Posts Tagged ‘rights
13
Jun
13
Pride
08
Jun
13
Rise and Shine
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
— Zandar (@ZandarVTS) June 7, 2013
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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.
More here
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WaPo changed “track a person’s movements and contacts” to “track foreign targets.” There’s a huge difference between the two versions.
— Bob Cesca (@bobcesca_go) June 7, 2013
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Now we find out as a result of his being wrong, GG is getting booked on the Sunday shows.All this starting to make sense now?
— Zandar (@ZandarVTS) June 7, 2013
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06
Mar
13
Rise and Shine
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Today:
The President has no scheduled public appearances
12:0: Jay Carney briefs the press
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USA Today: Rain, snow, and heavy winds have forced a change in President Obama’s schedule for Wednesday: No Alabama football. The Crimson Tide, prepared to celebrate their third national championship in four years with another White House ceremony, canceled their flight from Tuscaloosa on Tuesday because of bad weather. Instead, Obama will have a string of private meetings while riding out the storm today.
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Reuters: Private employers added 198,000 jobs in February, the biggest increase in a year and another sign of improvement in the labor market, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.
Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast the ADP National Employment Report would show a gain of 170,000 jobs. January’s private payrolls were revised up to an increase of 215,000 from the previously reported 192,000.
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TPM: President Obama will hold a signing ceremony Thursday for the Violence Against Women Act, which recently passed Congress. He and Vice President Joe Biden, the original author of VAWA in 1994, will make remarks.
They’ll be joined, according to the White House, “by women’s organizations, law enforcement officials, tribal leaders, survivors, advocates and members of Congress.”
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Jonathan Chait: Michael J. Boskin – former George W. Bush economic adviser, Hoover Institute fellow, and staunch advocate of conservative anti-tax doctrine – appears today, as is his wont, in The Wall Street Journal op-ed pages to warn that the Democratic president’s economic policies will lead us to misery.
If you are an investor, Boskin’s doomsaying is a sure sign of a coming bull market. Four years ago, Boskin penned a Journal op-ed whose thesis was captured in the headline, “Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing The Dow.” That was the signal for the Dow to go on a tear, doubling over the next four years…..
One might suppose that Boskin has simply suffered a single unfortunate coincidence. In fact, his career is a mighty testament to the power of enduring, invincible wrongness…..
Full post here
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NYT: With Republican leaders in Congress forswearing budget negotiations over new revenues, President Obama has begun reaching around them to Republican lawmakers with a history of willingness to cut bipartisan deals.
Mr. Obama has invited about a dozen Republican senators out to dinner on Wednesday night, after speaking with several of them by phone in recent days, according to people familiar with the invitation. And next week, according to those people and others who did not want to be identified, he will make a rare foray to Capitol Hill to meet separately with the Republican and Democratic caucuses in both the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House.
More here
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Washington Post: Some of the gun lobby’s strongest allies are breaking with the National Rifle Association to support proposals that would expand background checks for private firearm sales.
In behind-the-scenes talks with congressional staff members and others, gunmakers, dealers and other Second Amendment advocates have offered support for more instant criminal background checks, buoying the hopes of gun-control supporters, including President Obama, who has put a top priority on extending criminal checks to private sales.
More here
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USA Today: President Obama’s trip to Israel this month is just about set except for one big thing: A new Israeli government. Israel’s Channel 10 is reporting that Obama’s trip may be pushed back if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unable to form a new coalition government by March 16.
More here
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See here for full infographic – and more here
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TPM: A number of Republican senators Tuesday either didn’t know or wouldn’t say if they consider the Voting Rights Act to be constitutional, even though many of them voted to reauthorize it in 2006 and the Supreme Court is currently considering whether to invalidate a key section of it.
As they entered and exited weekly party luncheons Tuesday afternoon …. Every one of them dodged the questions, some more artfully than others.
“Uh,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, before a long, awkward pause, “I haven’t even thought about it.” He laughed and said, “I’ll leave that to the courts….”
More here
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Make sure you add the Pragmatic Pundit to your daily reading – it’s the blog of our TOD friend FayPax. It’s in the blogroll on the right if you ever need to find the link
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Missed this yesterday:
The First Lady’s interview on Univision’s Primer Impacto airs today – check your listings
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MoooOOooooOOorning!
26
Feb
13
Rise and Shine
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Today:
10:50: President Obama departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews
11:50: Arrives in Newport News, Va.
1:05: Delivers remarks on the sequester
2:05: Departs Newport News
3:05: Arrives at the White House
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See more here – thanks UT
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Michael Tomasky: How the credulousness of mainstream media figures like Bob Woodward and Ron Fournier enables Republican extremism …. On Saturday, I wrote about what I called the conservative Republican “rage machine” and its poisonous impact on our politics. I argued that a number of prominent conservative thinkers and pundits …. were and are partly responsible for this problem as long as they sit there pretending it doesn’t exist.
But there’s another responsible group here, too: Just as today’s Republican extremists benefit from the silence of conservative pundits, they also gain from the credulousness of mainstream figures who keep pretending that today’s GOP is a responsible party …. So that when the GOP takes a radical position on the sequester and Barack Obama a reasonable one, both are accorded equal seriousness, even when facts have to be ignored to do so.
Bob Woodward is Exhibit A here…..
Full post here
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Bob Cesca: …. the sequestration issue has been one of those rare items that frustrate me to the point of being incapable of spending time on it. When I read about sequestration, my brain seizes. The stupidity of it all simply confounds me to the point of being speechless. For me, this is a shocking and rare predicament.
It’s not even the chronic brinksmanship — the reoccurring doomsday countdowns and the Republican-manifested economic sabotage that’s behind it all. It’s not the Keynesian in me who opposes the very notion of deficit reduction during a sluggish recovery. Granted, these are both points of irritation, but the characteristic of the sequester that ought to force us all into complete apoplexy and subsequent outrage-induced catatonia is the epidemic of ignorance regarding the status of the federal budget deficit.
More here
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Charles Pierce: The administration made a sharp play, releasing a list of how the upcoming Sequester Plague is going to affect each individual state. (You will note the predominance of red states with Republican governors in the Top 20. Here’s Kansas, the most enthusiastic lab rat in the Republican experiment, and it will lose $5.5 million in school funding and have around 8000 defense-related employees furloughed….) There’s some not unexpected bleating coming from John Boehner’s office, as they duck phone calls from the district and hide behind either the curtains, or behind Bob Woodward’s reputation, whatever’s handiest.
…..You wanted the White House to play tough. This is Ronnie Lott stuff right here.
Full post here
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Jonathan Bernstein: House Republicans held a quick session with the press to mainly make one point: They have no responsibility for sequestration….
…. This standoff isn’t going to be resolved by rhetoric. But it’s worth noting the extent to which Republican spin simply ignores that there was an election in November.
….. whether Boehner and the Republicans like it or not, Barack Obama was in fact re-elected on a platform of “balanced” deficit reduction — that is, new revenue and new spending cuts. Republicans have of course every right to oppose that, but it’s a little strange hearing them talk as if that campaign and election never happened.
More here
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Steve Benen: Did you happen to catch yesterday’s Capitol Hill press conference with the entirety of the House Republican leadership? House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and House Republican Conference Cathy McMorris Rodgers wanted to talk about this week’s sequestration cuts, but in the process, they offered a case study in how to insult Americans’ intelligence.
More here
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Dana Milbank: …. With just four days left to stop automatic spending cuts House Republicans had but one item on their agenda Monday: renaming a NASA facility in California.
You’d have to be on another planet to think that renaming NASA operations is Congress’s most pressing order of business this week. But for Republicans …. the naming proposal was taken up at a time when House Republicans are pursuing a considered strategy of deliberate idleness.
After months of fretting over the harmful effects of sequestration, as the automatic cuts are called, House Republicans have belatedly embraced the realization that if they do nothing at all, they will be rewarded on Friday with a 2.5 percent cut in all federal spending without coughing up a single dollar in tax increases. They have learned to stop worrying and love the sequester.
More here
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MoooOOooorning!
09
Feb
13
Rise and Shine
@petesouza: ‘Photo of the day: POTUS w outgoing SecDef Panetta at his farewell tribute’
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Greg Sargent: John Boehner’s office is circulating Charles Krauthammer’s column, which argues that Republicans should call Obama’s sequester “bluff” and make no concessions whatsoever in revenues to avert the sequester. This is still more confirmation that the GOP’s explicit position is that allowing the sequester to happen – which Republicans themselves say will gut the military and tank the economy – is preferable to compromising at all with Dems, and that they will use the threat of disaster to force a solution that averts the sequester only by giving Republicans everything they want.
….. we’re back to exactly where we were during the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling fights. Republicans are explicitly and openly using the prospect of serious harm to millions and millions of Americans to force Democrats to agree to a deal that gives Republicans everything that they want, while requiring them to make no concessions whatsoever….
More here
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Steve Benen: When it comes to the looming, automatic sequestration cuts, there seem to be two broader debates happening simultaneously. The first, more important question deals with what’s going to happen with the policy itself, and the scope of the damage it could do to the economy, the military, and the country.
The second question is a little pettier: who came up with this awful idea in the first place? A Republican National Committee spokesperson, echoing his party’s favorite new talking point, insists this is all President Obama’s fault.
…. Does the GOP have a point on this? Was the policy actually Obama’s idea? No. The argument is not only wrong, it’s dependent on the entire political world having a very short memory …. Since this has become such an important element of the larger fight, let’s take a minute to set the record straight…..
More here
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Business Insider: …. Charles Krauthammer writes that Republicans should “call Obama’s sequester bluff.” It’s being passed around by Republicans and other conservatives on Twitter and in email blasts. His argument – which exemplifies a typical conservative shift on the sequester recently – is that Republicans now have leverage on the sequester over President Barack Obama…..
…. Krauthammer wasn’t always so bullish on using the sequester as a tool for leverage. Last May, he warned in an appearance on Fox News that letting the cuts go into effect would be a “catastrophe” for the nation’s defense…..
…. The conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal advanced a similar argument on Thursday. In an editorial entitled “The Unscary Sequester,” the editorial board disputed Washington’s “collective fit of terror.”
…. Then there’s the editorial the board wrote not even seven months ago. It used the same language as Krauthammer – “catastrophe,” which it wrote was “playing out in slow motion.” The board also said that Obama had the leverage, and that it would be a “dangerous game” to play with the sequester.
More here
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Auto exports:
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RollCall: President Barack Obama has agreed to do more than just raise money for House Democrats’ effort to win back the majority in 2014: He is also going to help with candidate recruitment.
Obama will headline eight fundraising events in 2013 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and more fundraisers are planned for 2014. But Obama’s agreement to help DCCC Chairman Steve Israel of New York make the sell to would-be candidates in targeted districts is also significant.
“It’s transformational,” Israel said in an interview, adding that House Democrats are “firing on all cylinders like I’ve never seen before.”
The president’s efforts to assist House Democrats politically are more than Israel initially even asked for.
More here
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Ari Berman (The Nation): In 2006, Congress voted overwhelmingly to reauthorize key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another twenty-five years. The legislation passed 390–33 in the House and 98–0 in the Senate. Every top Republican supported the bill …. Civil rights leaders flanked George W. Bush at the signing ceremony.
Seven years later, the bipartisan consensus that supported the VRA for nearly fifty years has collapsed, and conservatives are challenging the law as never before. Last November, three days after a presidential election in which voter suppression played a starring role, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Section 5 of the VRA, which compels parts or all of sixteen states with a history of racial discrimination in voting to clear election-related changes with the federal government. The case will be heard on February 27.
The lawsuit, originating in Shelby County, Alabama, is backed by leading operatives and funders in the conservative movement, along with Republican attorneys general in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas….
More here
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Washington Post: First lady Michelle Obama will join some of Illinois’ most recognizable politicians and clergy Saturday to mourn a 15-year-old honor student whose death has drawn attention to staggering gun violence in the nation’s third-largest city.
But Hadiya Pendleton’s family says her Saturday funeral service won’t be about politics, but about remembering a girl who loved to dance, once appeared in an anti-gang video and died just days after performing at one of President Barack Obama’s inauguration events.
None of the dignitaries are slated to speak during the service. The teen’s pastor and brother will talk, and the musical group Pendleton was a member of will perform.
More here
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NYT: Among the victims of gun violence who will be sitting in the House chamber on Tuesday night when President Obama delivers his State of the Union address will be a teacher who survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Natalie Hammond, who reportedly took bullet wounds to the leg, foot and hand but narrowly escaped with her life, will attend the speech as the guest of her congresswoman, Elizabeth Esty, the representative for Newtown, Conn.
Ms. Hammond, the school’s lead teacher, and another school employee were the only two people to survive after being shot by the gunman, Adam Lanza. Ms. Hammond will be one of the many victims of gun violence who will attend the State of the Union address.
More here
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WH: On Friday, February 15, President Obama will welcome the recipients of the 2012 Citizens Medal to the White House for a special ceremony to recognize their efforts to serve their communities, and inspire others to do the same.
See the list of recipients here
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State of the Union addresses:
2009 (not an ‘official’ State of the Union address’ – the first official one was in 2010):
2010:
2011:
2012:
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I hope TODers living in snowy places are keeping safe and warm – this is for you:
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MoooOOoooOOOoorning!
