President Obama announces that he has accepted the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki during a press conference in the Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington
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Deputy Veterans Affairs Secretary Sloan Gibson leaves the White House after being named by President Barack Obama to run the Veterans Affairs Department on an interim basis while President Obama searches for a replacement for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki who resigned Friday.
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President Barack Obama gives White House press secretary Jay Carney a hug after announcing that Carney will step down later next month, during a surprise visit to the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. The president announced Carney’s departure in a surprise appearance at in the White House press briefing room Friday. He said principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest will take over the job
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Will miss my friend Jay Carney shown here on Air Force One this week. http://t.co/SNnPaAmUc4
— (@petesouza) May 30, 2025
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Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, share the stage and a laugh during the daily briefing at the White House
President Barack Obama, flanked by Attorney Holder Eric Holder, Education Secretary Arne Duncan,and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker; speaks about a report from “My Brother’s Keeper,” an initiative to expand opportunity for young men and boys of color
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President Barack Obama attends a hurricane preparedness meeting at FEMA Headquarters in Washington, DC
On This Day: President Obama and Vice President Biden escort Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the East Room of the White House where the President will introduce her as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David, May 26, 2025 (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
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Today (All Times Eastern)
9:15 AM: The President hosts a breakfast in the State Dining Room in honor of Memorial Day. The Vice President and Dr. Biden will also attend
11:0 The President and First Lady travel to Arlington National Cemetery where the President will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
11:20: The President delivers remarks
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The Week Ahead
Tuesday
The President will host the 2014 White House Science Fair and celebrate the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. The President will also announce new steps as part of his Educate to Innovate campaign, an all-hands-on-deck effort to get more girls and boys inspired to excel and to provide the support they need to succeed in these vital subjects
Wednesday
The President travels to West Point, New York to deliver the commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point
Thursday
The President will host a summit at the White House on youth sports safety and concussions, where he will be joined by stakeholders, including young athletes, parents, coaches, experts, professional athletes, and military service members. At the White House Healthy Kids and Safe Sports Concussion Summit, the President will announce new commitments by both the public and private sectors to raise awareness about how to identify, treat and prevent concussions, and conduct additional research in the field of sports-related concussions that will help us better address these problems
Friday
The President will attend a hurricane preparedness meeting at FEMA Headquarters
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President Barack Obama waves as he returns from a surprise trip to Afghanistan
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Adrianna McIntyre: 21 Things Obamacare Does That You Didn’t Know About
1. Obamacare makes funds available for “training for adulthood.” True story. The law makes funds available for “personal responsibility” programs aimed at preparing young adults for being grown-ups. Per federal law, all of these programs must include efforts to educate young adults prevention of both pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Beyond that, they’re expected to touch on other “adulthood preparation subjects”, including but not limited to: financial literacy, healthy relationships, communication and interpersonal skills, educational and career success, body image, goal-setting, decision making, and stress management. 6. The law authorizes funding for grants that target postpartum depression. The Secretary of HHS is authorized to make grants available for treating individuals who have postpartum depression and psychosis (conditions that occur in women following childbirth). The law also encourages the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct long-term study from 2010-2019 on how pregnancy affects women’s mental health. This piece of the Affordable Care Act is called the Melanie Blocker Stokes CARE Act; it is named for a woman who tragically committed suicide in 2001 after suffering from postpartum depression despite three admissions to Chicago-area hospitals following her delivery.
The fact that leader of Senate Rs and multiple GOP Sen candidates are offering utter gibberish on Ocare repeal is major story.
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 24, 2025
10. Young adults who age out of the foster system at 18 receive benefits until they’re 26. Before the Affordable Care Act, states had the option — but not the requirement — of extending Medicaid coverage up to age 21 for kids who aged out of the foster system at 18. This is an incredibly vulnerable population that suffers from high rates of homelessness, poverty, and unemployment. Under reform, states have to offer these young adults Medicaid coverage until they turn 26. 13. Employers are required to provide reasonable break time for nursing mothers. Employers must provide a reasonable amount of break time — and a private place that isn’t a bathroom — for an employee to express breast milk for up to one year after giving birth. Breastfeeding the first six months, at a minimum, is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Prior to health reform, there was no federal law that protected nursing mothers; state laws on the issue tended to be very general.
More here
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"I’m here on a single mission & that is to thank you for your extraordinary service." —Obama to troops in Afghanistan http://t.co/FkHRRiIOez
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 26, 2025
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President Obama reaches to thank the troops during a surprise visit to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. http://t.co/DJwbHHqhl8
— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) May 25, 2025
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Bob Small: First Memorial Day Created By Blacks Here In Hampton Park
Memorial Day may signal the beginning of the summer for many. A time for cook-outs and being with friends and family, but few know that the first widely publicized event, then called “Decoration Day”, was held in Charleston to honor the Union dead and was put together by many of the newly freed Black men and women. On May 1, 1865, more than 10,000 black freedmen and women including 3,000 children gathered at the old Race Track now known as Hampton Park track to honor dead Union soldiers who were buried there. They cleaned up the area and placed flowers on the graves of the unknown soldiers. The event was highly publicized and covered by a number of newspapers nationally. To many of the white citizens it was looked upon more as an Emancipation for the newly freed black men and women. Preachers and white northern missionaries gave speeches and thanks to those who had lost their lives in the Civil War. A war that claimed over 600,000 lives on both sides.
Charleston had been a holding place for captured Union Soldiers and at least 257 soldiers died while in the custody of Confederate soldiers. They were buried in hastily dug unmarked graves around the race track as Confederates fled the city from advancing Union troops. Northern missionaries who helped organize the events for Decoration Day participated in songs and speeches. The response by the Black population was tremendous. Freedmen came from all over the state to participate. Many feeling that the Union soldiers had given their lives for their freedom rather than to bring the seceded states back into the Union. They cleaned up the burial grounds and erected an enclosure with an arch that read, “Martyrs of the Race Course.” Many of those in attendance brought flowers to lie on the graves. For the newly freed people it was their way of honoring those who had given their lives for their beliefs and the black population’s newfound freedom.
More here
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Sahil Kapur: What Obama Can - And Cannot Do - On Immigration Reform By Executive Action
Amid fading prospects for immigration reform in Congress, President Barack Obama has signaled he’ll take executive action on enforcement to ease the burden for certain people in the country illegally who don’t have criminal records. On his order, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is conducting a review of U.S. enforcement policies in order to determine how to implement the law in the smartest and most humane way. One area where DHS feels confident in its authority to act is the prioritization enforcement resources, sources familiar with the matter say. Under the legal theory of “prosecutorial discretion,” the department could decide, for instance, to prioritize removal of dangerous criminals who pose serious safety threats, such as gang members, drug dealers and repeat offenders. It could in turn de-prioritize action against those who have not committed crimes, (or committed lower-level crimes like DUIs) and steer resources away from those who have family ties in the U.S. and have lived here for a certain period of time. Under this approach, undocumented immigrants would technically remain subject to deportation. They’d simply be less likely to get picked up by the system.
Obama, in Chicago: “The problem is not that we’re too mean or we’re too partisan. The problem is that I don’t have enough votes. Full stop.”
— Rebecca Sinderbrand (@sinderbrand) May 23, 2025
A second category of executive action is more contentious: to formally let certain subsets of immigrants temporarily live in the U.S. without fear of deportation and perhaps apply for employment authorization. This would build upon the Obama administration’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which granted two-year relief to certain young people brought to the country as children, referred to as DREAMers. The Obama administration feels less comfortable with expanding DACA because the legal issues are trickier. Granting a reprieve to a narrow, specific population arguably falls within the realm of enforcement discretion. But applying it to broader populations becomes problematic and may backfire legally and politically, as some immigration law experts have cautioned. “Republicans may challenge his actions in Court saying that they constitute a violation of the Separation of Powers,” said Eli Kantor, an immigration lawyer based in Beverly Hills, California. The one thing the president certainly cannot do is grant legal status to anyone in the country without proper documentation. “That’s absolutely Congress’s authority,” Chen said. That means any executive action Obama takes would, by definition, be temporary and theoretically reversible by the next president.
More here
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NYT: Insurers Once On the Fence Plan To Join Health Exchanges In ’15
In a sign of the growing potential under the federal health care law, several insurers that have been sitting on the sidelines say they will sell policies on the new exchanges in the coming year, and others plan to expand their offerings to more states. “Insurers continue to see this as a good business opportunity,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “They see it as an attractive market, with enrollment expected to ramp up in the second year.” Eight million people have signed up for coverage in 2014, and estimates put next year’s enrollment around 13 million.
In New Hampshire, for example, where Anthem Blue Cross is the only insurer offering individual coverage on the state exchange, two other plans, both from Massachusetts, say they intend to offer policies next year. UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, which were notable in their caution about the exchanges last year, are expected to enter more markets this year. In Washington State, United is among four new insurers that have told state regulators they are interested in offering plans in 2015.
More here
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Never before published photos of World War I wapo.st/1ijYAai http://t.co/DWsh1Jo1SW
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 26, 2025
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"I hope all of us will take a moment to reflect on the meaning of this holiday." go.usa.gov/8Ny4 #MemorialDay http://t.co/jzUHLkcYC5
— OPM (@USOPM) May 26, 2025
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NYT: After Revival In San Antonio, Washington Comes Calling
When Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio and local officials traveled to Washington in 2012 to meet President Obama’s housing secretary, Shaun Donovan, the agenda was about housing policy. But for Mr. Castro, it was personal, too. The meeting was about revitalizing the Wheatley Courts public housing project on San Antonio’s impoverished Eastside, once the heart of the city’s black community. But it also hit home for Mr. Castro, who grew up near the low-rent projects in the Mexican-American barrio on the other side of town. His mother worked for the housing authority, and his father lived in the projects on the city’s Westside as a teenager. Two years after that meeting in Washington, the Eastside is now the focus of a public and private revival, fueled in part by a nearly
$30 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to demolish and redevelop Wheatley Courts as housing for a broader mix of incomes, including low- and moderate-income families and market-rate households. If he receives Senate confirmation, Mr. Castro, whose twin brother, Joaquin, is a Democratic congressman representing San Antonio, apparently would become the first housing secretary in the 48-year history of the position whose parents lived and worked in public housing projects. “It’s precisely because he’s lived out the American dream that he’ll work his tail off to make sure more people can travel that same path and earn their own dreams as well,” Mr. Obama said as Mr. Castro and Mr. Donovan stood next to him at the White House.
More here
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After Sandy Hook I thought something might change. That was more than 35,000 US gun deaths ago.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) May 25, 2025
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http://t.co/KoFjp8zDKV
— Paz (@pazan11_paz) May 26, 2025
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AP: Far Right, Euroskeptics Make Big Gains In EU Vote
Far-right and Euroskeptic parties made sweeping gains in European Parliament elections Sunday — triggering what one prime minister called a political “earthquake” by those who want to slash the powers of the European Union or abolish it altogether. Voters in 21 of the EU’s 28 nations went to the polls Sunday, choosing lawmakers for the bloc’s 751-seat legislature. The other seven countries in the bloc had already voted in a sprawling exercise of democracy that began Thursday in Britain and the Netherlands. One of the most significant winners was France’s far-right National Front party, which was the outright winner in France with 26 percent support— or 4.1 million votes.
“The sovereign people have spoken … acclaiming they want to take back the reins of their destiny,” party leader Marine Le Pen said in a statement. She called the results “the first step in a long march to liberty.” The National Front like other far-right parties across Europe promote anti-immigrant and often anti-Semitic policies. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, in an impassioned televised speech, called the National Front win “more than a news alert … it is a shock, an earthquake.” French President Francois Hollande’s office announced he would hold urgent talks first thing Monday with top government ministers in what French media called a crisis meeting.
More here
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Austin Frakt: Staying On Parents’ Plan May Lead To Healthier Paychecks
One of the earliest pieces of the health-care law to go into effect — and one of the easiest to understand — was the one that allowed adults under age 26 to remain on their parents’ insurance plan. It has long been clear that the policy has somewhat increased the insurance rate among young adults. Now a new study suggests the effects may be much broader, also leading to increases in educational attainment and the wages of young adults. The findings suggest that the health law has given young adults more flexibility to make decisions they think are best for them financially, rather than making decisions simply to obtain health insurance.
With coverage from their parents’ plans, they can remain in college or graduate school, rather than leaving to take a job that provides health insurance. With coverage in place, once students leave school, they can consider a broader range of jobs, including some that do not offer good health insurance or any health insurance. This finding is consistent with the academic literature on “job lock,” which has consistently shown that people who do not need to take a job with employer-based coverage have more flexibility, resulting in better employment matches with higher wages on average.
More here
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Benjamin Goad: Administration Demands Equal Education For Ilegal Immigrants
Schools cannot require students or their parents to provide Social Security numbers, birth certificates or other documentation showing citizenship status as a condition of enrollment under formal Obama administration guidance issued. The directive to all public school districts, meant to ensure equal access to education for the nation’s illegal immigrants, comes amid reports that some children have wrongfully been denied enrollment. Attorney General Eric Holder said such policies “have a chilling effect on student enrollment, raising barriers for undocumented children and children from immigrant families who seek to receive the public education to which they are entitled.” “Public school districts have an obligation to enroll students regardless of immigration status and without discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin,”
Holder said. “We will vigilantly enforce the law to ensure the schoolhouse door remains open to all.” The new guidance from the departments of Justice and Education is an update of similar guidelines issued three years ago. The mandate to provide equal education to all children stems from the Supreme Court’s 1982 Plyler vs. Doe ruling, which prohibited a school district from charging illegal immigrants extra tuition fees. The new guidance makes clear that schools may request certain documentation showing the age and address of children in order to determine whether they are eligible to enroll. But they may not ask about a child or family’s citizenship status, or deny enrollment on grounds that a student is an illegal immigrant.
More here
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Audrey Dutton: Idaho Medicaid Enrollment Climbs
The number of people on Medicaid in Idaho rose almost 6 percent since the launch of Idaho’s health-insurance exchange last fall even though Idaho is one of the states that has not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. The increase is sharper than usual. That’s partly because more people discovered they qualified for Medicaid during the process of shopping for health insurance to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which requires all Americans to be insured.
It’s also because Idaho is now using federal systems to check information for Medicaid renewals, making the process smoother for people already enrolled in the program, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. “This is a positive change for Idaho, as it ensures that those who are eligible for Medicaid can maintain coverage without burdensome administrative processes that cause individuals to [lose Medicaid] unnecessarily, causing problems for families and providers,” said Tom Shanahan, spokesman for the department. He said the change also cuts down on administrative costs.
More here
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TPM: Obama Administration Will Let Veterans Seek Care At Private Hospitals
The Obama administration’s decision to allow more veterans to get care at private hospitals could take some pressure off backlogged Veterans Affairs facilities struggling to cope with new patients from the wars on terrorism as well as old soldiers from prior conflicts. Agreeing to recommendations from lawmakers, the administration said Saturday it will allow more veterans to obtain treatment at private hospitals and clinics in an effort to improve care.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki also said VA facilities are enhancing capacity of their clinics so veterans can get care sooner. In cases where officials cannot expand capacity at VA centers, the Department of Veterans Affairs is “increasing the care we acquire in the community through non-VA care,” Shinseki said. Lawmakers from both parties have pressed for this policy change as the VA confronts allegations about treatment delays and falsified records at VA centers nationwide.
More here
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Brian Beutler: Mitch McConnell’s Obamacare Spin Misleads Kentucky’s ACA Beneficiaries
Now that Mitch McConnell’s emancipated himself from the exigencies of the Republican primary process, he’ll need to figure out how to square his primary-friendly view that Obamacare should be wiped off the books with the complicating fact that over 400,000 Kentuckians obtained insurance through the Affordable Care Act over the past several months. He just took a new line of obfuscation for a test drive. Assuming it’s been accurately characterized, it’s incredibly misleading. “McConnell told reporters Friday that the fate of the state exchange is unconnected to the federal health care law,” according to the Associated Press.
“Yet the exchange would not exist, if not for the law that created it.” If McConnell successfully wipes Obamacare off the books next year (which he won’t), Kynect might not go away. But the Medicaid expansion will. And the private insurance subsidies will. And the rules allowing and requiring uninsured people of all health statuses to become customers will, too. Insurance carriers will follow. Or else they’ll replace the plans they currently offer with much less generous ones. And hundreds of thousands of people will lose their coverage anyhow.
More here
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NYT: In Russia, Tune Changes About Leader In Ukraine
Petro O. Poroshenko, the billionaire businessman who won Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday, was portrayed last month in a bilious campaign profile on Russian television here as money-grubbing, devious, a radical sympathizer — in short, a run-of-the-mill Ukrainian politician to Russian eyes. The program on NTV, a Kremlin ally, said he owned a mansion resembling the White House, clear evidence of dangerous Western sympathies. The report mocked him as “The Chocolate Rabbit,” twisting his usual nickname, “The Chocolate King,” from his confectionary fortune.
A scientist, or at least someone wearing a white coat, materialized on screen to denounce his popular Roshen chocolate brand as riddled with carcinogens. Then as Mr. Poroshenko emerged as the front-runner, a change occurred. The attacks ceased, and his chocolate factory in southern Russia, which government police had shuttered, was allowed to operate again. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia even mentioned the chocolates in passing on TV as edible, and, in recent days, he has said on various occasions that he would work with whatever new leadership emerges in Kiev.
More here
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Bryce Covert: Workers At This Giant Retail Company Are Really Happy With Their Pay
In an analysis of employee feedback shared on Glassdoor over the past year, just one retailer comes in the top 25 for top marks on pay and benefits: Costco. In fact, the company is ranked at number two on the list, although has the same rating — 4.4 — as the top rated company, Google. It also beats out some big tech companies, which are often thought of as paying well and giving workers good perks, like Facebook, Adobe, and Microsoft. Costco has become known for paying its workers more than is typical in the retail sector, where median pay is $10.29 an hour.
Its starting pay is $11.50 an hour and even the lowest paid positions report on Glassdoor that they make $11.80 on average. Across all positions, its average pay is nearly $22. It also offers benefits, with 88 percent of employees enrolled in company-sponsored health insurance. On top of that, it offers significant room for advancement: 70 percent of its warehouse managers, who can expect to make about $22 an hour on average, started in the company’s lower ranked positions. This engenders high levels of worker loyalty, as its turnover rate is just 5 percent for those who have been there for more than a year.
More here
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Future Obamacrats and proud of it.:)
You can't get them started too young! :-) #GrandBabiesRTheBest http://t.co/22P70wQYOy
— Donna NoShock (@NoShock) May 26, 2025
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Surprise Commander in Chief Pre-Memorial Day visit to #troops in #Afghanistan http://t.co/jQbxOwOqVM
— Dudette (@Dudette9t9) May 26, 2025
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On This Day
President Obama meets with Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, and Vice President Biden, prior to an announcement in the East Room, May 26, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama embraces Sen. Harry Reid during a Las Vegas fundraiser for the senator at Caeser’s Palace, May 26, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrive at Stansted Airport, May 26, 2025
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The President and members of the White House staff look out the window of Air Force One to view tornado damage over Moore, Oklahoma. May 26, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama greets Gov. Mary Fallin after arriving at Tinker Air Force base in Midwest City, Sunday, May 26, 2025
President Obama tours tornado damage along a block of Eagle Drive in Moore, Okla., May 26, 2013. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, and local officials accompany him (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
On This Day: President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama wait in the Map Room of the White House, before welcoming President Felipe Calderón of Mexico and his wife, Mrs. Margarita Zavala, to the White House, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today (all times Eastern)
10:10 Attorney General Eric Holder News Conference on China being charged with hacking for trade secrets (CBS)
12:30: The President meets for lunch with Combatant Commanders, Roosevelt Room
1:0: Jay Carney briefs the press
7:30: The President speaks at a fundraiser for congressional Democrats, private residence, Maryland
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Bob Cesca: Popular Conservative Website Tries and Fails to Debunk Our ’13 Benghazis’
A little more than a year ago, I wrote an article for The Daily Banter titled “13 Benghazis That Occurred On Bush’s Watch Without a Peep From Fox News.” In it I listed 13 terrorist attacks on U.S. consulates and embassies that happened during the years when President Bush was evidently “keeping us safe.” Throughout the past year, the article has sporadically gone viral among one internet clique or another, and at least one graphical meme has been based upon the list.
Late last week, I began to receive a new onslaught of tweets from readers of a website called the IJReview about an article written by Managing Editor Kyle Becker, titled, “’13 Benghazis That Happened Under Bush’ Viral Meme Taken Apart & Destroyed Before Your Very Eyes.” Clearly it was intended to debunk my article — hocus-pocus alakazam! — before our very eyes.
It didn’t.
More here
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TPM: John Kerry To Yale Grads: You’re ‘Donald Sterling’s Worst Nightmare’
Secretary of State John Kerry used his address to this year’s Yale graduates on Sunday to take a swing at America’s favorite punching bag.
Speaking at the school’s Class Day ceremony in New Haven, Conn., Kerry noted the record diversity in this year’s crop of graduates.
“You are graduating today as the most diverse class in Yale’s long history,” Kerry said, according to a transcript provided by the State Department. “Or as they call it in the NBA, Donald Sterling’s worst nightmare.”
The line drew laughter and applause, but the speech also contained a commentary on contemporary affairs, with Kerry lamenting the lack of political action on climate change and immigration reform.
More here
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CHECK out how the good ppl of this NH town dealt w/a racist. http://t.co/aaJ3T30A96 Not seen it, watch. If you have, give another look.
— KSK(africa) (@lawalazu) May 18, 2025
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TPM: Eric Holder: Chief Justice John Roberts Is Wrong On Race
In a rare move, Attorney General Eric Holder took direct aim at U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on issues of race during a commencement speech Saturday.
“Chief Justice John Roberts has argued that the path to ending racial discrimination is to give less consideration to the issue of race altogether. This presupposes that racial discrimination is at a sufficiently low ebb that it doesn’t need to be actively confronted,” Holder said, speaking at the historically black Morgan State University. “In its most obvious forms, it might be. But discrimination does not always come in the form of a hateful epithet or a Jim Crow-like statute. And so we must continue to take account of racial inequality, especially in its less obvious forms, and actively discuss ways to combat it.”
Holder was referring to the Bush-appointed justice’s famous quote from a 2007 ruling: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
More here
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U.S. set to charge China with hacking into U.S. companies for trade secrets http://t.co/JfitliCoof
— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) May 19, 2025
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Auburnpub.com: President Obama to visit Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown during latest upstate NY trip
President Barack Obama is heading to upstate New York next week to highlight tourism’s role in boosting the economy.
In his weekly address, the president said he will travel to Cooperstown Thursday to deliver remarks at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“I’ll be heading to Cooperstown, New York – home of the Baseball Hall of Fame – to talk about tourism,” Obama said. “Because believe it or not, tourism is an export. And if we make it easier for more foreign visitors to visit and spend money at America’s attractions and unparalleled national parks, that helps local businesses and grows the economy for everyone.”
According to the Baseball Hall of Fame, this will be the first time a sitting president has visited the hall in its history.
More here
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Same-sex marriage is now ten years old, which makes it George W. Bush’s third longest war.
Smartypants: President Obama: Harnessing the power of big business for change
I’ve written before about how President Obama’s time as a community organizer and his understanding of power relations informs his foreign policy and the development of the Obama Doctrine. See if you can connect those dots with why Max Fisher says his strategy of letting Putin hang himself is working:
Most of this is economic. Russia’s self-imposed economic problems started pretty quickly after its annexation of Crimea in March and have kept up. Whether or not American or European governments sanction Russia’s broader economy, the global investment community has a mind of its own, and they seem to have decided that Russia’s behavior has made it a risky place to put money. So risky that they’re pulling more money out.
A lot of that may have come from the targeted sanctions that Obama pushed for against individual Russian leaders and oligarchs. Those targeted sanctions did not themselves do much damage to the Russian economy. But, along with Russia’s erratic behavior in Ukraine and the lack of clarity as to whether Europe and the US could impose broader sanctions, it appears to have been enough to scare off global investors — the big, faceless, placeless mass of people and banks who have done tremendous damage to Putin’s Russia, nudged along by the US and by Putin himself…
More here
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Trevor LaFauci (The People’s View): The Man In The Mirror: An Open Letter to Bill O’Reilly Regarding His Very Own White Privilege
Dear William,
As a fellow White male who has also studied history, I felt compelled to write to you today to respectfully disagree with your stance on White privilege in America. You see, William, on your show The O’Reilly Factor on May 15, you stated that, “I do not believe you are granted favorable treatment in this country because you are White. You have to work for success.” This point was conceded as a followup to your May 14th program during which you had a segment discussing how the Kennedy School at Harvard was considering including a portion of its orientation to discuss issues associated with White privilege as a way for students to be made aware of the issue going forward as they began to think about it impact in relation to public policy. As always William, your guests had some interesting things to say on the topic but unfortunately I don’t think either they or you truly understand what White privilege is. Allow me to share some of my thoughts as it relates to you and your own life, if I may.
More here
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My TOON/BLOG: “MacD’s Unhappy Meal” #raisethewage @TheObamaDiary @GottaLaff@UniteBlue http://t.co/mg1aiS11Ht — Chan Lowe (@Chanlowe) May 18, 2025
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E.J. Dionne Jr: No more liberal apologies as Elizabeth Warren takes the offensive
Elizabeth Warren is cast as many things: a populist, a left-winger, the paladin against the bankers and the rich, the Democrats’ alternative to Hillary Clinton, the policy wonk with a heart.
… Since the Reagan era, Democrats have been so determined to show how pro-market and pro-business they are that they’ve shied away from pointing out that markets could not exist without government, that the well-off depend on the state to keep their wealth secure and that participants in the economy rely on government to keep the marketplace on the level and to temper the business cycle’s gyrations.
Warren doesn’t back away from any of these facts. In her new book, “A Fighting Chance,” she recalls the answer she gave to a voter during a living-room gathering in Andover, Mass., that quickly went viral.
More here
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A Native American was once asked: “What did you call America before we arrived?” He replied: “Ours.”
— Casey (@pari_passu) May 18, 2025
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ThinkProgress: Obama To Host Summit On Concussions In Youth Sports
As research about concussions in sports continues to pour out, President Obama will host a White House summit later this month focusing on the risk concussions pose to young athletes. According to the Washington Post, which first reported the summit, the May 29 event will include young athletes, parents, coaches, professional athletes, and members of the military.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said this week that the summit will include the announcement of new initiatives to help research and address concussions in youth sports.
“The president will announce new commitments by both the public and private sectors to raise awareness about how to identify treat and prevent concussions, and conduct additional research in the field of sports-related concussions that will help us better address these problems,” Carney said.
More here
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I May Never Stop Laughing:
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On This Day
President Obama stands in the entrance to the Oval Office, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama delivers remarks at ceremony honoring National Small Business Award Winners in the East Room of the White House, May 19, 2025
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President Obama and President Felipe Calderón of Mexico stand together during the playing of the national anthem on the South Lawn of the White House, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
First Lady Michelle Obama and Mrs. Margarita Zavala watch the State Arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama watches as President Felipe Calderón of Mexico signs the official guest book in the Blue Room of the White House, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
First Lady Michelle Obama and her Mexican counterpart Margarita Zavala run with second graders during a physical education class as they visit New Hampshire Estates Elementary School May 19, 2025 in Silver Spring, Maryland
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama wait to welcome President Felipe Calderon of Mexico and his wife Margarita Zavala to the White House for an official State Dinner, May 19, 2025
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul arrive for the State Dinner for Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his wife Margarita Zavala at the White House, May 19, 2025
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife Dr. Sharon Malone arrive for the State Dinner
Guests board trolleys at the South Portico entrance to the White House, en route to the State Dinner reception in a tent on the South Lawn, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
President Obama adjusts his tie in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House, following a private reception in honor of President Felipe Calderón of Mexico and his wife, Mrs. Margarita Zavala, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama and President Felipe Calderón of Mexico descend the Grand Staircase at the White House, prior to the State Dinner, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, and his wife, Mrs. Margarita Zavala, attend the State Dinner reception in a tent on the South Lawn of the White House, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
Dr. Jill Biden listens to music during the State Dinner reception in a tent on the South Lawn of the White House, May 19, 2025
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama dance to music performed by the United States Marine Band, during the State Dinner reception in a tent on the South Lawn of the White House, May 19, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum National Issues Conference in Washington on May 19, 2025
President Barack Obama arrives to deliver a speech on Mideast and North Africa policy in the Ben Franklin Room at the State Department May 19, 2025 in Washington, DC
First Lady Michelle Obama hugs a child as she paint a mural during a community service activity day at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington on May 19, 2025
President Obama takes the stage before addressing the Women’s Leadership Forum at the Grand Hyatt Hotel May 19, 2025 in Washington, DC
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First Lady Michelle Obama escorts spouses of G-8 leaders on a tour of the White House, May 19, 2025 - L-R: Margarida Barroso (EU), Elsa Antonioli Monti (partially hidden, Italy), Laureen Harper (Canada), Valerie Trierweiler (France), Geertrui Windels van Rompuy (EU) and Hitomi Noda (Japan)
President Obama with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrive for a family photo during G8 Summit in Camp David, Maryland on May 19, 2012.
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President Obama smiles after delivering the commencement address to over 500 graduating students at the historically black Morehouse College on May 19, 2013, in Atlanta
On This Day: President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder attend the 32nd Annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service at the West Front Lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on May 15, 2025
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Today (All times Eastern)
9:40 AM: The President and First Lady tour the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York City
10:0 AM: The President delivers remarks
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Also at White House Live
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11:20 AM: Depart New York City
12:30 PM: Arrive White House
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A quote from Virgil seen during a press preview of the National September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center site May 14, 2025 in New York
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Morgan Whitaker: Obamacare Saved Consumers Billions, New Report Finds
A new analysis finds American consumers saved billions in 2011 and 2012 thanks to a key provision of the Affordable Care Act. The report from The Commonwealth Fund released Tuesday finds the medical loss ratio provision, which caps profits for health insurance companies, benefited consumers by about $3 billion over the past two years through a combination of rebates from insurance companies and reduced overhead spending. The law’s provision limits insurance companies to spending a minimum of 80-85% of premiums specifically on treatment and medical costs, rather than overhead and profits.
The rebate receipts sent to consumers hit $1 billion in 2011 and about $500 million in 2012, an indication that insurance providers successfully shifted business models to fit the new spending requirements. In addition to the rebates provided to consumers, insurers reduced profits and spending on general overhead by about $1.4 billion, the report finds. “The medical loss ratio requirement of the Affordable Care Act creates a higher-value insurance product for consumers,” said The Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal said in the report. “It ensures that a substantial portion of their premium dollar pays for medical care, as opposed to administrative costs and profits. It also encourages insurers to improve the care their customers receive, by investing in initiatives that will help achieve better outcomes for patients.”
More here
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ABC News: Obama Aide To Oversee VA Review
President Barack Obama is dispatching one of his closest White House advisers to oversee a review of the beleaguered Veterans Affairs Department as the agency grapples with allegations of treatment delays and preventable deaths at a Phoenix veterans hospital. White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors will be temporarily assigned to the VA to work on a review focused on policies for patient safety rules and the scheduling of patient appointments, officials said Wednesday. The move signals Obama’s growing concern over problems at the department, particularly recent reports that hospital administrators in Phoenix kept an off-the-books list to conceal long wait times as 40 veterans died waiting to get an appointment. Similar problems have since been reported in other states.
“While we get to the bottom of what happened in Phoenix, it’s clear the VA needs to do more to ensure quality care for our veterans,” Obama said in a statement. “I’m grateful that Rob, one of my most trusted advisers, has agreed to work with Secretary Shinseki to help the team at this important moment.” Despite calls for Shinseki to step down, the White House insists that Obama continues to have confidence in the secretary, a retired four-star Army general. Shinseki said he welcomed Nabors’ help in ensuring veterans have access to timely, quality health care. Though Nabors has kept a low public profile, he is one of Obama’s closest advisers and has played key roles in the president’s fiscal battles with congressional Republicans. Nabors, the son of an Army veteran, was appointed deputy chief of staff following Obama’s re-election and previously served as the president’s chief congressional liaison and deputy budget director.
More here
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Rick Ungar: Who Says Obamacare Is Turning Out To Be Good For The Economy? Goldman Sachs Does, That’s Who!
The news just keeps getting better and better for Obamacare. Marketwatch is reporting that an advisory issued by economic researcher Alec Phillips over at Goldman Sachs reports that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) boosted GDP in the first quarter of 2014 and projects that the same will occur in the second quarter. While Phillips—and other Goldman analysts—had initially been quite skeptical about the impact of the government subsidies provided to the many Americans who will now be able to purchase health insurance, the group has turned a corner and now views the subsidies as a major, beneficial contributor to first quarter numbers and what they project to be second quarter growth of 3.9 percent. Of even greater interest is the explanation provided by the Goldman analyst as to why healthcare spending rose 9.9 percent in the first quarter. Phillips pins the rise not on some undesired side-effect of Obamacare but on the fact that people had money in their pocket to spend on the health of their families as a result of $37 billion boost in personal income—something also projected to continue into the second quarter.
While the U.S. Bureau of Economics had predicted a higher spending figure on healthcare for the first quarter than what turned out to be the case, it is worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office—back when first reviewing the Senate bill to reform healthcare—predicted that we would see such a boost following the first enrollment period of Obamacare. Just because healthcare spending increased substantially in the first quarter does not mean that healthcare prices increased—a detail the GOP hopes you will miss. It simply means that more people were able to get the healthcare they were previously unable to afford; not that those of us who already had access to care had to pay more for that care. Phillips sees the trend continuing, suggesting that the positive effects of Obamacare will boost the economy in 2015 and 2016.
More here
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Katie Lobosco: Washington State Defies Minimum Wage Logic
Raising the minimum wage could lift hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers out of poverty, but it’s also a job killer. Right?
Not so fast. In Washington state, small businesses are adding jobs faster than any other state in the country, according to a report from Paychex and IHS. It’s also the state where minimum wage, at $9.32 per hour, is the highest. The federal minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour, and a battle is raging about whether it should be raised to $10.10. Small businesses, often called the engine of the U.S. economy, find themselves at the heart of the debate. Critics of a wage hike say that raising the minimum wage too high and too fast could put them out of business.
But the report from Paychex and IHS, which measured job additions and layoffs at 350,000 small businesses, could dispute that claim. Not only was Washington the strongest state, San Francisco — with a minimum wage of $10.74, the country’s highest — had the greatest job gains in the past year among cities measured. Washington state has been progressive on the issue for years. The state’s minimum wage rate has been tied to inflation since 1998, and the mayor of Seattle is currently pushing to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15.
More here
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Paulette Brown to Become the First Black Woman President of the American Bar Association forharriet.com/2014/05/paulet…
— For Harriet (@ForHarriet) May 14, 2025
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The Drug War Was the Wrong War - How We Missed the Battlefield by Light-years lgf.bz/1mOSTZr
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) May 13, 2025
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Russ Britt: Obamacare Is Good For The Economy, Goldman Sachs Researcher Says
Obamacare is good for the economy? That’s what one venerable Wall Street brokerage is saying. Alec Phillips, economic researcher at Goldman Sachs, said in a note issued late last week to clients that subsidies from the Affordable Care Act boosted gross domestic product during the first quarter and are likely to do the same during the second quarter. Phillips says that he now has a more optimistic view of the second quarter’s GDP growth, with a gain of 3.9% now estimated, and 4.5% annualized growth in real personal consumption.
“While we were initially skeptical of the large estimated effect of the new subsidies on personal income, these now look more reasonable to us in light of revisions, greater enrollment than expected several months ago, and the fact that states are likely contributing to the subsidies on top of the well-known estimates of federal costs,” Phillips said. But the health-care industry won’t be the only one to benefit, Phillips says, as subsidies will free up income for those who had no coverage before, as well as those who had insurance but were paying for it themselves. “Overall, around 40% of the subsidies should find their way to non-health consumption this year,” he wrote.
More here
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‘I told Michelle in 2012 this was my last campaign. She said, hallelujah!’ http://t.co/EiJ1OA00nH pic.twitter.com/ulLdLSDU5C
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) May 15, 2025
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America’s Foremost Dumb Dumb
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William Douglas: McCain: Send U.S. Troops To Rescue Kidnapped Girls In Nigeria
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wants to see more than hashtag messages voicing displeasure over the abduction of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. He wants to see U.S. troops go into Nigera and rescue the girls, even if it means doing so without permission from the Nigerian government. ‘If they knew where they were, I certainly would send in U.S. troops to rescue them, in a New York minute I would, without the permission of the host country,’ McCain said Tuesday. Referring to Nigeria’s president, McCain added: ‘I wouldn’t be waiting for some kind of permission from some guy named Goodluck Jonathan.’
Fact check: State Dept. under Hillary Clinton designated leaders of Boko Haram as terrorists: mm4a.org/1s7J2Lq http://t.co/5IktgAlyBT
— Media Matters (@mmfa) May 09, 2025
Thus far, the Obama administration has sent a team to Nigeria that includes FBI officials with hostage negotiation skills, five State Department officials, including a team leader, two strategic communications experts, a civiliam security expert and a regional medical support officer. There are also 10 Defense Department planners and advisers who were already in Nigeria and have been instructed to provide support to the kidnapping response, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.
More here
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San Francisco—with a min wage of $10.74, the country's highest—had the greatest job gains last year: goo.gl/0vxYdu #RaiseTheWage
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) May 14, 2025
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Breaking: Arkansas Supreme Court dismisses marriage case appeal bc there is no final order, denies stay request. bzfd.it/1jgVNUp
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) May 14, 2025
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TPM: Federal Judge Denies Governor’s Motion To Put Idaho Gay Marriages On Hold
A federal magistrate judge has refused to put gay marriages on hold in Idaho pending an appeal from the state’s governor. U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Dale wrote Wednesday morning that Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s appeal isn’t likely to succeed, and so there’s no reason to keep same-sex couples from seeking marriage licenses or marrying on Friday. On Tuesday, Dale struck down Idaho’s same-sex marriage ban in response to a lawsuit from four Idaho couples.
Dale said Idaho’s law unconstitutionally denies gay and lesbian couples their fundamental right to marry and wrongly stigmatizes their families. She said the state must start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Friday morning. Gay marriage is legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia.
More here
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#FastFoodGlobal protests Thursday as workers fight for higher wages nbcnews.to/1ltbLGP http://t.co/taWtFghlcM
— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 15, 2025
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Looking forward to lots of conservative tweets about Fox poll showing slightly more think Ocare will be good for country in long run
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 15, 2025
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Greg Sargent: Time To Revisit Conventional Wisdom About Politics Of Obamacare
The initial conventional wisdom about the Arkansas Senate race — that incumbent Mark Pryor is the nation’s preeminent Dead Dem Walking — is rapidly getting revised in the wake of new polls showing him ahead of GOP Rep. Tom Cotton. So perhaps, in the context of the Arkansas race, it’s also worth revisiting the conventional wisdom that Obamacare is nothing but a hideous liability for Democrats, and can only shower Republicans with political gold from now until election day. One of Senator Pryor’s senior campaign strategists tells me Pryor will not shy away from making the case that the state’s “private option” —
its version of the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare — represents Pryor’s brand of good governance, and that Cotton’s repeal stance is extreme and bad for the state. This is particularly relevant right now, as a fascinating new report from David Ramsey of the Arkansas Times demonstrates. Ramsey reports that the bipartisan private option — which uses Medicaid funds to expand private coverage to 150,000 Arkansans — has become a major issue in several state legislative Republican primaries.
More here
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The Pope read the bible and says it demands a redistribution of wealth thkpr.gs/1ixoKK1
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) May 09, 2025
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Dairy Queen CEO: Paying Workers A ‘Fair Wage’ Helps Us thkpr.gs/1kX2ian via
— Steve Wallace (@Stwallace23) May 10, 2025
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Louise Radnofsky: A Washington State Health Insurer Plans To Cut Rates In 2015
An insurer in Washington state selling plans under the Affordable Care Act is proposing to lower customers’ health premiums next year in what appears to be one of the first such decreases proposed for 2015. The proposal by Molina Healthcare Inc. MOH +0.60% was part of a batch of state rate filings released Monday that included Washington and Indiana. While most carriers are seeking increases, Molina’s filing signals that insurers that priced cautiously for 2014 could face pressure to be more competitive in the second full year of the law’s insurance marketplaces. Molina proposed a decrease averaging 6.8% for Washington customers for 2015. It told state regulators in its rate filing that it was betting that people signing up through the insurance exchange were in better health than the carrier previously thought,
and that it anticipated new entrants when the law’s penalties for not carrying coverage grow next year. Molina, a company that historically has focused on managed Medicaid plans, offered some of the most expensive premiums among insurers selling on the Washington exchange in this year. It said it had only about 1,200 members in 2014. Ben Lynam, vice president for Molina’s actuarial pricing, said in an interview that the company had made conservative assumptions for 2014 about the medical claims likely to be incurred by its enrollees, in part because it hadn’t had much previous commercial experience. “With hindsight and looking at what’s going on across the country…we’ve improved those assumptions and lowered our rates in 2015,” he said.
More here
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I've talked a lot about the negative influence of Koch money. At 9:30 am, I’ll offer a solution to the problem. c-span.org/live/?channel=…
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) May 15, 2025
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It’s been 321 days since the Senate passed bipartisan Immigration reform. The #TimeIsNow for the House GOP to act. http://t.co/YLI2nEYGwK
— Sen. Barbara Boxer (@SenatorBoxer) May 14, 2025
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Reuters: Jobless Claims Hit Seven-Year Low, Inflation Ticks Up
New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits hit a seven-year low last week while consumer prices recorded their largest increase in 10 months in April, pointing to a firming economy. The economy’s outlook was further brightened by other data on Thursday showing factory activity in New York state expanding at its quickest pace in nearly four years in May. “It conveys the message of solid economic activity. Labor conditions continue to improve and I expect this will be validated by payroll reports over the next few months,” said Anthony Karydakis, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak in New York.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 297,000, the Labor Department said, offering fresh evidence the jobs market was strengthening. That was the lowest reading since May 2007 and brought claims back to their pre-recession level. Economists had forecast first-time applications ticking up to 320,000 last week. In a second report, the department said its Consumer Price Index increased 0.3 percent last month as food prices rose for a fourth consecutive month and the cost of gasoline surged. The rise in the CPI was the biggest rise since June last year and added to March’s 0.2 percent rise. The combination of a strengthening jobs market and an uptick in inflation pressures should give the Federal Reserve ammunition to continue scaling back its monetary stimulus. However, the U.S. central bank is not expected to start raising overnight interest rates, currently near zero, before the second half of 2015.
More here
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Reuters wants to keep stories under 500 words. Editor takes 1174 to explain why. bit.ly/1lpRCnL
— Sam Jacobs (@sampjacobs) May 12, 2025
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Florida couple fined $746 for crime of feeding homeless people thkpr.gs/1iL77qq http://t.co/buxNJxh7lR
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) May 12, 2025
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On This Day
President Obama takes a stroll through the White House Rose Garden, May 15, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama walks in the White House Rose Garden, May 15, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama meets with former Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, in the Oval Office, May 15, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins gives President Obama a Phillies jersey and autographed baseball while Obama welcomes the 2008 Major League Baseball World Series Champion Philadelphia Phillies at the White House, May 15, 2025
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First Lady Michelle Obama addresses Spelman graduates at their May 15, 2025 commencement.
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President Obama greets people in the audience at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service, an annual ceremony honoring law enforcement who were killed in the line of duty, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., May 15, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama presents a birthday cake to Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, during a dinner for Combatant Commanders and senior military leadership in the Blue Room of the White House, May 15, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama and Attorney General Holder attend the 32nd Annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service at the West Front Lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on May 15, 2025
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President Obama poses with a souvenir jersey as he is flanked by players David Beckham and Landon Donovan, members of the LA Galaxy, Major League Soccer’s Championship team, at the White House, May 15, 2025
President Barack Obama walks across the tarmac with Vice President Joe Biden prior to departure from Fort Campbell, Ky., May 6, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today (All Times Eastern)
12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press
2:45: President Obama is interviewed by local and national meteorologists participating in “Weather from the White House”
4:15: Meets with Secretary of State Kerry
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The Week Ahead
Wednesday: Travels to Los Angeles to participate in a joint DSCC/DCCC event. In the evening, the President will be honored at a dinner hosted by the USC Shoah Foundation. He will remain overnight in Los Angeles.
Thursday: Participates in a DNC roundtable in Los Angeles before traveling to San Diego to participate in a DCCC event. The President will then travel to San Jose where he will participate in two DNC events and remain overnight.
Friday: Participates in an event on energy in the San Jose area. Following the event the President will return to Washington, DC.
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We can't get to the reckoning about America's racialized political economy when one of the parties suppresses vote/denies health insurance.
— Richard Yeselson (@yeselson) May 01, 2025
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A massively important new study finds that Obamacare could save thousands of lives per year. on.tnr.com/SuhGER
— The New Republic (@tnr) May 05, 2025
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Kathleen O’Brien: Final Tally Is 162K For New Jersey Obamacare Enrollment
The number of New Jersey residents who enrolled in Affordable Care Act insurance plans more than doubled in the final month before the deadline, bringing the total who signed up from the Garden State to roughly 162,000. More than 80 percent received a federal subsidy to help pay for their policies, according to numbers released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today.
Another 98,000 New Jersey residents selected coverage through the newly expanded state Medicaid program. One New Jersey health policy expert called the last-minute surge “nothing less than astounding.” It meant the state exceeded the goal set by public-health experts, said Jon Whiten, deputy director of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a think tank that supports health care reform.
More here
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Juliet Eilperin: For President Obama, A Renewed Focus On Climate
The satellite images viewed by President Obama before a meeting with eight Western governors were stark, showing how snowpack in California’s mountains had shrunk by 86 percent in a single year. “It was a ‘Houston, we have a problem’ moment,” recalled White House counselor John D. Podesta, one of two aides who briefed the president that February day. Obama mentioned the images several times as he warned the governors that political leaders had no choice but to cope with global warming’s impact. He is regularly briefed on scientific reports on the issue, including a national climate assessment that he will help showcase Tuesday. He is using his executive authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other sources, and is moving ahead with stricter fuel-efficiency standards for the heaviest trucks. And while he routinely brings up climate change in closed-door meetings with world leaders, according to his aides, he also discusses it in his private life, talking about global warming’s implications with his teenage daughters. “This is really real for him, in terms of what he’s leaving,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who directs the White House Domestic Policy Council and has helped coordinate federal investment in climate-resilient infrastructure projects. “This is personal for him.”
Obama to talk climate with meteorologists trib.al/F3fl78k by @LBarronLopez
— The Hill (@thehill) May 05, 2025
As president, Obama enacted the first carbon limits for cars and light-duty trucks and helped push through a House bill that would have imposed a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions. Obama has remained wary of some of the risks stemming from hydraulic fracturing, including the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. When the subject of natural gas came up during a Nov. 30, 2012, meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Obama turned to Holdren and his deputy assistant for energy and climate change, Heather Zichal. “Do we have an accurate accounting of methane emissions, and do we have a problem there?” Zichal recalled the president asking. The White House announced a new methane strategy — which will include additional federal regulations — in March. After his reelection, Obama told chief speechwriter Jon Favreau to make climate change “one of the big sections” in his second inaugural address, Favreau recalled. The move surprised even some of his closest aides.
More here
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Tara Culp-Ressler: New Study Confirms That Health Reform Can Save Lives
The mortality rate in Massachusetts dropped significantly after the state enacted health care reform in 2006, according to a new study published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Since Massachusetts’ health law relies on many of the same policies as the Affordable Care Act, the findings suggest that Obamacare could help save thousands of lives once it’s fully implemented. That suggests that for every 830 people who gained insurance, one death was prevented.
And perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found that that health reform had a particularly significant impact in the areas of Massachusetts with previously high rates of poverty and uninsurance; the mortality rate decline was steepest there. Although life expectancy for Americans as a whole has been on the rise, widening income inequality and deepening health disparities have ensured that poor people’s lives are actually getting shorter. This study suggests that Obamacare has the potential to help reverse that trend — but that’s only possible in the states that agree to fully implement the law.
More here
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Brian Beutler: The D.C. Press Corps Is Suffering From Benghazi Stockholm Syndrome
Last week, after Republicans pivoted to Benghazi in unison, The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein observed an interesting phenomenon. When it came time to put White House press secretary Jay Carney in the hot seat, reporters for smaller outlets—whose correspondents are consigned to the back rows of the briefing room—were interested in real, unfolding dramas: Ukraine, the Affordable Care Act, the Snowden disclosures, and so on. But when Carney moved to the big-name journalists at the front of the room, the only thing anyone seemed to care about was Benghazi And that raises an interesting question, because in covering the story as a political scandal, just as Republicans want them to, the only scalps the media has really collected are their own.
CBS suspended Lara Logan after “60 Minutes” aired, and later had to retract, her Benghazi feature; Sharyl Attkisson resigned from the same network, charging her former colleagues with liberal bias—reportedly because they didn’t adequately promote her Benghazi coverage; and ABC’s Jonathan Karl had to apologize last year after he passed along an inaccurate summation of then-unreleased White House Benghazi emails. The administration had granted members of Congress access to the emails in classified briefings, and the source who provided Karl the summary (presumably a Republican) had either taken poor notes, or intentionally misconstrued their contents, to make it appear as if the White House had thumbed the scales in the inter-agency dispute over how to address the attacks publicly.
More here
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Terence McCoy: The Man Behind The Nigerian Girls’ Kidnappings And His Death-Defying Mystique
No one knows how old he is. Some say 35. Some say 36. Others think he’s 44. Twice he was believed dead, and twice he reemerged to conduct an even broader campaign of killing and terror that made him one of the most wanted men in the world.
His name is Abubakar Shekau. He is the leader of Boko Haram. And he has your girls. “I abducted the girls at a Western education school,” Shekau proclaimed on Monday in a video, clutching a rifle among several masked men.
Obama’s former faith advisor @joshuadubois has a short, smart piece on what the pres is doing to #BringBackOurGirls joshuadubois.com/commentary/a-q…
— Brian Ries (@moneyries) May 05, 2025
Kidnapping of kids by #BokoHaram an unconscionable crime. US will support #Nigeria to #BringBackOurGirls & hold perpetrators accountable.
— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) May 05, 2025
“And you are disturbed. I said Western education should end. … I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah. There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell; he commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women.”
Shekau, who has a $7 million bounty on his head, grinned a mouth of white teeth.
More here
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Remember when the Democrats launched a series of endless hearings on the phony intel the Bush admin used to invade Iraq? No? ...Wait...
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) May 06, 2025
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Sabrina Tavernise: Mortality Drop Seen To Follow ’06 Health Law
The death rate in Massachusetts dropped significantly after it adopted mandatory health care coverage in 2006, a study released Monday found, offering evidence that the country’s first experiment with universal coverage — and the model for crucial parts of President Obama’s health care law — has saved lives, health economists say. The study tallied deaths in Massachusetts from 2001 to 2010 and found that the mortality rate — the number of deaths per 100,000 people —
fell by about 3 percent in the four years after the law went into effect. The decline was steepest in counties with the highest proportions of poor and previously uninsured people. In contrast, the mortality rate in a control group of counties similar to Massachusetts in other states was largely unchanged. A national 3 percent decline in mortality among adults under 65 would mean about 17,000 fewer deaths a year.
More here
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Peter Schroeder: Holder: No Bank Is ‘Too Big To Jail’
Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday he is personally overseeing investigations into major banks, and is working with regulators as those probes enter a “key” stage. The Obama administration’s top attorney emphasized that no institution or individual is powerful or influential enough to escape capture, and that the notion of “too big to jail” is a myth. “There is no such thing as ‘too big to jail,’” he said in a video message posted on the Justice Department’s website. “To be clear, no individual or company, no matter how large or how profitable, is above the law.” Holder said in his new message that his team is working closely with financial regulators to mitigate those potential risks, clearing the way for criminal charges if the case can be made.
Holder said Monday that there are times when an institution’s behavior was wrong, but not necessarily illegal. Furthermore, sometimes it can appear that a bank broke the law, but is not backed by evidence permissible in court. Nonetheless, Holder underlined that when banks do break the law, his department will not hesitate to bring forward the case. On that front, he said the Justice Department has made “great strides” in coordinating with financial regulators to address potential economic risks from criminal charges, including the revocation of a bank’s charter to do business in the United States. The Justice Department is reportedly examining BNP Paribas for evading U.S. sanctions, and Credit Suisse for helping Americans evade taxes.
More here
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For every 830 people who gained health insurance, one death was prevented: bit.ly/1fMfG4S cc Repeal & replace crowd
— (@igorvolsky) May 06, 2025
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Obamacare could save 24,000 lives a year IF WE DON'T DESTROY IT FIRST healthinsurance.org/blog/2014/05/0… #tcot
— (@LOLGOP) May 05, 2025
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Noam N. Levey: Health Insurance Reduces Deaths, New Massachusetts Study Shows
Giving more people health insurance could save tens of thousands of lives nationwide in the coming years, a new analysis of data from Massachusetts, whose trailblazing reforms became the model for President Obama’s health law, suggests. Throughout the national debate over the Affordable Care Act, critics of the law have questioned whether expanding coverage actually results in better health. The new analysis by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Urban Institute adds to the growing evidence that health coverage does make people healthier.
Mortality rates in Massachusetts measurably improved compared with similar places around the country after the state began guaranteeing its residents health coverage in 2006, the researchers found. A similar trend is emerging nationally, as surveys indicate millions have gained coverage since state marketplaces created by the federal law opened in October. A nationwide Gallup poll released Monday showed the percentage of working-age adults without coverage dropped from 18% last fall to 13.4% in April.
More here
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Steven Dennis: Obama Backs Shinseki Amid Calls To Resign
The White House is backing Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki after he faced calls to resign Monday over allegations that veterans died waiting for care in Phoenix and other problems in his department. “As the President said last week, we take the allegations around the Phoenix situation very seriously,” said Shin Inouye, a White House spokesman. “That’s why he immediately directed Secretary Shinseki to investigate, and Secretary Shinseki has also invited the independent Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General to conduct a comprehensive review,” he said.
“We must ensure that our nation’s veterans get the benefits and services that they deserve and have earned. The President remains confident in Secretary Shinseki’s ability to lead the Department and to take appropriate action based on the IG’s findings.” Earlier Monday, the American Legion called on Shinseki to resign, although the Veterans of Foreign Wars declined to do so. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., the chairman of the House Veterans’ Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, called on Shinseki to resign “due to chronic mismanagement and systemic failures of the VA under his leadership, ranging from dramatic cost overruns in major construction projects to glaring patient safety problems,” according to a press release.
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George P. Bush quest for public office: campaign funds of $2.2M furnished by same industry he'll regulate if he wins. america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/…
— meta (@metaquest) May 06, 2025
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Isaac Chotiner: Ron Fournier Attacks Paul Krugman, Embarrasses Self
I know it’s cruel to pick on people who are ill, but in Ron Fournier’s case an exception must be made. Fournier is currently ailing from a condition known as bipartisanship (medical name: vacuousness), which manifests itself when another person expresses a thought that can be deemed partisan. For example, on Monday Paul Krugman wrote a column castigating Republicans for releasing a biased report on whether people were paying their Obamacare premiums. (TPM: “Nearly 40 percent of Obamacare enrollees signed up after March 15—which means their first premium wasn’t due until after the committee finished collecting its data.”) Krugman scolded the GOP and expressed outrage that the Party was so dishonest.
The effect of this was to trigger one of Fournier’s symptoms: writing silly responses to people like Krugman. Fournier begins by agreeing with Krugman’s contention that the GOP is dishonest. Fournier provides no evidence that the White House could get accurate figures, and in any case it’s failure to do so is not an example of “skewing the truth.” Moreover, there will presumably be accurate figures after the end of May, which is when people who enrolled will have to pay up
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Danny Vinik: Republicans Still Don’t Have A Jobs Plan, But Americans Think They Do
A Pew Research-USA Today survey released on Monday finds that Americans’ number one priority remains jobs. And yet, while Democrats have fought for increased government spending to boost the recovery, Americans are planning to reward Republicans in November—even though they have still not offered a credible jobs plan. And while the recovery certainly could be much stronger, its weakness is the result of Republican obstruction, not the Democratic agenda.
In the debate over whether to apply fiscal or monetary stimulus, the GOP chooses neither. Facing a massive hole in aggregate demand, Republicans have offered the same supply-side agenda as always: tax cuts, spending cuts, and deregulation. These are not macroeconomic policies for filling a short-term hole in demand and spurring a recovery. Only after the economy returns to sustainable, full employment—something we haven’t achieved in nearly 20 years—should we look at supply-side policies to boost growth.
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Study: Expanding health insurance can save lives. What might it mean for the ACA debate? advbd.co/1o0w4kQ http://t.co/GD0KKc5dxr
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) May 06, 2025
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Death rate among young and middle-aged adults drops in Mass. after state health law implemented, study suggests bit.ly/1o01CHw
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) May 05, 2025
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Jonathan Cohn: More Good News For Obamacare: It May Be Saving Lives After All
It also suggests the health care law, implemented effectively, could save thousands of lives a year. The subject of the new paper is the Massachusetts health care reform scheme, signed into law by then-Governor Mitt Romney, that took effect in 2007. It is an obvious subject for research, because it looks just like Obamacare and it succeeded in reducing the number of uninsured, just as Obamacare seems to be doing. The change made a big difference. Subsequent studies showed that, as more people got insurance, fewer people struggled with medical bills and more people got regular medical care. But while hospitalizations for preventable conditions came down and people reported that they felt better, those findings didn’t fully address the question of how insurance was affecting health. Enter three well-credentialed, well-respected health care economists—Benjamin Sommers (who’s also a physician) and Katherine Baicker, from the Harvard School of Public Health; and Sharon Long, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.
NEW STUDY: Health insurance saves lives. That means it improves health, too.
theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/heal… http://t.co/um7L0LM0Z5
— Adrianna McIntyre (@onceuponA) May 05, 2025
The trio obtained figures on mortality and, better still, they were able to isolate causes of mortality “amenable to health care.” In other words, they were able to get data on cancers, various cardiac problems, and other conditions that, with better medical care, people should be more likely to survive. Then they compared how the people in Massachusetts fared relative to groups of people from around New England, who were similar in almost every meaningful way—age, income, and so on—except that they lived in states where similar expansions of health insurance were not underway. The results were clear. In those other places, outside of Massachusetts, the death rate from “amenable” causes went down by only a little bit and the overall death rate actually increased a tad. But in Massachusetts, deaths overall and deaths from “amenable” causes both went down—significantly. The authors calculated that, for every 830 people who got insurance in Massachusetts, about one person avoided a premature death.
Uninsured rate drops to 13.4% in April, new all-time low in Gallup Poll. Among blacks, 13.8% versus 20.9% before #Obamacare
— DR (@pollbuster) May 05, 2025
That’s a big payoff and it suggests Obamacare might have one, too. If millions of additional Americans end up with health insurance because of the law, as now seems likely, it would mean that at least a few thousand are going to live longer. And the number could get pretty high. A story in the New York Times suggested 17,000 would be a good guess. Harold Pollack has done some back-of-the-envelope math for healthinsurance.org and concluded the number could be as high as 24,000.
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“We have got to get 11 million people out of the shadows." -VP Biden on #ImmigrationReform. instagram.com/p/noLMkAFwZI/ http://t.co/ZlcifsFHZY
— Office of VP Biden (@VP) May 05, 2025
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Gallup reports 3.7 percentage point drop in uninsured, which is 8.5+ m adults. Not surprising with 8 m in marketplaces & 4.8 m in Medicaid.
— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) May 05, 2025
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An inexorable rule: If Republicans are obsessed with it, it's BS.
— (@LOLGOP) May 01, 2025
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On This Day
Sen. Barack Obama and his wife Michelle wave to the crowd after Obama delivered election night remarks after winning the North Carolina Primary at a rally at the North Carolina State University in Raleigh on May 6, 2025
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President Obama with Afghan President Karzai and Pakistan President Zardari walk along the Colonnade following a US-Afghan-PakistanTrilateral meeting in Cabinet Room May 6, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama meets in the Rose Garden of the White House with, from left, Susan Davies, deputy counsel to the President, Phil Schiliro, assistant to the President for legislative affairs, Ron Klain, chief of staff to the Vice President, and Bob Bauer, counsel to the President, regarding the pending Supreme Court nomination, May 6, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Dr. Jill Biden walks down the Cross Hall en route to a Mother’s Day Tea in the East Room of the White House, May 6, 2011. First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Biden hosted the tea for military spouses, relatives, and friends (Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
President Obama and Vice President Biden shake hands with the troops following the President’s remarks at Fort Campbell, Ky., May 6, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama disembarks Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, following his trip to Fort Campbell, Ky., May 6, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama plays golf with Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) and Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) at left at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on May 6, 2025
Julia Edwards: U.S. Justice Department To Collect, Study Arrest Data For Racial Bias
The U.S. Justice Department on Monday said it will begin collecting data on stops, searches and arrests made in five U.S. cities to weed out possible racial biases within the criminal justice system. Later this year, a $4.75 million federal grant will be awarded to recipients who compete for the funds to work with their local law enforcement to analyze arrest data and find ways to reduce any biases they find, particularly toward young minority men.
Black men were six times more likely, and Latino men were 2.5 times more likely, to be imprisoned than white men in 2012, according to Justice Department data. Attorney General Eric Holder said the data collection effort is in response to President Barack Obama’s call for better relations between law enforcement and young men of color following the “not guilty” verdict in the shooting death of black Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
President Obama listens, during a meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the Situation Room of the White House, April 16, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today (All Times Eastern):
1:0: President Obama departs the White House
2:30: Arrives Pittsburgh
3:10: With the vice president, tours a classroom at Community College of Allegheny West Hills Center, Oakdale, Pennsylvania
3:45: The President and VP deliver remarks on jobs-driven skills training
5:45: The President departs Pittsburgh
7:20: Arrives White House
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Thursday: The President will welcome the Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride to the White House in celebration of the eighth annual Soldier Ride.
Friday: The President will meet with the National Commander and Executive Director of the American Legion. Later, he will welcome the United States Naval Academy Football Team to the White House to present them with the 2013 Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.
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Darlene Superville: Obama, Biden To Announce $600M For Job Grants
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are hitting the road to trumpet $600 million in new competitive grants to spur creation of targeted training and apprenticeship programs that could help people land well-paying jobs. The programs that Obama and his Pennsylvania-born vice president are announcing do not need approval from Congress because they will be paid for with money that lawmakers have already authorized for spending. In response to stiff resistance to his agenda from Republican lawmakers, Obama has made it a goal this year to take smaller steps on his own, without support from Congress, to benefit the economy, workers and others, and Wednesday’s program fits that script. The larger of the two grant programs will put nearly $500 million toward a job training competition run by the Labor Department that is designed to encourage community colleges, employers and industry to work together to create training programs that are geared toward the jobs employers need to fill. Applications will be available starting Wednesday.
The training is part of an existing competitive grant program for community colleges that prepare dislocated workers and others for jobs. A priority will be placed on partnerships that include national entities, such as industry associations, that pledge to help design and institute programs that give job seekers a credential that will be recognized and accepted across a particular industry, signaling to an employer what kind of work the holder can do. The Labor Department is also making an additional $100 million available for grants to reward partnerships that expand apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeships are used less widely in the U.S. than in some other countries, said administration officials, who also noted that nearly 9 out of 10 apprentices end up in jobs that pay average starting salaries of above $50,000 a year.
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Dan Witters: Uninsured Rate Drops More In States Embracing Health Law
he uninsured rate among adults aged 18 and older in the states that have chosen to expand Medicaid and set up their own exchanges in the health insurance marketplace has declined significantly more this year than in the remaining states that have not done so. The uninsured rate, on average, declined 2.5 percentage points in the 21 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have implemented both of these measures, compared with a 0.8-point drop across the 29 states that have taken only one or neither of these actions. Medicaid expansion and state health insurance exchanges — are realizing a rate of decline that is substantively greater than what is found among the remaining states that have not done so. Consequently, the gap that previously existed between the two groups has now expanded.
More here
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boy, DC pundits can't stop buzzing abt new Reuters poll showing voter support for GOP re: healthcare collapsing...oh wait, they're ignoring
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) April 16, 2025
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Five years after right-wing media claimed that Obamacare was socialism, they're still wrong. mm4a.org/Q6GTDV
— Media Matters (@mmfa) April 14, 2025
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Reuters: Americans Increasingly Prefer Democrats On Healthcare: Reuters/Ipsos Poll
Americans increasingly think Democrats have a better plan for healthcare than Republicans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after the White House announced that more people than expected had signed up for the “Obamacare” health plan.
Nearly one-third of respondents in the online survey released on Tuesday said they prefer Democrats’ plan, policy or approach to healthcare, compared to just 18 percent for Republicans. This marks both an uptick in support for Democrats and a slide for Republicans since a similar poll in February.
…. “In the last couple of weeks, as the exchanges hit their goals, news coverage has been more positive and the support of the Democratic Party on this issue has rebounded,” said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson.
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Sun Times: At Howard U, Michelle Obama To Meet Chicago Public H.S. Students
First Lady Michelle Obama, a graduate of Whitney Young High School, will meet with Chicago high school students visiting Howard University in Washington D.C. on Thursday, juniors and seniors who will take part in a program called “Escape to the Mecca, ” run by Howard’s Chicago Peoples Union and “designed to immerse talented high school students in a college campus environment,” the White House said.
Background, from the White House: “The First Lady’s visit to Howard is part of her higher education initiative, in particular working to achieve the President’s “North Star” Goal, that by the year 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
The First Lady will join the students on a campus tour followed by a roundtable discussion where the students will be joined by their hosts. In the discussion, the First Lady will hear how college tours and similar types of exposure can inspire students to reach higher in their education.
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Medicare's so-called cost growth factor, calculated in February at minus 1.9 percent, is now calculated at minus 3.4 percent.
— (@igorvolsky) April 14, 2025
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Lower-than-expected premiums under the #ACA will help reduce the cost of expanding coverage by $104 billion over the next decade. #ACAWorks
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 14, 2025
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Kyle Cheney and Brett Norman: Insurers See Brighter Obamacare Skies
Health insurers got their first taste of Obamacare this year. And they want seconds. Insurers saw disaster in the fall when Obamacare’s rollout flopped and HealthCare.gov was a mess. But a strong March enrollment surge, along with indications that younger and healthier people had begun signing up, has changed their attitude. Around the country, insurers are considering expanding their stake in the Obamacare exchanges next year, bringing their business to more states and counties. Some health plans that skipped the new marketplaces altogether this year are ready to dive in next year. “[W]e see 2014 as just the beginning for exchanges,” said Tyler Mason, a spokesman for UnitedHealth Group, one of the nations’ largest insurers. “As the economics, sustainability and dynamics of exchanges continue to become clearer, we believe exchanges have the potential to be a growth market with much to offer UnitedHealthcare and other insurers and consumers.”
GALLUP: Uninsured rate dops significantly more in states embracing Obamacare. bit.ly/1qZISFg http://t.co/xTBwESVlQl
— (@igorvolsky) April 16, 2025
State officials and insurance company representatives signaled in interviews that at least 10 states would feature more companies, not fewer, on the Obamacare health plan menu. Those include Kentucky, California, Connecticut and Washington, four states that have enthusiastically supported the health law and built high-performing exchanges. New York’s exchange chief, Donna Frescatore, said her state has had “additional interest” from new insurers, as well. But the list also includes more surprising interest in places like South Dakota, Idaho, Iowa and Michigan, far from diehard fans of the president’s health law. A spokeswoman for one of the companies Haislmaier cited, Michigan-based Physician’s Health Plan, said in an interview that it will indeed join the state’s exchange in 2015. The company had planned to join in 2014 but pulled out at the last minute, citing uncertainty caused by federal delays. New, Obamacare-funded nonprofit insurers are expanding their footprints, as well. Minuteman Health in Massachusetts is expanding into bordering New Hampshire; Montana Health CO-OP will sell plans in Idaho; and Kentucky Health Cooperative is moving into West Virginia.
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USA Today: As MLB Honors Jackie Robinson, Can It Reverse A Trend?
Just when we want to believe that times are changing and prejudice is waning, along comes a ferocious reminder like a Manny Pacquiao punch to the jaw. Sheer racism, exposed in vile letters directed to Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, have poured into the Atlanta Braves offices over the past week. Yes, it was like 1974 all over again, the year Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, with letters laced with the most hateful epithet known to African Americans. “Hank Aaron is a scumbag piece of (expletive) (racial slur)” a man named Edward says in an e-mail to the Braves front office obtained by USA TODAY Sports. Edward invokes the epithet five times in four sentences, closing with, “My old man instilled in my mind from a young age, the only good (racial slur) is a dead (racial slur).” There are 67 black players in the major leagues, with three teams not represented by a single African-American player: the San Francisco Giants, Arizona Diamondbacks and St. Louis Cardinals.
Forty years ago, Aaron had the audacity to break Ruth’s home run record. This time, he simply spoke his mind. When asked by USA TODAY Sports last month why he still keeps those hate letters, Aaron calmly revealed his sentiments. “To remind myself that we are not that far removed from when I was chasing the record,” he said. “If you think that, you are fooling yourself. A lot of things have happened in this country, but we have so far to go. There’s not a whole lot that has changed. “We can talk about baseball. Talk about politics. Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he’s treated. We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go. “The bigger difference is back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.” When I first started playing, you had a lot of black players in the major leagues,” Aaron said last month. “Now, you don’t have any (7.8%). So what progress have we made? You try to understand, but we’re going backward.”
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Nine of the last ten recessions have occurred under Republican presidents.
— Jimi S (@jimi2124) April 16, 2025
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Clare McCann: CBO Finds Third Consecutive Year Of Good News On Pell Costs
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office announced some more good news for members of Congress: For the third consecutive year, the Pell Grant funding cliff is smaller and further away than we thought. After a few shaky years of funding during the recession, the updated CBO baseline will surely come as welcome news to lawmakers facing midterm elections and a tight budget. Then, starting with the 2013 CBO estimate, there was some surprising news: The program actually cost less than expected. As the rate of growth in the program flat-lined, the expected costs started to drop. Underestimating the numbers for fiscal year 2013 meant Congress could draw on an accumulated surplus in the program. Those funds–which actually come from funding provided in past years but never spent–are large enough that Congress can spread the surplus across fiscal years 2014 through 2017, added to a flat appropriation for the program.
Based on a separate funding formula, the maximum grant also increases with inflation. Here’s where it starts to get tricky. In fiscal year 2017, all that will be left of the surplus is $0.4 billion. And at the same time, the costs of the program are projected to increase as more students become eligible. That means members of Congress aren’t off the hook in ensuring the Pell Grant program–the cornerstone of federal financial aid for low-income students–is financially stable. The CBO report is good news for the immediate future, but it’s not a cure. Lawmakers have bought themselves a few years to figure out the long-term future of Pell Grant appropriations. If they don’t, the Pell Grant funding cliff will come knocking again.
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The Confederate flag isn't about your "heritage", unless you're from a long line of village idiots.
— Rocky Mountain Mike (@RockyMntnMike) April 15, 2025
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They'd be dead. RT @Slate: What if Bundy ranch were owned by black people? slate.me/1iWkYaJ http://t.co/ZdBReja0GQ
— (@AdamSerwer) April 15, 2025
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Jamelle Bouie: What If Bundy Ranch Were Owned By A Bunch Of Black People?
For 20 years the federal government has fined Cliven Bundy for grazing his cattle on protected land. And for 20 years Bundy has refused to pay. Last month this dance came to an end when the Bureau of Land Management sent Bundy a letter informing him that it intended to “impound his trespass cattle” that have been roaming on federal property. It closed off hundreds of thousands of acres, and earlier this month, moved to round up Bundy’s cows. The federal government blinked, and the Bureau of Land Management announced an abrupt end to its cattle roundup, hoping to avoid violence and further confrontations. this entire incident speaks to the continued power of right-wing mythology. For many of the protesters, this isn’t about a rogue rancher as much as it’s a stand against “tyranny” personified in Barack Obama and his administration.
right-wing media ought to be condemned for their role in fanning the flames of this standoff. After years of decrying Obama’s “lawlessness” and hyperventilating over faux scandals, it’s galling to watch conservatives applaud actual lawbreaking and violent threats to federal officials. I can’t help but wonder how conservatives would react if these were black farmers—or black anyone—defending “their” land against federal officials. Would Fox News applaud black militiamen aiming their guns at white bureaucrats as someone who closely follows the regular incidents of lethal police violence against blacks and Latinos, I also wonder whether law enforcement would be as tepid against a group of armed African-Americans. Judging from past events, I’m not so sure.
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CBO: 19m more people insured in 2015, 25m more insured in 2016, and 26m more each year from 2017-2024
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) April 14, 2025
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CBO projects that "12 million more nonelderly people will have health insurance in 2014 than would have had it in the absence of the ACA"
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) April 14, 2025
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Neela Banerjee: U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Obama Administration Limits On Air Toxins
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever limits on air toxins, including emissions of mercury, arsenic and acid gases, preserving a far-reaching rule the White House had touted as central to President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda. In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled that the mercury rule “was substantively and procedurally valid,” turning aside challenges brought both by Republican-led states that had argued the rule was onerous and environmental groups that had contended it did not go far enough.
The EPA welcomed the decision, calling it “a victory for public health and the environment.” Liz Purchia, an agency spokeswoman, said. “These practical and cost-effective standards will save thousands of lives each year, prevent heart and asthma attacks, while slashing emissions of the neurotoxin mercury, which can impair children’s ability to learn.” The EPA estimates that the mercury and air toxins rule will prevent 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks annually.
More here
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CBO estimates that employers will pay $139 billion in coverage penalties under the ACA from 2015 through 2024
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) April 14, 2025
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The reinsurance program will bring the government $10b in 2015, $6b in 2016 and $4b in 2017, per CBO
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) April 14, 2025
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Josh Gerstein: President Barack Obama Chops 3 1/2 Years Off Pot Sentence
President Barack Obama has issued a commutation to a drug convict, shortening his sentence by three-and-a-half years in what the White House said was an effort to correct a sentencing error. Ceasar Cantu of Katy, Texas pled guilty in 2006 to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and money laundering. He received a 15-year prison term but a White House official said it was subsequently discovered that a presentence report contained a mistake which caused the extra three-and-a-half years to be added to his sentence. “A judge ruled that Mr. Cantu did not discover this error in time to correct it through any judicial means; as a result, it can now only be rectified through clemency,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at the daily briefing, repeating word for word a comment offered on background by another Obama aide earlier in the day.
“The president thought [this] was the right thing to do to commute his sentence….The president wanted to act as quickly as possible. This is a matter of basic fairness and it reflects the important role of clemency as a failsafe in our judicial system,” Carney added. According to the Justice Department, Obama has issued 52 pardons and (now) ten commutations while in office. In recent months, Attorney General Eric Holder and his top aides have been encouraging lawyers for prisoners who believe their sentences are too lengthy to file commutation applications with the Justice Department.
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CHART: Retail sales surge across all major categories in March read.bi/1eEbbU0 http://t.co/tVPoKXC5Yd
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) April 14, 2025
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LA Times: Surging Retail Sales Signal An Economy On The Upswing
Americans rushed out to shop as frigid weather lifted in March, propelling retail sales at the fastest pace in a year and a half. The gauge from the Commerce Department surged 1.1% last month from February in its biggest leap since September 2012. Sales boomed 3.8% from March 2013. The strong sales, which beat economists’ expectations for a 1% increase, bolstered hopes that the economy would continue to gain momentum after struggling through an especially harsh winter. “One month doesn’t answer all the questions, and it’s not like we have all-over-the-place exploding growth,” said NPD Group analyst Marshal Cohen. “But we’re beginning to see that the recovery is no longer segmented — it’s broader.” Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of economic output, making retail sales a strong indicator of the nation’s overall economic health. But other reports this month also signal a rebound.
Employers created a net 192,000 new jobs in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which said that all private sector jobs that were lost in the downturn have been recovered. Initial jobless claims hit their lowest level in nearly seven years. The International Monetary Fund projects that global economic growth will rise 3.6% this year in the strongest increase since 2011, led by expansion in the U.S. Small-business owners surveyed by the National Federation of Independent Business believe their sales are set to increase. The government also revised the anemic 0.3% improvement previously reported for February retail sales to a much stronger 0.7% upswing.
The main CBO revisions to its ACA estimates: 1m more insured per calendar year till 2024. And $104b less in cost of coverage
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) April 14, 2025
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Jonathan Cohn: A New Report On Obamacare Says It’s $104 Billion Cheaper Than Expected
Republicans and their allies keep saying the Affordable Care Act will bankrupt the taxpaying public. Now there’s one more reason to think they are wrong. It comes from the Washington’s official accountant, the Congressional Budget Office, which on Monday released a newly updated projection on how the Affordable Care Act will affect the deficit and insurance coverage. It’s actually the latest in a series of revisions, each one suggesting the law would cost less money than the previous projection had suggested. And why this latest change? It doesn’t appear to be because the law will reach fewer people. CBO now expects slightly more people to end up with health insurance, at least over the long run. The CBO’s primary explanation for lower costs is that health insurance premiums on the new exchanges—what the administration calls “marketplaces”—are lower than CBO had originally expected they would be.
the federal government is simultaneously providing generous tax subsidies, designed to offset those price increases and, more generally, make health care more affordable for people who couldn’t pay for it previously. Those subsidies, along with the law’s expansion of Medicaid, are the most expensive part of the law—together they account for the vast majority of its spending. The cost of those subsidies depends on the raw, unsubsidized prices that insurers are charging upfront. The higher the premiums, the more expensive the subsidies. And that’s where the law has, so far, outperformed expectations. Insurers are offering plans with lower premiums than CBO and other experts had predicted. As a result, the federal government is on the hook for less financial assistance. Better still, the CBO says that it doesn’t expect across-the-board premium spikes next year, as the law’s critics and even some insurance company officials have speculated would happen.
More here
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Fascinating to watch: as more data comes in confirming O'care success, GOP remains politically paralyzed, unable/unwilling to change course
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) April 16, 2025
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Tell me exactly how this is breaking news, @cnn? http://t.co/uMu42Hdu4v
— Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoyACN) April 16, 2025
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On This Day:
Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle wave to supporters after addressing a Women for Obama luncheon in Chicago on April 16, 2025
Senator Obama and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley watch a video highlighting Olympic venues at a rally celebrating Chicago’s selection as the U.S. candidate to host the 2016 Summer Games in Chicago on April 16, 2025
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Sen. Hillary Clinton speaks at a Democratic presidential debate with opponent Sen. Obama at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on April 16, 2025
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President Obama listens as Vice President Biden discusses the Obama administration’s plans for promoting high speed rail service in areas of the United States in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 16, 2025
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President Obama receives an update on the explosions that occurred in Boston, in the Oval Office, April 16, 2013. Seated, from left, are: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Tony Blinken, Deputy National Security Advisor; Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Attorney General Eric Holder; Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Chief of Staff Denis McDonough; and FBI Director Robert Mueller (Photo by Pete Souza)
On This Day: President Obama encourages a young participant at the White House Easter Egg Roll, April 13, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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The Week Ahead
Today: The President has no public events scheduled.
Monday: The President will host an Easter Prayer Breakfast at the White House.
Tuesday: The President and the First Lady will mark the beginning of Passover with a Seder at the White House with friends and staff.
Wednesday: President Obama and Vice President Biden will travel to Leetsdale, Pennsylvania for an event on the economy.
Thursday: The President will welcome the Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride to the White House in celebration of the eighth annual Soldier Ride.
Friday: The President will meet with the National Commander and Executive Director of the American Legion. Later, he will welcome the United States Naval Academy Football Team to the White House to present them with the 2013 Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.
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10:0 PM ET today: President Obama appears in the Showtime documentary series ‘Years of Living Dangerously’, produced by James Cameron, to discuss climate change.
Watch the first episode of "Years of Living Dangerously" for free online: http://t.co/xMB2wbywUU #ActOnClimate
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 13, 2025
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Karen Rubin: Obama At National Action Network, Defends Voting Rights, Issues Call To Action
President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned defense of voting rights and a call to action to vote. Delivering the keynote address which concluded the National Action Network’s convention in New York City, on Friday, April 11, Obama declared, “Just as inequality feeds on injustice, opportunity requires justice. And justice requires the right to vote.” Just the day before, at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, he had reflected upon the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under President Lyndon B Johnson, and his remarks built on that theme. The Voting Rights Act, which some regard as even more crucial an achievement, did not come until 1965. Showing a full gamut of emotions during his 20-minute speech, from bemusement to impassioned invocation, to a folksy, intimate conversation, he used the fabricated controversy over his birth certificate to make the more serious point of documents being required to vote that low-income people,
elderly people, urbanites, young people may not have, and even women, who by virtue of getting married have a different name on their drivers’ license, may be denied access to the polls, while in other districts, people are being forced to stand for hours on end in order to cast a ballot. He pointed to some successes in his administration - 9 million jobs created since the financial collapse of 2008, the Affordable Care Act that saw nearly 8 million enrollees, millions more covered under expanded Medicaid and a significant drop in the percentage of uninsured, lowered high school drop out rates. But he talked, as well, about the Opportunity Agenda - raising the minimum wage, universal Pre-K, access to affordable health care, pay equity, job training, access to higher education, addressing the impacts of carbon pollution that disproportionately affect low-income communities, immigration reform, that can only be achieved, first because of the ballot box.
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LOL GOP: This Is A Fantastic Pro-Obamacare Ad - Why Aren’t There A Thousand Like It?
Since news broke that enrollments in the Obamacare exchanges had broken 7 million, there has been a steady stream of positive indications for the law. Signups in the exchanges continue at impressive pace as the deadline to complete applications nears. Medicaid expansion is taking off in Michigan and will continue all year long. But the best news is this new ad from a Super PAC supporting Alaska senator Mark Begich that makes the most effective case for the law — it ends discrimination against people who’ve gotten sick. This is a fantasitc message because you know who gets sick? Everyone, eventually. The bad news is we likely won’t be seeing many ads like this from candidates as Democrats in close elections recognize that the enthusiasm is on the side of repeal, which is less popular than the law nationally but gospel among the GOP base.
Going on the offense, which is always the right strategy, is more challenging when you’re afraid your only inflaming the people most likely to vote in a low-turn out election. However, there is a huge opportunity for outside groups and supporters of the law to flood the internet with these kinds of testimonials. Film a friend. Speak into a camera. I’m even thinking about how to fund a contest for the best homemade video. The tide could be turning for this law and personal stories — along with stern indictments of the incredible cruelty of denying Medicaid expansion — could transform the political landscape. And there are signs the shift has already begun.
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Justin Baragona: Can White Conservatives Please Stop Saying That Racism Doesn’t Exist Anymore?
In the aftermath of Attorney General Eric Holder’s remarks at a National Action Network event on Wednesday, white conservative pundits have used their airtime to complain about Holder ‘playing the race card.’ Some have even gone so far as saying that racism is no longer a problem in America and doesn’t even exist anymore. On two programs this past week, we witnessed panel discussions about race where all the participants were white. On Thursday, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough defended Gohmert’s behavior and accused the Attorney General and the President of playing the race card too often. He then tried to lead a discussion on racism, or the lack thereof, in Washington. His feeling is that Washington is just a tough place to work, and that Bill Clinton, Janet Reno and Richard Nixon all dealt with worse behavior from political opponents. He was able to get agreement from others on the panel that racism is not an issue in Washington and that this is all just politics as usual.
Now, I’d like you to take a look at the composition of this panel discussing race and tell me what all of them have in common: Hmmm. That sure is a diverse panel there, isn’t it? I am sure they can provide us with quite a bit of varied insight and experience when it comes to race relations and what it likes to be black in America. Few things are more offensive that white people explaining to black Americans how racism doesn’t exist anymore. I would have to think that African Americans hate hearing a white conservative whine about a black person ‘playing the race card.’ This is one of the biggest reasons why Republicans get less than 10% of the black vote in national elections, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
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0 people died from ObamaCare. 4 people died in Benghazi. 700.000 died in Iraq. Fox wonders if they should focus on ObamaCare or Benghazi.
— John (@linnyitssn) April 12, 2025
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TPM: Poll: Republicans Admit Obamacare Might Not Be The End Of The World
As Obamacare’s first enrollment period ends and the law becomes a more established part of U.S. policy, the Republican base appears to be having an epiphany: Maybe it’s not the end of the world.
A new Gallup poll found that the number of self-identified GOPers who think the law won’t affect them spiked 20 percentage points from a month ago.
Back in late February and early March, 72 percent of Republicans said that Obamacare would make their lives and their family’s lives worse in the long run. But just a month later, that figure fell to 51 percent. The percentage who said that the law wouldn’t make much difference leapt from 23 percent to 43 percent over the same period.
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Trevor LaFauci: Texas-Sized Beat Down: How Eric Holder Put Rep. Louie Gohmert In His Place
On Tuesday, in a heated exchange on Capitol Hill, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder laid the smackdown on Texas Republican Representative Louie Gohmert for implying that Holder should be held in contempt for withholding documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. In the nearly three-and-a-half-hour-long session involving thirty-four members of Congress, it was the exchange with Gohmert which brought the day’s most dramatic fireworks. This was not the first time that tensions have risen between Holder and Gohmert. Last May at a hearing regarding the Boston Marathon bombing, Gohmert attacked Holder by claiming that the Justice Department had not done enough to prevent the Boston Marathon bombing. When Holder pushed back, Gohmert gave us the now-famous quote that “the Attorney General will not cast aspersions on my asparagus”
The Republican Party has been doing everything in their power since day one to try and manufacture some kind of Watergate-esque scandal that could bring down the Obama Administration. They are doing so because they know that with eight successful years of Democratic policies in place, the Republican Party will be unlikely to take back the White House any time soon. They have been digging and digging for some kind of scandal and at this point the hole is so big that there is no way to return to the surface, so they continue digging deeper no matter how foolish they appear. Here’s the current list of “impeachable” scandals that Republicans have tried to pin on the Obama Administration: Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS targeting of Conservative groups, the NSA data collecting, the tracking of Associated Press reporters, Benghazi, etc., etc. None of these have panned out
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Millions of lives changed for the better. #ThanksKathleen—you've earned this mic drop. bit.ly/1ewYv1k http://t.co/6rwBZQ4X47
— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) April 11, 2025
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Dear Kathleen Sebelius, feel free to hang your "Mission Accomplished" banner in Boehner's office on your way out. #Obamacare #ThankYou
— Matty Ice (@MattyIceAZ) April 11, 2025
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Jonathan Capehart: ‘Thank You, Kathleen, For Your Service’
Kathleen Sebelius is a rarity in Washington: a powerhouse with a down-to-earth sense of humor that made her as approachable as she was powerful. And after five tough years (and particularly the past six months) as secretary of health and human services, the former governor of Kansas is stepping down. The Rose Garden send-off today by President Obama and Vice President Biden and the standing ovations from her colleagues were appropriate for someone who met the ultimate goal. Yes, the Oct. 1 rollout of HealthCare.gov was an unmitigated disaster. But if you only focus on that, you’re missing a more complete picture of Sebelius’s tenure at HHS. Crisis greeted her when she walked through the door in April 2009. The H1N1 pandemic was surging across the globe, and vaccines for this new strain of swine flu didn’t exist. Sebelius shepherded the process of expediting production and distribution of a vaccine.
Dec. @ezraklein "Obama Needs To Fire" Sebelius bv.ms/1qI7nqr April "Obamacare has won" thanks to Sebelius bit.ly/QbbKih
— Bill Scher (@billscher) April 11, 2025
While that was happening, Sebelius was helping to design what would become known and derided as Obamacare. She was there for the lunacy of “death panels” and “You lie!” She was there when the ACA passed Congress without a single Republican vote and when it survived a constitutional challenge. She was there for countless congressional hearings on the health-care law, useless votes to repeal it, creepy Uncle Sam and other tactics meant to scare people from signing up for health care.“There are seven and a half million people across the country that have the security of health insurance, most of them for the very first time, and that’s because of the woman standing next to me here today,” the president said in a farewell ceremony as triumphant as the one held more than a week ago to announce the better-than-expected enrollment numbers. “And we are proud of her for that. That’s a historic accomplishment.”
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Zachary Roth: Democrats Finally Make Voting Rights A Top Priority
For years, voting-rights advocates have been quietly urging Democrats and the Obama administration to fully embrace the fight over access to the ballot as a defining civil-rights issue of our day. This was the week when it finally happened. The heightened rhetoric, which came from President Obama and other heavyweights in his party, is the latest sign that voting rights are likely to be a front-burner issue when Americans go to the polls this fall—at least if Democrats have their way. In a speech at the National Action Network convention in New York City Friday afternoon, Obama used his most forceful language yet on the subject to condemn Republican efforts to make voting harder. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” the president said. “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.”
McCutcheon cartoon of the day. http://t.co/9puUpDg5wn
— Michael Li (@mcpli) April 09, 2025
Obama continually linked today’s battles to the historic movement for African-American voting rights half a century ago, invoking the three young civil-rights activists who were murdered in Mississippi in 1964 while registering voters. “Americans did not stand up and did not march and did not sacrifice to gain the right to vote, for themselves and for others, only to see it denied to their kids and their grandkids,” Obama said, drawing raucous cheers from the crowd. “We’ve got to pay attention to this.” Obama even took time to dissect the arguments of those who argue that voter ID laws are needed to stop fraud, citing a study showing a fraud rate of just 0.00002%. “So let’s be clear,” Obama said. “The real voter fraud is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud.”
Obama’s rousing words come days after he called efforts to stop people voting “un-American” during a Houston fundraiser. And they follow on the heels of similar remarks this week from two of the other highest-profile Democrats in the country, Vice President Joe Biden and President Bill Clinton. In linking today’s voting restrictions to laws that kept blacks from the polls during segregation, Obama and his allies aren’t explicitly saying that the ongoing GOP push to make voting harder is a racially motivated effort that has roots in the Jim Crow era. But they’re certainly allowing that inference to be drawn. To voting rights advocates, the new level of engagement from top Democrats, especially Obama himself, is welcome indeed.
50 years after the Civil Rights Act, America remains divided on.msnbc.com/1ipwr0Z via @msnbc
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) April 09, 2025
“Nothing is more important than the American people hearing the president of the United States bringing the full passion and power of his voice and his position to the issue of promoting voting rights and an open democracy for every citizen,” said Barbara Arnwine, the president of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. It’s not just talk, either. The Democratic National Committee recently launched the Voter Expansion Project, which aims to push back against restrictive voting laws by registering new voters and supporting laws that expand access to the ballot.
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“We don’t accept a Constitution saying #Crimea belongs to #Russia”,- Crimean Tatars leader obozrevatel.com/politics/16749… http://t.co/JIcRWQ07lL
— Euromaidan PR (@EuromaidanPR) April 11, 2025
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#NATO sets the record straight: 9 #Russia myths debunked goo.gl/wSGskA #Ukraine http://t.co/uGO42wJSdk
— (@NATO) April 11, 2025
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Bloomberg: Ukraine Sees $7 Billion IMF Funding This Year
Ukraine will probably receive $7 billion in International Monetary Fund financing this year to support the state budget and central bank reserves, Finance Minister Oleksandr Shlapak said. The east European nation is also seeking further funding from the Group of Seven countries, Shlapak said an interview in Washington yesterday. Of the group’s members, Canada has pledged $200 million and the U.S. has also responded, he said. The government predicts Ukraine’s economy will shrink 3 percent in 2014, the third recession since 2008, while reserves are at a nine-year low. The country sealed a preliminary accord with the IMF last month for as much as $18 billion in loans during two years, with the agreement unlocking $27 billion in international financing. Ukraine needs about $30 billion through 2015 to “balance the situation,” Shlapak said.
The currency will rebound after the IMF deal is completed, Shlapak said. Ukrainian officials will meet IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on April 14 and the government “hopes” the lender’s board will convene to approve the loan this month, he said. Ukraine wants to get the funds as soon as possible, he added. “While we announced the $27 billion, which is the financing need of the country for the next 24 months, we have also given a range for the financing that would come from the fund, and that range has been $14 to $18 billion,” IMF European Director Reza Moghadam said today in Washington. “Our exact financing will depend on how much comes from other bilateral and multilateral lenders.”
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Jonnelle Marte: Obamacare Making Insurance Cheaper - For Cars
Obamacare, the law that could save you 2% or more on car insurance. It isn’t exactly the main pitch behind the health-insurance law, but a study released Wednesday by the Rand Corporation finds that as more people gain health insurance, the costs of other types of insurance could go down. In particular, car insurance and other liability-insurance companies that typically spend tens of billions of dollars each year on health-care claims related to car accidents, workplace injuries and other scenarios could see their health costs decline and could pass those savings on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.
In the case of car-insurance companies, the study points out that some uninsured people, upon suffering through a car accident, may then seek treatment for conditions they have that are unrelated to the car accident. If those types of conditions were covered by health-insurance companies, it could shave up to 2% off of the average costs incurred by auto-insurance companies, the study found. “It’s extraneous stuff you might get the auto insurer to pay for,” says David Auerbach, the lead author of the report and a health policy researcher with Rand Corporation. “It’s hard to tell what was actually caused by the accident.”
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Read: Full NSA statement on Heartbleed http://t.co/3o2S8zuvd9
— AJAM Live (@ajamlive) April 11, 2025
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Weeping for FDR: In a classic photo by Ed Clark, the face of a nation's loss | ti.me/1kgP2jX http://t.co/EvX3GqUeMv
— (@LIFE) April 12, 2025
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What Chait's critics are simply asking is that black views on this race-political divide be taken seriously by him. That's not an attack.
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) April 13, 2025
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Tommy Christopher: Republicans, Racism, And Reasonable Suspicion
Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine has been making a spectacle of himself lately, most recently tying himself in knots trying to explain away his essay on race in the Obama Era. On Thursday night’s All In with Chris Hayes, his point seems to have evolved into a plea for fairness to Republicans, while conceding that everything about Republicanism is legitimately racist. He told Chris Hayes that “you can go to almost any issue and see a racial dynamic, and I really think you can, and you can legitimately,” but somehow, legitimately identifying those racial dynamics is somehow unfair, and contributes to a “poisonous dynamic.”
I don’t get it, and I don’t agree with either end of that hypothesis. There are many issues that either don’t have a racial dynamic, or have racial dynamics that intersect the partisan divide, and discussing those issues that do have a racial dynamic in racial terms isn’t just fair, it is essential. However, on Chait’s own terms, if every partisan issue can legitimately be viewed as racial, how could it possibly be unfair to discuss that?
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The Obamas gave to 32 different charities, White House says. Largest beneficiary, as usual: Fisher House Foundation fisherhouse.org
— West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) April 11, 2025
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The Obamas paid a higher tax rate this year, even as their income fell on.wsj.com/1oUtC0F by @johndmckinnon @wsj http://t.co/kA86uhKaXa
— Tim Hanrahan (@TimJHanrahan) April 11, 2025
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Jay Carney: President Obama and Vice President Biden’s 2013 Tax Returns
Today, the President released his 2013 federal income tax returns. He and the First Lady filed their income tax returns jointly and reported adjusted gross income of $481,098. The Obamas paid $98,169 in total tax. The President and First Lady also reported donating $59,251 – or about 12.3 percent of their adjusted gross income – to 32 different charities. The largest reported gift to charity was $8,751 to the Fisher House Foundation. The President’s effective federal income tax rate is 20.4 percent. The President pushed for and signed into law legislation that makes the system more fair and helps the middle class by extending tax cuts to middle class and working families and asks the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. In 2013, as a result of his policies, the President was subject to limitations in tax preferences, as well as additional Medicare and investment income taxes, for high income earners.
The President and First Lady also released their Illinois income tax return and reported paying $23,328 in state income tax. The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden also released their 2013 federal income tax returns, as well as state income tax returns for both Delaware and Virginia. The Bidens filed joint federal and combined Delaware income tax returns. Dr. Biden filed a separate non-resident Virginia tax return. Together, they reported adjusted gross income of $407,009. The Bidens paid $96,378 in total federal tax for 2013, amounting to an effective tax rate of 23.7 percent. They also paid $14,644 in Delaware income tax and Dr. Biden paid $3,470 in Virginia income tax. The Bidens contributed $20,523 to charity in 2013, including contributing the royalties received from Dr. Biden’s children’s book, net of taxes, to the USO.
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Sebelius says she told Obama staying 'wasn't an option' reut.rs/1qV0xOt
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 13, 2025
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Sebelius: No Regrets on Health Care nbcnews.to/1qsXUoJ
— Michael F Ozaki MD (@brontyman) April 13, 2025
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Nancy LeTourneau: An Open Letter To My “Disappointed” Democratic Friends
Dear Disappointeds: Back in 2010 you told us that you were disappointed in the President you helped elect. And because of that, you weren’t motivated enough to vote in the midterms. While I don’t share your disappointment, I want to say that I hear you. Now we’re facing another midterm election and we have the benefit of hindsight to tell us what changed as a result of your lack of enthusiasm. Sure, you might have wanted single payer and a larger stimulus package.
But you have to admit that Obamacare is doing an awful lot of good. And perhaps you should read Michael Grunwald’s book The New New Deal to learn how the American Recovery Act was way more than many of us thought it was at the time. Its “gut check” time for all of us. I don’t know about you, but after these last four years I’m actually psyched to get back to Democrats arguing with other Democrats over HOW MUCH change we want to see rather than being pissed at Republicans all the time for their total obstruction. There’s a lot riding on this one. I hope we can all work together to make that happen.
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The Week: Obama Is On Track To Leave A Budget Surplus
Bill Clinton left the presidency with a budget surplus. And although the first five years of Barack Obama’s presidency have featured high (but falling) deficits, it’s starting to look like Obama could do the same. For the first time since the 1950s, federal spending is lower than it was four years ago: As Mike Darda argues: The fiscal deficit has been falling by an average of 1.5 percentage points per annum since peaking in late 2009.
If this trend continues, it would imply a balanced budget during 2015 and a fiscal surplus in 2016. [AEI] Obama leaving office with a balanced budget would come as a big shock to those who have compared the U.S. to crisis-stricken countries like Greece, or claimed that Obama is spending like a drunken sailor. But that is exactly what the U.S. is on trend to do.
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Alice C. Shephard: Balancing Act: In The Constant Juggle Of Managing Life At Home And Life At Work, Claire Shipman Realizes That Confidence Is Key
ABC News contributor Claire Shipman is gently trying to coax her eight-year-old daughter, Della Claire Carney, to appear in a Washingtonian MOM photo shoot, in which Della might have to wear pink and comb her tangled mane. Della is not easily swayed. She hates pink. Nor does she like to brush her hair. The daughter of Shipman and Jay Carney, President Obama’s press secretary, isn’t the kind of young girl interested in pleasing her Washington-power-couple parents, or any of the adults around her on the photo shoot for that matter. She is funny, sweet, and obviously smart, but she’s not going to budge for braids and patterned shirts.
To Shipman, 51, this is great, though it can be trying. She’d love it if every once in a while Della would run a comb through her locks. Shipman and Carney’s son, Hugo James Carney, on the other hand, spends a lot more time styling his red hair. “He’s 12 going on 16,” says Shipman. During the shoot, Hugo walked up to everyone on the production crew, held out his hand for a firm shake, and said, “Hello, I’m Hugo, nice to meet you”; to say he is a well-mannered tween is an understatement. Hugo and Della both attend Sidwell Friends School. The busy Carney-Shipman household also “parents” one-year-old Flash, a Portuguese water dog who is a cousin to the Obamas’ dog Sunny.
Shipman and her close friend Katty Kay, the Washington correspondent for BBC World News America, have just written a book on women and confidence called The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know, released in April. Not surprisingly, Shipman has learned a lot about her own daughter through her research. “My daughter is a tomboy,” she says. “She’s strong-willed and doesn’t care about conventions. Our research helped me realize that this is not something I want to go away. If she has her own strong opinions and wears what she wants to wear, that’s great—even if I don’t like it.”
Carney, 48, says the book’s findings changed how they parent their daughter. “Raising Della, we are both now extremely mindful of how important confidence is for girls, and how different it can be in girls compared with boys,” he says. “We try to help Della build confidence by focusing on the effort she puts into things, rather than just praising the outcomes.” I Absolutely Won’t Let Kids . . . They can never treat people badly. Being rude or less than caring produces draconian consequences and much-dreaded family meetings.
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#BundyRanch nutjobbery calls to mind that @SenWarren speech - he won't give to gubmint, but he'll sure as heck take. http://t.co/RI8sa1bbAx
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) April 12, 2025
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Militia types are running pictures of Obama and Holder in defending Bundy's non-payment of fees authorized by Reagan reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speec…
— (@techweenie) April 12, 2025
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Just donated $200 to Harry Reid after reading about his efforts to bring parasitic felon Bundy to justice #BundyRanch http://t.co/Fpfrq7k6bD
— Virgil Texas (@virgiltexas) April 12, 2025
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On This Day
President Obama cheers on a young child as she rolls her egg toward the finish line April 13, 2009, during the White House Easter Egg Roll (Photo by Pete Souza)
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First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden tour earthquake damage in Port Au-Prince, Haiti, along with Haitian President Rene Preval, and Elisabeth Delatour Preval, the First Lady of Haiti, April 13, 2010. The damaged presidential palace is seen in the background (Photo by Samantha Appleton
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President Obama meets with Goldman Environmental Prize winners in the Oval Office, April 13, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, seated far left, meet with staff aboard Bright Star during a flight from New River Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, April 13, 2011. The trip was to launch Joining Forces, a national initiative to support and honor America’s service members and their families (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
First Lady Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden and Martha Stewart drop by Operation Shower, a celebration for pregnant women whose husbands are service members, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, April 13, 2011. The event was part of the launch of Joining Forces, a national initiative to support and honor America’s service members and their families (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
First Lady Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden, and facility manager Judith Markelz, second left, greet volunteers preparing a meal at the Warrior and Family Support Center in San Antonio, Texas, April 13, 2011. The First Lady and Dr. Biden met with service members and their families during their visit to the facility, which helps care for family members of Wounded Warriors whose recovery is expected to last a long period of time (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
First Lady Michelle Obama greets Marines following her remarks to 3,000 Marines, soldiers, sailors, and military family members at Memorial Field House in Camp Lejeune, N.C., April 13, 2011. The event was part of the launch of Joining Forces, a national initiative to support and honor America’s service members and their families (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
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President Obama talks with, from left: Dan Restrepo, Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs; U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk; and Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis aboard Air Force One while en route to Tampa, Fla., April 13, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
Audience members embrace President Obama after he spoke at the Port of Tampa in Tampa, Fla., April 13, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama attends a Summit of the Americas Leaders’ Dinner at Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, Cartagena, Colombia, April 13, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)
Youth Guidance: President Obama Invites BAM Program Back To The White House
President Obama has invited Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man (B.A.M.) program back to Washington D.C. to kick off a new White House initiative called “My Brother’s Keeper.” Three B.A.M. students from Hyde Park High School, along with B.A.M. Lead Supervisor, Marshaun Bacon, and Youth Guidance Board Member, Stuart Taylor, will visit the White House Thursday and Friday. The President’s initiative will support young male minorities by bringing foundations and companies together to find ways to keep young men in school and out of the criminal justice system.
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USA Today: Obama Plans Program To Aid Minority Men
As part of the new effort, businesses and foundations would seek to develop strategies designed to help young men at critical and vulnerable parts of their lives. Goals range from helping boys get to school on time to avoiding problems with the criminal justice system. Ideas include promoting literacy, early childhood education and healthy lifestyles, as well as disrupting what one official called “the school-to-prison pipeline.” “My Brother’s Keeper” also involves a review of existing federal programs designed to address the challenges facing young men, discarding those that don’t work and improving those that do — “all within existing federal resources,” one official said. One official said the goal of “My Brother’s Keeper” is “to make sure that every young man of color who is willing to work hard and lift himself up has an opportunity to get ahead and reach his full potential.”
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Yahoo: Obama Embraces A Lifelong Cause: Helping Minority Boys Succeed
“I never signed a Father’s Day card before,” the young man explained as the president opened the card. “I’ve never signed a Father’s Day card, either,” Obama replied, according to an aide, improbably closing the distance between the Chicago teens and the American president. It was an intimate, private moment that moved him. On Thursday afternoon, Obama will be addressing the same set of issues in a far more public way. Three of the BAM teens will return to the White House for Obama’s unveiling of a new initiative partly inspired by the Chicago program. As part of “My Brother’s Keeper,” as the new campaign is known, the White House will bring together nonprofits, foundations and private businesses to endorse and test out programs designed to help young minority men graduate from high school, stay out of juvenile detention centers and prisons, and train for and get good jobs.
Pete Souza: “We were on Air Force One heading to the Summit of the Americas in Singapore. Since the 1990’s, the host country for this Summit chooses a shirt that all heads of state wear to the formal ceremony. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was showing the President pictures of past leaders wearing - shall we say - not the most dignified of shirts.” Nov. 14, 2009
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Today (All Times Eastern):
11:35: President Obama to make announcement on a fix for health plans canceled under ACA
12:0: First Lady Michelle Obama delivers keynote address at Disney’s first-ever Veterans Institute workshop at Walt Disney World Resort
1:0: President Obama departs the White House
2:25: Arrives in Cleveland
2:30: VP Biden delivers remarks in Atlanta
2:55: President Obama tours ArcelorMittal, Cleveland
3:40: Delivers remarks on the economy
4:35: Departs Cleveland
5:30: VP Biden attends DNC event in Atlanta
5:45: President Obama arrives in Philadelphia
7:45: Delivers remarks at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
9:10: Departs Philadelphia
10:05: Arrives at the White House
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Igor Volsky: The Official Obamacare Numbers And What They Mean For The Future Of Health Care Reform
The Obama administration released October’s enrollment numbers for HealthCare.gov on Wednesday afternoon, providing the first official glimpse into the administration’s progress towards implementing the Affordable Care Act. Here is the breakdown: 106,185: filled out the application and have selected a plan through a federally run or state run exchange. 79,391: filled out the application and have selected a plan through a state-run exchange.
26,794: filled out the application and have selected a plan through a federal exchange. 846,184: filled out the application but have not yet selected a plan 1,509,883: individuals applying for coverage with completed applications 1,081,592: total individuals eligible to enroll in an exchange plan 396,261: eligible for Medicaid or CHIP. Enrollees by state: California 35,364; Federal exchange 26,794; New York 16,404; Washington 7,091; Kentucky 5,586.
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It's telling that the shorthand enrollment #s exclude Medicaid. In American politics, the very poor are non-persons.
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) November 13, 2025
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Media Matters: The Obamacare Fact-Check CBS Should Have Done (But Didn’t)
CBS News, already in trouble for not bothering to fact-check sensational claims about the Benghazi attacks, has stepped in it again with an exclusive story on the Affordable Care Act that has quickly fallen apart.
On November 11, CBS News reported that the “project manager in charge of building the federal health care website was apparently kept in the dark about serious failures in the website’s security.”
CBS investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson’s report was based on an exclusive “first look at a partial transcript” of closed-door testimony by project manager Henry Chao that was likely leaked to the network by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. Other media outlets picked up CBS’s scoop and ran with it.
…. Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA) questioned Chao at a November 13 Oversight Committee hearing and revealed how misleading CBS News’ report was….
…. Gee, CBS gets scammed by a con-man like Darrell Issa. Hoocoodanode?
Perhaps a CBS reporter who has proven to be a reliable mark in the past.
Sharyl Atkisson? The Sharyl Atkisson? The one who proved so valuable to Issa in his attempt to promote the Fast And Furious fakery? …. She was also a dependable mouthpiece in the early days of Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! …. the Sharyl Atkisson who did so much to mainstream anti-vaccine propaganda and give Julia Ioffe whooping cough? That Sharyl Atkisson?
The Tiffany Network is having a tough week.
Full post here
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Greg Sargent: What The Obamacare Enrollment Numbers Really Tell Us
To Larry Levitt, a vice president at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, another very telling number is this one: over 975,000 have been determined eligible for a marketplace but haven’t yet chosen a plan.
“That’s one of the most telling numbers — a million people have been determined eligible,” Levitt tells me. “That means if the website had been working well, and a million people had gotten to the end of the process, we’d be looking at a very different trajectory now. We heard about the surge in traffic when HealthCare.gov went live. This suggests there is in fact a lot of interest.”
Meanwhile, the 100,000 number is getting a lot of attention, but the report also finds nearly 400,000 were determined eligible for Medicaid. “In total that’s over 500,000 people who signed up for insurance in the midst of a tumultuous launch,” Levitt says. “People make a distinction between the marketplace and Medicaid, but those are both elements of the Affordable Care Act — both are mechanisms to get people insured.”
#ObamaCare Works: 106,185 signed up on exchanges, 396,261 covered through Medicaid, 846,184 completed applications. http://t.co/iAfLRVoc7b
— Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) November 13, 2025
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Mother Jones: If GOP Repeals Obamacare, 137 Million Americans Could Get Cancellation Notices
how many Americans’ health plans would receive some form of cancellation notice if GOP hardliners got their wish and repealed Obamacare? Probably at least 137 million. Let’s do the math. Most of the 49 million Americans who were uninsured before the Affordable Care Act will now be eligible to obtain health coverage—either through the expansion of Medicaid or through federal subsidies they can use to purchase insurance on the cheap through the exchanges.
From that number, subtract the 30 million or so low-income people who will not sign up for coverage, either because they can’t afford it, or they live in one of the 24 states where Republican governors decided not to expand Medicaid. That takes us down to 19 million uninsured Americans whose coverage would disappear if Republicans repeal Obamacare. Now add to that number the 267 million Americans who have insurance, but will now receive better coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
More here
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Thanks to #ObamaCare, 500,000 people now have health insurance through a combination of the exchanges and Medicaid. http://t.co/cgkR17yBFC
— Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) November 13, 2025
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Bob Cesca: The Truth About The Obamacare Enrollment Numbers
You’ve probably heard the number 106,000 bouncing around the tubes today. It represents the supposed number of Americans who have signed up for health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Of course it’s not the most accurate indication of what October really looked like.
According to Jonathan Cohn, the total number of Americans who have submitted applications for coverage via Healthcare.gov and state exchanges? Try 1.5 million people, if you factor in households with multiple people receiving coverage — dependents and so forth, who, by the way, are included among the 30 million Americans without insurance prior to the ACA.
— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) November 14, 2025
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ABC6: Obama Says He Will Visit Indian Country Next Year
President Barack Obama told Native American leaders Wednesday that he will make his first trip as president to Indian Country next year, expanding on his vow to enhance the bond between the federal and tribal governments. Obama told the tribal leaders at the fifth annual White House Tribal Nations Conference that the federal government still has work to do to sustain a strong relationship with tribal governments.
He says the United States can do more to give tribes more control over their communities and says that high rates of poverty among Native Americans are “a moral call to action.” In addition, he says the federal government needs to ensure that Native Americans have access to affordable health care and must help tribes be good stewards of their native homelands.
More here
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Tim Dickinson: How Republicans Rig The Game
As the nation recovers from the Republican shutdown of government, the question Americans should be asking is not “Why did the GOP do that to us?” but “Why were they even relevant in the first place?” So dramatically have the demographic and electoral tides in this country turned against the Republican Party that, in a representative democracy worthy of the designation, the Grand Old Party should be watching from the sidelines and licking its wounds. Not only did Barack Obama win a second term in an electoral landslide in 2012, but he is also just the fourth president in a century to have won two elections with more than 50 percent of the popular vote.
What’s more, the party controls 55 seats in the Senate, and Democratic candidates for the House received well over a million more votes than their Republican counterparts in the election last year. And yet, John Boehner still wields the gavel in the House and Republican resistance remains a defining force in the Senate, frustrating Obama’s ambitious agenda. Through a combination of hyperpartisan redistricting of the House, unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate and racist voter suppression in the states, today’s GOP has locked in political power that it could never have secured on a level playing field.
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Steve Benen: HHS Releases Obamacare Enrollment Data
Over the first month of open-enrollment, 106,185 consumers signed up for health insurance through an exchange – about a quarter of that total signed up by way of the federal marketplace. In addition, another 396,261 Americans have gained coverage through Medicaid expansion. By this reasoning, about 500,000 consumers gained health insurance in October thanks to the Affordable Care Act
nearly 1 million consumers – on top of those who gained coverage – began the process “by applying and receiving an eligibility determination” but have “not yet selected a plan.” For many of these folks, this is the result of the broken website – the totals are not a reflection of demand, but rather, capacity.
And therein lies the point: the administration assumed that that demand for coverage would be there, and those assumptions were correct. The problem, of course, is the dysfunctional website – people haven’t been able to purchase the product they want to buy. Fix the site and the pieces of the system fall nicely into place.
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BREAKING: U.S. worker productivity grew 1.9 percent rate over the summer as output rose; labor costs fell.
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 14, 2025
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MORE: 5th straight decline in unemployment benefit applications shows businesses don't see need to cut jobs: apne.ws/1cXQmqU -MM
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 14, 2025
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Digital Journal: President Obama Signs School Access To Emergency Epinephrine Act
President Obama today signed into law the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act during a ceremony attended by Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) CEO John L. Lehr, members of FARE’s board of directors and key congressional sponsors. This historic and potentially lifesaving legislation is the first federal law encouraging schools to stock epinephrine for use in allergic emergencies, and has been championed by FARE for more than two years.
The law, passed by the Senate on Oct. 31 and by the U.S. House of Representatives on July 30, encourages states to require schools to keep lifesaving epinephrine on hand and ensure school personnel are trained to use it. The bill received strong bipartisan support and was passed by unanimous consent in both chambers. “We are thrilled to see this legislation signed by President Obama and thank him for bringing national attention to the need to protect students with food allergies,” said John L. Lehr, CEO of FARE
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WaPo: CBS Ran Misleading Story On HealthCare.gov Security Issues talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cbs-n…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 14, 2025
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@60Minutes runs a fake Benghazi story and now @CBSNews runs a fake anti-#ObamaCare story. talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cbs-n…
Journalism is dead at CBS.
— Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) November 14, 2025
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Department Of Justice: Court Authorizes IRS To Issue Summonses For Records Relating To U.S. Taxpayers With Offshore Bank Accounts
U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood of the Southern District of New York entered an order on Nov. 7, 2013, authorizing the IRS to issue summonses requiring Bank of New York Mellon (Mellon) and Citibank NA (Citibank) to produce information about U.S. taxpayers who may be evading or have evaded federal taxes by holding interests in undisclosed accounts at Zurcher Kantonalbank and its affiliates (collectively, ZKB) in Switzerland; and U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman of the Southern District of New York entered an order today authorizing the IRS to issue summonses requiring Mellon, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA (JPMorgan),
HSBC Bank USA NA (HSBC), and Bank of America NA (Bank of America) to produce similar information in connection with undisclosed accounts at The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited and its affiliates (collectively, Butterfield) in the Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Malta, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. These cases once again demonstrate the department’s resolve to uncover and identify taxpayers who tried to hide money overseas as a way to avoid federal taxes,” said Assistant Attorney General Keneally.
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Think Progress: Senate Democrats Unveil Pro-Choice Bill To Prevent States From Chipping Away At Abortion Rights
Last week, Senate Republicans introduced a national abortion ban that would chisel away at the constitutional rights guaranteed under Roe v. Wade. Now, their Democratic colleagues are striking back with some abortion-related legislation of their own. a group of pro-choice senators plan to introduce the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2013, a measure intended to stem the barrage of state-level restrictions on reproductive rights.
the new bill would preempt state’s efforts to indirectly restrict abortion by requiring new laws to be medically necessary. The measure emphasizes that new abortion regulations shouldn’t decrease access to abortion services or require doctors to go against their best judgment.
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Michael Tomasky: The Democrats Need To Stop Freaking Out About Obamacare And Take Charge
Bill Clinton conceded those rhetorical inches to the right on Obamacare, which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) seized on immediately. At least two blue-state senators, Dianne Feinstein (CA) and Jeff Merkley (OR), have jumped on the “fix Obamacare” bandwagon. At the same time, there’s no need for panic. Even with the continued existence and success of Fox, reality is still reality, and in the end, reality usually trumps cable and hyperventilating reports about who won the morning in Politico. And reality says the enrollment period doesn’t end until next spring, and it’s really not possible to tell how things are going until enrollment has ended and we see both the number of people who’ve enrolled and what percentage healthy vs. sick, because insurers made their guesstimates and pegged their rates to those guesstimates.
I remember a lot of other times when it was supposedly curtains for Obama, too, because inside the Beltway, the more disciplined Republicans, who after all are in the luxurious position of just sitting back and firing away, have an easier time winning news cycles. But out beyond the Beltway, the party that shut down the government for three weeks and killed immigration reform and wants to decimate food stamps and can’t even pass its own spending bills doesn’t look very appealing to most people. The fate of Obamacare can be changed. The DNA of the GOP cannot.
More here
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53 years ago today. http://t.co/UJ3CHFaa5y
— James Perry (@JamesHPerry) November 14, 2025
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On This Day:
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and President Obama laugh as they brush their hair during a group photo during the APEC summit
First Lady Michelle Obama hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ spouses luncheon at Kualoa Ranch in Ka’a’awa on the island of Oahu in Hawaii on November 13, 2025 (Okay, a day late)
President Obama chats with Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, right, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the APEC leaders dinner in Singapore, Nov. 14, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama shares a laugh with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the APEC leaders dinner in Singapore, Nov. 14, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama eats a green tea ice cream bar during his visit to the Great Buddha of Kamakura at the Kotoku-in Temple in Kamakura, Japan, Nov. 14, 2010 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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