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.
Santorum explains “phony theology” comment
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he wasn’t questioning Barack Obama’s faith on Saturday when he said the Democratic president’s agenda was based on “some phony theology.”
Santorum explained his comments during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, saying he was questioning the president’s world view — not his faith.
“I accept the fact that the president’s Christian,” Santorum said. “I just said that when you have a world view that elevates the earth above man says that, you know, we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the earth by things that are frankly just not scientifically proven.”
A devout Roman Catholic and social conservative, Santorum brought up the theology issue a day earlier in Columbus, Ohio, as he addressed supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement. (Here’s the story from Reuters’ Sam Jacobs)
On ABC’s “This Week,” Robert Gibbs, a senior advisor to Obama’s re-election campaign said Santorum’s “phony theology” comment crosses a line and was dragging the presidential campaign down.
“I can’t help but think that those remarks are well over the line,” Gibbs said. “It’s wrong. It’s destructive. It makes it virtually impossible to solve the problems that we all face together as Americans.”
Here’s Santorum on “Face the Nation”
All these so-called “social conservatives” screamed bloody murder when it was rumored that Muslims were being granted a religious exemption to the individual mandate on PPACA. (Even though that was nothing more than a chain-email rumor.) Now these same wingnuts insist that if Obama doesn’t grant Catholics a religious exemption that he’s somehow violating the constitution. Which is it Republicons? Do your religious beliefs exempt you from following the law or don’t they? Or is it just YOUR religious beliefs that garner special privilege?
from Tax Break:
Obama touts Boeing, critics lament company tax breaks
Obama went to aircraft giant Boeing on Friday to tout U.S. manufacturing and to pitch changes in the U.S. tax code – including slashing tax deductions for corporations that shutter U.S. plants, and a new minimum tax on foreign profits earned in tax havens. “My attitude is every multinational company should have to pay a basic international tax. You should not have an advantage by building a plant over there, over somebody who is investing here and hiring American workers,” Obama said visiting a Boeing plant in Everett, Washington.
“And every penny of that minimum tax should go towards lowering taxes for companies like Boeing that choose to stay and hire here in the United States of America," he said.
Ironic, since most business groups are privately groaning about the idea of a basic minimum tax on foreign profits earned in low tax countries like the Cayman Islands.
Meanwhile, a left-leaning tax policy group cried foul about Obama's choice of venue. By their calculation Boeing has paid no net taxes over the past decade, using legal means that the group says are undermining the integrity of the U.S. tax code.
Citizens for Tax Justice, which is funded in part by labor unions, estimates that Boeing got money back from the U.S. government over the past decade – paying a negative 6.5 percent tax rate, even though it was profitable every year from 2002 through 2011. “Every time (Obama) sees a company that pays no taxes, he wants to be its best friend,” said Bob McIntyre, a veteran Washington D.C. tax activit who helped push changes that led to a 1986 overhaul of the tax code, which raised taxes on corporate America.
McIntyre may have been referring to General Electric, which McIntyre's group says also has paid no taxes in recent years, and whose Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt heads Obama’s advisory “Jobs Council.”
Boeing, for its part, says its effective tax rate over the past several years has been in the high 20-percent to low 30 percent range. One of the biggest tax breaks Boeing takes advantage of is the research and development tax credit, which is widely praised by lawmakers of both parties.
Santorum: backer’s contraceptives comment was bad joke
“It was a stupid joke,” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says about a wealthy backer’s “aspirins for contraceptives” comment.
Whatever it was, Santorum — a staunch social conservative – said he’s not going to be responsible for what his supporters say.
“I’m not going to play that game,” the former Pennsylvania senator told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren Thursday night when asked about what Foster Friess said earlier in the day.
Friess, the chief donor to the pro-Santorum SuperPAC, was asked whether he had any concerns about the candidate’s views on social issues. Part of his response raised eyebrows.
“Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.
Here’s video from the MSNBC interview:
I don’t know what is more scary. The fact that Santorum is running for president or the fact that he actually won 3 states so far.
Washington Extra – Peace by piece
Not since Vietnam has the United States sat down with an enemy it was fighting on the battlefield and negotiated an exit from war. That long-standing policy might end this year if a carefully choreographed diplomatic dance takes U.S. and Afghan officials to a negotiating table with the Taliban.
As Reuters Washington correspondent Missy Ryan explains, President Obama’s peace gambit has the potential to be a significant development for U.S. foreign policy. But it turns out it is a policy borne out of necessity: two years ago, the Pentagon thought the Taliban could be defeated militarily, and today, it’s all too clear they aren’t going away.
There are many hurdles and not insignificant push back here at home to overcome. And Obama may want to don a helmet for the incoming fire… from Capitol Hill. As soon as he notifies Congress of plans to move Taliban detainees from Guantanamo to get the ball rolling, he is sure to face a torrent of attacks.
If the idea of talking with a fundamentalist group known for its brutality and repression is just too hard to conceive, consider this: it could have well happened a decade ago and possibly ended the war in Afghanistan.
As a former U.N. official and advocate of peace talks told Ryan: “When people start to add up cost of war in Afghanistan over the last decade, they will ask how on earth the new Afghan leadership and U.S. officials failed to take advantage of these early overtures by the Taliban.”
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Romney’s misguided attack on the automotive bailout
Michigan’s upcoming GOP presidential primary lends itself to automotive analogies. So here’s one. If Mitt Romney were a car, he’d be the Mitt-subishi Eclipse.
That might well be the upshot of Romney’s op-ed in the Detroit News this week deriding the 2009 automotive bailout as “crony capitalism” and calling it a sop to the United Auto Workers union for supporting President Barack Obama’s campaign. Romney wins points here for courage and consistency (he has taken this position before), but not for political smarts or judgment.
Romney has found himself in the shaky position of defending Romneycare, the government-financed healthcare plan in Massachusetts, while criticizing the government-financed rescue of GM and Chrysler. It’s hard to see a consistent political philosophy in this, which is why conservatives don’t trust Romney. It’s also hard to understand why, on the eve of Michigan’s critical primary, Romney is criticizing the only Obama domestic-policy initiative that actually has worked.
Not surprisingly, the $81 billion bailout was, and remains, wildly popular in Michigan. But on a more fundamental level, the government bailout was the only way to save General Motors and Chrysler, and thus was a critical element in preventing the Great Recession from morphing into Great Depression II.
Recall that in November 2008, the month Obama was elected, the U.S. economy shed 533,000 jobs, the biggest monthly job loss in more than 30 years. That jolted George W. Bush, a Republican, into action. The first $25 billion in government bailout money was approved by the Bush administration before Obama took office.
While Romney asserts that a “managed bankruptcy” funded by private investors could have rescued General Motors, absolutely no private money was on the horizon in 2009 for either GM or Chrysler. Nobody was raising their hand to buy a used car company, and the frightened banks wouldn’t have financed it anyway. The only alternative to a government bailout was the outright liquidation of both companies. Maybe the U.S. economy could have survived that blow, but maybe not. What’s clear is that it would have been foolhardy to find out.
For both political and philosophical reasons, the Obama administration really didn’t want to bail out Detroit. The potential for accusing the administration of paying off the UAW, as Romney has done, was all too obvious. To the president and his aides, the bailout was sort of like changing a diaper — disgusting but necessary.
Bashing the auto industry might not be a smart idea in a Michigan primary but it is definitely not a dumb move for the general election. US taxpayers are going to lose well over $60B bailing out Chrysler and GM. Michigan in the presidential election is seen as a solid lock for Obama and should it be won by a Republican it would signal a massive landslide.
So clearly when it comes to the Presidential election Michigan doesn’t matter for the Republicans. Being able to use the bailout as an issue can play very very well. Afterall people are irrate at the banks being bailed out by TARP, how many realize that the banks already paid back their TARP money with a profit to Uncle Sam? You can’t say that for the TARP loans to Fannie, Freddie, GM or Chrysler. Add then all up and it is $100′s of billions of taxpayer dollars wasted.
“Linsanity” hits the White House
President Barack Obama is well-known to be a huge basketball fan, and he hasn’t missed the biggest story in the NBA — the rise of Jeremy Lin, the Harvard-educated, Taiwanese American guard whose record-setting scoring run has led the New York Knicks to six straight victories.
Lin added to his legend on Monday night by making a three-point shot as time expired that gave the Knicks a 90-87 victory over the Toronto Raptors.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said he and Obama had talked about Lin on Tuesday on the helicopter ride from the White House to catch an Air Force One flight to Milwaukee.
“The president is an avid sports fan and particularly avid basketball fan and we were speaking about Jeremy Lin on Marine One as we flew here to Andrews Air Force Base this morning,” Carney told reporters as they flew to Wisconsin.
“It’s just a great story and the president was saying as much this morning. Obviously terrific for the New York Knicks but it’s the kind of sports story that transcends the sport itself,” he said
“It’s a great story and yes, he’s very impressed and fully up to speed. I know he’s watched Lin play already and he’s seen the highlights from last night’s game,” Carney said.
We need to change our name to VSA, the vacuous states of america.
Gingrich offers “dream team” to supporters
For a $100 donation, this free poster of Newt Gingrich and his conservative “Dream Team” can be yours.
The poster — featuring the Republican presidential candidate flanked by endorsers of his White House bid — was offered to supporters Tuesday in a new fundraising appeal.
The Dream Team photo was unveiled at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington last week. The Gingrich campaign said it was hit, and now conservatives across the country are clamoring for a copy of their own.
We wondered whether the Gingrich folks were inspired by the reported success of rival Rick Santorum’s sweater vest campaign. But there was no immediate response to an email inquiry about the initial poster offering.
By its own account, the Santorum campaign’s “thank you” gift to small donors — supporters without SuperPAC money — has been a hit too.
The Santorum camp has “extended by popular demand” — for a limited time — its offer of the official Rick Santorum For President sweater vest, which can be had for a minimum contribution of $100. “It’s a great way to show your support for Rick,” the campaign says, describing the vest as 100 percent cotton, made in the USA, and grey (shouldn’t that be g-r-a-y?).
And that’s not even the biggest acknowledgement being offered to people willing to make small contributions to their favorite candidate.
oh man, part of that $100 goes to the guy that photoshopped 20 lbs of bacon fat off Newt’s neck. That’s great. It looks like some kind of poster for CSI: Ignorantville.
Washington Extra – Post script
You’ve heard about the income divide and the digital divide. Now, get ready for the postal divide.
Nearly 80 percent of the 3,830 U.S. post offices slated for closure later this year are in sparsely populated areas where poverty rates are higher than the national average, according to our findings in the special report “Towns go dark with post office closings.”
One-third of them fall in areas with limited or no wired broadband Internet, leaving 1.7 million people in the lurch. One of them is Carlos Sandoval, a rancher in Trinchera, Colorado, who relies on his post office for everything except groceries.
The closures will strike at the economic heart of many of these communities, but they will also hit the reputation of a Postal Service expected to serve all. And although there is not much noise about the impending closures in Washington, those who know about the toll they will take are not mincing words.
“The postmaster general doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on in rural America, and it shows,” said U.S. Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Tending to China-US relations
Valentine’s Day is as good a day as any for China and the United States to work on the kinks in their relationship.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping signaled beforehand that tending to the state of the “dynamic and promising” U.S.-China connection would be the at the heart of his White House visit on Tuesday.
The economic and trade relationship between the two countries is far too important to be frayed by “frictions and differences,” Xi wrote in a Q&A submitted to the Washington Post and published on the eve of his White House meeting with President Barack Obama.
“What is important is that we properly handle these differences through coordination based on equality, mutual benefit, mutual understanding and mutual accommodation. We must not allow frictions and differences to undermine the larger interests of our business cooperation,” Xi wrote.
The man many see as China’s leader-in-waiting promised to do better and called on the United States to make an effort too — but he might not be feeling any love from the Republicans seeking to upset Obama in the Nov. 6 election.
Tough talk on China has been a recurring theme on the campaign trail — especially for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. He calls China a cheater and says, if elected, he’d work to get Bejing labeled a currency manipulator, something the U.S. Treasury has so far refrained from doing.
In a speech last week, the Republican lumped China with Russia and jihadism. (It didn’t have the same ring of George W. Bush’s axis of evil, but the point was made.) Romney, a leading candidate now tied in recent polls, said that trio threatened to compete with the United States and the West for world leadership.
ABSOLUTELY LOVE MY PRESIDENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!