NewsTrust - U.S. White House - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

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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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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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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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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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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She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 11 (Opinion) - As the Republicans’ lone charismatic performer, Sarah Palin has come to represent a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances. Sarah Palin and Al Sharpton don’t ordinarily have much in common, but they achieved a rare harmonic convergence at Michael Jackson’s memorial service. When Sharpton told the singer’s children it was their daddy’s adversaries, not their daddy, who were “strange,” he was channeling the pugnacious argument the Alaska governor had made the week before. There was nothing strange about her decision to quit in midterm, Palin told America. What’s strange — or “insane,” in her lingo — are the critics who dare question her erratic behavior on the national stage.

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Health-Care Reform's Public Support Problem

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - "If you can't reform the employer tax exclusion," a well-connected health-care reform advocate told me a few months ago, "you can't find the money to reform the health-care system." Harry Reid is now saying that there will be no reform of the employer tax exclusion. So can we still reform health care? Probably. By this point in the process, Max Baucus had backed so far down on the exclusion that it was going to raise only $300 billion or $400 billion over 10 years. That's not nothing, but it's not much more than, say, Barack Obama's idea for capping itemized deductions. The money can be found elsewhere.

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Obama enters decisive phase of presidency

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Financial Times - By Edward Luce - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - Barack Obama is gearing up for the most decisive phase of his presidency when the fate of his core legislative proposals will show whether he is capable of taming Washington or whether Washington will tame him. Critics and supporters see Mr Obama’s attempts to push his flagship healthcare reform through Congress this month as a critical test of the president’s pledge to take on Washington’s most powerful lobby groups.

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What the Nixon tapes tell us about the Republican Party.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Christopher Hitchens - Jul. 01 (Opinion) - I wonder sometimes whether the Nixon tapes really will just continue to be the gift that never stops giving. I was in college when Richard Milhous Nixon was first elected president, and I can still remember the profound sense of loathing and disgust that I experienced at the mere sight, let alone the sound, of him and of his most especially repellent sidekick Henry Kissinger. Wiser and older people tell you that the passions of your youth will dry up and that a more sere and autumnal condition will overtake you as maturity advances, but the thought of the Nixon gang in the White House still infuses me with a pure and undiluted hatred and makes me consider throwing up things that I don't even remember having eaten.

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A More Contentious Obama Press Conference

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - By Brian Montopoli - Jun. 24 (Opinion) - Barack Obama's fourth solo White House press conference differed from his past efforts in many ways: It was held during the day instead of prime time. It was the first to be held in the briefing room. It featured a question that had been directly solicited by the White House.

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Welcome Back, Congress

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Dan Froomkin - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - If you believe in the legislative process -- if you actually believe that members of Congress have a role in formulating the laws of this land, rather than just rubber-stamping whatever the president wants -- then you really can't get freaked out when that process gets messy. It is a messy process. [Ed: This could be the last White House Watch column, as the WashPo just ended its relation with Dan Froomkin]

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The Intel-Journo Alliance

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Jun. 02 (Opinion) - The neocons understood that intimidating CIA analysts and Washington journalists would clear the way for the key neocon goals: a more aggressive foreign policy and more spending on military budgets, some of which would get recycled into neocon think tanks and media outlets. So, through the 1980s, the neocons spearheaded an assault on the CIA’s analytical division by pushing a politicization of intelligence that reversed the tradition of giving policymakers the best possible information.

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Fixing America, Erasing Bush

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By William Rivers Pitt, - May. 25 (Opinion) - issues of torture and secrecy lead directly to the office of the President of the United States, and the manner in which Mr. Obama has proceeded thus far offends the very nature of the nation he presumes to lead. Mr. Obama sang the praises of our founding documents on Thursday, while failing utterly to live up to the oath he swore to them.

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Think Who Might Be 45th President

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By David Swanson - May. 24 (Opinion) - let's stop to consider what powers #45 will inherit from the previous 44 men, what powers have been used by at least one previous president in recent years without being blocked by Congress or the courts or a subsequent president: the powers to rewrite laws with signing statements, to create laws by simple decree, to draft and act on secret laws specifically written to retroactively and proactively legalize crimes, to produce phony media stories and otherwise engage in domestic propaganda campaigns, to reduce congressional oversight to one-way communications from the White House at the pleasure of the president, to launch and prolong and escalate wars, to lie the congress and the public into supporting wars, to misspend funds appropriated for other things, to rewrite tax laws, to hand out trillions of dollars without oversight, to use illegal weapons and commit countless war crimes with impunity, to spy without warrants, to detain indefinitely without charge, to torture, to murder, to run the government as an election campaign using public funds to support candidates including the president, to selectively leak classified information and to baselessly classify information, to keep anything secret, to try people in kangaroo court military commissions, to create foreign treaties and appoint high officials without consulting the congress, to read your mail and e-mail and listen in on your phone calls, to rig elections, and to throw out any court case on the basis of an unverifiable claim. I'm asking you to imagine giving these powers to the worst person who could hold them, a person who would abuse them drastically and whose abuse would be in no way disguised or hidden.

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Mr. Cheney, You Did Not Keep Us Safe

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - May. 14 (Opinion) - If 3,000 Americans had been killed on your watch, in an attack that could have been prevented, perhaps you'd be a little hesitant to accuse anyone else of endangering America. And if you had advocated torture, and the torture produced false information that you used to mislead America into an unwise, unjust and unwarranted war, you might be a tad sheepish about defending the use of torture.

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Comparing the U.S. to Russia and Argentina

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 26 (Opinion) - Desmond Lachman -- the former chief strategist for emerging markets at Salomon Smith Barney and a long-time official with the IMF (no raving socialist he) -- argues today that the most apt comparison for the U.S. now is not Japan's "lost decade," but rather, "that the United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we're trying to fix it."

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Obama's Gifts To Brown Irk British Media

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

All Things Considered - By Robert Siegal, Ian Martin - Mar. 09 (Interview) - Only at the last moment was it agreed that there would be a small press conference, and, I think, it was read as a metaphor for the concern that Obama really just didn't like having the Brits in town," Martin says

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Is Obama embracing the lawless, omnipotent executive?

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 02 (Opinion) - After a few symbolic (and potentially important) decrees in the first week, which I praised at the time -- the Obama administration's approach to civil liberties, constitutional protections and the reining in of executive power abuses has been absolutely abysmal.

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For Obama, 'change' doesn't come so easily

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Robert L. Jamieson Jr. - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - as the president's oratory filled televisions across the country, the words of another crossed my mind. Reflecting on the state of modern electoral democracy, the political writer and activist Arundhati Roy once suggested that it really doesn't matter which party leads America. "It's not a real choice," Roy said. "It's an apparent choice. Like choosing a brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide, they're both owned by Procter & Gamble." Yes, Democrats and Republicans are vulnerable to pressure from lobbyists. Both kowtow to the rarified segment of political, economic and military brokers -- a posse the sociologist C. Wright Mills called the Power Elite. And both campaign in poetry to seduce the masses but switch to sobering prose when tough realities dawn and temper hope.

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Obama follows some of Bush's footsteps

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Helen Thomas - Feb. 22 (Opinion) - One judge asked the Justice Department lawyer if the change in administrations had any bearing on the case. "No, your honor," came the reply. According to The New York Times, "even the judges on the panel seemed surprised by the administration's decision to go forward" with the same argument.

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Revolutionary Road: Obama's Inaugural

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jacob Heilbrunn - Jan. 20 (Opinion) - Barack Obama didn't promise a new era in his inaugural speech. He promised a new American revolution. His evocation of George Washington at the end of his address made it clear that he regards the perils that face the country as almost no less daunting than those that it confronted in battling for its independence. Now a fresh, stubbornly independent generation, Obama suggested, must emerge to renew the promise of American life. The tone of his speech was somber, but his vision of the future was not. If America can navigate the icy rapids that threaten to submerge it and tap into the "quiet force of progress," Obama indicated, it can emerge into a sunlit harbor, united by the memory of having conquered some of the greatest dangers, domestic and foreign, that it once braved. Whether that vision will be fulfilled is another matter. But Obama's inaugural address, sober and dignified, has set the foundation for constructing a new gleaming edifice of democracy. It is up to us as much as Obama to construct it.

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Transcript: Inaugural Address of Barack Obama

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Barack Obama - Jan. 20 (Speech) - Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

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From George Washington To Barack Obama - A Long Way

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

YouTube - By Poldivideo - Jan. 20 (Entertainment) - (VIDEO - 3:58) A Face Morphing Video Retrospective of 44 Presidents of the United States, with Maurice Ravel's Boléro.

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