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Weighing Jobs and Deficit

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Elizabeth Williamson - Nov. 23 (News Report) - The White House is lukewarm about proposals by congressional Democrats to introduce broad legislation to create jobs, instead favoring targeted measures that would be less likely to inflate the deficit, administration officials said. There is as yet no agreement within the White House or in Congress on how to try to curb the U.S. jobless rate. But the differences in opinion suggest that rifts could emerge among Democrats as they wrestle with how to beat back the highest unemployment rate in a generation.

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The St. Petersburg Times - News - Gorbachev, Bush, Kohl Remember Cold War

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

sptimes.ru - By Agence France Presse - Nov. 03 (News Report) - Helmut Kohl, George Bush, and Mikhail Gorbachev hailed their excellent relations at a Berlin cabaret on Saturday, 20 years after the Cold War leaders watched over the Wall’s fall.

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Reveals That The White House Garden Cost Only $180 To Plant

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Katherine Goldstein - Oct. 29 (News) - She [Michelle Obama] then revealed the answer: "Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land..... It [cost] about $180.

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In recent polls, GOP limited to Southern comfort

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OregonLive.com - By David Sarasohn - Oct. 24 (Opinion) - For months, Barack Obama’s national approval rating has been hovering in the low to mid-50s. The level is respectable — his predecessor hadn’t been there for his last three years — but not exactly intimidating, not exactly a number to make congressmen think they’d better get in line

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WH: We're Happy To Exclude Fox, But Didn't Yesterday

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Christina Bellantoni - Oct. 24 (News Report) - Adding to the Fox News v. White House feud today is a dust-up over an interview with pay czar Ken Feinberg. Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents asked to get the comments on camera; Treasury agreed to one pool camera, giving the list of those who asked. (Fox was not among them)

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Attack on White House criticism of Fox follows years of GOP assaults on media

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media Matters - Oct. 23 (News Analysis) - Following White House communications director Anita Dunn's entirely justified criticisms of Fox News as an "arm" of the Republican Party, conservative media figures have attacked both Dunn and the Obama administration. But Media Matters for America has compiled a list of organized attacks that GOP leaders -- often aided by Fox News -- have conducted against media outlets based on groundless complaints of bias; those attacks have included boycotts or threatened boycotts of media outlets, efforts to revoke journalists' credentials or ban them from press planes, and even calls to have journalists prosecuted.

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Neutralizing the opposition

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Howard Kurtz - Oct. 22 (News Analysis) - The Foxified debate over whether the White House is being mean to a certain network is morphing into a broader argument about the politics of negativity. The question, which is being pushed on the right, is whether the Obama team is using its muscle to demonize its opponents. The president bears a special burden in this regard. He ran as a post-partisan guy who would reach out to the other side. (Of course, Bush also ran as a uniter-not-a-divider, and that didn't work out too well.) But while Obama is a conciliator by nature, what should a politician do when the opposition refuses to meet him even a quarter-way? Number of Republican votes for the stimulus: zero. Number of Republican votes so far for health-care reform: one. And if the insurance industry, after making a deal with the White House, attempts to sink health care? What administration wouldn't fight back? I just wonder if Obama is being held to a higher standard when he practices plain ol' politics.

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Dem officials set stage for corporate-backed health care campaign

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Ben Smith,Kenneth P. Vogel - Oct. 16 (Special Report) - At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in

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The audacity of greed: how private health insurers just blew their cover

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Robert Reich - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - The health-insurance industry has finally revealed itself for what it is. Background: The industry hates the idea that's emerged from the Senate Finance Committee of lowering penalties on younger and healthier people who don't buy insurance. Relying on an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, insurers say this means new enrollees will be older and less healthy -- which will drive up costs. And, says the industry, these costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Proposed taxes on high-priced "Cadillac" policies will also be passed on to consumers. As a result, premiums will rise faster and higher than the government projects.

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A Volley Between Fox News and Obama Administration

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Brian Stelter - Oct. 12 (News Analysis) - A presidential spokeswoman said, “We don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

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Health Care Bill Gets Support From GOP Off The Hill

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

All Things Considered - By Andrea Seabrook - Oct. 11 (News) - As various health care bills wind their way toward the House and Senate floors, the White House is soliciting support from some unlikely allies: Republicans. Recently such high-profile Republicans as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tommy Thompson, health and human services secretary in the Bush administration, have come out in support of an overhaul. The administration hopes this will help win over moderates in Congress. The former majority leader of the Senate, Republican Bill Frist, said last week that if he were in Congress, he'd take the heat and vote for an overhaul. "I'm coming out very strongly in support of what's going on in the Senate Finance Committee," he said on CNN. "It's bipartisan; I hope that it ends up being bipartisan. If not, I think it's going to be a destructive bill. But it's bipartisan, people working together, so we're on the way there." Then there's Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare under President George W. Bush. "Congress needs to act. The health care issues facing this country are both major and urgent," he said. "We have a real opportunity now to make some progress — not just on improving coverage, but also on improving health care. My hope is that we'll take advantage of those opportunities."

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Truth-O-Meter: Statements on Health Care

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Oct. 08 (Special Report) - PolitiFact fact-checks statements about health care by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups -- and rates them on their Truth-O-Meter.

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Is the tide turning for the public option?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Mike Madden - Oct. 06 (News Analysis) - None of the various healthcare reform bills kicking around Congress would order doctors to make house calls. But the White House decided that was exactly the treatment the administration's top domestic priority needed to maintain some legislative momentum. And so about 150 physicians showed up on the Rose Garden lawn Monday morning for a pep rally -- with at least one coming from every state, naturally, the better to gin up local media coverage of the event back home.

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Lisa Versus Lisa: EPA's Jackson Bests Sen. Murkowski

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Stephen Power - Sep. 25 (News Report) - Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s plan to limit EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases won’t be coming up for a vote after all. This, after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers sent letters to Congress warning that the Alaska Republican’s amendment would prevent the EPA from completing its recent proposal to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions. If that had happened, the industry would face “a patchwork of conflicting state and federal regulations,” the Alliance warned in its letter. A Murkowski spokesman said Senate Democratic leaders prevented a vote on her amendment and that the senator disputes the EPA administrator’s view that the amendment would prevent the EPA from completing its vehicle proposal. “They’ve gone out of their way to refuse to debate the merits of this” amendment, the spokesman said.

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Obama battles great racial divide

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Kansas City Star - By Yael T. Abouhalkah - Sep. 17 (Editorial) - Obama doesn't want this furor on his hands right now, given all the incredibly important policy decisions he's handling. But critics are off base when they carp about Carter and his comments. They were truthful. And they sting.

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At OpEdNews: Change is Scary! Are You Afraid?

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - By R. Francis Rubio - Sep. 07 (Opinion) - With all the confusion about health care and lets be frank some outright lies, it's getting harder and harder to get at the truth. The problem with getting at the truth is most people don't pay a whole lot of attention to policy and when they do the loudest and the most sensationalized voices usually get heard. Change is scary and unfortunately when people get scared they tend to believe the things that can justify their fear, it's human nature.

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Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Mehdi Hasan - Aug. 24 (Editorial) - So why are Republican politicians fanning the flames with talk of "death panels" and Nazism? Why are pundits like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh indulging in what the historian Richard Hoftstader described as the "paranoid style" in American politics? Do they really not understand that this hysterical wave of hatred and fury against Obama goes beyond healthcare reform, or party politicking, or even the country's so-called "culture wars", and now threatens the life of their elected head of state? Do they want to be held responsible, through their extreme and dishonest rhetoric and hate-filled divisiveness, for the death of America's first black president?

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A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Neil King Jr., Jonathan Weisman - Aug. 12 (News Report) - Many presidents have directed policy from on high, shunning the details of most issues. Mr. Obama has adopted a different style, particularly when it comes to economics, as he and his team wrestle with the worst financial crisis the nation has faced since the Depression.

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White House Decries Physicians Committee's Poster, Which Mentions Obama Girls

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Kate Kilpatrick, Ruth McCann - Aug. 11 (News Report) - The posters went up last week, 14 in Union Station. On each of the large displays, a thought bubble rises up from a picture of a beautiful 8-year-old: "President Obama's daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don't I?"

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White House Launches Web Site to Battle Health Care 'Rumors'

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Staff - Aug. 10 (News) - A White House Web site activated Monday uses the same set-up as the "Fight the Smears" page the Obama campaign maintained last year to battle rumors seen as potentially damaging to his candidacy.

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White House Objects to Poster That Invokes Obama Children

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Kate Kilpatrick, Ruth McCann - Aug. 10 (Breaking News) - The posters went up last week, 14 in Union Station. On each of the large displays, a thought bubble rises up from a picture of a beautiful 8-year-old: ’President Obama’s daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don’t I?’

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35 Years After Nixon

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Stanley Kutler - Aug. 09 (Review) - President Richard Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the revelations of his “abuses of power” and obstruction of justice. For his involvement in criminal activities, Nixon earned his unique epitaph: an unindicted co-conspirator. As the nation watched events unfold from 1972 to 1974, a host of then-famous names passed before us: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Mitchell, Colson, Haig, Ziegler, Liddy, Hunt, Kleindienst, Magruder, Agnew, and so on. But the burglars, assorted presidential aides, congressional investigators and prosecutors now have faded into the mists of history—spear carriers at best. Only the principal remains in our consciousness for his achievements and his misdeeds.

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The Many Layers of Nahalat Shimon beg the question: Where's the money coming from?

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

arabisto.com - By Eileen Fleming - Aug. 09 (Special Report) - Last Sunday morning just before sunrise, Israeli forces evicted seventy more Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which is being taken over by the Nahalat Shimon settlers. "The events in Sheikh Jarrah garnered international censure from the European Union, the United Nations (UN) and from Britain, which said it was 'appalled' at the move. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday night called the Israeli evictions "deeply regrettable" and she urged "the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions."

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White House Admits Obama Hasn't Fixed Everything Yet

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

gawker.com - By John Cook - Aug. 04 (Investigative Report) - Check out Gawker's use of the ProPublica Changetracker in this story, to call attention to the subtle backpedaling in the language on whitehouse.gov.

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Obama's crappy patio furniture

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Peter Hartlaub - Aug. 01 (Opinion) - I can't believe the president doesn't have better patio furniture.

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