My A.M. News Break – June 15
BP Covering Up Wildlife Deaths Due to Spill?
from Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Finance, Markets, Economy
- Markets Pricing in ‘Paradigm Change’ – El-Arian – CNBC
- Best Buy profits don’t meet target - CNBC
- Data and BP top market agenda - MarketWatch
Other Stuff
- Efforts to control gulf spill described as ‘chaotic’ - New York Times
- Setbacks cloud U.S. plan to exit Afghanistan – New York Times
- Banks Yielding on Volcker, Picking Other Fights – New York Times
- Kasich’s tax returns flip flop - Columbus Dispatch
- Editorial: Your tax dollars at work - Columbus Dispatch
- U.S. man arrested in Pakistan for Hunting bin-Laden – Agence France Presse
- More Alvin Greene - Washington Post
Transcript – Secy of State Hillary Clinton on ABC’s ‘This Week’ – Obama Meets the 3 a.m. Test
(Source: ABC News This Week with George Stephanopolous)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: Madam Secretary, thanks very much for doing this.
HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: I’m glad to see you, George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, we were just talking about Cairo, did you ever imagine you’d be here as secretary of state?
CLINTON: Never. (LAUGHTER)
CLINTON: Never crossed my mind. And what an extraordinary honor to be here, especially for this speech today.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The president has a very high-powered team, Vice President Biden, General Jones, Secretary Gates. You’ve got envoys for Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea. How do you fit in?
(LAUGHTER) CLINTON: Well, I&
STEPHANOPOULOS: What is your role, exactly?
Video: Obama Weekly Address – Health Care Reform
Text: Obama Weekly Address – Health Care Reform
(Source: White House Press Office)
Over the past few days, I’ve been traveling through the Middle East and Europe working to renew our alliances, enhance our common security, and propose a new partnership between the United States and the Muslim world.
But even as I’m abroad, I’m firmly focused on the other pressing challenges we face – including the urgent need to reform our health care system. Even as we speak, Congress is preparing to introduce and debate health reform legislation that is the product of many months of effort and deliberation. And if you’re like any of the Americans I’ve met across this country who know all too well that the soaring costs of health care make our current course unsustainable, I imagine you’ll be watching their progress closely.
Daily Graphic: Gallup Shows Cheney More Popular Than Pelosi
Daily Graphic: U.S. Public Opinion and Guantanamo Bay – WTF Are People Thinking?
Does anyone else think it’s troubling that more than half of Americans think that an extra-judicial, unconstitutional prison camp run by the U.S. government is O.K.?
Jeffrey Dahmer killed man-boys, butchered them, stored their choice cuts in the freezer and made stew with the rest. We put that sick fuck in a U.S. prison. The analysis of this should say, ” 75% of Americans aren’t even thinking this one through …”
Go Check Out Gallup’s Polling on This Subject
Full Text: Sen. John McCain Speech – A World Without Nuclear Weapons
(Source: Office of Sen. John McCain)
(Editor’s Note: This speech was given on the floor of the U.S. Senate June 3, 2009)
Mr. President, today we celebrate the unveiling in the Capitol of a statue of Ronald Reagan, one of our country’s great presidents and a personal hero to me throughout my political life. While there are many aspects of President Reagan’s legacy we might reflect on today, I’d like to take the opportunity to discuss just one of them: his dream of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Speaking before the Japanese Diet on November 11, 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, “The only value in possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they can’t be used ever. I know I speak for people everywhere when I say our dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.” That is my dream, too, and it is one shared by many of our most distinguished national security practitioners. In 2007, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, along with former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Senator Sam Nunn, authored an article titled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” in which they laid out their vision of the globe free of the most dangerous weapons ever known.
Video: Obama Interview with BBC
Video – President Obama’s Weekly Address – On Judge Sonia Sotomayor
Video: Gibbs Answers Question on Obama Birth Certificate During Press Briefing
I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the question to be asked in a White House press briefing. There is a fairly large amount of folks out there in Amerika who believe that President Obama has not released his birth certificate; that it resides behind lock and key in a vault somewhere in Hawaii.
Un-f*&cking believable. You can see the president’s birth certificate here. The tards on the right who continue to wring their hands over this issue say that the document is not what they expect for some reason. According to Snopes.com, a site that never lets us down when it comes to debunking, the document linked above is consistent with other certificates of live birth from the time in Hawaii.
Lester Kinsolving is the fellow who asks the question. Kinsolving a radio host and “correspondent” for Internet conservaporn World Net Daily has every right to ask the question, but it should be noted that WorldNet Daily has been the standard bearer for all things anti-Obama.
SCOTUS Update – Sotomayor Announcement – News & Links from Around the Web
Obama Selects Sotomayor – New York Times
Judge Sotomayor, who stood next to the president during the announcement, was described by Mr. Obama as “an inspiring woman who I am confident will make a great justice.”
The president said he had made his decision after “deep reflection and careful deliberation,” and he made it clear that the judge’s inspiring personal story was crucial in his decision. Mr. Obama praised his choice as someone possessing “a rigorous intellect, a mastery of the law.”
But those essential qualities are not enough, the president said. Quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mr. Obama said, “The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience.” It is vitally important that a justice know “how the world works, and how ordinary people live,” the president said.
The judge described her selection as “the most humbling honor of my life.”
- Obama nominates Judge Sotomayor – Washington Times
The president said he wanted a nominee with intellectual rigor and an appreciation for the limits of judicial power — “a judge’s job is to interpret, not make law.” But he said it was Ms. Sotomayor’s “own extraordinary journey” from the housing projects of the South Bronx that he thinks will give her the “common touch” he wanted in a justice.
Mr. Obama also touted Ms. Sotomayor as a jurist with moderate appeal because she was first nominated to the federal bench by former President George H.W. Bush, a Republican.
- Obama chooses Sotomayor – Washington Post
However, Sotomayor is strongly opposed by conservative groups, who have signaled their intention to use her nomination as a rallying cry against liberal causes. Republican lawmakers said this weekend they would try to slow down her confirmation, which despite the strong Democratic majority in the Senate could lead to an all-consuming fight this summer that could divert attention from the rest of Obama’s political and economic agenda.
“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, in a statement e-mailed to reporters this morning. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”
- SCOTUS pick is Sotomayor – CNN
Sotomayor, however, has suffered through recent stinging criticism in the media and blogs from both the left and right over perceived — some defenders say invented — concerns about her temperament and intellect.
As she has risen through the judicial ranks, Sotomayor increasingly has drawn the ire and opposition of conservatives. A majority of Republican senators opposed her elevation to the appellate court in 1998.
However, an official with the Republican National Committee promised that the GOP will be equitable toward Sotomayor.
“The Republicans are going to strike a tone that’s fair, that allows the vetting process to happen like it should, and that’s in stark contrast to how the Democrats dealt with Judge Roberts when you look back a couple years ago,” the official said, referring to the 2005 confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts.
Transcript – Gingrich, Durbin on Meet the Press – May 24
(Source: NBC’s Meet the Press)
MR. DAVID GREGORY: Our issues today: America’s fight against terrorism, a debate about the past…
(Videotape)
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: All too often our government trims facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.
(End videotape)
Dick Cheney’s Classic Misdirection
I got suckered. Perhaps you did too.
On Thursday, President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney gave dueling speeches on National Security policy. The man who is trying to re-invent hope versus Darth Cheney is the way this blogger interpreted what was billed by the Washington press as the “Thrilla on The Hilla.”
By early afternoon the results were in. Obama gave a long, thoughtful better angels treatise on the rule of law and maintaining the moral high ground. Cheney, gave a shorter, pithier shout from the undisclosed location.
It was the Constitution versus the red, orange, yellow threat meter.
Daily Graphic: The Southernization of the GOP
Ron Brownstein and the National Journal tackles with data what most of us who follow politics know – the Grand Old Party is moving toward becoming a regional political party.
A look at the 2008 final electoral map is telling, but one can’t make a sweeping pronouncement based on one election. Brownstein’s well-researched, thoughtful piece is worth a read. Along with the graphic below, there is an interactive chart where you can pick an era and see the Republican Party’s share of the vote inside and outside the South.
Video: CSPAN Interview with President Barack Obama – Taped May 22
CNN Says Obama SCOTUS Pick Tuesday
Ed Henry, CNN White House correspondent says that a top aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy and three Obama Administration officials are sources for his reporting that President Barack Obama will announce his first Supreme Court nomination on Tuesday.
Still on the list according to Henry:
- Sotomayor
- Wood
- Kagan
Henry says the president is till mulling and that the pick could be announced somewhat later next week.
Dick Cheney Should Get Knocked Down a Peg on Thursday
The Politico is reporting that on Thursday, a day former Veep Dick Cheney is scheduled to give a speech titled, “Keeping America Safe,” President Barack Obama will give a major speech outlining the “political and intellectual” framework behind his anti-terror stance and all things related to detainee treatment.
Mr. Cheney, meet Mr. Obama – you might want to talk to Mr. McCain about bringin’ the scary hype against the man who seems to have re-invented hope.
I can see it now. Cheney, talking like Burgess Meredith’s Penguin character from the old Batman TV series, spitting all the worn out Bush era lines about fighting “them” over there so we don’t have to fight “them” here. Through teeth clenched around a cigarette holder he might even throw in a few nasal, conspiratorial giggles as he derides Democrats as soft.
On the other side of the split screen is the man who is steady, unafraid. Barack Obama will use his moment to teach, to inspire. Cheney will undoubtedly use his moment, in front of a partisan crowd at the American Enterprise Institute to stoke the flames that divide us.
America will once again be reminded what a great choice she made in November.
I’ll be the first to say that as an Obama voter, I’m not down with the whole cult of personality thing. I’ve criticized the Administration’s policies of feeding corporate America while middle America is hungry for work. I criticized recently the flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos.
But of one thing I’m fairly certain. When President Obama speaks on big issues, he speaks from a carefully considered, thoughtful point of view. His values – some may label them “Left” – go into his positions, but I do believe that all sides of the issues are considered. This pragmatism, something entirely missing from U.S. national politics since Bush 41, leads to decisions like that of using military tribunals to adjudicate some of the Guantanamo detainee cases. When you’re pragmatic and you compromise you rankle the extremes. Since most of us inhabit the space more near the center, that’s O.K.
I’m looking forward to this speech from President Obama on Thursday like no other public appearance he’s made since the address to the Joint Session of Congress. I’ll take in the coverage of Cheney also. I just won’t expect anything of value.
Bill Summary: Senate Passed Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act
The bill, which calls for credit card agreements to be written in “plain English,” and would protect consumers from abusive practices such as surprise rate increases passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 90 to 5. The full summary of the bill’s provisions, as provided by the Senate Banking Committee can be viewed by clicking the pdf below.
Click for Credit Card Bill Summary
Obama’s Big Step in Right Direction on Auto Fuel Efficiency and Emissions
The Rose Garden announcement made today by President Barack Obama is perhaps the first tangible example of the political and public policy synergy among environmentalists, national security interests, big business and consumers.
The president’s “National Fuel Efficiency Policy” will serve consumers with more fuel efficient cars – cheaper to drive – big business by streamlined and equal application of federal regulation, and the nation’s national security interests by decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. Finally, less gasoline burned means less pollutants into the atmosphere, a policy environmentalists should heartily support.
According to information released by the White House, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the federal Dept. of Transportation and the state of California all collaborated with auto industry and environmental interests on the new fuel efficiency policy.
Among other things the new program will:
- Require that all sizes of cars and trucks become more energy efficient;
- Requires automakers to maintain an average fuel economy rating for their fleets of 35.5 mpg by 2016;
- Create a uniform national policy cutting compliance costs for automakers;
- Projects a reduction in oil consumption of 1.8 billion barrels over model years 2012-16;
- Projects a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 900 million metric tons over the same period.
Daily Graphic: More Americans “Pro-Life” than “Pro-Choice” | Gallup Graph 1995-Present
For the first time since Gallup began polling this question in 1995 more U.S. adults identify themselves as “pro-life.”
