AP: The first lady on Thursday planted lettuce and other crops in her garden on the South Lawn of the White House, with an assist from schoolchildren from Washington, D.C., and several school districts around the country. Two varieties of wheat were planted for the first time: club wheat and bread wheat.
Other crops now growing in the garden are spinach, kale, Swiss chard, endive, potatoes, radishes, garlic, fennel, broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens and herbs, along with raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and an apple tree. The first lady personally planted rows of wheat, spinach and kale, with help from a few students. Other students planted the remaining crops, with an assist from White House staff members. Also helping were military veterans in training for careers in sustainable agriculture.
The garden so far has produced more than 3,000 pounds of food. The White House gives some away to a local soup kitchen.
President Obama makes his way to board Marine One at the White House – the President was headed to Baltimore and Philadelphia to attend campaign fundraisers
…. arriving at Owings Mills, Maryland
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Coming up:
3:45: Delivers remarks at a campaign event (Hyatt Regency, Baltimore – Live Coverage)
7:45: Delivers remarks at a campaign event (Franklin Institute, Philadelphia – Live coverage)
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First Lady Michelle Obama signs her book, ‘American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America,’ at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Washington, DC
President Barack Obama high fives a young boy outside an event in Palm Beach Garden, Fla., April 10, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama returns to the White House after a visit to Florida, April 10
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**** 10:15 AM ET: President Obama delivers a statement on the Buffett Rule ****
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EJ Dionne: Conservatives are not accustomed to being on the defensive. They have long experience with attacking the evils of the left and the abuses of activist judges. They love to assail “tax-and-spend liberals” without ever discussing who should be taxed or what government money is actually spent on. They expect their progressive opponents to be wimpy and apologetic.
So imagine the shock when President Obama decided last week to speak plainly about what a Supreme Court decision throwing out the health-care law would mean, and then landed straight shots against the Mitt Romney-supported Paul Ryan budget as “a Trojan horse,” “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”
….. Romney pronounced himself appalled …. yet could neither defend the cuts nor deny the president’s list of particulars, based as they were on reasonable assumptions. When it came to the Ryan budget, Romney wanted to fuzz things up. But, as Obama likes to point out, math is math.
And when Obama went after the right’s willingness to use the power of the Supreme Court for ideological purposes, conservatives were aghast – and never mind that conservatives have been castigating activist judges since at least the 1968 presidential campaign….
Paul Krugman: Oh, boy. It turns out that the WaPo featured on its front page a report by Charles Blahous of the (yes, Koch-funded) Mercatus Center – although the Post describes him as a Medicare trustee, giving the impression that this is somehow an official document – claiming that the Affordable Care Act will actually increase the deficit. Jonathan Chait does the honors…..
….. this is basically a sick joke that doesn’t pass the laugh test. Unfortunately, it seems that some news organizations don’t have mandatory laugh-testing.
Steve Benen: ….. The problem, which the Post article didn’t mention, is that Blahous’ research falls apart under scrutiny. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Paul N. Van de Water easily dismissed the Republican’s report.
…. I can appreciate the fact that these budget figures can seem complex, but certainly a guy who worked on entitlement policy for Bush/Cheney should understand the basics here, and the basics tell us that Obama’s health care law helps lower the national debt. Whether the right finds this inconvenient or not is irrelevant.
ET can exclusively reveal that George Clooney is hosting a fundraiser for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign – but there’s one thing he won’t do to help the president.
Clooney tells ET, “I’m proud to do whatever I can to support the President… as long as no one asks me to sing.”
… Clooney will host the president and about 150 supporters at the event on May 10 at his home in Los Angeles, California …. tickets will run $40,000 each, with proceeds going to the Obama Victory fund, a joint fundraising committee of Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee and several state Democratic parties.
Rolling Stone: …. When Obama 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe likened the campaign’s email list to a television network in his campaign memoir, it was a rough analogy. But for the revamped Obama 2012 campaign, the meaning is quite literal. The YouTube and social media revolution of the last four years has given the campaign the power to produce and disseminate powerful video content that it can broadcast to a highly targeted audience of millions, effectively for free.
….. The folks in Chicago have spent next to nothing on television ads. Yet the campaign’s digital team – the biggest squad by far in Obama 2012′s massive headquarters in a downtown skyscraper – is quietly churning out nearly a video a day, designed to reengage Obama supporters, activate new volunteers, or persuade fence-sitting independents.
…. We’re seeing something really new in the history of presidential politics develop out of Chicago. This is a social-media-optimized campaign …. All of this direct communication with targeted voters is happening without the advice or consent of the mainstream media, in ways that David Plouffe could scarcely have imagined just four years ago. Meanwhile, the Mitt Romney campaign website looks like it’s still trying to catch up to Obama 2008.
Pew Research: The gender gap in presidential politics is not new. Democratic candidates have gotten more support from women than men for more than 30 years. Even so, Barack Obama’s advantages among women voters over his GOP rivals are striking.
In the Pew Research Center’s most recent national survey, conducted March 7-11, Obama led Mitt Romney by 20 points (58% to 38%) among women voters. It marked the second consecutive month that Obama held such a wide advantage over Romney among women (59% to 38% in February).
MSNBC: …. a new NBC News/Marist poll shows President Obama holding a sizable advantage over his Republican opposition in Wisconsin, which he carried in 2008 but where Republicans made big gains in the 2010 midterms.
Obama leads Romney in Wisconsin among registered voters, 52 percent to 35 percent, with 13 percent undecided. And he edges Santorum, 51 percent to 38 percent, with 11 percent undecided….
Benefitting Obama is growing optimism about the state of the economy (52 percent believe the worst is behind them), as well as a more negative perception of the Republican Party (48 percent say the Democratic Party does a better job in appealing to those who aren’t hard-core supporters, while just 32 percent say that about the GOP).
What’s more, there’s a significant gender gap: Obama leads Romney among women by 25 points (55 percent to 30 percent) and men by 12 points (50 percent to 38 percent). The president’s job-approval rating in Wisconsin stands at 50 percent.
President Obama greets US soldiers and family members before boarding Air Force One at Osan Air Base outside Seoul on March 27 to leave South Korea
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11:00 AM: Michelle Obama participates in the 2012 National Cherry Blossom Festival’s Centennial Tree Planting Ceremony.
12:00: Michelle Obama meets with the spouses of the military’s senior enlisted leaders.
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President Obama covers the microphone as he arrives at the plenary session of the Nuclear Security Summit at the Coex Center in Seoul, March 27
…. with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
President Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak find their places for the group ‘family photo’ at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit
…. with Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev
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The U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement will help to support an estimated 70,000 jobs in the years ahead and increase U.S. GDP by at least $11 billion due to increased exports of goods.
…. greeting US soldiers and family members before boarding Air Force One at Osan Air Base outside Seoul, March 27
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Time: ….. Trayvon Martin’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton were on the long stretch of a turnpike between Orlando and Miami on March 23 when they heard President Obama’s poignant remark about their boy — that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.”
They say that was when they realized how far-reaching the impact of his controversial death, and their effort to get to the bottom of it, is. “It felt real warm to know our son’s name had been mentioned by the President of the United States and all over the nation and the world,” Martin says.
“His name is ringing all over the country, all over the nation, all over the world.” Fulton agrees, saying, “It showed us that even President Obama understands we need justice, that he understands our situation.” Adds Martin: “The nation is saying, What if — what if this was my son, what would I do?”
Charles Pierce: This picture, which ran on the front page of The New York Times this morning, and which accompanied the story about the opening of the arguments in the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, makes me as sad and despairing about the state of the country as I have been in an awfully long time. There are better places on the Intertoobz than this one to look either for a general overview of what may happen in the Court over the next three days – Ezra Klein’s joint did a masterful job this morning – …. but this picture makes the whole affair ring a little hollow already.
RT @DavidShuster: . @jonkarl I'm going on @CNN this morning to discuss your inaccurate reporting on Benghazi emails. Still no apology from… 3 hours ago
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