Broder Lane, Centerville, USA. Chris, dude, there one big “What If…” missing from your litany there: What If The Republican Party Wasn’t Completely Insane? That really is the only one that matters…..

Full post here

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Greg Sargent: Wisconsin Democrats are telling reporters that they have gathered more than one million signatures to recall Governor Scott Walker — a remarkable number that could have real ramifications for this year’s presidential race.

…. Dems need around 540,000 of those signatures to be certified as official in order for the recall of Walker to proceed. The one-million total makes that cushion pretty comfortable.

More here

John Nichols (The Nation): …. No other gubernatorial recall drive in American history has gathered the signatures of so large a proportion of the electorate. The total number of signatures submitted Tuesday represents 46 percent of the turnout in the 2010 Wisconsin gubernatorial election. That compares with 23.4 percent that signed the petitions that initiated the successful recall of California Governor Gray Davis in 2003 and 31.8 percent that signed petitions to recall North Dakota Governor Lynn Frazier in 1921.

More here

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Valerie Harper, January 2012

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I just want to offer my apologies to saintroscoe for some seriously stupid and unfair comments I directed at him/her last night. After lecturing everyone else about staying ‘civil’ in the middle of disagreements, I went and broke my own rules, pretty spectacularly.

I have blocked people recently who were obvious GOP/Firebagger trolls, or who brought nothing much more than negativity or personal abuse to the blog, and they’ll stay blocked, but saintroscoe, obviously, fits in to neither category – which is why s/he has not been blocked.

When I ranted (on and on and on….) recently about negative stuff on the blog, I never meant – even if it sounded that way – that I wanted everyone to be Little Miss Sunshine even when the news wasn’t encouraging. We can still be fiercely positive, because there’s so much to be fiercely positive about, without burying our heads in the sand (as I often do) and ignoring the challenges and papering over the setbacks.

I know a lot of you don’t want any ‘negative’ stuff here, and have complained about the place being that way recently, but we’ll just carry on trying to get the balance right, between being positive and honest.

I’ll completely understand if Saintroscoe chooses not to return – if not, I recommend you follow him/her on Twitter (link). We didn’t always agree, but I appreciated what s/he brought here, which was smart and informed commentary on the issues.

Sorry again.

Dec

rise and shine

By Chipsticks 140 Comments

Categories: All Photos, Articles and Joe 'Big Deal' Biden
Tags: 2.5, adults, Biden, children, Esquire, healthcare, Joe, million, obamacare, young

From an interview with VP Biden in Esquire:

“What I haven’t seen before is the intensity of the desire on the other side to see to it that Barack Obama is not president again. There seems to be a willingness to put that ahead of what might be a short-term – or a long-term – benefit to the American people.”

On the Presdsent: “What I’m amazed about is the guy’s courage. The decisions the president makes day in and day out are decisions that nobody sees. Trust me, if you had to make only one of those decisions, you’d be telling your grandchildren about it. … I would argue that this president has had more land on his plate from the day he got in office than any other president – including Franklin Roosevelt.”

On Mitt Romney’s faith: “When my son was a senior, I was asked to do a speech at Georgetown University,” Biden recalled in an interview with the magazine. “Father O’Donovan asked me to speak on how faith informs my public service. I’d never talked about my faith publicly. I mean, I acknowledge that I’m a practicing Catholic, but I don’t think it’s anybody’s business, nor do I think it should matter to anyone. That’s why I’m so angry about the way they’re treating Romney. Who I’m not crazy about, but…”

More here

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Today:

10:05: The President and First Lady depart the White House en route to Joint Base Andrews

10:20: Leave Andrews for Ft. Bragg, N.C.

11:25: Arrive in Ft. Bragg

11:55: The President and First Lady deliver remarks to the troops

12:50: Depart Ft. Bragg

2:05: Arrive at the White House

5:00: The President attends a campaign event

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Kathleen Sebelius: As a parent, nothing gives us more peace of mind than knowing that our children can pursue their dreams without unfair limitations. This is why I’m excited to announce that millions more young adults in America now have health insurance coverage thanks to the health care law – enabling them to pursue their goals without worrying about what will happen if they get sick.

The provision in the law allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26 has resulted in 2.5 million young people gaining coverage, according to analysis based on new data released today by the National Center for Health Statistics.

More here

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Morning everyone

I’ll catch up with the news – soon-ish