Tag-Archive for » Obama «
The Senate has voted to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, ending the legal ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.
It passed the Senate in a 65-31 vote. Earlier six Republicans joined Democrats in a procedural vote that brought the measure to the floor.
President Obama announced he would sign the repeal of the 1993 law, one of his priorities in the lame-duck congressional session.
The House passed the bill this week 250 to 174.
The repeal allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military without fear of prosecution for their sexual orientation. More than 13,500 people have been dismissed from the military under the law.
The Senate is set to vote on a controversial immigration bill. If it fails, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez tells Bryan Curtis he’s prepared to ditch Obama and the Democrats-and take the movement to the streets.
It’s zero hour for the DREAM Act, a bit of immigration legislation that has taken on a hulking importance among Hispanic leaders. For two years, Barack Obama failed-or, if you prefer, refused-to nudge along a major immigration bill.
The last-ditch hope is that departing Democrats, and a few Republicans, somehow band together in the lame-duck session and pass a law allowing illegal immigrants who came to the United States as minors to gain citizenship. Harry Reid promised to bring up the bill for a Senate cloture vote this week. Republicans vowed to scuttle it, just as they did in September.
But as Chicago congressman Luis Gutiérrez prepares for a rally at a church in Brooklyn a few weeks before the vote, the DREAM Act seems like the end of his interest in congressional gamesmanship rather than the start.
Gutiérrez is one of several Hispanic leaders who have found themselves politically estranged from the president. Moreover, they are numbed by the legislative process that denied them a vote on immigration reform, much less a victory, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.
“If we couldn’t do it when Democrats were nearly 260 in the House and 59 in the Senate, how do we propose to tell people we can do it now?” Gutiérrez tells me. “The opportunity to have gotten it done is gone.”
WASHINGTON — Barely an hour after President Barack Obama invited congressional Republicans to post-election talks to work together on major issues, the Senate’s GOP leader had a blunt message: His party’s main goal is denying Obama re-election.
In a sign that combat and the 2012 elections rather than compromise could mark the next two years, Sen. Mitch McConnell on Thursday called for Senate votes to repeal or erode Obama’s signature health care law, to cut spending and to shrink government.
“The only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things,” McConnell said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The Senate Republican leader’s confrontational tone was in sharp contrast to the posture Obama took Wednesday in the face of a new GOP-controlled House and Republican gains in the Senate. Obama followed up Thursday morning by inviting Republican and Democratic congressional leaders for talks on Nov. 18 and challenging his own Cabinet to make Washington work better.
“I want us to talk substantively about how we can move the American people’s agenda forward,” Obama said of the upcoming meeting with lawmakers. “It’s not just going to be a photo op.”
The meeting in two weeks will be watched for any indication of compromise between Obama and Congress’ Republican leaders, House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner and McConnell. They will be joined by the top Democrats in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Obama said Thursday, “It’s clear that the voters sent a message, which is that they want us to focus on the economy and jobs.”
Still, there are major differences between the two parties, including the GOP emphasis on tax-cutting, and Obama made that clear on Wednesday.
“From 2001 to 2009, we cut taxes pretty significantly,” Obama said, “and we just didn’t see the kind of expansion that is going to be necessary” to create jobs.
Obama and, to some degree, Republican leaders did signal they might reach accords on a few issues, such as energy. Obama has abandoned his proposed cap-and-trade system for trying to reduce greenhouse gases, which Republicans sharply opposed. But he said the two parties might reach compromises on other fronts, such as promoting electric cars, nuclear power, energy efficiency and “energy independence.”
But McConnell on Thursday indicated that the road to agreements is more like a one-way street.
“If the administration wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction,” McConnell said.
And he spelled out a strategy for undermining Obama’s health care law, calling for repeated votes to repeal the measure.
“But we can’t expect the president to sign it,” he said. “So we’ll also have to work, in the House, on denying funds for implementation, and, in the Senate, on votes against its most egregious provisions.”
Obama said there should be bipartisan agreement on a plan to give businesses a tax break by letting them accelerate the depreciation of some equipment.
But those are relatively minor issues in the federal universe. The array of Republican and Democratic postelection news conferences Wednesday gave virtually no hint about how Obama and the next Congress might tackle major issues such as immigration or Medicare’s long-term viability.
Leaders in both parties talked about cutting spending. But there was barely a word about cutting big programs that consume so much of the federal budget, such as Social Security, Medicare and the military.
Obama hinted that he might be willing to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans for a year or two but not make them permanent, as Republicans have advocated.
Republicans, meanwhile, spoke of working with Democrats only in vague terms. Mostly, they seemed defiant.
McConnell was unapologetic for the unified resistance of the Republican Party to Obama initiatives over the past two years.
“By sticking together in principled opposition to policies we viewed as harmful, we made it perfectly clear to the American people where we stood,” he said. “And we gave voters a real choice on Election Day.”
He also vowed to continue to keep the administration in check by using congressional hearings to oversee executive branch actions.
“Through oversight we’ll also keep a spotlight on the various agencies the administration will now use to advance through regulation what it can’t through legislation,” he said.
Reid, D-Nev., said that in light of the election, “Republicans must take the responsibility to solve the problems of ordinary Americans,” although he added, “people expect us to work together.”
Big clashes seem inevitable.
On the health care law, Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters, “We have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with commonsense reforms that’ll bring down the cost of health insurance.”
Obama, whose veto powers would seem to make repeal impossible, defended the law’s main provisions at length.
“When I talk to a woman from New Hampshire who doesn’t have to mortgage her house because she got cancer and is seeking treatment, but now is able to get health insurance; when I talk to parents who are relieved that their child with a preexisting condition can now stay on their policy” until age 26, “or the small businesses that are now taking advantage of the tax credits that are provided, then I say to myself, this was the right thing to do,” Obama said.
He also rejected claims that he spent too much money to stimulate the economy, bail out banks and shore up automakers at the recession’s height. Republicans hammered all those programs in the elections.
“We’ve stabilized the economy,” Obama said. “We’ve got job growth in the private sectors. But people all across America aren’t feeling that progress. They don’t see it.”
President Barack Obama is praising comedian Jon Stewart’s upcoming “Rally to Restore Sanity,” saying it may help instill more “courtesy” in American political life.
Speaking Wednesday in Richmond, Virginia, the president welcomed the idea behind the October 30 rally, which Stewart described as an effort for people who expect common sense and courtesy in daily interactions.
The event is a thinly veiled dig at right-wing icon Glenn Beck’s “Restore America” march on Washington’s National Mall last month.
“I was amused,” Obama said of ‘The Daily Show’ host’s rally.
“They may not be following every single issue, because they just don’t have time. But they are just expecting some common sense and some courtesy in how people interact,” he said about average people simply “going about their business,” “looking after their families” and “working hard every day.”
“And having those voices lifted up is really important.”
After Stewart’s announcement, Stewart’s alter-ego Stephen Colbert used his own TV show on Comedy Central to invite Americans to attend another rally, which he dubbed the “March to Keep Fear Alive.”
Leave it to Fox News to take President Obama’s inclusion of Jay-Z, Nas and Lil Wayne on his iPod and turn it into this headline on its website:
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES LOVES GANGSTA RAP
As previously reported, Jann Wenner’s interview with the president in the latest Rolling Stone ended with a question about the music he’s been listening to lately.
Obama answered:
My iPod now has about 2,000 songs, and it is a source of great pleasure to me. I am probably still more heavily weighted toward the music of my childhood than I am the new stuff. There’s still a lot of Stevie Wonder, a lot of Bob Dylan, a lot of Rolling Stones, a lot of R&B, a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Those are the old standards.
A lot of classical music. I’m not a big opera buff in terms of going to opera, but there are days where Maria Callas is exactly what I need.
Thanks to Reggie [Love, the president's personal aide], my rap palate has greatly improved. Jay-Z used to be sort of what predominated, but now I’ve got a little Nas and a little Lil Wayne and some other stuff, but I would not claim to be an expert. Malia and Sasha are now getting old enough to where they start hipping me to things. Music is still a great source of joy and occasional solace in the midst of what can be some difficult days.
Foxnews coverage is the most racist news network on television today in my opinion.
House Republicans gathered Thursday at a lumber warehouse in Virginia to unveil their new “Pledge to America.” So what are they promising? To make the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone, to repeal health-care reform, and to reduce federal spending. The Pledge is 45 pages. If this doesn’t Scare Democrats and Independents to the voting booth in November to vote for Democratic, well, nothing will.
Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein says “Their policy agenda is detailed and specific-a decision they will almost certainly come to regret. Because when you get past the adjectives and soaring language, the talk of inalienable rights and constitutional guarantees, you’re left with a set of hard promises that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, take health-care insurance away from tens of millions of people, create a level of policy uncertainty businesses have never previously known, and suck demand out of an economy that’s already got too little of it.”
The New Republic’s Jon Chait is also unimpressed:
“It’s a reprise of every theme of Republican economic policy-making the party has followed for 20 years.” He adds, “The Pledge to America fulminates against debt, but it should be read as a plan to explode debt through the ceiling.”
With No Proof Enquirer Reporting Obama Cheated With Aide. Well, we can’t say that we’re surprised ’cause you knew it was only a matter of time. The National Enquirer is claiming that President Obama is supposedly caught up “in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, D.C. Hotel with a former campaign aide.” Here’s what the rag is reporting:
A confidential investigation has learned that Obama first became close to gorgeous 35 year-old Vera Baker in 2004 when she worked tirelessly to get him elected to the US Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions. Now, the investigators are searching for a hotel surveillance videotape. While Baker has insisted in the past that “nothing happened” between them, reports reveal that top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair.
Armed Man Held After Obama Leaves N.C. Airport. An armed man with a car decked out with police gear was held after being spotted at a North Carolina airport just after President Obama took off. Joseph Sean McVey, 23, had police sirens, flashing lights, four big antennas, and a digital camera mounted on the dashboard in his car, as well as a sidearm. The Ohio man, who is not law enforcement, was charged with going armed in terror of the public, a misdemeanor. Obama had been vacationing in Asheville, N.C., and had just left for the memorial service for the 29 miners killed in West Virginia this month. Airport police saw McVey get out of his car and listen to a handheld scanner and radio with a remote earpiece, which he was using to monitor local agencies. He had formulas for rifle scopes on a note in his car. McVey was questioned by police and Secret Service and said he heard the president was in town and that he wanted to see him.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is an “interesting” politician. He’s incredibly polished when speaking on script, but if you broadside him with an unexpected question, he fumbles his words like a 16-year old boy seeing a naked woman for the first time. I recall watching Gov. McDonnell on television, explaining in an incredibly eloquent fashion how Barack Obama’s health care reform plan was going to lead our nation to hell in a hand basket. Heck, he almost had me convinced. But then Greta Van Susteren threw a sharp question at McDonnell that he didn’t see coming, and that is when he lost my respect. Upon trying to answer a question about what to do with the uninsured, McDonnell lost his cool faster than a popsicle in a tanning bed. Forrest Gump could have done a better job.
When you are governor of a state like Virginia, you’ve got to be smooth. When you are a governor attempting to explain how our country should commemorate the Confederacy, you’ve got to be Bill Clinton smooth and pretty damn persuasive. McDonnell wasn’t smooth at all recently when a reporter asked him why he forgot to mention the evils of slavery during his announcement that his state will commemorate Confederate History Month. That’s when his critics really got excited.
Going beyond Bob McDonnell’s own inadequacies as governor, let’s think carefully about why a Republican governor in a southern state might want to remember the Confederacy. One can make the logical argument that Confederates, like other radical groups, were an important part of history and deserve to have their memories preserved. I can almost buy that, but not really.
T.D Jakes Admonishes Rev. Franklin Graham for Questioning Pres. Obama’s Faith. Coming off the success of his hit film “Jumping the Broom,” Bishop T. D. Jakes appears on TV One’s “Washington Week with Roland Martin” Sunday at 11am Eastern.On the show, taped on Friday, host Roland Martin asked Bishop Jakes to respond to comments made by conservative preacher Franklin Graham:
Roland Martin: Rev. Franklin Graham has made some comments on several occasions as recently as three weeks ago really questioning, if you will, the faith of the President. He said the President has told him he’s a Christian, but he basically said that going to church does not make you a Christian. But the President is on record as saying that he walked down that aisle, he gave his life to Christ, so what do you say to folks like Rev. Graham who, frankly, are muddying the water but other people who are questioning the Christianity of this President?
Bishop T.D. Jakes: I find it insulting. We didn’t question the Christianity of President Bush when he said he accepted Christ, and I’m disappointed in Rev. Franklin Graham in that regard. I wish he had the diplomacy of his father, who brought the gospel to people without being nuanced by politics because when you do those things you offend people that you are actually called to save and to serve. And I would hope that he would see the rationale in apologizing for such statements – because if the President’s faith is suspect then all of our faiths are suspect, because the Bible is quite clear about what it takes to be saved and the President has been quite open about his accepting Christ and him openly confessing it before men. And if it’s good enough for the Bible it ought to be good enough for the rest of us.