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)
****
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
****
****
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….
More here – and see ThinkProgress
****
You know the economy is rockin and rollin when the press is focused on fake scandals
— John Sunununu (@JohnSunununu) May 21, 2013
****
U.S. sales of existing homes climbs to three-year high | bloom.bg/10LM8Xc
— Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) May 22, 2013
****
The Dow is on track for its best May performance since 1997, up 4.55% month-to-date. (via @giovannymoreano)
— CNBC (@CNBC) May 22, 2013
****
‘Tesla, labeled a “loser” by Romney, giving Obama green-energy strategy its biggest win: paying off loan 9 yrs early’ businessweek.com/news/2013-05-2…
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) May 22, 2013
****
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.
Full article here
****
I actually don’t even know how to respond to Sullivan’s stuff on race and IQ anymore.
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) May 22, 2013
You know what, how about black folks agree that sure, we’re dumdums, and Sullivan stops writing about it.
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) May 22, 2013
****
Greg Sargent: A few of us on the left have been arguing that the current scandal-mania gripping the GOP risks bringing about a rerun of 1998, when the frenzy amid the Monica Lewinsky revelations led the GOP to overreach, resulting in backlash.
….. [yesterday's] Washington Post poll confirms his diagnosis very neatly… majorities believe Obama is focused on their problems, and Republicans aren’t ….
…. In the case of Obama, of course, his personal conduct is not at issue, and there is still no evidence that Republicans will be able to tie the current storylines directly to him. But the widespread conviction among Republican base voters that we’re seeing Watergate-level presidential wrongdoing will require that Republican officials keep chasing after evidence of it. It’s for these reasons that Democratic strategists are betting that GOP scandal overreach will play a key role in the 2014 elections.
We may be seeing a rerun of the 1990s in more ways than one.
Full post here
****
****
Sergio’s mask slips…..
BBC: Sergio Garcia has apologised for making what could be seen as a racist remark about world number one Tiger Woods.
Garcia, 33, was asked if he would have Woods round for dinner to settle their recent argument and joked that he would serve fried chicken.
Fried chicken is stereotypically associated with black people in the American deep south.
Garcia said: “I apologise for any offence. In no way was the comment meant in a racist manner.”
More here
The comment that was made wasn’t silly. It was wrong, hurtful and clearly inappropriate…
— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) May 22, 2013
****
Photo of Bo hanging out in the West Wing this morning twitter.com/petesouza/stat…
— petesouza (@petesouza) May 22, 2013
****
Poor Wolf:
****
MoooOOOooorning!
