A Year Ago: First Lady Michelle Obama waits to greet President Barack Obama upon his arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport, June 14, 2012. (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today:
11:30: The President hosts a Father’s Day Luncheon
12:30: Press Briefing by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest
2:45: The President welcomes the WNBA Champion Indiana Fever to the White House
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The Guardian: Families of the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, will mark the six-month anniversary of the tragedy on Friday by launching a nationwide bus tour designed to step up political pressure on the US senators who voted against the bill to toughen America’s gun laws.
Relatives of the 20 young children and six carers who were killed by a lone shooter on 14 December will begin the tour in Newtown under the banner “No More Names”. The campaign, launched by the national coalition to reduce gun violence, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, will last for 100 days and take in 25 states.
BooMan: …. when Bill Clinton compares the situation in Syria to the situation he faced in Kosovo, he’s making one of the stupidest statements that I have ever heard from him.
…. For Clinton to appear with John McCain and make comments like this is a perfect vindication of my total opposition to his wife’s candidacy for president. We cannot afford more leadership from people who think about American power in this way…..
This is what we gained when we won the presidency for Obama. A cool head.
3:0: Delivers remarks at a DNC Fundraiser, Private Residence, Santa Monica
5:05: Departs Los Angeles
5:55: Arrives Palm Springs
8:0: Participates in a photo opportunity with President Xi Jinping of China, at The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, Rancho Mirage, California.
8:05: Holds a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping
11:0: Holds a working dinner with President Xi Jinping
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Steve Benen: … The U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in May, slightly better than expected, though the overall unemployment rate inched higher to 7.6%. As is usually the case, there was a gap between the two major sectors – America’s private sector added 178,000 jobs last month, while spending cuts caused the public sector lose 3,000 jobs.
One key figure to keep in mind, however, was local-government hiring, where 13,000 jobs were created. We’ve grown accustomed to municipalities doing the opposite, and if this holds up (and continues), it will strengthen the overall job market…
PS Loved this: “Do you folks remember the last time Steve Benen took a day off? Yeah, we had to go back and look, too. I’m happy to report that Steve is taking vacation today and tomorrow, Thursday and Friday.”
But…. “Steve says he’ll be escaping vacation at least long enough to post the new unemployment report – and his famous bikini graph – on Friday morning.”
Yes, he took a break from his two day vacation to post on the jobs’ figures. He’s a hoot.
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Unemployment rate among Latinos was 9.1% in May. One year ago, it was 11%. bls.gov/news.release/e…
Must-read – although, Tomasky makes the mistake of suggesting the deranged hate only comes from the right:
Michael Tomasky: Nothing will stop Republicans from trying to turn the IRS scandal into Watergate. They simply despise Obama too much to settle for anything less ….. That’s all this is really about — their base’s rage at the continued existence of Barack Obama, and their own twisted craving to acknowledge and stoke it.
…. all that is to say nothing of the racist invective that is the constant background music of this presidency …. We in the media never discuss this, but it is a daily diet in this country — yes, daily — and nothing said about any president in history that I can think of comes close to matching its relentless and savage sickness.
…. The liberal base hated George Bush all right, but the hate wasn’t quite as existential, wasn’t quite as drenched in the same kind of suppurated derangement one finds in quarters of the right.
Besides which, Bush discredited himself through his uniform incompetence. Obama, clearly competent, has not done that and is unlikely to do it. So the Republicans have to do it to him. Tarnishing Obama is the only way they can emerge from these eight years not completely humiliated by him, so we’re just going to have to endure it.
On Sunday, the president will travel to Oklahama to survey the damage from recent tornadoes there, and to visit affected families and first responders. After having breakfast with the families of fallen soldiers on Monday, the president will visit Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and give remarks.
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Estimating the impact of #Obamacare: “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California.” Read more: OFA.BO/LBnx6X
UT posted this Mediaite story the other day, ‘DOJ Document Reveals Fox News Reporter James Rosen Wanted To Impact U.S. Foreign Policy’ – some extracts again:
….. From the minute WaPo released its story, the press has been fluffing the details for maximum Scandalabra™ impact, comparing the Kim investigation with the DOJ’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records….
…. After outlining the kinds of secret information he hoped to get from “Leo,” Rosen summed up his intention to… report the news objectively? To serve the public?
“Let’s break some news, and expose muddle-headed policy when we see it – or force the administration’s hand to go in the right direction, if possible.”
Wait, what? Is that what a News reporter is supposed to do, force the administration’s hand to guide American foreign policy to the reporter’s whim? …. this email seems to indicate that James Rosen is not just a News reporter, but an activist intent on pushing his own agenda, with the stated goal of manipulating U.S. foreign policy.
…. The press should continue to shine a light on the Justice Department’s handling of reporters in leak investigations, but it should do so honestly, and stop claiming that James Rosen was just a reporter doing his job. Unless they see that job as steering America’s global foreign policy.
But even after this revelation about what the Fox boy was up to, I see he’s still being portrayed as an innocent victim of the Big Brother Obama administration, even by usually smart writers. That’s the scandal here.
Read what SmartyPants had to say about this earlier in the week
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Yes, there’s a terrible scandal in govt. It lies in the broken oaths of a political party more devoted to destroying Obama than serving us.
Of course it’s not good enough for Scahills, Greenwalds, and Benjamins. Nothing other than a strict policy of non-violence, irrespective of the dangers this country faces, would be good enough. And for the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and O’Reillys, it is nothing less than the affirmation of all their fears: that he’s a Manchurian candidate out to deliver the land of the free to its enemies.
But Barack Obama’s speech at the National Defense University on Thursday heralds nothing less than a total upending of the prevailing US security stance post-9/11.
For the past 12 years, we’ve been, quite frankly, in a perpetual state of war. The one in Afghanistan, it can be quite cogently argued, was a war of self-defense, pursued in pursuit of those who rammed planes into New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. Very few people in this country argued that it wasn’t a war worth waging to extract an enemy who had struck deeply inside our territory.
Of course, we know what happened next. We installed a flawed strongman in Hamid Karzai. We gave cursory aid to the new regime, both financially and militarily, allowing Al Qaeda and the Taliban to regroup and carry on the war. And why? Because the neo-con dream of having a nation up in righteous indignation was too good to pass up to pursue its true project, which was to attack Iraq, remove Saddam Hussein, and remake the Middle East into an American satrapy. Gas would be under $2 a gallon forever, oil companies would reap the rewards of lucrative contracts from an Iraqi regime indebted to the US, and the Palestinians would lose their one ally in the region, leaving Israel to range freely. The new American Century would be born on the streets of Baghdad. And Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority would be the fruit of a short, sharp, successful war, fought on the cheap, because the Administration knew that Saddam didn’t have the military capability to hurt his neighbors, much less withstand an invasion by the US.
Hey, Happy Birthday to two of my fave Pete Souza pics – President Obama with Senior Advisor David Axelrod following an event at the Costa Mesa Town Hall at OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa, Calif., March 18, 2009
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The Week Ahead:
Today: At 11:40 President Obama will announce his intent to nominate Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary. In the afternoon, he will deliver remarks at the Women’s History Month Reception in the East Room (4:40). The First Lady will also attend
Tuesday: In the morning, the President will meet Taoiseach Enda Kenny of Ireland in the Oval Office, and subsequently he will attend the traditional St Patrick’s Day lunch at the U.S. Capitol. During the day, the president will also greet First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Northern Ireland at the White House.
In the evening, the President and first lady will host a reception to celebrate their fifth St Patrick’s Day at the White House.
Later in the evening, the President will depart for Israel.
Wednesday: The President will have separate meetings with Israeli President Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. He will also hold a joint press conference with Netanyahu.
Thursday: The President will meet with President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and will tour a youth development center with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Fayyad. Later in the day, the President will deliver a speech to the Israeli people at the Jerusalem International Convention Center. He will also hold a joint press conference with Abbas.
Friday: The President with meet with King Abdullah II of Jordan and later will hold a joint press conference with Abdullah.
Saturday: The President will return to Washington, DC.
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Independent (UK): Two senior Iraqi politicians told Western intelligence that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the 2003 invasion – but their warnings were ignored …
Vital intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq 10 years ago was based on “fabrication” and “wishful thinking”, the BBC Panorama documentary claims. While information from highly placed Iraqis was dismissed as unimportant if it indicated that Hussein did not have WMD, tip offs from low-ranking Iraqis were eagerly lapped up if they reinforced what George W Bush and Tony Blair wanted to hear, it is claimed.
Paul Krugman: Ten years ago, America invaded Iraq; somehow, our political class decided that we should respond to a terrorist attack by making war on a regime that, however vile, had nothing to do with that attack.
Some voices warned that we were making a terrible mistake — that the case for war was weak and possibly fraudulent, and that far from yielding the promised easy victory, the venture was all too likely to end in costly grief. And those warnings were, of course, right.
There were, it turned out, no weapons of mass destruction; it was obvious in retrospect that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into war. And the war — having cost thousands of American lives and scores of thousands of Iraqi lives, having imposed financial costs vastly higher than the war’s boosters predicted — left America weaker, not stronger, and ended up creating an Iraqi regime that is closer to Tehran than it is to Washington.
So did our political elite and our news media learn from this experience? It sure doesn’t look like it…..
Washington Post: President Obama will formally nominate assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez as the next labor secretary on Monday, White House officials said, marking the first Latino selection to Obama’s second-term Cabinet.
Perez, 51, a first-generation Dominican American, is a former Montgomery County Council member who has overseen the civil rights division in the Justice Department since 2009. If confirmed, he would replace Hilda Solis, who resigned in January.
Steve Benen: Last week, President Obama sat down with George Stephanopoulos, and when the discussion turned to the national debt, the president shared a simple fact: “We don’t have an immediate crisis.”
For reasons unclear, the comment was not well received by Republicans and many in the media, with some suggesting a bipartisan debt-reduction agreement may be dependent, at least in part, on Obama saying the opposite.
But then a funny thing happened. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled his budget plan, and it also conceded there is no immediate debt crisis. Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner made the same concession to Martha Raddatz…..
Greg Sargent: GOP officials, unwilling to concede anything in new revenues to reach a compromise that would replace the sequester, have taken to claiming that the sequester is a “victory” for them, since they wanted spending cuts all along. But is being the party of austerity-only-and-forever really a sustainable long term position?
A Republican pollster is now warning his fellow Republicans that it isn’t…..
Business Insider: Republican strategist Karl Rove took a big swipe back at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Sunday, a day after Palin mocked him during a rousing speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
…. “I appreciate her encouragement that I ought to go home to Texas and run for office,” Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I would be enthused if I ran for office to have her support ….. if I did run for office and win, I would serve out my term and I wouldn’t leave office midterm.”
* You know all those emails I promised to reply to ages ago? Just starting now
* Again, a gazillion thanks to all our new TOD posters …. legends, all of them! Will be emailing them too, mainly in an effort to bully them in to carrying on posting.
