Ashley Alman: A Boy Who Asked Obama About Stem Cell Research In 2007 Writes To Say It Saved His Life
A young cancer survivor sent President Barack Obama a moving letter thanking him for keeping a promise made during a 2007 campaign stop — a promise the boy says saved his life. Gavin Nore, a teen from Fort Dodge, Iowa, told Obama in a letter shared by the White House Tuesday that he’d had the opportunity to meet the president during his first presidential campaign.
At the time, Nore asked Obama whether he’d continue stem cell research during his presidency, to which the president responded he would. In February 2013, Nore was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. He was 14 years old. Nore said he was “cancer free” by that summer, but was later re-diagnosed. “I had to have a stem cell transplant. I beat the battle once again,” Nore wrote to the president. “I would like to thank you very much for continuing the research. If the research haden’t [sic] continued, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Amidst global volatility, Congress should protect the momentum of our growing economy (not kill it). We must avoid shutdown / austerity.
— President Obama (@POTUS) August 27, 2025
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Jason Furman: Second Estimate Of GDP For The Second Quarter Of 2015
Real GDP growth in the second quarter was revised markedly upward, as consumers spent more and businesses invested more than previously estimated. The economy grew at a much faster pace in the second quarter than in the first, with strong personal consumption leading the rebound. At this time in the global economy, it is essential that we continue to do everything we can to maintain America’s domestic economic momentum—including avoiding a return to fiscal brinksmanship or unnecessary austerity by passing an on-time budget that reverses the sequester, increasing investments in infrastructure as part of a long-term transportation reauthorization, and other steps to foster long-term growth.
1. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose 3.7 percent at an annual rate in the second quarter according to the BEA’s latest estimate, well above the first quarter’s 0.6 percent pace and the BEA’s initial second-quarter estimate of 2.3 percent growth.In the second quarter, the increase in GDP growth was led by a faster pace of personal consumption growth than in the first quarter and a shift from negative to positive net export growth. Structures investment, which declined sharply in the first quarter and was previously thought to have declined in the second, is now estimated to have grown. Overall, real GDP has now risen 2.7 percent over the past four quarters.
More here
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Real PDFP, key indicator of future growth, grew at 3.4 percent over the past four quarters whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/08/2… http://t.co/XKwmpeuTzx
— Jason Furman (@CEAChair) August 27, 2025
Upward revisions to Q2 GDP widespread across business investment, consumer spending, other components http://t.co/ve1YA0QzDD
— Jason Furman (@CEAChair) August 27, 2025
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R&D investment growing at fastest pace since 2007, good news for long-run productivity growth whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/08/2…
— Jason Furman (@CEAChair) August 27, 2025
Q2 GDP revised up to 3.7 percent, much faster than initial estimate and Q1 whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/08/2… http://t.co/jdzSJTpTfa
Yesterday, Jorge Ramos of Univision was unceremoniously escorted out of a Donald Trump press conference by one of the Hair’s goons, for daring to ask a question “out of turn”. Trump told Mr. Ramos to “sit down”, and then to “go back to Univision”. (I guess even The Hair wasn’t prepared to say “go back to Mexico, you wetback.”) Our brave press corps… did nothing. Journalists of conscience would have gotten up en masse and walked out right behind Mr. Ramos. I’m old enough to remember when the good and the great of the major media outlets rallied around Fox News when President Obama took off the gloves with them. Imagine if Pres. Obama had done something like this at one of his campaign press conferences, or, heaven forbid, at a presidential one. Calls for his impeachment would be hurling in 72 point type on newspapers and from well-coiffed news anchors.
However, even though I was going to write at length about this contretemps, I realized that the expulsion of Mr. Ramos is not the story. It is a mere manifestation of a much darker reality.
I mocked Trump (I refuse to be polite and call him “Mr.”). I thought he was the greatest thing to happen to Democrats since Dan Quayle. And, if by some malfeasance he does manage to be the GOP nominee, he lost the general election yesterday. The image of the Latino Walter Cronkite being frog-marched out of a press availability will galvanize the Latino community like nothing else. Not because Latinos are celebrity-mongers who will rally around Mr. Ramos, but because he and his treatment represent what Latinos fear the most from the GOP. Trump just handed the Latino community the symbol it needed, in a way which even his outrageous words didn’t.
But I’m no longer mocking him. I’m taking him very seriously. Because what may have begun as a lark is no longer that. It’s obvious that Trump is taking this campaign to heart, and is in it to win. And that should give everyone a good scare.
So no one thinks that the coalition of 65-69 million American citizens with a proven record of WINNING back to back presidential elections in record numbers, because they organize, stand in line for hours in rain and frost, MUST be feverishly re-activated for the next election? Of course it must.
The Obama Coalition
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Yet thus far none of the Democratic Party candidates has seriously courted the Obama-Coalition. I say seriously, precisely because it took more than the letter “D” beside a candidate’s name, or political platitudes, or a liberal wish-tree to put the coalition together in the first place. Plus no one size fits all in activating this coalition, as its different components were motivated by different strategies of persuasion. This is a coalition that did not care about name, pedigree, or size of wallet when it backed the insurgent Obama candidacy. It did not have its head in the clouds in a lofty quest for unicorns either.
Stephen Feller: Study: Higher Number Of Americans Insured Because Of ObamaCare
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A review of data on community health centers shows large increases in the number of people who have gained access to healthcare as a result of the Affordable Care Act, especially in underserved urban and rural areas of the United States. Researchers pin much of the credit to the expansion of Medicaid under the ACA, also referred to as ObamaCare, which has allowed people who cannot afford health insurance to have greater access to care.
They note, though, that there has also been a large increase in the number people who have purchased private insurance through the ACA-mandated state exchanges. “Our findings underscore the importance of the Affordable Care Act to the poorest Americans,” said Dr. Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, in a press release. “This report shows the importance of ensuring that the ACA’s resources reach all medically underserved communities, including those in the 20 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid.”
More here
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Thank you #POTUS for using that political capital to give us ObamaCare that @SenSchumer said you shouldn't have spent http://t.co/P7pTjcE0A3
Specialist Mario Picone, right, watches the numbers as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Aug. 21, 2015. The Dow Jones industrial average has plunged more than 530 points and is in a correction amid a global sell-off sparked by fears about China’s slowing economy. Oil tumbled below $40 per barrel for the first time since the financial crisis. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The financial markets are melting down. Here’s why.
A couple of months ago, the Shanghai bourse began the Mother of all Corrections. Within a few weeks, it had lost 30% of its value.
This first go-round of market mayhem was greeted with pretty much of a yawn in Europe and the US. This was especially so after the government in Beijing stepped in to prop up the markets.
However, that propping up failed to calm the markets. Beijing decided to let the market work, and the sell-off commenced again.
Now, though, there is the added component of a fear of a major Chinese slow-down in its broader economy. To paraphrase that old saw: When China sneezes, the world catches a cold.
The fear of a significant downturn in the Chinese economy is spooking markets all over the world like a bump in the night spooks wild horses. Without knowing exactly what’s coming down the pike out of China, markets are in a panic.
So it boils down to this: Trump suffers from Obama size-envy. Crowd size, that is, and maybe more…
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75,000 show up at Obama campaign in Oregon May 18, 2025
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But first, it was only a matter of time before the object of Prez Obama’s ridicule at the White House Correspondents’ Dinners in 2011 and 2015, would be prompted to redeem his ego. Behold, the Trump2016 presidential run.
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In 2011, President Obama chose deliberately to inflate Trump’s gargantuan ego, using the very vehicle of birtherism to surgically puncture Trump’s pompous ass at the precise moment for maximal humiliating effect, the night before the OBL operation. That we the American people enjoyed the take down of the hotair without knowing about the OBL mission underway, only prolonged the deliciousness of the schadenfreude when we found out the next night when POTUS interrupted Trump’s “Apprentice” show to deliver the unbelievable news. Trump was doubly slayed. We roared!
As icing on the cake, Prez Obama gave us a spoof sneak peak into what a Trump White House might look like, complete with gaudy Trump insignia plastered all over the WH exterior, plus female posse wading in the WH fountain. We found the idea of a Trump presidency absurd. But Trump began dreaming big.
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The coup de grace came this year, when POTUS Obama raised and then immediately dashed Trump’s hope of the President engaging him again in full glare of the cameras. POTUS simply said “Donald Trump is here…..still”, then moved on to the next segment. Ouch!
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I posit that Trump’s mind was made up that night to run for President by hook or crook. How do we know this? Answer: Trump himself is the fire breathing clue. A narcissist thrives on attention, and President Obama flippantly cut off that oxygen on an important media stage, the same one on which he had been humiliated irreparably in 2011. Trump could deal with the ridicule during the previous WHCDs, because they accrued to him media notoriety. Media attention is the currency of Trump’s very existence. But to be swatted away like a fly with nary a word more from Prez Obama to indulge his outsized narcissism? Naw. He had to get even.
