E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSObama’s day: “President Barack Obama is discussing legislative priorities with Democratic congressional leaders for a second day Wednesday,” the AP writes. “The president met with the Senate Democratic leadership on Tuesday. On Wednesday it's the House Democrats' turn. Obama is getting the meetings in before Congress takes its August break.”
Yesterday, “President Barack Obama used a Tuesday meeting with Senate Democratic leaders to urge action on three agenda items in the coming weeks as part of a larger messaging strategy on the economy, the top issue on voters’ minds leading to the November elections,” Roll Call says.
Jack Lew as LeBron? “I was actually worried that Hillary would not let him go,” Obama said in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House yesterday, introducing Lew as his new (old) budget director. “I had to trade a number of No. 1 draft picks to get Jack back at OMB.”
BusinessWeek writes up the “jobs summit” that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is holding today. “The Chamber, the biggest lobbying group for U.S. business, plans to release a letter to Obama today calling for him to sell government-owned minerals to raise revenue without raising taxes, said Stan Anderson, managing director at the group’s Campaign for Free Enterprise. The letter will be discussed at a “jobs summit” the Chamber will hold in Washington. ‘We are running a reasonable risk of going back into a recession,’ Anderson said in an interview. ‘As you wear off the artificial spending of the stimulus, you are seeing weakening in job growth.’ The Chamber, which spent more than $30 million lobbying this year, believes the “overhang” of pending health, financial, environmental and other regulations is stifling business spending and curtailing the economic recovery, Anderson said.”
The AP: “In a high-stakes national intelligence stare-down between congressional Democrats and the White House, Sen. Dianne Feinstein blinked.” Feinstein “ended weeks of delay Tuesday and set a confirmation hearing for President Barack Obama's nomination of retired Air Force Gen. James T. Clapper to be the next director of national intelligence. The hearing was scheduled for July 20. By doing so, Feinstein backed off from a threat to wait until a key piece of intelligence legislation passed the House before putting the confirmation process in motion.” Why the holdup? “Feinstein and the top Republican on the committee, Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, used the pending hearing as a lever to expand intelligence reform. In a standard bit of quid pro quo negotiation with the White House, Feinstein wanted to see action first on last year's intelligence bill. The Senate has passed that bill, but it has languished in the House.”
“The Obama administration rolled out an ambitious five-year plan yesterday for moving doctors and hospitals to computerized medical records, promising greater safety for patients and lower costs,” the AP reports. “Starting next year, doctors’ offices and hospitals can get federal money to help defray the costs of the systems, which can run to millions of dollars for hospitals. Providers who don’t comply by 2015 will face cuts in Medicare payments.”
Leave a Comment:
Rick “Gather Your Armies” Barber lost? Oh, dear where's the extortist, Smiling Sarah and her SarahPac?
the “jobs summit” that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is holding"
Now that is ridiculous, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest job killing organizations in the country, they are the working mans enemy and the champion of corporate America. It would be safe to say that "jobs" were never mentioned at the conference they spent their time scheming as to how they can screw the taxpayer again, give me a break.
The repugnant ones always want to do anything except the right thing for our country, force the rich and greedy to sacrifice by paying more taxes. It's time to end the tax cut welfare for the rich and greedy which has not created the jobs the repugnant ones promised.
The repugnant ones are big on selling government assets rather than forcing the rich and greedy to pay more taxes. So many red states are selling off their sate buildings to raise money now, in arizona they're doing it to look good now but in 20 years it will end up creating even bigger budget deficits but the dopes of nope in power now only care about making themselves look good now.
Obama is discussing priorities? Let's see-
Golf
photo ops
Wednesday night parties
golf
vacations
golf
speech
golf
b-ball
golf. . .
It is sort of funny really, they say that all of these changes MAY have an impact on their bottom line, but their Not Hiring presently, and holding down wages is going to hurt their bottom line a lot worse since no one is going to be ale to afford their products. Oh yeah, that is right, they have gotten out of anything other than Financial Instruments of Mass Destruction and the general economy means nothing to them anyways, Just Wall Street, which is, of course, Hiring again.
Too bad that they have forgotten what REALLY made America strong, it's workforce, Not it's CEOs and the other overpaid accountants that make big bonuses by cutting corners and shorting Americans!
It simply is ‘impossible to get blood out of a turnip’ just like it is totally impossible to get quality where dishonesty is the rule, as what you are looking for just isn’t there. The trick of course is in recognizing the turnip as a turnip and the dishonesty as dishonesty and in not seeing things as being other than they are or as we may like them to be for our own preferences (biases/prejudices/emotions). In other words, we need to be disciplined at being objective, rational and honest with ourselves first.
To condemn Democrats for being Socialistic and spending too much neglects to acknowledge the truth that Republicans, even while being Conservative, can literally cost more in placating Special Interests and the extremely wealthy, powerful and influential few who strongly support them – Bush-Cheney clearly proved that and all we have to do is look at the problems we have to see the results. The ‘trickle down’ theory has obviously been proven to be a fraud as giving more to those who already spend all they want really doesn’t help the overall economy. Also, successful social programs which can bring the poor up to being independent and productive in society really do benefit the overall economy. Today’s problems are not because the Democrats are spending but rather the Democrats are spending because of the problems they inherited and to do nothing would be a continuing disaster. All of that is common sense yet people can literally be conned, often easily, with emotional appeals to their biases and self-interests and they then can accept and support positions that are not in their best interests.
We each need to individually determine what the truth is and we need to do that objectively and rationally, uninfluenced by the propaganda and the emotional appeals aimed to manipulate us. I clearly see that none are perfect but I have really been alienated (from being a registered Republican to now being an Independent) by the gross, arrogant and self-serving, dishonesty of the Republican Party. After Bush, Cheney, Rove,, and now with Boehner, McConnell, Kyl and several others, supported by Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Steele and more, including the overt and covert support of those who they serve, all seriously presenting an obnoxious and flagrant irresponsibility that boldly attacks but offers nothing positive and really demonstrates a total focus only on their political ambitions at any cost and without conscience, I now see the dishonesty pendulum as having swung far to the right. John Dean, in his book ‘Broken Government’, describes how the current Republican mindset prevents them from responsibly governing. Again, without honesty I can’t see how to expect any quality but then that is really something we each need to discern with private discipline for ourselves; the key simply is in having the discipline to reject being conned.
RGiles,
Awesome Post, Voted for sure!