New DNC ad questions Romney’s claim that “any president would have” killed bin Laden
In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Saturday, Mitt Romney said he was “delighted” that President Obama “gave the order to take out Osama bin Laden.” It was something, Romney told Wallace, “any president would have done.”
Not so, according to a new ad from the Democratic National Committee. The video compiles praise from prominent conservatives, all of whom commend Obama for bin Laden’s death.
“I worked with a lot of these guys, and this is one of the most courageous calls, decisions, that I think I’ve ever seen a president make,” says former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
“The president, I think, handled this brilliantly, frankly,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell says in another clip.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is also shown lauding Obama. “It takes a lot of courage to make a decision like that. I admire him,” he says.
Watch the ad:
Recycled newspapers, “Bo-Zilla” deck the White House halls
The White House sometimes may not know what to do with reporters’ questions, but it appears to have made good use of their work this holiday season - using old magazines and newspapers to help deck the halls. The recycled publications were used to make sparkling golden wreaths and trees adorning the “Green Room,” which is decorated with the theme of recycling and reusing ordinary materials.
This year’s decorations at the executive mansion – with an overarching theme of “Simple Gifts” — include 19 trees. One is covered with red, white and blue ornaments commemorating the branches of the U.S. military, and topped with a hand-made dove, symbolizing peace. Beside the tree is a basket filled with cards on which visitors can write messages, and a mailbox to send the messages to troops serving overseas.
A large figure of Bo, the Obama family dog, wearing a picture of himself on a red collar, is the focal point of an area decorated to depict “A Child’s Joy.” A tree showcases gingerbread ornaments decorated by 300 children of members of all branches of the U.S. military. Nearby is the figure of the shaggy family pet, made of 40,000 black and white pipe cleaners. “It’s pretty, pretty shocking,” first lady Michelle Obama told children attending a preview of the decorations. “But it’s very cool and he’s very soft.”
Bob Lapp, 88, from Carlinville, Illinois, one of the volunteers who helped decorate the White House, said the real Bo had seen his doppelganger. “I’m sure he’s seen it, because he’s walked through here many times,” said Lapp. Joking that no one might believe that someone his age could pitch in as a volunteer, Lapp pointed out another tribute to the first pet. This year’s White House Christmas card is on a wall near the Bo statue. Signed by the president and first lady and their daughters Malia and Sasha, it also bears the “signature” Bo, with a small paw print.
Bo’s likeness makes another appearance in the State Dining Room, where the dog is modeled in a marzipan blend and sits in front of this year’s White House gingerbread house. The mansion confection is clad in white chocolate with clear gelatin windows and even a tiny White House kitchen garden — this year’s model weighs well over 400 pounds.
“They complain every year that it’s getting heavier. We just tell them that they’re getting older,” executive pastry chef Bill Yosses joked. The White House chefs have crafted gingerbread houses since Richard Nixon was president four decades ago.
Senate Republicans ask: What’s the hurry on the new START treaty?
When it comes to ratifying President Obama’s nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Russians, Senate Republicans say: don’t rush us.
Obama has said he would like to see the Senate ratify the new START treaty with Moscow this year. But he will need some Republican support to get the 67 votes required for ratification. And Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans don’t yet have the answers to their questions about the agreement and related concerns about how much money will be spent modernizing U.S. nuclear forces.
“The only way this treaty gets in trouble is if it’s rushed,” McConnell said in an interview with Reuters. “My advice to the president was, don’t try to jam it, answer all the requests, and let’s take our time and do it right,” he said.
The new START treaty would cut the arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia by about 30 percent.
McConnell said he had not yet decided how he would vote on the treaty, but that he would be strongly influenced by whatever Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican whip, decides. Kyl is considered something of an expert on nuclear weapons.
Kyl is pushing the administration to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. The White House has proposed spending over $80 billion to do this over the next ten years. But McConnell suggested that some evidence of the administration’s commitment will need to be written into appropriations bills pending in Congress to convince Kyl.
“All they have to do is find enough money to satisfy Senator Kyl that they are prepared to do what they said they would do,” he said. “If it’s important to you, you can find a way, in an over a trillion dollar discretionary budget to fund it. In my view they need to do that, because without that I think the chances of ratification are pretty slim,” McConnell said.
Sen. Mitch McConnell asserts that the Senate needs more time to consider the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, but nothing could be further from the truth. The treaty was signed more than a year ago, and the Senate has held at least 20 hearings on it. It is supported by an impressive number of members of the Republican foreign policy establishment, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, George Shultz,James Baker and Colin Powell; former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger; and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. The text of the treaty places no limits on U.S. development of missile defenses, and, as noted in the article, the Obama administration will seek substantial increases in funding for the nuclear weapons complex in parallel with the implementation of the treaty. Last but not least, there is real urgency to ratifying the treaty as soon as possible. When the prior START agreement lapsed last December, the elaborate system of verification measures that allowed the United States to keep close tabs on Russian nuclear developments lapsed as well. As seven former heads of the Strategic Air Command and the U.S. Strategic Command noted in a recent letter to Congress, we will know more about Russia’s nuclear program with New START than without it — a significant benefit to our security. The time to ratify New START is now.
Washington Extra
The special relationship has been upgraded. It is now “extraordinary”, “truly special” and “absolutely essential”.
President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, both repeatedly calling each other by their first names, were at pains today to demonstrate the warmth of ties between their two nations, despite an embarrassing row about BP, the oil spill and Lockerbie.
Joking about the temperature beer should be served and the tidiness of their children’s bedrooms, the two men, both left-handers we now realize, clearly wanted to show they enjoyed a personal rapport. A deliberate contrast to the businesslike tone of the relationship with Gordon Brown?
In the substance too, there was no argument that BP needs to pay for the oil spill but should not be forced out of business, and “violent agreement” that the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison last year was plain wrong.
Elsewhere today, evidence that getting involved in legislation to curb Wall Street excesses might not be a huge vote winner come November.
A Reuters/IPSOS poll showed Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, a chief architect of the financial regulation overhaul, trailing Republican candidate John Boozman, by 19 points, by 54 percent to 35.
For more on Cameron’s visit, check out Matt Spetalnick and Matt Falloon’s story, Steve Holland’s analysis on Barack and David, Toby Zakaria’s blog on beer diplomacy. .
If he’s going to make good on his promises to the citizenry then he needs to remove the enemy of the citizenry which is the fake non human corporate constituency. They lobby congress to make conditions more favorable for them to profit even if it is at the expense of the citizenry.
They have no business lobbying congress. The government belongs to the citizenry. Corporations are not human beings and not individual people. Abolish corporate citizenship.
Healthcare reform may leave some legal migrants to U.S. in limbo
Immigration, particularly what to do with millions of illegal immigrants living in the shadows, has long been a divisive issue in the United States — so it comes as little surprise that undocumented migrants are excluded from benefits under President Barack Obama’s signature drive to overhaul healthcare. But legislation to reform the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system to cut costs, extend coverage and regulate insurers could also exclude more than a million legal permanent residents living, working and paying taxes in this country of immigrants from core benefits, according to a study published this month. The report by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute said 4.2 million lawful permanent residents in the United States are uninsured. More than 1 million of them could be excluded from Medicaid coverage or insurance subsidies outlined in the bill — five versions of which are currently on Capitol Hill — if Congress does not remove a five-year waiting period for eligibility. Congress is set to debate the legislation in coming weeks, and the prospects for the overhaul are far from certain. But if legal residents are denied eligibility for Medicaid and insurance subidies, yet are nevertheless subjected to mandates requiring them to buy health insurance coverage, the study concluded, many of them would face a “significant burden.” “Leaving large numbers of legal immigrants out of healthcare reform would defeat the core goal of the legislation, which is to extend coverage to the nation’s 46 million uninsured,” said MPI Senior Vice President Michael Fix, who co-authored the report. The study also concluded that implementing verification systems to ensure that 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States do not receive benefits could prove expensive and may also discriminate against Americans. “Document checks would be especially costly, and would have the biggest impact on U.S. citizens who cannot produce birth certificates or other forms of ID, leading to lost or delayed coverage,” said Marc Rosenblum, a co-author of the MPI study. The measures denying undocumented immigrants benefits are likely to be welcomed by most Americans — one telephone survey in June found 80 percent of U.S. voters opposed providing government healthcare coverage to undocumented migrants. But activists say a bill that left many legal permanent residents in limbo would likely discourage some skilled migrants from seeking to move to the United States. Aman Kapoor, the founder and president of advocacy group Immigration Voice said many high-skilled immigrants including engineers and software specialists were already wary about moving to the United States because of red tape and delays in processing applications for permanent residency. “This will ring the alarm bells again around the world for the high-skilled community,” Kapoor said, adding that skilled foreign workers were “already considering other destinations like India, China and Brazil because the hassle of settling here has increased dramatically.”
Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Senator Max Baucus and Senator Olympia Snowe shake hands after Senate Finance Committee passed healthcare reform bill, October 13, 2009)
Healthcare the world over seems much more of an illusion, for far too many people that need it. My company http://www.smilemd.com is right now securing doctors and dentists for voluntary free clinics, for all those uninsureds throughout the USA, who still will not have insurance coverage, even after the dust settles on the great healthcare debate.
The irony of the issue that’s left out of these debates we’re fighting this very moment is that most people in this country die from viruses that are freely contracted. Whatever then will all your money buy you then?
Genealogist unearths first lady’s family tree back to 1850
A genealogist working with The New York Times has traced Michelle Obama’s family tree back five generations to a 6-year-old slave girl named Melvinia who was valued at $475.
The White House said first lady Michelle Obama had not known many of the details of her family history and enjoyed reading it. She had declined to comment on the story for The New York Times because of the personal nature of the subject.
“I don’t believe she knew or had known all of this, but enjoyed reading about her family history,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
The slave girl Melvinia initially appears in the documentary record in 1850, the property of South Carolina landowner David Patterson, who owned 21 slaves.
After Patterson died in 1852, Melvinia was sent to a smaller 200-acre farm in Georgia, the home of Patterson’s daughter and son-in-law, Christianne and Henry Shields. She was one of only three slaves on the farm near Atlanta.
Sometime when she was a teenager, possibly as young as 15, Melvinia became pregnant by a white male. The father is unknown, possibly Henry Shields, then in his 40s, or one of his four sons, aged 19 to 24.
Melvinia gave birth around 1859 to a boy, Dolphus. She and the father of her first-born son are Michelle Obama’s great-great-great-grandparents, genealogist Megan Smolenyak says.
The resources available online without cost these days is amazing! I’ve researched my father back to 1850 and my mother back to the 1500s. There are many places to start your search, but I’ve found that putting a grandparents name in quotes on Google is sometimes the best way to find where someone else has already done the research for you and they are willing to share.
Plan B for Afghanistan: cut and run?
In Monday’s blog, I looked at McChrystal’s recommendation for a significantly stepped up effort to stabilize Afghanistan, and a major shift in strategy to win over the Afghan people.
But many people, including influential actors within the administration and several readers who left comments on Monday, are advocating a different approach: pull out, and leave Afghans to their own devices. This blog looks at Plan B.
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“The Russians were in Afghanistan for 10 years. The Americans have been here for seven, and we will send them home in just three more years”.
That was how Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, the Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan, described the movement’s message to the Afghan people when I met him in a drafty and bare Kabul room in March.
Zaeef, who was imprisoned for years in Bagram and Guantanamo, says he is no longer a member of the Taliban but is now acting as a mediator between its leadership and the Afghan government.
But his comments underline one of the West’s biggest problems in trying to regain the momentum in Afghanistan.
It’s not a question of ‘cutting and running’, it’s a question of quickly withdrawing like gentle-people from something that is very far removed from most realities known to the rest of the World, while negotiating optimum oil prices for the future. Shock and awe simply fuels more hatred.
An honest assessment of Afghan mistakes, but what is next?
It is encouraging that the U.S. administration finally seems to be getting a handle on what went wrong in Afghanistan these past eight years.
What is less encouraging is the fact there seems little political appetite around the globe to fix the mess.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report is a stark and honest assessment of the war in Afghanistan.
A failure to send more troops within the next year and regain the initiative “will likely result in failure,” he said.
Everyone knows that time is running out to get Afganistan right, with political support eroding fast in the West but the Taliban dug in for the long haul and getting stronger all the time.
McChrystal is also right in saying that more troops and more resources are not enough in themselves, and pointing out many of the errors of the past eight years.
Among them:
We can’t win in afganistan, so we should get out and take our 100,000 “contractors” with us
Carter says race is issue for some Obama opponents
Some of President Barack Obama’s more demonstrative opponents list any number of reasons why they oppose him and why they’re angry — from the bank bailout, to his plan to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, the direction the country is heading and the ballooning U.S. deficit. But former President Jimmy Carter thinks a lot of the opposition is really about Obama’s race.
“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man,” Carter said in an NBC interview on Tuesday.
Here’s what the Georgia Democrat had to say: “I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that share the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans. “And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”
Disputes over race are not unheard of in U.S. presidential politics. Click here for a list of some of them.
Click here for more Reuters Political News. Photo Credit: Reuters/Tami Chappell (Carter at a baseball game in Atlanta in June)
Why are so many people taking the race bait?? I want a government that encourages honesty, hard work, liberty and freedom. Let’s debate who will uphold those values… I haven’t found them yet.
I was born and raised in a Social Democracy… my dad can no longer afford car insurance on his retirement … taxed for everything including church…(my guess – only a matter of time before someone in our government comes up with that bright idea)
For social programs to exist the working class gets to pay an average of 50% income tax… is it working?? Depends who you ask, unemployed get help to make it by, but really can’t get any where, you can’t kick a renter out of an apartment because they won’t pay because they are protected by law. If you come in from out of country on a work visa and you want breast augmentation, you just need a doctor to certify that you have a lack of self esteem – voila – procedure will be paid for courtesy of the government…
Who gets screwed? The Tax payers!!! “Black” money is rampant, because working people feel it is the only way to save.
Where do people think government gets the money for social programs??? Call it what you want – I trust myself more than anyone in government – I want to decide who I’m helping! I’ll work to reach my goals! Hope springs in the heart and soul and not from government!
One president did get bin Laden. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.