Obama sings again, this time blues with B.B. King, Mick Jagger
President Barack Obama gave what appeared to be an impromptu performance of “Sweet Home Chicago” during a blues concert Tuesday night at the White House in celebration of Black History Month.
At the end of an evening of performances from the likes of B.B. King, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Derek Trucks, Shemekia Copeland and others, Obama grabbed a mic from the stage and crooned, “Come on, baby don’t you wanna go,” part of the popular blues standard.
A month ago, Obama sang a little Al Green — a moment captured on video and viewed thousands of times over. It was seen as having added cool points to the president. Afterwards First Lady Michelle said Obama sings to her all the time.
Whether Tuesday’s performance was really impromptu, or staged as another way to help the president’s image during an election year, we may never know. One thing we do know is that Republican candidates like Mitt Romney have not had the same success in musical performance.
Obama called the blues “music with humble beginnings,” with roots in slavery and segregation in the United States.
Obama said, “Because their music teaches us that when we find ourselves at a crossroads, we don’t shy away from our problems. We own them. We face up to them. We deal with them. We sing about them. We turn them into art.”
See the video here from PBS. Obama sings at about 47 seconds.
Rights advocates press White House while China’s Xi visits
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – While China’s leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, enjoyed center stage in Washington on Tuesday, the wife of a jailed Chinese rights lawyer and other opponents of Beijing’s grip on dissent said the Obama administration should increase pressure on China.
The White House has said it always presses human rights concerns in talks with Chinese leaders.
“On critical issues like human rights, we will continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of recognizing the aspirations and rights of all people,” President Barack Obama said during Xi’s visit to the White House.
But in a hearing before a congressional panel and protests outside the White House, opponents of China’s one-party government said they feared that international worries about jailed dissidents and stifled speech in China were being muffled by economic interests and geopolitics.
“I had thought up to now that the Obama administration was strongly acting on my husband’s behalf. But I am saddened and surprised it has appeared to downplay China human rights concerns before this visit,” said Geng He, the wife of Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese rights lawyer whose secretive imprisonment has drawn criticism from the U.N. human rights body.
Geng told a congressional panel hearing that her request to see Vice President Joe Biden to discuss her husband’s case had not received a reply.
“Such self-censorship by the United States gives license to the Chinese government to act with impunity,” she said in remarks prepared for the hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.
Republican Santorum catches Romney in U.S. polls
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum has surged into a virtual tie in opinion polls with Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, setting up a tough fight in the party’s primary in Michigan on Feb 28.
Picking up support from voters aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement and white Christian evangelicals, Santorum rose rapidly to edge 2 percentage points ahead of Romney in a national poll released by the Pew Research Center on Monday.
Santorum, a social conservative, also came within 2 points of Romney in a national Gallup poll, and was ahead by 15 points in Michigan, where Romney was born and has been expected to do well.
“It’s a real threat to the kind of sense of inevitability that Romney was trying to project a few short weeks ago,” said Christopher Arterton, a professor at George Washington University.
The Republican candidates are engaged in a state-by-state battle for their party’s nomination to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 presidential election.
Conservative voters wary of the more moderate Romney may be coalescing around Santorum, who appears to be benefiting from fights between Republicans and Democrats over abortion, gay marriage and contraception in recent weeks.
Almost twice as many Tea Party supporters and white evangelical Christians in the Pew poll chose Santorum over the former Massachusetts governor.
Santorum calls Romney “desperate,” downplays wins
Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum on Sunday called recent attacks by his rival Mitt Romney “desperate,” as the two face off in an increasingly contentious battle to become the party’s White House nominee.
Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania and social conservative known for his staunch positions on abortion and gay marriage, is competing to be the conservative alternative to Romney, who faces resistance from Republicans skeptical of moderate stances he took when he was governor of the liberal state of Massachusetts.
Asked about Romney’s recent efforts to highlight times when Santorum sided with Democrats while in Congress, including votes to raise the federal debt ceiling, Santorum appeared amused.
“For him to suggest that I’m not the conservative in this race, you know, you reach a point where desperate people do desperate things,” Santorum said on ABC’s “This Week.” He also downplayed recent victories for Romney, who won the nonbinding Maine caucuses as well as a straw poll at a major conservative conference in Washington over the weekend.
Santorum also suggested Romney won Saturday’s Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll by busing in supporters and giving them tickets.
“I don’t try to rig straw polls,” he told CNN. When asked if he thought Romney rigged the CPAC vote, Santorum said, “Well, you have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they bought. We’ve heard all sorts of things.”
The straw poll was conducted among CPAC attendees, a group of party activists from across the country. It is strictly symbolic but does show Romney’s organizational strength and demonstrate he is capable of appealing to conservatives who have lacked enthusiasm for him.
White House sticking to contraception plan
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will not make any more changes to the rule announced last week requiring health insurance plans to provide women with coverage for contraception, although U.S. Catholic bishops have said it violates the Church’s religious principles.
“We put out the plan that reflects where the president intended to go. This is our plan,” White House chief of staff Jacob Lew said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Lew said no religious organization will be required to pay for or facilitate the coverage that it disagrees with since the insurance companies are the ones who will pay.
Asked what incentive insurance companies would have to provide contraception, Lew – Obama’s budget director until a few weeks ago – said it would be cost effective just like other preventive healthcare coverage.
“As somebody who’s done budgets for a lot of years, when people tell me things don’t cost money, I ask a lot of questions,” Lew said on ABC News’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”.
“This is actually one of those exceptions to the rule. If you look at the overall cost of providing healthcare to a woman, the cost goes up, not down, if you take contraceptives out.”
Lew said the White House had not expected universal support for contraceptive coverage, but did find backing from several affected groups, including Catholic hospitals and charities.
Romney appeals to US business with harsh China talk
, Feb 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney slammed China’s “autocratic model” of capitalism in a speech to technology executives on Friday, keeping up attacks on the economic powerhouse days before a visit from a Chinese official expected to be the country’s next leader.
China’s rise could ultimately threaten U.S. freedom, said Romney, seen as the frontrunner in the Republican race for the nomination to oppose Democratic President Barack Obama in the November election.
Romney couched his usual call for limiting government regulation of the U.S. economy in the context of a zero-sum contest with China’s fast growing economy.
“China now has a competing strategy which they are selling around the world and their strategy is this: free enterprise, of a sort,” he said, to laughter from the audience, “combined with authoritarianism.”
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to be China’s next president, is to be in the United States next week on a visit that could set the mood for relations in the next decade. Both sides want Xi’s visit to encourage long-term cooperation between the world’s two biggest economies.
Romney has made tough talk on China a centerpiece of his campaign’s economic message. He has called the country a cheater and said that if elected president he would seek to label Beijing a currency manipulator.
In his remarks on Friday, Romney said in addition to China, Russia and jihadism threatened to compete with the United States and the West for world leadership.
Rick Santorum: birth control ruling has nothing to do with women’s rights
Forcing religious organizations to provide contraceptives has nothing to do with women’s rights, Republican presidential contender and vocal Catholic Rick Santorum said on Thursday.
The comment aligned Santorum with a lineup of conservative critics bashing Democratic President Barack Obama’s rule requiring religious institutions — but not churches — to provide health insurance plans that cover birth control.
The rule, announced in January, covers religious-affiliated groups like charities, hospitals and universities. The Catholic Church opposes most methods of birth control and conservatives have painted the rule as an attack on religious freedom from a secular president.
Speaking to CNN’s John King, the former Pennsylvania senator said: “That’s the Church’s money, and forcing them to do something that they think is a grievous moral wrong. How can that be a right of a woman? That has nothing to do with the right of a woman.”
Santorum bills himself as the only true conservative in the field of Republicans vying to win their party’s nomination to challenge Obama in November. He’s backed by evangelical leaders and social conservatives who admire his consistent and at times polemical stances on abortion and gay marriage. He swept nominating contests Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado on Tuesday buoyed by votes from social conservatives.
Better than expected economic news and the administration’s move, which was initially viewed as a score for women’s health advocates, have shifted the conversation of an election that most believed would be centered on the economy.
Conservative heavyweights including House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas Governor Rick Perry and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich have all warned of an attack on religious freedom coming from the White House. Obama also risks losing the votes of Catholics of whom he won 54 percent in 2008. On Thursday, the administration back-pedalled from its position, promising room for compromise but the groundwork for the attacks seems to have been laid.
Police clear DC Occupy site, protesters look to a new day
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. police officers cleared tents from an “Occupy” protest site in downtown Washington on Sunday, but demonstrators said even without the camp they would continue to fight for economic equality and other issues.
About two dozen protesters in Freedom Plaza, just blocks from the White House, watched calmly as the National Park police and sanitation workers in hazmat suits dismantled protesters’ tents, packed bedding and personal belongings into plastic bags and cardboard boxes, citing violations of rules against living in the park. Police cruisers, police officers outfitted with shields and riot gear, and an armored vehicle waited on the outskirts of the plaza.
The National Park Service, which tends the grounds where the protesters have camped, issued a series of warnings to protesters after coming under pressure from U.S. lawmakers and city officials who cited unsanitary conditions and the cost of policing. The Park Service bans camping in Freedom Plaza and at another nearby site cleared by the police on Saturday.
Since October, more than 100 protesters allied with the Occupy Wall Street movement have taken over public grounds near the White House to protest the country’s growing income gap, war and what they see as corporate corruption of democracy.
The police crackdown in Washington comes after police moved to disband other Occupy sites in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. Some see the movement as dwindling since it was first sparked by protests in New York’s Zuccotti Park in September.
In Washington, one protester sat cross-legged on the ground, holding a sign painted with the words, “Imagine Peace” while a group of women chanted, “This occupation is not leaving.” A man handed out pins in the shape of ivy branches, symbolizing regrowth.
“Fall back, regroup, and fight another day,” said Mike Sheffer, 54, who traveled from Vermont to be part of the anti-war demonstration in Freedom Plaza that kicked off the encampment in October. “The reasons why we came here haven’t changed.”
U.S. police clear DC Occupy site, protesters look to a new day
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – U.S. police officers cleared tents from an “Occupy” protest site in downtown Washington on Sunday, but demonstrators said even without the camp they would continue to fight for economic equality and other issues.
About two dozen protesters in Freedom Plaza, just blocks from the White House, watched calmly as the National Park police and sanitation workers in hazmat suits dismantled protesters’ tents, packed bedding and personal belongings into plastic bags and cardboard boxes, citing violations of rules against living in the park. Police cruisers, police officers outfitted with shields and riot gear, and an armored vehicle waited on the outskirts of the plaza.
The National Park Service, which tends the grounds where the protesters have camped, issued a series of warnings to protesters after coming under pressure from U.S. lawmakers and city officials who cited unsanitary conditions and the cost of policing. The Park Service bans camping in Freedom Plaza and at another nearby site cleared by the police on Saturday.
Since October, more than 100 protesters allied with the Occupy Wall Street movement have taken over public grounds near the White House to protest the country’s growing income gap, war and what they see as corporate corruption of democracy.
The police crackdown in Washington comes after police moved to disband other Occupy sites in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. Some see the movement as dwindling since it was first sparked by protests in New York’s Zuccotti Park in September.
In Washington, one protester sat cross-legged on the ground, holding a sign painted with the words, “Imagine Peace” while a group of women chanted, “This occupation is not leaving.” A man handed out pins in the shape of ivy branches, symbolizing regrowth.
“Fall back, regroup, and fight another day,” said Mike Sheffer, 54, who traveled from Vermont to be part of the anti-war demonstration in Freedom Plaza that kicked off the encampment in October. “The reasons why we came here haven’t changed.”
Police, some on horseback, clear Occupy DC protesters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Police removed protesters as they confiscated bedding and most tents on Saturday from an “Occupy” protest site just blocks from the White House, enforcing a no-camping rule for the public McPherson Square they had ignored for months.
Dozens of mounted police and police on foot in riot gear earlier sealed off the square, which is administered by the National Park Service, and moved in before dawn to enforce the no-camping regulation.
Demonstrators have been in the square since early October to target the growing income gap, corporate greed and what they see as an unfair tax structure favoring the richest Americans.
By early evening, police had scuffled with protesters and moved all but one out of the park as they cleared most of the encampment. Police said the move was only an enforcement of park rules but Occupy demonstrators called the action a “full force eviction” and said the police had beaten them with batons and pushed them out so violently that several people were trampled.
Police said there had been eight arrests and one injury to a police officer who was hit in the face with a brick. Protesters said a protester had been beaten unconscious but the police did not confirm the injury.
“They pushed and beat us out.” said Sam Jewler, a protester, 23, from the nation’s capital who has been camping in the square for months.
The National Park Service has repeatedly warned protesters it would start enforcing a ban against camping in the square alongside K Street, home to many of the powerful lobbyists who seek to influence lawmakers, and at the Occupy movement’s site at Freedom Plaza, both a few blocks from the White House.
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