President Obama arrives at Palms Springs International Airport, June 7
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Today:
PDT
9:25 AM: President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China hold a bilateral meeting, The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands
11:10 AM: The President participates in a departure greet with President Xi Jinping and First Lady Madame Peng Liyuan
Sunday:
PDT
10:25 AM: The President departs Palm Springs, CA
EDT
5:55: Arrives The White House
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The Week Ahead:
Monday: The President will deliver remarks at the White House commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act.
Tuesday: Will deliver remarks at the White House in support of the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform bill. Later in the morning, the President will host President Ollanta Humala of Peru at the White House.
Wednesday: The President will travel to Boston for an event for Ed Markey for Senate and the Massachusetts Democratic Party. From there, he will travel to Miami for a DNC event and will return to the White House in the evening.
Thursday: Will deliver remarks at the LGBT Pride Month celebration at the White House.
Friday: The President will welcome the WNBA Champion Indiana Fever to the White House to honor the team and their victory in the WNBA Finals
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Pete Souza: President Obama with China’s President Xi Jinping at The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands.
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And now we find out WaPo is backing way, way, way away from Greenwald’s claims. read.bi/18cZ5mn
Business Insider: The Washington Post Has Now Hedged Its Stunning Claim About Google, Facebook, Etc, Giving The Government Direct Access
…. the Washington Post reported a shocking story about how the FBI and National Security Agency had partnered with Google, Facebook, and many other tech companies to spy on the tech companies’ hundreds of millions of users …. Not surprisingly, the Post’s story created an instant explosion of outrage. The ire was directed at both the government and the technology companies.
….. 24 hours later, after more denials and questions, the Post has made at least two important changes to its spying story.
Two years ago: President Obama greets people in Toledo, Ohio, June 3, 2011 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today:
9:40: President Obama delivers opening remarks to the White House Mental Health Conference
12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press
2:0: VP Biden delivers closing remarks at the National Conference on Mental Health at the White House
3:30: Sec. of State Kerry Addresses 2013 American Jewish Committee Forum (C-Span)
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Tuesday: The President will host President Sebastián Piñera of Chile at the White House.
Wednesday: The President will welcome the Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens to the White House.
Thursday: The President will travel to the Charlotte area as part of his middle-class jobs and opportunity tour. From there, he’ll travel to San José, California to attend an event for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He will spend the night in San José.
Friday: The President will travel to Los Angeles to attend an event for the Democratic National Committee. He will then travel to Palm Springs, California to meet with President Xi Jinping of The People’s Republic of China at Sunnylands, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg estate. He will remain overnight in Palm Springs.
Saturday: The President will wrap up his meetings with the Chinese President and then will return to Washington, D.C.
Washington Post: President Obama is scheduled to deliver remarks Monday on the issue of mental health, raising it in connection with the sweeping gun-control agenda he unveiled earlier this year.
The morning address will open what the White House has dubbed a National Conference on Mental Health, a gathering of advocates, elected officials, faith leaders and others aimed at increasing awareness of mental illness and highlighting ways that the mentally ill can seek help. Actress Glenn Close and Vice President Joe Biden are slated to speak at the event.
During his speech, Obama is expected to announce a series of “summits” coordinated by Veterans Affairs health centers aimed at bolstering mental health services for veterans.
Steve Benen: ….. Unlike Issa’s rhetorical jabs, Plouffe’s brush-back pitch at least has the benefit of accuracy …. Issa, the man Republicans have tasked with leading investigations into alleged administration misdeeds, really has spent a fair amount of his adult life as a suspected criminal. This Ryan Lizza piece in the New Yorker from a couple of years ago remains relevant.
“Many politicians have committed indiscretions in earlier years: maybe they had an affair or hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. Issa, it turned out, had, among other things, been indicted for stealing a car, arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, and accused by former associates of burning down a building.”
…… It’s not a secret – Issa’s background is the subject of insider jokes and private chatter – but it’s considered impolite to broach the subject publicly.
Which makes Plouffe’s rhetorical shot all the more interesting.
ThinkProgress: The Medicare Trustees had great news for American seniors on Friday: the program’s solvency has been extended for two full years past what the trustees predicted in 2012.
In their annual report, the trustees wrote that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be fully solvent through 2026. That’s over a decade longer than what the trustees projected back in 2009….
…. The upward projections are likely a consequence of several factors. First, the 10-year revision from 2009 is a direct result of Obamacare. The health law takes $700 billion of excessive and wasteful payments made to private providers that service the Medicare Advantage program and reallocates it to traditional Medicare. Conservatives have made the outlandish claim that this “robs Medicare,” when in fact it does the exact opposite, and Republicans have included the same savings in their own budgets.
Paul Krugman: Last month the Congressional Budget Office released its much-anticipated projections for debt and deficits, and there were cries of lamentation from the deficit scolds who have had so much influence on our policy discourse. The problem, you see, was that the budget office numbers looked, well, O.K.: deficits are falling fast, and the ratio of debt to gross domestic product is projected to remain roughly stable over the next decade. Obviously it would be nice, eventually, to actually reduce debt. But if you’ve built your career around proclamations of imminent fiscal doom, this definitely wasn’t the report you wanted to see.
Still, we can always count on the baby boomers to deliver disaster, can’t we? Doesn’t the rising tide of retirees mean that Social Security and Medicare are doomed unless we radically change those programs now now now?
Supreme Court will hand down decisions starting at 10:00 a.m.will be monitoring @scotusblog all day 4 Affirmative Action & VRA decisions.
— skeptical brotha (@skepticalbrotha) June 3, 2013
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Michael Tomasky: Who’s Mark Pryor Kidding? …. Arkansas Democratic Senator Mark Pryor has a new reelection ad up in which he says: “The mayor of New York City is running ADS again me, because I oppose President Obama’s gun-control legislation. … I’m Mark Pryor. And I approve this message because NO ONE from New York or Washington tells ME what to do. I listen to ARKANSAS.”
New poll: 60/31 support for background checks in Arkansas
…. So, Senator: bullfeathers. You’re not listening to Arkansas. You’re listening to the NRA…..
TPM: A lawmaker who helped negotiate a bipartisan bill to overhaul immigration predicted on Sunday that comprehensive legislation would overwhelmingly pass the Senate by July 4 while House Republicans cautioned that they would write their own version, one piece at a time.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he anticipates as many as 70 of the 100 senators will vote for the measure heading to the full Senate on June 10. Even if it passes there, the proposal faces tough prospects in the Republican-led House, where lawmakers are at work on their own piecemeal approach that could stall a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in this country illegally.
She hid in the bushes to protect us from the gays, launched an inquisition into the government to protect us from the Muslims and promised to break the law to save us from the census takers.
But now that Rep. Michele Bachmann is calling it quits, who is left to save our incandescent light bulbs?
No one, that’s who.
….. my favorite Bachmann sleight-of-mouth may have been when she said this: “After the debate that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true.”
PolitiFact rated that statement a “pants-on-fire” fib…..
Woah, am I the last to know about the conditions George Preston Marshall left in his will??
Michael Tomasky: There’s a debate brewing – yet again – about whether the name of Washington’s football team is racist. Of course it is.
When George Preston Marshall died in 1969, he … directed that the bulk of his estate be used to set up a foundation in his name. He attached, however, one firm condition: that the foundation, operating out of Washington, D.C., should not direct a single dollar toward “any purpose which supports or employs the principle of racial integration in any form.” Think about that. This was not 1929 or 1949….
This is the man who gave the Washington Redskins their name. He was one of the most despicable racists in the American sporting arena of the entire 20th century. He thought Redskins was funny, just as he thought the war paint and feather headdress he made the head coach wear were funny. And this is the legacy that current Redskins owner Dan Snyder wants to uphold?
Four years ago: President Obama looks out the window of Marine One as it lands at the White House, May 22, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today:
11:0: VP Biden Gives the Commencement Address at the United States Coast Guard Academy (audio only at WH Live)
1:0 Jay Carney’s press briefing
7:25: President Obama hosts a concert honoring Gershwin Prize winner Carole King
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NYT: The bipartisan immigration bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday has many serious hurdles ahead. It is the most serious and worthy attempt to fix immigration in a generation, but it cannot help reflecting the poisoned politics of today, with its heavy tilt toward needless border enforcement and a deficiency in equal rights.
In the most moving and wrenching moment in three weeks of committee markup, the committee’s chairman, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, sought to amend the bill to allow gay Americans to sponsor their wives and husbands for green cards. The other Democrats, including Charles Schumer of New York, implored him not to put that amendment forward, saying this measure of basic fairness would drive off Republican support and kill the entire bill. Mr. Leahy withdrew it.
With that unhappy capitulation, the bill survives, with a possible battle over same-sex marriage still to come on the Senate floor. And then the bill will need to find some path through the Republican-led House….
Jonathan Capehart: Here we go again. President Obama’s critics in the African American community are hammering him for doing nothing for black people …. this thinking drives me crazy because the president’s detractors fail to take a 360-degree view of what they are demanding from him and ignore what he’s actually done.
…. Coates’s criticism emanates from Obama’s commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta …. Obama spoke to the black men of Morehouse not as a distant president but as a familiar peer. He used his troubled past as a real-life example of how one’s limited circumstances are neither destiny nor a hindrance to achieving the American Dream, as they define it. He urged the graduates to not make excuses, to aim high and to give back. Yet, Coates calls this “‘convenient race-talk’ from a president who ought to know better.” Obama can’t win.
… what’s missing from most African American critiques of Obama: an appreciation for Republican resistance to his agenda. To expect the president to introduce an explicit and definable “black agenda” in a Congress filled with people who believe him to be a socialist destroying the country while illegitimately occupying the Oval Office is seriously naive.
Steve Benen: We talked earlier about Oklahoma’s junior senator, Republican Tom Coburn (R), announcing last night that he will only support federal disaster relief — for his own constituents — if it’s financed by comparable spending cuts elsewhere. But what about Oklahoma’s senior senator?
Republican Sen. James Inhofe, like Coburn, has opposed emergency aid in the recent past, including voting against a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy. This morning, however, the conservative senator said that was “totally different”.
Now Obama has WEATHER WEAPONS? This is a million times worse than the last thing about Obama although I forget what that was.
— Thanks4 Sharing Jerk (@Thx4SharingJerk) May 21, 2013
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WH: As the Senate debates bipartisan immigration reform legislation, the President and the Vice President hosted a meeting today in the Oval Office with young immigrants, also known as DREAMers, as well as with the siblings and spouses of undocumented immigrants. The meeting was an important opportunity for the President and the Vice President to hear directly from people whose families are affected daily by our nation’s broken immigration system.
President Obama and Vice President Biden meet with DREAMers who have received Deferred Action and U.S. citizen family members of undocumented immigrants, in the Oval Office, May 21 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Socialist stock market soaring to new historic records. S&P 500 hits 1672, Dow at remarkable 15,400. #obamasfault
It being Gallup, you know yourself, it’s probably a 96-year high:
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In case you missed it, SmartyPants on the, well, interesting background of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim:
….. The next place a little curiosity might take you is to wonder just who this Stephen Jin-Woo Kim is. As even I was able to find out from a simple look at Wikipedia, he was an employee of a federally funded research and development center that consulted with Rumsfeld via the Defense Policy Board – which was chaired by Richard Perle. In 2008 – just before the Obama administration began – Kim went to work for the State Department. One might be curious about that…..
Three years ago today: President Obama, Vice President Biden and Solicitor General Elena Kagan wait in the Blue Room of the White House, May 10, 2010, prior to the President’s announcement of Kagan as his choice to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens in the Supreme Court (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today:
12:30: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney
2:40: The President delivers a statement on the Affordable Care Act
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USA Today: President Obama turns his attention back Friday to one of his signature issues, health care. A White House event this afternoon ties implementation of the massive 2010 health care law to Mother’s Day on Sunday.
Obama will discuss the benefits of the law for women, and also ask mothers to encourage young people to sign up when insurance exchanges go on line in October.
Sun Times: President Barack Obama returns to Berlin in June – the city where he staged a triumphic speech during the 2008 election – with First Lady Michelle, the White House announced on Friday.
The June 17-19 swing will start in Belfast and move to Lough Erne in Northern Ireland for the G-8 Summit. After that the First Couple head to Berlin.
Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Austin, May 9
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Norm Ornstein (National Journal): ….. Bob Woodward has pushed the idea that Obama has failed in his fundamental leadership task – not building relationships with key congressional leaders the way Bill Clinton did….
…. No one schmoozed more or better with legislators in both parties than Clinton. How many Republican votes did it get him on his signature initial priority, an economic plan? Zero in both houses. And it took eight months to get enough Democrats to limp over the finish line. How did things work out on his health care plan? How about his impeachment in the House?
…. For Obama, we knew from the get-go that he had no Republicans willing to work with him ….. schmoozing was not going to change that.
…. it is past time to abandon selective history and wishful thinking, and realize the inherent limits of presidential power, and the very different tribal politics that Obama faces compared with his predecessors.
The vice president on guns, global warming and why he’s “the last guy in the room” on every decision Obama makes……
“Remember, I got criticized for saying I support gay marriage …. I just decided I couldn’t be quiet about it anymore, and everybody was stunned that that’s where the public is. And I’m not stunned; it’s where the public’s been for a while. Talk to any of your kids, for God’s sake.”
Did you get blowback from the president or people in general?
“I got blowback from everybody but the president. I walked in that Monday, he had a big grin on his face, he put his arms around me and said, “Well, Joe, God love you, you say what you think.” I knew he agreed with me. It wasn’t like he was in a different place…..”
