Inspire Political Discourse

TRANSCRIPT: President Obama on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill – May 27, 2010

An excellent conference with the President taking full responsibility for the response to, and clean up of, the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

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THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

12:50 P.M. EDT, THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2010

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good afternoon, everybody.

Before I take your questions, I want to update the American people on the status of the BP oil spill, a catastrophe that is causing tremendous hardship in the Gulf Coast, damaging a precious ecosystem, and one that led to the death of 11 workers who lost their lives in the initial explosion.

Yesterday the federal government gave BP approval to move forward with a procedure known as a top kill, to try to stop the leak. This involves plugging the well with densely packed mud to prevent any more oil from escaping. And given the complexity of this procedure and the depth of the leak, this procedure offers no guarantee of success; but we're exploring any reasonable strategies to try and save the Gulf from a spill that may otherwise last until the relief wells are finished, and that's a process that could take months.

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Arizona Legalizes Racial Profiling, Ctd

Via Bob Cesca @ Huffpost on the Arizona law and neo-slavery:

And now this is the law of the state of Arizona -- arresting people, citizen or not, simply for appearing Hispanic. The ghosts of Green Cottonham, "anti-vagrancy" laws and Black Codes. America has resurrected its predilection for rounding up brown people based on flimsy excuses and good ol' boy lawmaking.

While there's no evidence that the Arizona law will feed the rise of a new underground forced labor market in the United States, it's clear that the various components of neo-slavery are here now. And the optics and civil liberties violations, say nothing of the long-term consequences, are horrible. We're on the brink of rounding up Hispanic people on ridiculous charges while American corporations are actively engaged in the trafficking of illegal immigrant labor.

How soon, I wonder, until we read about Hispanic people -- citizens or otherwise -- being picked up for not having their birth certificates and other "papers" in their back pockets and consequently shipped off on some sort of prison "work release" program to a cabbage farm or meat packing plant?

Dodd Excoriates GOP for Obstructionism on Financial Reform Bill

Via Think Progress

Despite months of bipartisan negotiation and promises of cooperation, Republicans recently threatened to filibuster the bill. A visibly angry Dodd took to the Senate floor today to condemn the GOP’s obstructionism, calling out their “very false talking points” and warning them that they will have to explain to Americans, “I’m sorry but we’re not on your side:”

DODD: A letter from the Minority Leader said we’ve got 41 votes here to stop you from even debating this bill. Well, you explain that to the American taxpayer, to the small business, to the American family, and to others out there who are paying an awful price because the the mess that the very institutions who are today leading the charge against us getting a bill. Explain to them why the status quo is in their interest and their benefit. Mr. President, those who vote to block this bill will be sending a clear message to American families, businesses, community bankers and tax payers and that message will be, I’m sorry but we are not on your side. We are choosing another side of this equation.

Last month, my good friend the Minority Leader and the Republican senator responsible for campaign fundraising participated in meeting in New York with Wall Street executives. … Comes back right afterwards and we get all of a sudden, we get this rhetoric about too big to fail and we can’t possibly go to this bill. Don’t tell me that miraculously, these things happen and all of sudden we find ourselves with 41 senators [opposed to this bill].

Break up the big banks?

Economist, Paul Krugman:

Clearly, there was a massive increase in financial concentration, with a few true behemoths emerging. It’s easy to argue that this creates moral hazard, because the giant firms know that they’re too big to fail – which is also an easy slogan to remember. The idea that size is the problem has gained a lot of credibility from Paul Volcker, who personally embodies the truth of too big to fail (if you’ve ever met him); more seriously, Volcker has argued strongly that the repeal of Glass-Steagall, allowing financial firms to grow big in part by merging conventional banking with investment activities, set the stage for the crisis.

My view is that I’d love to see those financial giants broken up, if only for political reasons: it’s bad to have banks so big they can often write laws. But I’m not sold on the centrality of too big to fail to the crisis, for reasons best explained in terms of the second doctrine.

Economist, Simon Johnson:

There is no social value to having banks above $100 billion in total assets and we all now understand the danger of allowing banks to become 10 times that size – let alone entering the $2-$3 trillion range; we will gradually and responsibly force our biggest banks to become smaller.  This worked for Standard Oil – no one can claim it hurt the oil industry.  And who would really want to go back to having AT&T run a monopoly in any part of telecommunications?

Obama Mandates Rights to Gays Re Hospital Visitation and Medical Care Choices

On Thursday, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum that extends rights of hospital visitation to same-sex partners of gays, and directs respect for their choice of an advocate to make medical care decisions for them.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

SUBJECT: Respecting the Rights of Hospital Patients to Receive Visitors and to Designate Surrogate Decision Makers for Medical Emergencies

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VIDEO: Barney Frank on Hardball Calls Out the GOP on Their Blatant Lies Re the Financial Reform Bill

Earlier in the week, I talked about Mitch McConnell, and the GOP’s efforts to kill the financial reform bill now in the Senate.

As of yesterday, the lies from the GOP were coming ever faster and more furious. And all based on a memo by GOP pollster Frank Luntz, concerning tactics to be used by the Republicans to kill health care reform, which talking points have now been converted and used to attempt the murder of financial reform. Imagine that. Republicans lying. Republicans protecting Wall St. and the very financial services companies that drove us to the brink of economic collapse.

Barney Frank obliterated the nonsense last night on Hardball.

World Nuclear Security Summit Hosted by Obama

President Obama hosted 47 world leaders at a summit yesterday, with the goal being to find ways to reduce the threat that terrorists such as al Qaeda could obtain nuclear materials or weapons.

President Obama completed a first meeting of world leaders on combating nuclear terrorism with a list of specific commitments from dozens of nations to eliminate or lock down nuclear materials, in what he called a “bold and pragmatic” program to finish the task in the next four years.

The meeting that Mr. Obama convened, and to a great degree stage-managed, was unlike any negotiations over arms control with the Soviets during the cold war or, more recently, the so-far fruitless talks to get North Korea to disarm. This was a far broader effort to persuade African, Latin American, Asian and European nations to agree on steps to deny terrorist groups the two materials necessary to make a bomb: plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

Mr. Obama began the session arguing that while superpower confrontation was far more remote, the risk of nuclear terrorism had never been greater, and he quoted the warning of Albert Einstein soon after the beginning of the nuclear age: “We are drifting towards a catastrophe beyond comparison.” [……]

He achieved some success[emphasis is mine].

At the end of two days of meetings, Mr. Obama could claim two major accomplishments: The summit meeting forced countries that had failed to clean up their nuclear surpluses to formulate detailed plans to deal with them, and it kicked into action nations that had failed to move on previous commitments.

A second summit meeting will be held in two years in South Korea, Mr. Obama said, to make sure countries are on track. [……]

Image source: Doug Mills, New York TImes

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Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party Stands in Defense of Wall Street and Against Financial Reform

Last week McConnell attended a private meeting with 25 Wall Street executives, many of them hedge fund managers.

What McConnell did not mention was that, last week, he traveled alongside National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. John Cornyn (TX) to New York City for a private meeting with elite hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives. The purpose of the meeting between the top Republicans and the financial executives was to enlist “Wall Street’s help” in funding Republican campaigns in the fall and killing any tough financial reform:[......]

This week McConnell has thrown down the gauntlet, refusing to deal on Dodd's financial  
reform bill. His excuse making harkens back to the much publicized GOP strategy memo written by pollster Frank Luntz. In point of fact, his arguments against reform are close to exactly as Luntz urged the GOP to make.

In order to prevent future taxpayer bailouts of the big banks, to prevent our economy from spinning out of control again, to protect our country from financial insolvency, we must legislate financial reform. Period. The removal of controls on the financial services industry is what got us in to this mess to begin with. If we listen to the Republicans we are asking for more of the same.

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Lieberman is a Neocon

Just when you thought he might behave……..

Lieberman is back. Making friends. [……]

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Sarah Palin Mock’s Obama’s “Vast Nuclear Experience”

On Wednesday, Sarah Palin offered her unique view of Obama’s new nuclear policy.

This morning, Obama responded to the Wasilla hillbilly when asked to do so by George Stephanopoulos on GMA.

A short time ago while perusing the blogs, I learned that Palin had once again managed to stick her foot squarely in her mouth when she did her tap dance at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans today. Via TPM, bolding mine, she had this to say:

“Now the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer, and a part-time senator and as a full-time candidate, all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.

Ms. Palin was clearly blissfully unaware that contrary to her uninformed, narrow view, the President did have the benefit of researching and authoring a bill while still a U.S. senator. Via Bob Cesca:

Lugar-Obama Signed into Law Thursday, January 11, 2007 President Bush today signed the Lugar-Obama proliferation and threat reduction initiative into law.
Authored by U.S. Sens. Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Barack Obama (D-IL), the Lugar-Obama initiative expands U.S. cooperation to destroy conventional weapons. It also expands the State Department’s ability to detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction.

As Mr. Cesca pointed out, weapons and materials of mass destruction are, lo and behold, WMDs or loose nukes.

So, yes Sarah, the President is once again vastly superior to you in his knowledge of this topic.

That is all.

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VIDEO: Jon Stewart Schools the Fox News Channel Nitwits on Nuclear Policy

Jon Stewart schools the nitwit liars, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Sean Hannity on America's new nuclear policy.

Do these people have NO conscience?

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President Obama Dismisses Sarah Palin’s Foreign Policy Cred

Yesterday, the ever non-credible Sarah Palin compared the President’s new nuclear policy to a playground fight.

PALIN: No administration in America's history would I think ever have considered such a step that we just found out that President Obama is supporting today.

You know that's kinda like getting out there on the playground, a bunch of kids ready to fight and one of the kids saying 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.

During a GMA interview this morning, George Stephanopoulos asked President Obama to respond to Palin's ridiculous comment:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to get to some of those broader issues [of nuclear proliferation]. Because you're also facing criticism on that. Sarah Palin, taking aim at your decision to restrict the use of nuclear weapons. Your pledge not to strike nations, non-nuclear nations, who abide by the nonproliferation treaty. Here's what she said. She said, "It's unbelievable, no other administration would do it." And then she likened it to kids on the playground. She said you're like a kid who says, "Punch me in the face, and I'm not going to retaliate." Your response?

OBAMA: I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the string of criticism has been out there among other Republicans as well. They think you're restricting use of nuclear weapons too much.

OBAMA: And what I would say to them is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But not concerned about her criticisms?

OBAMA: No.

A strong, pointed response from Obama. I do not, however, understand what the hades Stephanopoulos was thinking when he asked this question. As most of us recall Palin's utterly childish response to Charlie Gibson's question to Palin regarding her foreign policy credentials, or lack thereof, the question to President Obama seems particularly outrageous.

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NO to "Drill, Baby, Drill"!

A major disagreement is brewing in the Democratic Party, with both Democrats and Progressives at odds  with President Obama over his proposal to allow drilling along the East Coast of the US, and parts of Alaska.  

Is this another attempt at more fruitless bipartisanship? We disagree, Mr. President. Strongly.

The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The environmentally sensitive Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected and no drilling would be allowed under the plan, officials said. But large tracts in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska — nearly 130 million acres — would be eligible for exploration and drilling after extensive studies.

Via The New York Times

Turning back the Reagan legacy

As Obama tackles health care reform, he simultaneously strikes at wealth inequality.

In the U.S., we have been dogged by wealth inequality via redistribution, since the Reagan years. Hence the near demise of the middle class. Along comes Obama.

The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.[.....]

The Colbert Report Video: Blackwashing

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Blackwashing
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

TEXT-TRANSCRIPT: PRESIDENT OBAMA SPEECH TO CONGRESS ON HEALTHCARE REFORM SEPT. 9, 2009

Click here to watch the video.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:
“Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, and the American people:

When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

As any American who is still looking for work or a way to pay their bills will tell you, we are by no means out of the woods. A full and vibrant recovery is many months away. And I will not let up until those Americans who seek jobs can find them; until those businesses that seek capital and credit can thrive; until all responsible homeowners can stay in their homes. That is our ultimate goal. But thanks to the bold and decisive action we have taken since January, I can stand here with confidence and say that we have pulled this economy back from the brink.

Krugman on Faux-Populist Tea Parties, Republicans, and Democrats…..

| In his NYT column, Nobel prize- winning economist, Paul Krugman weighs in on tea parties, Republicans, and   Democrats…..And once again, I find myself agreeing with Krugman, the economist whom Republicans have just recently loved to quote, as Krugman has been at odds with the Dem mainstream over the handling of the economy. This time, however, I suspect that the right wingers won't be too happy about what Krugman has to say…..

Today’s G.O.P. is, after all, very much a minority party. It retains some limited ability to obstruct the Democrats, but has no ability to make or even significantly shape policy.

Beyond that, Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats.

Krugman goes on to say essentially the same thing that I pointed out in my article last week --- namely that the tea parties are not a matter of public sentiment, are not spontaneous, but rather, organized and paid for by the corporatists, and promoted by Fox News.

Last but not least: it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.

Liberals invented revolution in this country. Leave it to the Republicans to muck it all up and give it an undeservedly bad rep. Happy teabagging, tools.

UPDATE:

MSNBC’s David Schuster gives us some background on the teabagging movement. Hilarious and factual.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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IPD Political News Summary: Monday, April 6, 2009

Friday, April 3 – Sunday, April 5, 2009

| For 18 years, in a practice begun by George H.W. Bush, the government has banned the media from providing coverage of returning war dead.
At President Obama’s request, the Pentagon has now lifted the ban, although permission from the service member’s family is required. “The arrival of the remains of Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Myers, a 30-year-old supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, at Dover Air Force Base at 11 p.m. today [ipd note: Sunday, Apr. 5] marked the first time that the transfer of any of the nearly 5,000 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan was open to the media. The transfer of the flag-draped casket was carried out with great dignity, for the seven family members present.” source
AP/Reuters photo
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ZERO Cred, and ZERO Numbers in the GOP “Budget” Plan

In response to President Obama’s call to produce their own budget, the GOP did just that, invoking the criticism of media conservatives, as well as hilarity from the Democrats, when it was noted that the GOP budget had not one number in it! That’s right, ZERO NUMBERS in a budget!

You may see this ad put out by the DNC as a little silly……on the other hand, the GOP’s idea of a budget is one hell of a lot sillier. Still laughing here.

Obama Reverses Bush Policy and Announces Overhaul of How Federal Contracts Are Awarded

:: Fulfilling another campaign promise, Obama announced the reform of government contracting procedures, and signed an executive memorandum to begin the process. From the AP:

Obama joined lawmakers to announce an executive memorandum that commits his administration to a new set of marching orders for awarding contracts. Obama said "the days of giving defense contractors a blank check are over" and said changes could save up to $40 billion a year.

Obama's presidential memo changes government contracting procedures. It directs Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to work with Cabinet and agency officials to draft new contracting rules by the end of September. Those new rules, White House aides say, will make it more difficult for contractors to bilk taxpayers and make some half-trillion dollars in federal contracts each year more accessible to independent contractors.

AP photo.
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