'Courage' will live on. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
"I was planning to eat this sucker," President Barack Obama just joked, before issuing an "official" pardon for Courage the turkey. His girls convinced him to do otherwise, Obama said.
Cracking another one-liner, Obama also said that he and daughters Sasha and Malia today have "saved or created four turkeys" -- a second bird, named Carolina, has also been pardoned and the first family will be delivering two birds (for eating) to a D.C.-area charity.
That "saved or created" line, of course, refers to the oft-used phrase his administration keeps using about the jobs that it says have been "saved or created" by this year's economic stimulus package.
On a more serious note, the president urged all Americans to -- as we say thanks this week -- "also give back to those less fortunate" during this holiday season.
The Obama girls and the president all took the opportunity to pet Courage, by the way.
I am very sorry for this article, andthat this is the program automatically issued a document from the article. Do not the subject of race and politics make the discussion too radical and sincere hope that the world is very peaceful.
So now, a Google Image search does not turn up the image.
Here's our original post:
By Mark Memmott
A disgusting photo illustration of first lady Michelle Obama that turns up when anyone does a Google Images search on her name is disturbing, the search engine giant concedes.
But in a statement that's showing up along with searches about the first lady, Google says:
People examine a sample table setting before the state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009. (Gerald Herbert / AGENCY CREDIT GOES HERE)
By Frank James
The White House has released the list of attendees at Tuesday's state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a highlight of the first state visit hosted by the President Barack Obama.
It includes Hollywood luminaries like directors Steven Spielberg and M. Night Shalayam, mogul David Geffen and super agent Ari Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
There are also a number of Indian Americans, as you'd expect, including Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Deepak Chopra.
Jeff Immelt, General Electric's CEO, is on the list. As are network anchors Brian Williams of NBC and CBS's Katie Couric.
President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held a joint news conference at the White House today.
Singh is making the first official State visit of a foreign leader since Obama was sworn into office in January. There will be a State Dinner at the White House tonight.
While issues related to U.S.-India relations were likely to come up during the news conference, iPresident Obama was also asked about reports that he's planning to announce next Tuesday his decision on how many more U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan.
We used the box below to live-blog during the news conference. Just click the "play" button and our updates should flow in automatically. If you want to submit a comment, there's a box at the bottom of the player for them:
President Barack Obama, like his predecessors, has made improving science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, education a priority.
On Monday, he announced a new initiative of his administration called "Educate to Innovate" meant to raise the performance of U.S. students in these areas where they have been lagging behind other nations.
To that end, he announced a new, annual White House science fair to give the accomplishments of young scientists the same high-profile that-a-boy NCAA champions get.
If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you've produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too. Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models, and here at the White House we're going to lead by example. We're going to show young people how cool science can be.
It's hard to argue that U.S. students shouldn't do better at science and math if only because, as Obama said today, a knowledge of these subjects helps critical thinking as well as informed citizenship.
But the push for more and better STEM education, most often grows from the argument that it's important for the U.S. economy's future for the nation to produce more STEM professionals.
Yet, what would it mean if the U.S. produced more engineers or scientists?
For the first time in the 10 months since he took office, President Barack Obama's approval rating has dropped below 50% in Gallup's daily "tracking" poll.
The polling firm just reported that its surveys show "49% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president."
And the gap between Obama's "approval" and "disapproval" numbers has narrowed to five percentage points: 44% of those surveyed disapprove of the job he's doing, Gallup says.
The numbers, Gallup writes:
Are based on telephone interviews with 1,533 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Nov. 17-19, 2009, as part of Gallup Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points.
It adds that "most of the recent decline in support for Obama occurred in July and August." And:
Obama now is the fourth fastest to drop below the majority approval level, doing so in his 10th month on the job. Gerald Ford dropped below 50% approval during his third month in office, and Bill Clinton did so in his fourth month. Ronald Reagan, like Obama, also dropped below 50% in his 10th month in office, though Reagan's drop occurred a few days sooner in that month.
Gallup has been doing presidential approval polling since the Truman administration, and it says "all presidents except John Kennedy dropped below the majority approval level at some point in their presidencies, and all recovered after the first time below this mark to go back above 50% approval."
Pollster.com collects data from a variety of pollsters. It's latest average of those surveys puts Obama's approval rating at 50.5% and his disapproval rating at 44.5%.
There were fireworks today on Capitol Hill when Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, laid blame for the economy's problems on the Obama administration and called on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to "step down from your post."
Geithner ended up telling the congressman that he won't "take responsibility for the legacy of crises you (and, presumably, other Republicans in Geithner's opinion) bequeathed the country."
It all happened at a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee -- while Geithner was appearing before Brady and other members.
Sec. Geithner. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
By the time the you-ruined-the-economy-NO-YOU-RUINED-THE-ECONOMY exchange finished, the two were talking over each other and Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., had to bring things to order.
We'll pass along two things to listen to.
First, a short clip of how the whole exchange finished. It begins with Geithner laying the blame for the economy's problems on the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress:
And, for those who want to get the full effect, here's the entire Brady-Geithner back-and-forth. It begins with Brady making the case that the Obama team has failed so far:
NPR's John Ydstie will have much more about the committee hearing and Geithner on today's All Things Considered. Click here to find an NPR station that broadcasts ATC.
In a profile of courage, Attorney General Eric Holder spoke after a Senate hearing with 9/11 families critical of his decision to give some Guantanamo detainees a civilian trial.( C-SPAN.org)
It was an unusual moment following a Senate hearing.
After being grilled for about four hours, mainly but not exclusively, by Republican senators critical of his decision to put five Guantanamo detainees and terrorist suspects on trial, Attorney General Eric Holder didn't bold from the hearing room immediately, as many a cabinet secretary might have.
Instead, the lanky and soft-spoken Justice Department head lingered to talk with family members of 9/11 victims who expressed their dismay and upset, though politely, with his decision to send Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind, and four other detainees to New York City for trial.
In Washington, someone like the attorney general is always on stage, particularly when he's at the center of a political controversy like the current one. So an experienced prosecutor, judge and federal bureaucrat like Holder knew enough to talk to those family members and to not duck them or their questions.
Still, even though it was obviously the right thing to do, if only from a public relations standpoint, to stay and talk with the survivors as C-Span's cameras captured the scene, public officials don't always do what's right in such situations.
For a public officials who's made a tough decision to stand and face the music is the essence of democracy. The video of Holder explaining his decision should be required viewing for all those who aspire to public office.
A partial transcript of Holder's exchange with Alice Hoagland whose son was a passenger on Flight 93 on 9/11 follows:
Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to give a federal court trial instead of a military commission hearing to five Guantanamo detainees the government has linked to the 9/11 attacks has led to criticism that the Obama Administration is transforming the war on terror from a military to law-enforcement affair.
This has led some critics to wonder if captured terrorist suspects would have to be read their Miranda rights on being captured by U.S. military or law enforcement representatives.
In one of the highlights of Wednesday's Justice Department oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, attempted to put Holder on the spot with the question: would U.S. officials need to Mirandize Osama bin Ladin if it captured him, including telling the al Qaeda leader that he had the right to remain silent?
Holder essentially said no, not necessarily. It would depend on the tack the U.S. government decided to take after capturing the terrorist leader. Graham clearly wasn't persuaded by Holder's answer.
The exchange started with Graham stumping Holder with a question one would have thought the attorney general would have been prepared for:
GRAHAM: Can you give me a case in United States history where a (sic) enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?
ATTY GEN. HOLDER: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made --
SEN. GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it for you. The answer is no.
For anyone who's out of work, "nothing matters until you have a job," Vice President Joe Biden conceded on last night's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And, unfortunately, "jobs are going to lag behind growth in this country by somewhere between 12 to 18 months," Biden added.
After taking a little time to play tourist at the Great Wall, President Barack Obama has flown from China to South Korea for the last stop on his tour of Asia.
Also before leaving China, the president gave a round of interviews to U.S. TV news networks. Among the highlights:
-- He told Fox News' Major Garrett that there's a threat of a "double-dip recession" if the government piles on too much more debt. A "double-dip" occurs when the economy quickly slips back into recession after emerging from a downturn.
-- On CBS, Obama said he would fire anyone who's proved to have been leaking information about his decision-making process regarding how many more troops to send to Afghanistan. It will likely be several more weeks before he announces a decision on additional deployments, Obama also said.
On Morning Edition, NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported on the mixed reviews that the president's visit to China has generated there:
Update at 8:15 a.m. ET. CNN has posted video from its interview with the president:
All dressed up. Obama with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. (Pool/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
Every year at the summit of leaders from Asia and the Pacific Rim nations, the presidents and prime ministers put on shirts that reflect the host nation's sense of style and gather for what have become light-hearted photos.
President Barack Obama, attending his first annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, was in Singapore yesterday for this year's funny photos. The garb: Silk tunic shirts with mandarin collars, in a choice of red or blue-gray.
Of course, there's also been work to do at the summit. NPR's Scott Horsley, who's traveling with the president on Obama's 10-day trip across Asia, says Obama "became the first American leader in decades to sit in the same room with Myanmar's military ruler." According to one of Obama's national security advisers, Scott reports, the president took the opportunity to call for political reform in Myanmar, and specifically for the release of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other pro-democracy political prisoners.
Obama also met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the two discussed the ongoing problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions. The leaders said they aren't satisified with the pace of talks with Iran and that "other options" might have to be explored.
As The New York Times writes, Obama also said that "the reset button has worked" to improve U.S.-Russian relations.
It's was announced that the 2011 APEC summit will be held in Obama's native state; Hawaii.
We suspect we know what type of shirt the leaders will be wearing in that year's group photo.
The 2009 class photo (Obama is ninth from the left). (Pool/Getty Images)
Ndesandjo, who lives in Shenzhen, China, talked with NPR's Louisa Lim for a story that's due on today's All Things Considered.
In the report, Louisa asks Ndesandjo to listen to this clip of the president telling NPR (in 2005) that "there's a wonderful saying by Lyndon Johnson that 'every man is either trying to live up to his father's expectations or making up for his mistakes.' I guess I'm sort of doing both. I think in some ways I still chase after his ghost a little bit":
Ndesandjo chuckles at their different views. "I guess in my case I don't see myself chasing after his ghost," he says. "I think for a long time his ghost was chasing after me":
Ndesandjo's book is called Nairobi to Shenzhen. The president, you might recall, wrote Dreams from My Father, an account of his effort to learn more about the father who left the family when Obama was quite young.
Yesterday, Ndesandjo did an online Q&A at WashingtonPost.com. The brothers are expected to see each other when Obama visits China during his current 10-day swing through Asia.
To find an NPR station near you that broadcasts ATC, click here.
Craig and the president back in January. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
By Mark Memmott
As the Associated Press said earlier, White House Counsel Greg Craig has been "dogged by talk that President Obama's promise to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay military prison by January went awry under Craig's leadership."
The White House just confirmed that Craig is leaving. Here's a statement just sent to reporters:
-- The Associated Press -- "Attacks Kill 16 In Pakistan, Spy Agency Targeted": "A suicide bomber in a pickup truck attacked the northwestern regional headquarters of the Pakistani spy agency overseeing a campaign against militancy, killing 10 people Friday. Another suicide assault in the area killed six more. ... About an hour later, a second suicide car bomber attacked a police station farther south near the Afghan border, killing six people, said police official Tahir Shah."
-- BBC News -- British Prime Minister Thinks NATO Will Send More Troops To Afghanistan: "Gordon Brown has said he is hopeful he will be able to persuade countries both in and outside NATO to send more military personnel to Afghanistan. The prime minister said he had 'taken responsibility' for making the case for reinforcing the Afghan effort and believed 'burden sharing will happen.' He told the BBC that U.K. strategy was 'in line' with that of the U.S., which is considering how many troops to send."
Related report from the Associated Press: "A suicide car bomber attempting to strike an international military convoy on the outskirts of Kabul wounded at least 19 people Friday, including nine NATO service members, on a road that has become a frequent target."
-- Morning Edition -- Obama Begins 10-Day Swing Through Asia. From Tokyo, NPR's Scott Horsley talks with Renee Montagne about what's on the president's agenda. The central focus of the trip is China, Scott says:
-- Politico -- Obama Will Use 'State Of The Union' Address To Focus On Deficits: "President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 -- and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning."
-- Morning Edition -- U.S. Seeks Complete Forfeiture of NY Skyscraper And Four Mosques Tied To Iran. NPR's Mike Shuster reports:
President Barack Obama was headed to Asia on Thursday to first visit Japan, then attend the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Singapore and eventually wind up in China in his first trip to the region as the United States' head of state.
Researches for the Pew Global Attitudes Project report that Obama should be welcomed by Asian populaces confident in his leadership and who hold the nation he leads in significantly higher esteem than they did last year.
But, in a striking finding, Asians aren't nearly as positive about Obama as, say, Germans, Canadians and Brits.
An excerpt:
As President Barack Obama embarks on his first trip to Asia -- which will include stops in Japan, China and South Korea -- he will be greeted by publics who are confident in his judgment regarding world affairs and who generally agree with his international policies.
Like in much of the world, views of the United States have improved in Japan, China and South Korea over the past year, reflecting broad confidence in the new American president.
But improvements in U.S. image in the three countries on Obama's itinerary have not been as pronounced as they have been in many of the countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project in May and June of this year.
President Barack Obama has asked the Pentagon and intelligence officials to inventory and review all information related that existed prior to the Ft. Hood shootings in an effort to learn where mistakes, if any, were made to improve the process going forward.
The White House made the order public by releasing a memo which captures the order of Nov. 6 which was last Friday, the day after the shooting. The preliminary results are to be sent to the White House by Nov. 30.
An excerpt:
... I directed an immediate review be initiated to determine how any such intelligence was handled, shared, and acted upon within individual departments and agencies and what intelligence was shared with others. This inventory and review shall be conducted in a manner that does not interfere with the ongoing criminal investigations of the Fort Hood shooting.
The results of this inventory and review, as well as any recommendations for improvements to procedures and practices, shall be provided to John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism...
Along with the American flag, the White House flew the POW-MIA flag on Veterans Day(Don Gonyea / NPR)
By Frank James
Don Gonyea, NPR's White House correspondent, noticed something a little different about the flag situation at the White House today. On the flag pole atop the official residence, the POW-MIA flag waved in the wind below the American flag. Don took a picture of it.
It has flown above the White House under other presidents. But it always makes an impression when you see the stark black and white flag above the White House. It is the only flag other than the American flag to fly above the president's house.
Shortly after CBS News' David Martin reported last night that President Barack Obama "intends to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal most, if not all, the additional troops he is asking for" in Afghanistan -- about 40,000 more personnel -- the White House issued this statement from National Security adviser James Jones:
"Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources."
Regarding the CBS report, CNN says that "two senior administration officials suggested the information is being leaked by Pentagon sources who are trying to box Obama in by setting public expectations that he will send close to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan as McChrystal requested."
Author Jerome Corsi, who was among the group that "Swift Boated" Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election and more recently penned The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, has another eye-catching story at the conservative World Net Daily website.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama's transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.
Here's what NPR national security/intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten tells us about Corsi's conclusion:
This claim is so exaggerated as to be without merit.
Nidal Hasan was one of 308 people whose names appear on a list of "participants" in a series of public roundtable meetings organized by the "Presidential Transition Task Force," a project of the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University. Hasan was not himself a member of the Task Force.
Frank Cilluffo, the HSPI director, says the participants' list, published as an appendix to the Task Force report, was no more than a tally of those people who RSVP'd to a notice of the roundtable meetings, which took place between June 2008 and February 2009. "Hasan joined as a member of the audience," Cilluffo says.
When Cilluffo saw a picture of Hasan, he remembered him making a public comment during one of the roundtable meetings. "I had to cut him off, because he was going on too long," Cilluffo says. He says he can not recall what Hasan was saying.
Corsi's report, by the way, does something of a U-turn about midway through. "While the GWU task force participants included several members of government, including representatives of the Department of Justice and the U.S Department of Homeland Security," he writes, "there is no indication in the document that the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition, other than to serve in a university-based advisory capacity."
And an "editor's note" attached to Corsi's story after its publication says "Hasan is being reported as a participant in the GWU Homeland Security Policy Institute's Presidential Transition Task Force, not as a member, noting the group was a university think-tank, not part of the Obama administration official transition team."
So, he begins with a sure-to-shock conclusion -- that Hasan played a "homeland security advisory role" in the transition. Then, at a point in the story that many readers won't reach or hear about, Corsi reverses course.
President Barack Obama was supposed to leave for his first trip to Asia as president on Wednesday but the mass shootings at Ft. Hood Army Base have caused the White House put its schedule in "flux" according to the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
The president will attend a Ft. Hood memorial service whenever it occurs, Gibbs said, and he indicated Obama will do so even if it means pushing back Obama's departure for China. Indeed, Gibbs told reporters that the White House has told the Pentagon that the president will plan his Asia schedule around the timing of the memorial service.
Here's Gibbs' exchange with a reporter:
MR. GIBBS: I anticipate -- we will attend a memorial service at Ft. Hood when it is scheduled. I anticipate that that will likely happen prior to Asia. But again, this is, again, somewhat in flux based on the scheduling of this -- families that would have to come in from all over the United States. And our schedule is -- will be formed around that.
REPORTER: And they're not building the schedule around his schedule, I take it, for the memorial service, as far as you know?
MR. GIBBS: We have communicated with -- with the Department ofDefense that our schedule is built around the families that suffered tragic losses yesterday.
REPORTER: So if they were to delay it until Tuesday or Wednesday or something like that, he could end up changing his schedule on the Asia trip?
MR. GIBBS: We -- we anticipate going to Asia and we anticipate we will go to a memorial service. I -- I hate to get into hypotheticals --
REPORTER: Right, but you're not ruling out the possibility of changing the departure time.
MR. GIBBS: I'm not ruling -- I'd -- I'd prefer to talk about the schedule when we have a better sense of its formation.
President Barack Obama said Friday he met with Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller and other officials to review what is known about Maj. Nidal Hasan and the circumstances surrounding the officer's alleged shooting rampage at Ft. Hood Army Base.
Entering the Rose Garden to make a brief statement about the Ft. Hood killings and the economy, Obama cautioned Americans against "jumping to conclusions" regarding the shooter and his motivations. In addition, he requested prayers for the victims and their families as well as for service members serving in harm's way to protect the nation.
Furthermore, the president ordered all flags on federal buildings to be lowered to half staff until Veterans Day which is next Wednesday.
Obama's Ft. Hood related remarks:
"I want to begin by offering an update on the tragedy that too place at Ft. Hood. This morning I met with FBI Director Mueller and the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what caused one individual to turn his gun on fellow servicemen and women.
"We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts. What we do know is that there are families friends and an entire nation grieving right now for the valiant men and women who came under attack yesterday in one of the worst mass shootings ever to take place on an American military base.
So from now until Veterans Day I've ordered the flags at the White House and other federal buildings to be flown at half staff. This is a modest tribute to those who lost their lives even as many were preparing to risk their lives for their country. And it's also recognition of the men and women who put their lives on the line everyday to protect our safety and uphold our values.
We honor their service; we stand in awe of their sacrifice and we pray for the safety of those who fight and for the families of those who have fallen. And as we continue to learn more about what happened at Ft. Hood this administration will continue to provide you updates in the coming days and weeks.
President Barack Obama took a few minutes on Thursday to publicly thank the AARP and American Medical Association for supporting Democratic-led efforts to overhaul the nation's health-care system.
The endorsements were a boon that allowed the president to make the not unreasonable argument that since the two fierce advocacy organizations that arguably know the health-care issue the best were on board, wavering lawmakers and the public could safely ignore the negative attacks from opponents he suggested were self-serving.
In a visit to the White House press briefing room, Obama said:
I am extraordinarily pleased and grateful to learn that the AARP and the American Medical Association are both supporting the health insurance reform bill that will soon come up to a vote in the House of Representatives.
If he didn't get her approval beforehand, we can just imagine her 12-year old response when she finds out. "Oh, great Dad. So you told everyone I'm an idiot?"
Actually, the story ended with her acing a later test. Obama's point was about the importance of kids adopting goals for high achievement as their own as Malia did. So all's well that ends well.
Here's an excerpt from his speech:
These aren't in my prepared remarks, but I think it's important to note that Malia and Sasha are just wonderful kids, and Michelle is a wonderful mother. But in our own household, with all the privileges and opportunities that we have, there are times -- look, there are times when kids slack off. There are times where they would rather be watching TV or playing a computer game than hitting the books. And part of our job as parents -- Michelle and my job -- is not just to tell our kids what to do, but to start instilling in them a sense that they want to do it for themselves.
Afghanistan, and today's declaration that President Hamid Karzai has been re-elected despite the massive fraud during the August election, was topic No. 1 at today's White House briefing.
Spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Karzai is "obviously ... the legitimate leader of the country" now that he has been "declared the winner of the Afghan election." The U.S. will continue to discuss with Karzai and his ministers, Gibbs added, "governance, civil society and corruption ... to ensure that we have a credible partner in our efforts to help secure the country":
As for whether this means President Barack Obama can now come to a decision about how many, if any, additional U.S. troops to send to Afghanistan, Gibbs said that "the decision is still -- will be made in the coming weeks":
Halloween greetings from the first couple. (Kristoffer Tripplaar for the pool/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
Rich Wolf of USA TODAY (full disclosure: he's a friend) was the "print pool" reporter last night as the president and first lady welcomed trick-or-treaters to the White House. Here's some of what Rich passed along to the rest of the White House press corps:
The war of words between the auto website Edmunds.com and the Obama Administration continues over Edmunds.com's claim that the true cost to taxpayers of the Cash for Clunkers program was more like $24,000 per car than government rebates of up to $4,500 per car.
Edmunds.com arrived at its startling figure by teasing out the number of vehicles sold that were attributable to the government rebate program from the number that would have been sold anyway.
Divide the roughly $3 billion the Congress allocated for the Cash for Clunkers program and you get the $24,000 figure. This is what Edmunds.com reported on Wednesday.
Saying that "we just keep going into more valleys and finding more enemies because we're going into their valleys," former U.S. foreign service officer Matthew Hoh just spoke with NPR about the decision he made to leave the State Department because he disagrees with U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
In an interview, much of which will be broadcast later today on All Things Considered, Hoh told host Melissa Block that he's convinced the U.S. is losing "soldiers and Marines in combat to people who are fighting us, really only because we're occupying them":
Hoh believes most Afghans just want to be left alone in their villages and valleys. "They're concerned with the events in their local area, in their village and valley and that's what they fight for":
American policy has been misdirected, Hoh thinks, because "we only talk to Afghans who come into our headquarters and talk to us. We don't get out and talk to the people who live in the villages and valleys. And you realize that they want is to be left alone":
The U.S. had to go after the Taliban and al-Qaida after the 9/11 attacks, Hoh believes, but now is in danger of making al-Qaida stronger, not weaker:
And, he does not think leaving Afghanistan would turn that country into a "safe haven" for al-Qaida again. He maintains that al-Qaida no longer needs that country. Al-Qaida, he maintains, is an "ideological cloud" that spreads via the Web:
Your opinion?
Click here to find an NPR station that broadcasts ATC.
On Morning Edition, NPR's Scott Horsley talked with host Renee Montagne about what it was like at the base. Obama left the White House just before midnight, Scott says, and when he got to Dover the first thing he did was meet with the soldiers' families at a chapel.
Four times, Scott says, Obama went on board the transport plane and then accompanied the remains as they were brought out. The bodies were of 15 military personnel and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
Update at 3:15 p.m. ET: At the White House today, the president said his trip to Dover was "a sobering reminder" of the sacrifices of war, the AP reports. The wire service adds that Obama:
Told reporters Thursday that the burden of such sacrifices by U.S. military personnel and their families "is going to bear on how I see" the war in Afghanistan. Obama is in the midst of an intensive review of the war, which could result in him soon ordering more troops overseas.
Update at 12:15 p.m. ET. Jay Tea at the widely read conservative blog Wizbang writes that "if we're lucky, that was not just a photo op, and will help him come to the realization that he has a debt of honor to those men."
Liberal Steve Benen at Washington Monthly's Political Animal says that "for all the talk in recent years about whether American media should be allowed to cover -- and whether the American public should be allowed to see -- flag-draped caskets as fallen U.S. soldiers return home, it was good to see President Obama pay his respects this morning at Dover Air Force Base."
Update at 9:55 a.m. ET. At the conservative National Review Online's The Corner blog, Pete Hegseth writes that:
It was a classy move that I believe underscores the serious nature with which President Obama is approaching his forthcoming Afghanistan decision.
As much as anyone else, I want the president to make his decision as soon as possible -- American lives, and commitment, hang in the balance. But if he has to take a few extra days to get it right -- and become convinced of the rightness of General McChrystal's approach -- then the extra time is worth it.
A senior White House official tells ABC News that President Obama has wanted to do this ever since the policy of media coverage of the return of fallen troops was changed earlier this year, but he wanted to do so "in a way that caused the least amount of disruption." ...
... On the helicopter flight back to Washington, DC, President Obama thanked (military aide, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Clay) Beers for arranging the trip, after which no one said a word for the remainder of the 45-minute flight.
Update at 9:35 a.m. ET. The Associated Press posted this video:
President Barack Obama is thanked for his remarks by Sen. Edward Brooke at a Capitol Hill ceremony at which the former senator was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal(Gerald Herbert / AP Photo)
By Frank James
At the U.S. Capitol Wednesday two men who've made American history as the African Americans to attain what was previously unheard of political success occupied the same historic space, the Rotunda for an award ceremony.
Sen. Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress' highest civilian honor. (Two other blacks served in the Senate before him during Reconstruction but they were appointed by Mississippi state legislators.)
Brooke, now 90, served in the Senate from 1967 to 1979. A moderate Republican who was the last of his party to represent Massachusetts, he was heralded by the first African American man to occupy the White House.
Obama said:
It is a great privilege to be here today as we confer the Congressional Gold Medal on a man who's spent his life breaking barriers and bridging divides across this country -- Senator Edward Brooke.
It sounded like Obama could've been talking about himself.
Meanwhile, Brooke sounded a little like Rodney King when he urged lawmakers to put their differences behind them. Turning towards Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, Brooke said:
"We've got to get together. We have no alternative. There's nothing left. It's time for politics to be put aside on the back burner."
The 2008 Republican presidential nominee renewed his criticism of President Barack Obama's decision-making process today, saying that Obama "needs to make this decision and soon" regarding whether to send a large number of additional troops to Afghanistan.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS-TV's The Early Show that U.S. military leaders are "becoming frustrated" as the White House continues its policy review:
NPR's Giles Snyder adds that the president has said he won't rush a decision and does not want to risk additional American lives unless it's necessary:
If George W. Bush had done some of the things that President Barack Obama has -- such as spending four hours in New Orleans before heading off to a fundraiser or dissing a cable news network (Fox) -- there likely would have been much more of a fuss in the news media.
President Barack Obama greets sailors at the Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Fla. (Gerald Herbert / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Appearing at the the Naval Air Station Jacksonville in Florida on Monday, President Barack Obama drew understandable cheers and applause from service members when he said he would take his time to deliberate before putting them in harm's way.
And while I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests, I also promise you this -- and this is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan: I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way. I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary. (Applause.) And if it is necessary, we will back you up to the hilt. Because you deserve the strategy, the clear mission, and the defined goals as well as the equipment and support that you need to get the job done. We are not going to have a situation in which you are not fully supported back here at home. That is a promise that I will always make to you. (Applause.)
The president, eight-year-old Sasha, first lady Michelle Obama, and 11-year-old Malia. (Official White House Photo)
It was taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, who has been in the news lately as much for her own financial problems as for her decades of stunning portraits. The Washington Post says Leibovitz did not take a fee for this work.
Also last week it was NPR's David Folkenflik reporting that "the White House is taking direct aim at Fox News, the news organization that is the home to the most potent collection of its conservative critics."
Update at 8:50 a.m. ET, Nov. 2: Another update on the response to this post.
As you can see, there are now more than 1.1 million votes on the survey and 2,100 comments with this post.
We've also received several hundred e-mails. Here's a representative sample:
-- Chuck Parker: "Conservatives should be allowed to have one Network on their side, that being FOX since the libs have ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC acting as unpaid mouth pieces for Obama."
-- Wendy Glenn: " WE LOVE FOX. They tell it like it is and we make up our mind. It is a REAL news station. From loyal patriotic Arizona Ranchers!"
-- Paul Ingram: "NPR should be more objective instead of being a mouthpiece for the Obama administration, What a great opportunity you have of education and spreading truth to the population , taking neither side in any political dispute. Just the unvarnished facts."
-- Lyn Underdahl: "Fox News provides the opportunity for its listeners to be informed about all the issues. President Obama wants it 'His way or the highway'. Fox News has taken in on the 'high way' by encouraging Americans to get involved in what is being said, what is happening and those in charge who dictate what will become law. The talent of the News staff @ Fox is very credible. Hats off to all of you at Fox News! You make a difference in our World. Thank you for caring about about your listeners."
Many e-mailers wanted to make sure we knew that there had been an online effort, fueled by e-mail chains and blogs, among Fox News fans to "win" the poll. John Plotkin said he had received an e-mail from conservative "friends," urging that he vote in the survey. "If you think your poll results are accurate, think again," Plotkin added.
As I noted on Saturday, this isn't a scientific survey. It's an online poll that successfully got folks talking about a very interesting story.
Thanks again to all those who've taken part. We hope to keep hearing from you.
Update at 7 a.m., Oct. 31: I would like to say thanks to all those who were inspired to vote. As Raw Story explains, the poll touched off a competition. That's a good thing, in my opinion. These kinds of surveys aren't meant to be scientific. They're intended to stimulate discussion and give folks another way to express themselves. We certainly accomplished that.
Now, can I make a small request? Perhaps some who came here to vote and comment could come back on occasion and contribute again to the discussions? We value your input.
Kenneth Feinberg, the man who slashed the pay and compensation of executives at the seven financial firms that received the most federal bailout money (don't call him pay czar, he despises the term) made the media rounds Thursday to explain his actions.
He told NPR's Melissa Block, a host of All Things Considered that, overall, he felt he had gotten the balance right between setting pay at a level that recognized the public's outrage at hefty bonuses at at these companies while making sure the companies could pay the right executives enough so the firms make the sort of profits that lets them repay taxpayers.
Melissa asked Feinberg how that squared with the $7 million in pay Robert Benmosche, American Insurance General, is scheduled to make in 2009.
FEINBERG: You explain that by looking at the statute and balancing exactly the competing considerations. On the one hand we must get somebody on board who had nothing to do with AIG's problems. We have to find a CEO who can come in laterally and right the ship so that the taxpayer can get her and his money back.
And we looked at the data, we looked at all of the empirical information about what a CEO should be compensated, at what levels. And we concluded that getting Robert Benmosche, a nationally recognized expert in insurance to come in laterally and right the ship is something very, very important.
Conservative pundit William Kristol said former vice president Dick Cheney would be giving a "real humdinger" of a speech last night, and Cheney did just that.
At the Center for Security Policy in Washington, Cheney:
-- Said "the White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger" in Afghanistan. "Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries. Waffling, while our troops on the ground face an emboldened enemy, endangers them and hurts our cause."
-- Assailed the Obama team for not imitating the Bush administration on national security policy.
"Eight years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive -- and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed," Cheney said. "So you would think that our successors would be going to the intelligence community saying, 'How did you did you do it? What were the keys to preventing another attack over that period of time?'
"Instead, they've chosen a different path entirely -- giving in to the angry left, slandering people who did a hard job well, and demagoguing an issue more serious than any other they'll face in these four years. No one knows just where that path will lead, but I can promise you this: There will always be plenty of us willing to stand up for the policies and the people that have kept this country safe."
-- Defended the Bush administration against charges that it allowed some suspected terrorists to be tortured.
"In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program's legal underpinnings and safeguards," Cheney said. "Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country's name and in our country's cause. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.
"For all that we've lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings -- and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them."
But she did demonstrate a certain flair with the Hula Hoop, gyrating so long it was clear she had a certain expertise in that area.
For all her ability with the Hula Hoop, her timing appeared to fail her when it came to jumping double dutch. I'm not throwing any stones; I can't double dutch either. Then again, in New York City when I was growing up, boys didn't double-dutch. She even had problems with a single rope.
The 45-year old first lady had nothing to be ashamed about, however. She knocked out the agility ladder drill like a running back prospect at a football combine, finishing an obstacle course that took her up a slightly uphill on the White House South Lawn.
All in all, a pretty respectable performance. If ABC should once again revive its celebrity sports challenge The Superstars, they might want to check to see if Mrs. Obama's available.
The Obama Administration is about to order that top executives at the financial services companies that received the most bail out money from federal taxpayers take big pay cuts, according to the New York Times:
Kenneth Feinberg, White House pay czar, is about to drop the hammer on several finance firms. (Charles Dharapak/AP Photo)
WASHINGTON -- Responding to the growing furor over the paychecks of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in federal bailouts, the Obama administration will order the companies that received the most aid to deeply slash the compensation to their highest paid executives, an official involved in the decision said on Wednesday.
Under the plan, which will be announced in the next few days by the Treasury Department, the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the cash payouts to their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. For many of the executives, the cash they would have received will be replaced by stock that they will be restricted from selling immediately.
And for all executives the total compensation, which includes bonuses, will drop, on average, by about 50 percent.
The companies are Citigroup, Bank of America, the American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing arms of the two automakers.
At the financial products division of A.I.G., the locus of problems that plagued the large insurer and forced its rescue with more than $180 billion in taxpayer assistance, no top executive will receive more than $200,000 in total compensation, a stunning decline from previous years in which the unit produced many wealthy executives and traders.
President Barack Obama has become fond of a rather plebeian image lately. It is of a man mopping up a liquid mess as fast as he can while his critics complain he's not swabbing well or quickly enough.
(iStockphoto.com)
He used it last night at a $30,400 a couple New York fundraiser where more than $3 million was raised. If the president was aware of the irony of talking about mopping with that gilded crowd, he certainly didn't let on. He said:
I said this before, last week at a fundraiser. I don't mind cleaning up the mess that some other folks made. That's what I signed up to do. But while I'm there mopping the floor I don't want somebody standing there saying, "You're not mopping fast enough." Or, "You're not holding the mop the right way." (Laughter.) Grab a mop! (Applause.) Why don't you help clean up? (Applause.)
It's certainly a striking picture, Obama with a mop, though a bit out of character for the urbane, super cool, cerebral president.
It's an attempt to accomplish a few things. The president is obviously trying to break the raging policy debates down into simple, even simplistic terms for the average American. He's also labeling his critics as idlers who let others do all the heavy lifting.
Further, it's a way to bring himself down from his Olympian heights to seem like a regular guy.
More numbers from the Obama administration this morning on how many jobs it estimates have been "saved or created" so far by the $787 billion stimulus plan signed into law early this year:
250,000 "teaching or other education jobs" the Associated Press says.
Last week, the administration said that 30,000 jobs had been directly saved or created thanks to about $16 billion worth of contracts that are part of the $787 billion package.
Recovery.gov is the administration's official website for stimulus-related news.
Arianna says that Biden should underscore his opposition to a build-up of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by stepping down if President Barack Obama decides to send a large number of additional troops to that country. It would be, she writes, something that "generations to come" would be grateful for and a "crowning moment in a distinguished career" for Biden. And Biden could then become "the natural leader of the movement to wind down this disastrous war and focus on the real dangers in Pakistan."
Anyone who says President Barack Obama hasn't accomplished enough to deserve his Nobel Peace Prize is wrong, says the chairman of the committee that awarded him the honor on Friday.
"We simply disagree that he has done nothing," Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the Associated Press today. "He got the prize for what he has done."
According to AP, it spoke with four of the committee's five members and they strongly defended their choice "against a storm of criticism that the award was premature and a potential liability for the U.S. president." Three of the members "rejected the notion that Obama hadn't accomplished anything to deserve the award, while the fourth declined to answer that question," AP adds.
Jagland, according to the wire service, pointed to Obama's efforts to heal the divide between
the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe. "All these things have contributed to -- I wouldn't say a safer world -- but a world with less tension," said Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe.
Aagot Valle, a left-wing Norwegian politician who joined the Nobel panel this year, said that comments about the president being undeserving "patronize Obama."
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.
But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.
We started this poll on Friday. As of 11:45 a.m. ET today, 3,008 people had voted and the result was almost a 50-50 split: 52% saying the president did not deserve the award; and 48% saying he did. You can still vote:
Last week, Saturday Night Live had "President Obama" admitting that so far he'd done "jack and squat." This week, the joke was that he's the luckiest guy in the world -- and won the Nobel Peace Prize "for not being George Bush" (as Frank also basically said on Friday):
"We think that this gives us a sense of momentum when the United States has accolades tossed its way rather than shoes."
That's what State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said yesterday when he talked to reporters about the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Barack Obama on Friday.
His line is a reference, of course, to the incident in Baghdad last December when an angry Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at then-president George W. Bush.
And Crowley's rather undiplomatic quip underscores what Frank noted yesterday afternoon -- that it certainly appears that Obama got the award in part because he's not Bush.
After a follow-up question, Crowley steered back to give a more diplomatic answer about the connection between the Nobel Prize and the previous administration:
Question: "I have two questions. First of all, on your very clever comment about accolades, not shoes, how much of this Nobel Peace Prize do you think is, you know, a kind of award to the president for not being George Bush? I mean, there was so much kind of animosity in the international community because of the last administration that it seems that just the fact that this administration has offered a new approach around the world is what the award was really about. I mean, I think the president himself recognized that there isn't a whole lot of actual accomplishment yet about the award, but it's more about expectations and the fact that this administration is devising a new course. So how much do you think that this is an indictment of the past administration and an award for not being George Bush?"
Crowley: "Well, I think I'll follow the sage advice of Robert Gibbs and say it's impossible for us to project what the Nobel committee had in mind. I think what is important to us is an affirmation of not only the strategy but also the important agenda. The committee particularly singled out the challenge of nonproliferation. Obviously, it's been a significant focus of the president, the secretary, and others in these first 10 months, starting with the Prague speech and continuing with the session at the U.N. a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, we're very mindful as the secretary heads to Russia -- we've got ongoing discussions with Russia on a follow-on to the START treaty. We obviously are aware that we have important dialogue with Iran and North Korea that's ongoing. We're looking ahead to the NPT review conference next year, finding ways to strengthen the Nonproliferation Treaty and the global regime. And we know that there's a very heavy lift here with the United States coming up in terms of the administration's desire to see ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And there are other steps as well.
"So there is an opportunity here. The tone has changed, but obviously, we recognize that while the tone in the world has changed, the challenges remain. They're very significant. And I thought the president set the right tone today in terms of looking forward and understanding that there's a lot that needs to be done, but that as we go through this we'll need to see collaborative action. The United States can't solve this problem alone, but these problems will not be solved without the American leadership that we've shown in the first 10 months."
Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at Sen. Edward Kennedy's funeral. (Brian Snyder, Pool / AP Photo)
By Frank James
It's a pity that former President George W. Bush vowed to fade from view after leaving the White House and not publicly talk about his successor.
Because if anyone's true views would be fascinating to hear on this day when President Barack Obama was announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize it would be the 43rd U.S. president.
The awarding of the peace prize was clearly a repudiation of Bush's policies of unilateralism, particularly strong during his first four-year term, as well as the invasion of Iraq.
In a strange way, Obama owes Bush a debt because his predecessor's global unpopularity made it much easier for Obama to contrast his inclusive style with Bush's and to win over the world's hearts and minds.
Indeed, Bush's real and perceived failures not just internationally but domestically opened the door for Obama to be elected president in the first place since Bush had created just enough anger and impatience with just enough voters to set the stage for an African-American to become president.
While President Obama's biracial background has drawn considerable attention, his wife's pedigree, which includes American Indian strands, highlights the complicated history of racial intermingling, sometimes born of violence or coercion, that lingers in the bloodlines of many African-Americans. Mrs. Obama and her family declined to comment for this article, aides said, in part because of the personal nature of the subject.
"She is representative of how we have evolved and who we are," said Edward Ball, a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors, when he researched his memoir, Slaves in the Family.
The Times is also appealing to its Web readers for help in filling in some of the gaps in the first lady's family tree.
If Saturday Night Live is a barometer of what the left is thinking, then liberal President Barack Obama has some problems. Here's this weekend's satirical skewering of the president:
Your view?
It's worth noting that in Pollster.com's chart on the president's "approval" and "disapproval" ratings, both seem to have leveled off in recent weeks:
While it was disappointing for President Barack Obama to return to the U.S. without the 2016 Olympic Games for Chicago, his and the nation's larger problem remains the stubborn unemployment situation reflected in Friday's report that employers cut 263,000 jobs in September, significantly more than economists had forecast.
With a 9.8 percent unemployment rate that some economists believes could be in the double digits into 2010, the economic and political climate could be increasingly gloomy for the Democratic Party's prospects next November and beyond.
So on his return to the White House, Obama quickly pivoted from expressing disappointment in the failed Olympic bid to underscoring his administration's commitment to and focus on getting the U.S. economy back on track.
He said:
I also want to say a few words about the unemployment numbers that came out today. As I've said before, my principle focus each and every day, as well as the principle focus of my economic team, is putting our nation back on the path to prosperity. Since the period last winter when we were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month, we've certainly made some progress on this front. But today's job report is a sobering reminder that progress comes in fits and starts -- and that we're going to need to grind out this recovery step by step.
A clearly tired and disappointed President Barack Obama delivered a brief statement in the White House Rose Garden after returning from his unsuccessful trip to Copenhagen to lobby for his hometown Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
Obama put a positive spin on it, saying one of the benefits of sports was that you can make a maximum effort and still lose. It was a concession speech he had hoped not to make.
But at least he had the consolation of making a concession speech in October 2009 as president in the Rose Garden and not a concession speech in November 2008 in Chicago.
Again making virtue out of necessity, the president said he was glad Rio de Janeiro won making Brazil the first South American nation to be chosen to host an Olympic Games. It was still the Americas, after all. So America won, sort of, seemed to be his point.
His comments on the failed Olympic bid:
One of the things that I think is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still not win. And so while I wish that we had come back with better news from Copenhagen, I could not be prouder of my home town of Chicago the volunteers who were involved, Mayor Daley, the delegation and the American people for the extraordinary bid we put forward.
President Barack Obama arriving in Copenhagen for what turned out to be a failed Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympic games. (Gerald Herbert / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Before President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen to lobby for his hometown Chicago and the U.S. to get the 2016 Olympic games, some questioned whether it was wise for him to put the prestige of the U.S. presidency on the line.
What if Chicago didn't have the winning bid? Wouldn't that be a blow to his and the U.S.'s image, especially since Obama is so popular globally compared with his predecessor?
Also, the president had initially said he wasn't going to go because he needed to focus on getting the massive health-care overhaul through Congress.
But with the leaders of other nations with cities bidding for the games attending, as well as the pressure coming from Chicago being his hometown, the pull was too great for the president not to go.
So he did, making as brief a trip as possible, four hours on the ground, 14 in the air.
If he hadn't and Chicago failed to get the games, questions would have long lingered as to whether his non-appearance fatally harmed the bid.
President Barack Obama has made the first direct pitch ever by a U.S. leader to the Internationl Olympic Committee on behalf of an American city's effort to host the Summer Games.
Now all that's left to do is await the IOC's announcement about which city will get the 2016 games. That news is expected at 12:30 p.m. ET.
In Copenhagen, Obama told IOC leaders that "the city of Chicago and the United States of America will make the world proud":
President Barack Obama calls talks with Iran "a constructive beginning." (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo)
By Frank James
On the heels of Thursday's discussion between Iran and the group of nations on the United Nations Security Council, President Barack Obama described the talks as a "constructive beginning."
But he warned Iran that its actions would speak louder than its words and said the Iranian Republic would need to take positive steps in resolving tensions over its controversial nuclear program to avoid punitive steps from the world's major powers.
Obama said:
"Iran must demonstrate through concrete steps that it will live up to its responsibilities with regard to its nuclear program. In pursuit of that goal today's meeting was a constructive beginning. But it must be followed with constructive action by the Iranian government."
It sounds like Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington lawyer now serving as the Obama White House's Wall Street pay czar, expects to soon publicly outline the revamped compensation packages for high-finance executives whose companies received significant sums of taxpayer money.
White House "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg expects to publicly outline reworked pay packages soon. (Charles Dharapak / AP Photo)
As Reuters reports:
The Obama administration's pay czar said on Thursday he was reworking compensation agreements for some of the highest paid employees at seven companies that have received government funds and hoped to make details public by mid-October.
"We have been quite successful in the last three or four months in renegotiating grandfathered contracts," Kenneth Feinberg said at an event at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law.
Seven companies in his review are: Citigroup Inc, Bank of America Corp, American International Group Inc, General Motors , GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.
The story goes on to say that Feinberg also spoke by teleconference to a meeting of lawyers in Chicago on Wednesday and it notes that the pay czar didn't explain why he's being so public lately.
Feinberg actually has been very public in his past roles in an effort to be transparent. That's what he did when he ran the 9/11 compensation fund which awarded more than $7 billion to more than 5,500 individuals. Indeed, the consensus was that he did a commendable job of making the process open and understandable.
It appears he's trying to do the same with executive compensation for the seven companies he's working with.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi continues to say and do some of the most inappropriate things.
Yesterday, as the Associated Press and NPR's Silvia Poggioli report, the prime minister's indiscretion was again referring to the United States' first African-American president as being tanned:
The list of Berlusconi's questionable activities is quite long. As the AP says:
The 72-year-old Berlusconi has made no secret for his admiration of attractive women. He has been on the defensive in a sex scandal that erupted last spring after his wife complained he was infatuated with young women and announced she is divorcing him.
Prosecutors in the southern city of Bari are investigating a local businessman, as a suspect in a cocaine investigation, who has said he sent some 30 young women to dinners and parties at Berlusconi's Rome palazzo residence and Sardinian villa. The businessman told investigators he paid the women's expenses and in some cases extra money in case they had sex with the premier. But he stressed Berlusconi was unaware of these arrangements
As Silvia says, it's no wonder that last week first lady Michelle Obama greeted Berlusconi with a handshake rather than a kiss (as she did with some other leaders at the G-20 summit):
A handshake will do just fine. (Jewel SamadAFP/Getty Images)
President Barack Obama takes a tough stand against Iran at G-20 news conference. (Gerald Herbert / AP Photo)
By Frank James
We'll be live-blogging President Barack Obama's news conference expected at 4:40 pm ET which comes at the end of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh.
While the G-20 was supposed to be focus on the recovery of the global economy from the worst recession since the Great Depression, events overtook the event with the revelation Friday morning that Iran has admitted to having a secret nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom.
At least several Western governments -- the U.S., Britain and France -- have been aware of the facility's existence through intelligence for some time. When Iran became aware of this, it finally admitted to its deception, having only acknowledged the existence of a facility at Natanz.
Leaders of the three Western nations sounded the call for more intensive sanctions against Iran. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today sounded anything but contrite.
Given all this, Obama can be expected to focus on Iran as will many of the reporters' questions.
Guantanamo was a clear instance where the Obama Administration's ideals smacked hard against cold reality. (BRENNAN LINSLEY/AFP/Getty Images)
By Frank James
It's been obvious for months that the Obama Administration's plans to close the Guantanamo detention facility have smacked hard into wall of reality, which is that coming up with a plan to close it would be hard.
The Washington Post does a good job of laying out the problems encountered by the Obama White House which seem to have originated with a failure to appreciate just how difficult it would be to relocate hundreds of individuals who for years were called the "worst of the worst" by the prior administration.
According to the story, White House Greg Craig, was initially in charge of the process and admits that he misjudged the magnitude of the task that lay ahead of him if the administration were to redeem President Barack Obama's pledge to close the facility a year after he took office.
An excerpt:
Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said.
Sarkozy, Obama & Brown (left to right). (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
By Mark Memmott
Saying that Iran "is refusing to live up to its international responsibilities," President Barack Obama just called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to immediately investigate what that country is doing at a second nuclear enrichment site it is constructing and had kept hidden for years.
The president has been joined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as he makes the announcement in Pittsburgh, where leaders of the G-20 nations have gathered for an economic summit.
Update at 9:03 a.m. ET. Here's the full audio of the president's statement:
Update at 8:51 a.m. ET. Tough talk from the leaders:
Obama also said Iran has "presented a direct challenge" to the world's efforts to present the spread of nuclear weapons. "The size and the configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful (nuclear) program," Obama said. "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow."
Sarkozy said that "if by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken."
Brown said "the level of deception by the Iranian government ... will shock and anger the whole international community." The U.S., U.K. and France have "no choice but to draw a line in the sand," he added.
Iran, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany are due to meet Oct. 1 in talks about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
One subject of debate as Congress considers an overhaul of banking and financial services regulations is whether the Federal Reserve should be turned into something of a "super regulator"; a plan the Obama administration favors.
In a conversation this afternoon, Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Chris Dodd told All Things Considered host Robert Siegel about why he opposes giving the Fed superpowers. Basically, the Connecticut Democrat thinks the central bank needs to remain focused on its traditional mission -- setting monetary policy -- and that it would be dangerous to do anything that might threaten the Fed's independence:
Much more from Robert's conversation with the senator is due on today's edition of ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
Planet Money is one place to go for more coverage of all things financial.
Addressing the delegates. (Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
President Barack Obama is this morning delivering his first address to the United Nations General Assembly. As we reported earlier, among the messages he has for other world leaders will be that they can't wait for the USA to solve all of the globe's problems.
You'll have many ways to follow the address. NPR will broadcast it live (click here to find a station near you). NPR.org will be streaming the audio. The cable news networks will have it on the air as well.
And we're live-blogging in this post as the president speaks. Just click "play" below and our updates should flow in automatically. You can also submit comments at the bottom of the player. We'll publish as many as we can while the president's speaking.
Update at 10:50 a.m. ET. The president has finished his address. Now, if you click the "play" button, you can read what he had to say. Or, you can click here for a transcript.:
At a United Nations-sponsored climate change summit this hour, President Barack Obama is making the case that the U.S. is taking action and will work with other nations to avoid catastrophe. We're following his address and will post highlights below. Just click the "play" button and our updates should flow in automatically. You can also submit comments in the player. We'll post as many as we can:
As Frank said last evening, when President Barack Obama stopped by CBS-TV's Late Show with David Letterman, a weirdly shaped tuber got much of the attention.
And as NPR's Don Gonyea reports, the president used some humor when a very touchy subject -- race -- came up:
Letterman asked about the shouting and anger at town halls this summer, and how some critics have vilified the president. He noted that former President Jimmy Carter said some of it is rooted is racism.
"Is he onto something there or is that just something to talk about?," Letterman asked.
"First of all," Obama began his answer. "I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election."
The audience roared with laugher.
Obama goes on to say that he doesn't blame racism for the anger and shouting. People always get "riled up," he says, when presidents push for major changes.
For those who want to see some of the video, here's what CBS has made available:
President Barack Obama finishes his latest media blitz by joking with David Letterman during a taping of the "Late Show" in New York on September 21, 2009. (JIM WATSON/ / AFP/Getty Images)
By Frank James
President Barack Obama completed the last stop of his latest media blitz by taping an appearance Monday afternoon on David Letterman's "Late Show." And it sounds like, for a few moments, the center of attention wasn't the world's most powerful man but a weirdly shaped tuber.
According to the Associated Press:
By the time Barack Obama came on stage to the taping of the "Late Show" on Monday, host David Letterman had offered up 10 reasons why in the world the president had agreed to do it.
Among Letterman's theories: Obama said yes without thinking about it, or as Letterman put it, "Like Bush did with Iraq."
But Obama had other ideas. It turns out he was listening when Letterman had bantered with a woman in the audience who brought - yes - a potato in the shape of a heart to the show.
Obama told Letterman: "The main reason I'm here? I want to see that heart-shaped potato."
The woman tossed the potato to Letterman. She agreed to let Obama keep it. Said the president: "This is remarkable."
Letterman covered a number of topics with Obama - many of them serious - in a taping that ran about 40 minutes. The show will be broadcast on CBS on Monday evening.
President Obama and other U.S. officials don't plan to directly interact with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when world leaders gather in New York City for the opening of the UN General Assembly next week. (Charles Dharapak / AP Photo)
By Frank James
While President Barack Obama has opened the door to direct high level talks between the U.S. and Iran, it appears he's not planning to take the opportunity of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York next week for the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
Ahmadinejad essentially guaranteed his likely treatment as a pariah by U.S. officials by yet another one of his statements, this time on Friday, denying the reality of the Holocaust.
U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, was asked Friday by journalists how U.S. officials, including the president, will respond to Ahmadinejad next week. She said she doesn't expect "direct engagement."
And she predicted that Ahmadinejad would see public evidence of grassroots American displeasure with him and the Iranian leadership.
Here's her exchange with reporters:
REPORTER: One more on Iran, if I might. The talks coming up -- the Iranians have made very clear that although they're going to talk, they're not talking about suspending their program. President Ahmadinejad is going to be at the U.N. Are you hoping he's going to get an earful there?
No need to read between the lines. Pollster.com's on-going effort to track President Barack Obama's "approval" and "disapproval" ratings across a variety of polls shows he's settled right around or just above 50% on the "plus" side in recent weeks and just below 45% on the "negative":
President Obama, joined by First Lady Michelle Obama and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, lobbies for Chicago to win the 2016 Olympics. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)
By Frank James
For an administration that righteously announced early on that it would keep its distance from lobbying, there certainly was a lot of it at the White House as President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle joined Chicago Mayor Richard Daley at a South Lawn event to lobby the International Olympic Committee to select the first family's hometown as the 2016 summer games venue.
President Barack Obama said he would be going to Copenhagen himself to lobby for Chicago's bid if he weren't so busy trying to overhaul one-seventh of the U.S. economy.
OBAMA: I would make the case in Copenhagen personally, if I weren't so firmly committed to making -- making real the promise of quality, affordable health care for every American. But the good news is I'm sending a more compelling superstar to represent the city and country we love, and that is our First Lady, Michelle Obama. (Applause.) She's going because she and I share the conviction that bringing the Games to the United States isn't just important for the city, but for the American people.
Former president Jimmy Carter has gotten into the middle of the debate over whether racism may be playing a part in the protests aimed at President Barack Obama. Carter tells NBC News that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man":
-- The New York Times -- "Man In Queens Raids Denies Any Terrorist Link": "A Colorado man whose visit to New York apparently set off government raids on several Queens apartments on Monday has denied having ties to al-Qaida or any other terrorist group. 'I have nothing to do with this,' said the man, Najibullah Zazi, 25, who was reached by telephone in Colorado on Monday and Tuesday. 'This looks like it's going toward me, which is more shocking every hour.' "
-- Morning Edition -- Al-Qaida Operative Killed In Somalia Linked To Minneapolis Boys Who Had Been Recruited By Terrorists:
-- The Associated Press -- New Prime Minister & Cabinet Take Places In Japan: "Longtime opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama was elected prime minister and installed his new Cabinet Wednesday, promising to reinvigorate Japan's economy and shake up government with his left-of-center party after more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by conservatives."
Among the things to watch for today -- At 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the consumer price index figures for August. President Obama meets with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the White House. And Vice President Joe Biden continues his visit to Iraq.
President Obama's appearance will mark the first by a sitting U.S. president on the Late Show and his first visit back to the show since his election.
Of course, since nearly all the Sunday morning talk shows (except Fox News') will be having the president on this week, they're also making all kinds of promises about how great their interviews with the president will be. TVNewser has collected the pledges here.
As with his visit to Letterman, Obama's stops on these networks will be pre-recorded:
-- ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
-- CBS' Face the Nation.
-- CNN's State of the Union.
-- NBC's Meet the Press.
-- Univision.
Hitting all the Sunday shows in one day is known, you might recall, as a "full Ginsburg" -- in honor of Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, William Ginsburg, who was the first person to do it (way back in February, 1998).
The conversation continues about whether racism is playing a part in the criticism aimed at President Barack Obama by some conservatives.
On Morning Edition, NPR news analyst Juan Williams told host Renee Montagne that many in the black and Hispanic communities see what they think is a pattern that adds up to a "lack of basic acceptance of the stature that's to be accorded any president."
Among the elements of that perceived pattern:
-- Questions from so-called birthers about whether the president was actually born in the USA (he was; in Hawaii).
-- Objections from some to having the president address schoolchildren.
-- Republican Rep. Joe Wilson's shout of "you lie!" during Obama's address to a joint session of Congress last week.
Juan adds, though, that many conservatives say that liberals are trying to stifle legitimate criticism with accusations of racism any time they raise questions about the policies being pursued by the nation's first African-American president.
Here is Juan's conversation with Renee:
We'll ask again, with this poll that we started yesterday:
A rain-soaked President Barack Obama greets people who attended the Pentagon 9/11 commemoration. (Charles Dharapak / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Presidents are among the most pampered individuals in the world. Their motorcades never stop for traffic lights, they have 747s at their disposal and dozens of people whose daily thoughts boil down to the question: "How do I make the president happy today?"
So it's not an everyday you see a president with his suit soaked through by rain as was the case with President Barack Obama at his appearance at the Pentagon this morning to observe the eighth anniversary of 9/11.
That the president should be drenched by a steady rain during a memorial to the thousands who died on this day eight years ago seemed appropriate to the somber mood of continuing grief that comes with this anniversary.
That the president was wet like everyone else in attendance served to underscore the moment of shared national sadness.
President Barack Obama will have some real life examples of the types of people who would be helped by an overhaul of health insurance to point to in the House chamber tonight. They'll be sitting in First Lady Michelle Obama's box.
Also sitting with the first lady will be Vicki Kennedy, the widow of late Sen. Edward M Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who was Congress's most forceful health-care champion until he was struck by the brain cancer that eventually took his life.
Among those in the box will be people who had problems getting insurance because of pre-existing conditions or whose medical insurance coverage was summarily cancelled by insurers.
The list follows:
Guest List for the First Lady's Box
2009 Joint Session of Congress
September 9, 2009
Mrs. Michelle Obama
Dr. Jill Biden
Susan Sher, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady
Phil Schiliro, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs
Marie Connolly (Washington, DC)
Marie is the owner of Stitch DC yarn shop, which she opened in June 2004. She lives on Capitol Hill with her husband and three children. Stitch DC hosted a Roundtable Discussion in May with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls Tina Tchen on the struggles small businesses face in trying to provide health insurance to their employees. Marie cannot afford to provide her three employees health insurance. Under health insurance reform, Marie will be eligible for small business tax credits.
Darlene Daniels (Baltimore, MD)
Darlene has insurance through her employer, but it only goes so far. Diagnosed in 2008 with a chronic condition, Sarcoidosis, that attacks all her major organs, she's already gone through her coverage cap for the year. Darlene has had to undergo three different procedures to treat her condition, and the insurance company only paid $400 total. When she was first diagnosed, she incurred bills totaling at least $30,000, and while Darlene is trying to negotiate a payment plan, she fears she will be paying this off the rest of her life. Her Sarcoidosis necessitates that she see a heart and lung doctor regularly and an eye doctor three times a year, but she just can't afford it. Darlene is still waiting to see if she qualifies for medical assistance. Under health insurance reform, there will be no annual caps on coverage.
Angela Diggs (Washington, DC)
Angela Diggs has served as Project Director for Congress Heights Senior Wellness Center in Southeast Washington, DC since March 2002. The center is a partnership of the District of Columbia Office on Aging and Providence Hospital's Wellness Institute. It is located in the District's Southeast Ward 8, where longstanding health care access problems are starting to be addressed. Ms. Diggs is responsible for overall administration and management of the center. Congress Heights is considered the model for all future wellness programs in DC. Angela has been with Providence Hospital since May 1995, serving in progressively challenging positions within the Wellness Institute and Employee Health Services. Angela shared her experiences in March at the White House Forum on Health Reform.
Public disapproval for President Barack Obama's handling of the health-care issue has nearly almost doubled since the spring, with a new AP-Gfk poll indicating that 52 percent of Americans don't like how he has managed it.
The poll of 1,001 respondents was taken between Sept. 3 and Sept. 8, the eve of the president's scheduled health-care speech Wednesday to a joint session of Congress.
Approval fell to 42 percent in the recent polling compared with 53 percent in April.
The poll demonstrates how difficult a task Obama has ahead of him as he tries to win many Americans back to his side on overhauling health care.
The president's problem is that while he is using his bully pulpit to try and win back public support, his opponents and those opposed to a health-care overhaul for fear it will harm their interests will be just as active in continuing to drive up public disapproval for any Obama endorsed plan.
It looks like the health care address that President Barack Obama's delivering to a joint session of Congress tonight is still being tweaked.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs talked with reporters about Air Force One this morning about where things stand (transcript produced by the White House):
Question: "Is tonight's speech finished? Is he still working on it?"
Gibbs: "He's still working on it."
Question: "What's the process there? Is it bouncing off ideas off other aides? Who is kind of involved in the drafting?"
President Barack Obama today spoke to school students across the nation -- with an address that ignited some controversy because critics say it could be used to spread the president's political message.
You can judge for yourself whether that's true, because Obama's as-prepared-for-delivery text is posted here.
The address, from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., was webcast at WhiteHouse.gov and C-SPAN.org. We put the video player in this post as well. It's the first box below. And underneath that in the second box, we "live-blogged" as he spoke. Just click the "play" button and our updates should flow in automatically. You can add your thoughts in the player's "comment" field if you wish. We'll publish as many as we can.
A top Obama administration adviser who has been at the center of controversy in recent days has resigned.
Van Jones, an official at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, blamed a "vicious smear campaign against me." It had been widely reported over the past week that Jones, in 2004, signed on to a petition calling for a Congressional investigation into whether the U.S. government allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen. He also came under fire for a derogatory comment about Republicans.
Word of Jones' involvement with the group that organized the petition about the 9/11 attacks was spread most prominently by Fox News Channel host and conservative commentator Glenn Beck.
Beck, in turn, had been responding to a call from a group that Jones co-founded, ColorOfChange.org, for advertisers to boycott the Fox host's show. ColorofChange issued that call after Beck said President Barack Obama is a racist.
Beck and others had also been spotlighting the obscene comment Jones made -- before joining the White House team -- about Republicans.
In a resignation statement released early today, Jones says that "on the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. ... They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." Jones had previously said he did not agree with the sentiments expressed in that 2004 petition and that he added his name to it without knowledge of what it was expressing.
The news of Jones' resignation is leading FoxNews.com right now. It's at the top of other news sites as well, including Politico, which writes that:
While the job itself is not that high-profile--special adviser on green jobs--Jones' departure from the position is the first real scalp claimed by the Republican right, which stoked much of the criticism of Jones.
In the political blogosphere, the reactions so far are pretty much along the lines you would expect.
Liberal Oliver Willis says that "of course, under a GOP administration the people with the really kooky ideas become defense secretary or vice president."
Ed Driscoll at the conservative Pajamas Media says the so-called mainstream media are downplaying many of what he says are Jones' objectionable views and past statements.
The conservative Jawa Report speculates that "the only reason he resigned is someone in the White House focused grouped him and the numbers were so bad ... he had to go under the bus. Let's give Gateway Pundit a big thank you he lead this fight."
As for Gateway Pundit, it asks whether "The New York Times (will) finally report on this story now?"
Well, as of this moment, the story is showing up at No. 3 on the NYTimes.com mobile site page and the story is getting similar play on the Times' website.
General view of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Beitar Ilit, Friday, Sept. 4, 2009. (Sebastian Scheiner / AP Photo)
By Frank James
The White House is making it known that it "regrets" Israel's decision to build hundreds of more homes in Jewish settlements in the disputed West Bank.
The statement in full:
We regret the reports of Israel's plans to approve additional settlement construction. Continued settlement activity is inconsistent with Israel's commitment under the Roadmap.
As the President has said before, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop. We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate.
We do appreciate Israel's stated intent to place limits on settlement activity and will continue to discuss this with the Israelis as these limitations are defined.
The U.S. commitment to Israel's security is and will remain unshakeable. We believe it can best be achieved through comprehensive peace in the region, including a two-state solution with a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel.
President Barack Obama plans to speak to Congress and the nation during a joint session of Congress next Wednesday, Sept. 9 in an attempt to regain some traction for his major domestic agenda item, health-care overhaul.
President Barack Obama plans to speak to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009 about health-care reform. (Evan Vucci / AP Photo)
It's an obvious response to the beating he's taken on health care reform during the congressional recess with recent surveys showing more respondents questioning the president's leadership as well as Democratic health-care overhaul proposals. And then there were all those spirited town-hall meetings that dominated the news.
President Obama with cabinet officials at White House event on swine flu preparations. (JIM WATSON / AFP/Getty Images)
By Frank James
President Barack Obama stepped into the White House Rose Garden today to assure Americans that his administration is prepared for the swine-flu season to come. Of course, he didn't call it swine flu since the administration, sensitive to the pork industry's concerns, prefers to call it it H1N1.
Flanked by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius after a meeting of his swine-flu team, the president said:
As I said when we saw the first cases of this virus back in the spring, I don't want anybody to be alarmed but I do want everybody to be prepared. We know that we usually get a second, larger wave of these flu viruses in the fall. And so response plans have been put in place across all levels of government. Our plans and decisions are based on the best scientific information available and as the situation changes, we will continue to update the public.
We're also making steady progress on developing a safe and effective flu vaccine and we expect a flu shot program will begin soon. This program will be completely voluntary but it will be strongly recommended. "
For all that we do in the federal government however, everybody has a roll in responding to this virus. We need state and local governments on the front line to make antivirals available and be ready to take whatever steps are necessary to support the health-care system.
We need hospitals and health-care providers to continue preparing for an increased patient load and to take steps to protect health-care workers. We need families and businesses to insure that they have plans in place if a family member, a child or a co-worker contracts the flu and needs to stay home
And most importantly, we need everyone to get informed about individual risk factors and we need everyone to take the common sense steps we know can make a difference. Stay home if you're sick, wash your hands frequently, cover your sneezes with your sleeve, not your hands. And take all the necessary precautions to stay healthy. I know it sounds simple but it's important and it works.
The White House dismissed criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney who, among other things, lambasted the Obama Administration on Fox News Sunday for a opening a review of CIA interrogation practices during the Bush Administration.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed former Vice President Dick Cheney's national-security criticisms of the Obama Administration. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo)
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration had heard it all before from Cheney from almost its opening days.
Gibbs also said Cheney had his fact wrongs. And, in the equivalent of catching and throwing Cheney's grenade back at him, Gibbs pointed out that Cheney hasn't been a particularly reliable foreign-policy expert.
An excerpt of Gibbs' relevant interchange with reporters:
REPORTER: And lastly, I just wanted to know if you have any comment on remarks that former Vice President Cheney made yesterday: "I just think it's" -- about the preliminary review of whether CIA officers broke any laws: "I think it's an outrageous precedent to set to have this kind of intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration." He said it would create a chilling effect at the CIA and the actions are not making the country safer.
MR. GIBBS: Yeah. I mean, this is -- you've -- this is the same song and dance we've heard since literally the first day of our administration. So I don't have -- I don't have a lot to say.I think the vice president, if you watched some of his interview, was clearly -- clearly had his facts on a number of things wrong.
President Barack Obama, who received perhaps his most important endorsement from Sen. Ted Kennedy during last year's Democratic presidential primaries, issued a statement early this morning after learning of Kennedy's death.
The president is vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, not far from Hyannis where Kennedy died at his family's famous compound. Obama is expected to speak to reporters within the hour. Here's the statement from earlier:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release August 26, 2009
Statement from President Obama:
Michelle and I were heartbroken to learn this morning of the death of our dear friend, Senator Ted Kennedy.
For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.
I valued his wise counsel in the Senate, where, regardless of the swirl of events, he always had time for a new colleague. I cherished his confidence and momentous support in my race for the Presidency. And even as he waged a valiant struggle with a mortal illness, I've profited as President from his encouragement and wisdom.
An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time.
And the Kennedy family has lost their patriarch, a tower of strength and support through good times and bad.
Our hearts and prayers go out to them today--to his wonderful wife, Vicki, his children Ted Jr., Patrick and Kara, his grandchildren and his extended family.
President Barack Obama's reappointment of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, first appointed by his White House predecessor, is more evidence that it really is Obama's economy now.
Sticking with Bernanke gives the president one less place to point the finger when he wants to blame George W. Bush for the economic recession he inherited.
Bush and his supporters can always retort: You also inherited Bernanke as well as the financial bailouts that led to the economy stabilizing early in your first year.
In any event, here are Obama's remarks in reappointing Bernanke and Bernanke's appreciative response as well.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
Good morning everyone. I apologize for interrupting the relaxing I told you all to do, but I have an important announcement to make concerning the Federal Reserve.
The man next to me, Ben Bernanke, has led the Fed through one of the worst financial crises that this nation and the world has ever faced. As an expert on the causes of the Great Depression, I'm sure Ben never imagined that he would be part of a team responsible for preventing another. But because of his background, his temperament, his courage, and his creativity, that's exactly what he has helped to achieve. And that is why I am re-appointing him to another term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
On the issue whether U.S. intelligence agents should be investigated by the Justice Department for allegations that they broke the nation's laws against torture during the previous administration, President Barack Obama has frequently said he wants to look to the future, not behind to the Bush era's controversies.
But now those controversies are indeed pulling him backwards. Attorney General Eric Holder has named a prosecutor, John Durham, to probe the Central Intelligence Agency's use of harsh interrogation techniques during the Bush Administration and whether laws were violated.
So the White House issued the following statement on the president's behalf this afternoon.
The President has said repeatedly that he wants to look forward, not back, and the President agrees with the Attorney General that those who acted in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance should not be prosecuted. Ultimately, determinations about whether someone broke the law are made independently by the Attorney General.
While the president doesn't want to look backward, other past controversies dictate the need for him to make it very clear that the attorney general is free to do as he sees fit.
Earlier, I posted on the Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta sending a message to his employees today to tell them essentially to hang in there despite the Justice Department releasing today a report detailing the agency's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," also known to some as torture.
CIA Director Leon Panetta reportedly threatened to quit over Justice's handling of probe into CIA interrogation tactics. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo)
ABC News is reporting that Panetta was angered by indications that Attorney General Eric Holder would likely be naming a prosecutor to reopen a probe into numerous interrogations of suspected terrorist detainees.
An excerpt from ABC News' report:
A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.
Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.
"You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.
If you haven't gotten into your nearby car dealer to trade in your clunker for a more fuel-efficient car under the federal "Cash for Clunkers" program, you're running out of time. The program will end Monday, Aug. 24, at 8 pm EDT, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Thursday.
An excerpt from a press release on the Transportation Department's www.cars.gov web site:
"This program has been a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work," Secretary LaHood said. "At the same time, we've been able to take old, polluting cars off the road and help consumers purchase fuel efficient vehicles."
As of today, the CARS program has recorded more than 457,000 dealer transactions worth $1.9 billion in rebates.
The Car Allowance Rebate System, as it is officially known, has sparked intense interest, filling auto showrooms with buyers and revitalizing manufacturing plants. As a result of the program, automotive inventory has been depleted and both General Motors and Ford are ramping up production, adding shifts and rehiring laid off workers.
"It's been a thrill to be part of the best economic news story in America," Secretary LaHood said.
President Barack Obama resorted to the language of the King James Version of the Bible today as he accused some opposed to his health-care reform of untruthfulness.
Joining a conference call held by a group of religious leaders today in which the clergy announced their intention to rally people of faith for health-reform legislation over the next 40 days, Obama told the participants:
I know there's been a lot of misinformation in this debate. There are some folks out there who, frankly, are bearing false witness.
The president then proceeded to give an example, the infamous and completely false accusation that the existing proposals contain a provision for "death panels" that would decide when and where to put the elderly to death.
President Barack Obama listens to a question from a member of the audience during a town hall meeting on health care reform in Belgrade, Mont., Friday, Aug. 14, 2009. (Jae C. Hong / AP Photo)
By Frank James
In Montana today, President Barack Obama starred at another town-hall meeting where he was again treated to respectfully asked questions about his health-care reform plans, even from those who clearly distrusted his approach.
The session in Belgrade, Montana contrasted sharply with the combative nature of the town halls held by numerous members of Congress who have found themselves shouted at by angry members of the public.
The toughest questions came from two men, one a self-identified National Rifle Association member, who skeptically asked the president where he was going to get the money for expanding health care to those who don't have it.
The other, a seller of individual health-insurance policies, asked why the president had started to "vilify" insurance companies.
Here's the exchange between Randy Rathe of Ekalaka, and the president:
RATHE: We keep getting the bull. That's all we're getting is bull. You can't tell us how you're going to pay for this. You're saving here, you're saving over there. You're going to take a little money here, you're going to take a little money there. But you have no money. The only way you're going to get that money is to raise our taxes. You said you wouldn't... But that's the only way you can do that.
OBAMA: You are absolutely right that I can't cover another 46 million for free, you're right. So we're going to have to find some resources. We're going to have some money from somewhere."
You can listen to the exchange below:
Obama went on to say he could get two-thirds of the costs from savings by "eliminating subsidies to insurance companies."
President Barack Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo detention facility, redeeming his campaign vow, raised the not insignificant problem of what to do with the terrorist suspects currently housed at the Cuban facility.
The administration is casting about for places to relocate Gitmo detainees and is having teams of its officials scout potential sites, including Standish, Michigan where Obama's people are today investigating the possibilities of using the maximum-security prison there.
NPR's Ari Shapiro filed a report for the network's newscast. Here's his report:
A task force of people from across the government has spent months analyzing how best to close Guantanamo.
They've concluded some detainees will likely have to be locked up in the U.S. for a very long time, either with or without trial.
Sounds like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton momentarily lost her diplomatic cool Monday.
She was in the Congo today, part of her tour of Africa, when she thought a university student asked her what former President Bill Clinton thought of a Chinese loan offer to the central African nation.
Video of the moment shown by some network news outlets portrays her as clearly loosing her cool. (As soon as I can get my hands on the video, I'll post it.)
"My husband is not secretary of state, I am," she snapped. "I am not going to be channeling my husband."
Another excerpt:
"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" she asked incredulously when the student raised a question about a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan offer to Congo.
"If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion," she said. "I am not going to be channeling my husband."
The moderator quickly moved on.
State Department officials said the student approached Clinton afterward and told her he had meant to ask what Obama, not Bill Clinton, thought about the Chinese loan. It was unclear whether the French-speaking student or translator had erred. Either way, she was not pleased at the mention of her husband's name.
President Barack Obama surprised White House reporters on Tuesday by carrying a plate of six cupcakes topped by a birthday candle into the briefing room as he led his aides in the singing of "Happy Birthday" to Helen Thomas, the 89-year old dean of White House reporters.
It just so happens to be the president's birthday too, as we reported earlier. That caused some reporters in the room to shout "happy birthday" to the president as he entered.
Obama asked Thomas what she wished for. She said world peace and and end to racial and ethnic discrimination, "that there's no prejudice in the country" you can hear her say in the Associated Press video.
"You've got to blow it out to make it come true," Obama said, giving her instructions on what to do with the candle. Then he sat down, put an arm around her shoulders and posed for a picture. with her.
Forty eight years ago today President Barack Obama was born, despite what the Birthers insist, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Then-Sen. Obama served birthday cake to journalists aboard his campaign play exactly a year ago. (Alex Brandon / AP Photo)
It was 1961. John F. Kennedy, still the youngest person ever elected president at age 43, was in the White House. And with African Americans unable to sit undisturbed at many downtown lunch counters in the South, the thought that a black man would be marking his birthday a few decades later while sitting at his desk in the Oval Office would have seemed like a pipe dream to most people.
But that's where we are. America is still capable of surprising itself.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. (Lauren Victoria Burke / AP Photo)
By Frank James
The point man for the Obama Administration's effort to combat the nation's huge home foreclosure problem is 43-year old Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.
If anyone has the intellectual capacity to comprehend a complicated problem like the foreclosure mess, it's Donovan with his two masters degrees from Harvard University, one in public administration, the other in architecture.
But it will take more than brainpower to solve the nation's foreclosure crisis. As Donovan told All Things Considered guest host Madeleine Brand during an interview, not only will it require mortgage modifications, something the administration is trying to boost, but a turn in the nation's employment picture.
Given that many economists are predicting we could see a so-called jobless recovery, the employment piece may be even harder to achieve than the mortgage modification part which is hard enough, given it requires the cooperation of often stubborn mortgage holders.
Still, Donovan sounded very can-do in the interview which is worth checking out.
Obama made specific mention of reports that the pace of job cuts has slowed, that home prices have edged higher and that financial markets have stabilized.
The White House says Obama will have more to say about the economy at 1:15 p.m. ET.
Just two days ago, the president was saying he was shocked by a Newsweek cover that declares "the recession is over."
Update at 1:40 p.m. ET. Here's the full audio of the president's remarks this afternoon:
Update at 1:29 p.m. ET: The president just added that he is "guardedly optimistic about the direction our economy is going ... but we've got a lot of work left to do."
He pointed specifically to the popular "cash for clunkers" stimulus program that has quickly run out of cash -- and praised efforts in the House today to add more money to that program.
Update at 1:25 p.m. ET. Obama just said that the GDP report, which showed that the Commerce Department had revised "down" the declines in output in late '08 and earlier this year, means that:
"The recession we faced when I took office was even deeper than anyone thought at the time.
"But, the GDP (report) also revealed that in the last few months the economy has done measurably better than we thought."
Thinking about trading your gas guzzling beater in for a new, fuel efficient vehicle under the Obama Administration's "cash for clunkers" program? Hope you have a Plan B.
The Transportation Department is freezing the program after only four days because it appears it will have exhausted its allotted $950 million by midnight Thursday.
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government will suspend the popular cash-for-clunkers program after less than four days in business, telling Congress that the plan would burn through its $950-million budget by midnight, several sources told the Free Press.
-- Updated at 8:00 pm ET Police Sergeant James Crowley spoke to the media a short while ago. He was asked what was accomplished today:
"I think what was accomplished was this was a positive step in moving forward as opposed to reliving the events of the past couple of weeks. In an effort to move just not the city of Cambridge, or two individuals, past this event but the whole country, to move beyond this and to make this the basis of maybe some meaningful discussions in the future."
What you had today was two gentleman agreed to disagree on a particular issue. I don't think we spent too much time talking about the past. We spent a lot of time discussing the future.
Crowley said he and Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. planned to meet again somewhere in Massachusetts.
He also shared an interesting anecdote. As their two families were on individual White House tours, Gates approached Crowley.
Gates introduced his family; Crowley reciprocated. Then the Gateses and Crowleys continued on with their tour, not as two separate groups, however, but one larger group.
-- Updated at 7:20 pm ET The White House has issued this press release with a statement from the president:
"I am thankful to Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley for joining me at the White House this evening for a friendly, thoughtful conversation. Even before we sat down for the beer, I learned that the two gentlemen spent some time together listening to one another, which is a testament to them. I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode."
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The first and last White House Rose Garden beer-drinking session to stem from a disorderly conduct arrest has happened.
It was essentially a photo op meant to answer Rodney King's age-old question "Can't we all get along?" with an emphatic yes.
Journalists were kept about 50 feet from the participants President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the man who "acted stupidly " or not in arresting him, Cambridge, Mass. Police Sgt. James Crowley.
We don't know yet what they talked about. Crowley is supposed to speak to journalists within the hour.
But we do know that White House types would be nothing short of overjoyed if today's beer chat allowed them to put the whole sorry episode in their rear-view mirror and get on with the task of running the country.
President Barack Obama's former long-time physician doesn't think much of the health-care overhaul plan his most famous former patient is promoting today in North Carolina and Virginia.
It's only one man's opinion, of course. And just because he's an internist doesn't make Dr. David Scheiner of Hyde Park Associates in Medicine in Chicago an expert on health-care economics.
But it certainly doesn't help the president's marketing effort that his doctor of 22 years doesn't support the congressional plan that incorporates the president's principles. Scheiner's opposition has been known publicly for a while but he gets the banner headline treatment today on the Huffington Post.
President Barack Obama infamously upset many police officers last week when he said the Cambridge, Mass. police departed had "acted stupidly" in arresting his friend Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct, a statement for which the president has expressed regret.
But today the administration was clearly standing with the thin blue line in announcing $1 billion in grants to cities across the nation so they can keep cops on the streets at a time when some cities have had to cut back due to the recession.
At a Philadelphia press conference, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the grants funded by the $787 billion economic stimulus legislation.
Holder said:
Today we have the pleasure of announcing a series of grants made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies hire and retain police officers. We are awarding $1 billion in Recovery Act grants through the Community Oriented Policing Services - or COPS - Hiring Recovery Program.
Nationally, this grant program will allow 1,046 law enforcement agencies in all fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Mariana Islands, to hire or re-hire 4,699 officers. That means that police departments can add new officers or re-hire officers who have been or are scheduled to be laid off, as a result of local budget cuts.
A slight shift for President Barack Obama's press office in recent days.
The daily morning gaggle, a White House staple through administration after administration, but absent in the current White House, has returned.
The gaggle (it's one of those terms that has been in existence since well before I got there in 2001) is an informal, first thing in the morning, on the record session in the Press Secretary's office that generally takes place prior to any public presidential events AND, a reporter's day is overtaken by deadlines.
One other key to the gaggle. NO CAMERAS. So questions can be asked and answered in a more informal setting. It proved a pretty good way to get an early take on what the administration was up to that day. The regular televised briefing would take place hours later.
The White House reports that President Barack Obama has talked with the recently arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Here's the short press release:
Readout of the President's Phone Call with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The President called and connected with Professor Gates at 3:15 this afternoon. They had a positive discussion during which the President told Gates about his call with Sgt. Crowley and statement to the media. The President also invited Gates to join him with Sgt. Crowley at the White House in the near future.
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President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room this afternoon as he tried to defuse the mounting controversy over his comment that the Cambridge, Mass. Police Department "acted stupidly" by arresting a Harvard University professor friend of his on a disorderly conduct charge.
The president's said he talked by phone with Police Sgt. James Crowley, the officer who arrested scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. after the police responded to a report of a burglary at Gates' house. Obama said his chat with Crowley confirmed his sense that the officer was an exemplary policeman and a "good man."
Then Obama said:
In my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically. And I could have calibrated those words differently. And I told this to Sergeant Crowley.
I continue to believe based on what I have heard that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station. I also continue to believe based on what I heard that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.
My sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved. The fact that it has garnered so much attention I think is a testimony to the fact that these are issues that still are very sensitive in America.
The White House just confirmed that Army Staff Sgt. Jared Monti will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously "for his heroic actions in combat in Afghanistan." It adds that Monti:
Displayed immeasurable courage and uncommon valor -- eventually sacrificing his own life in an effort to save his comrade.
The Boston Globe writes that the 30-year-old Monti, from Raynham, Mass., "died in 2006 trying to rescue fellow soldiers in Afghanistan during a battle against Taliban insurgents. ... Monti was shot to death by Taliban fighters while he was moving fellow soldiers to a covered position, his mother said. He saved the life of one soldier who had been wounded by gunfire, before he was killed."
Police Commissioner Robert Haas at Cambridge, Mass. police headquarters, Thursday, July 23, 2009. AP Photo/Josh Reynolds
By Frank James
President Barack Obama's comments last night in which he said the Cambridge, Mass. police department "acted stupidly" in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was apparently a body blow to that police department.
Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas said as much at a press conference today. He said:
I think we were deeply concerned. We take our professional pride very deeply. When I talked to officers throughout the course of the day, you could see that they were really stunned by being, not having the greatest regard or actually taking those comments to heart. So I would say to you they were very much deflated.
Haas also said he stood behind Sgt. James Crowley who arrested Gates, a friend of Obama's after Crowley responded to a report of a burglary at Gates's home. Gates is African American while Crowley is white, facts that have led some to conclude race played a role in the arrest, a charge Gates has made.
Haas said:
I believe Sgt. Crowley acted in a way that is consistent with his training at the department and that is consistent with national standards of law enforcement protocol. I do not believe his actions in any way were racially motivated.
President Barack Obama told ABC News in an interview today that he was caught off guard by the hubbub to his comment that "the Cambridge Police acted stupidly" in arresting Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.
A snippet from an ABC News report:
"I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement, because I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home," Obama said.
In an exclusive interview with ABC's Terry Moran to air on "Nightline" tonight, Obama said it doesn't make sense to him that the situation escalated to the point that Gates was arrested.
The White House has released excerpts of the statement President Barack Obama will give before he takes reporters' questions at tonight's press conference.
From the excerpts, it's clear the president will be appealing to Americans to understand that health care reform is about more than health care, that it's also about the economy which is being increasingly weighed down by rising health care costs that are crowding out other areas in the economy that require investment.
Obama will say:
So let me be clear: if we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket.
And Obama also paints his opponents as petty political players who are opposing Democratic reform proposals for reasons of partisanship not principle.
Here's another snippet from the released excerpts:
I understand how easy it is for this town to become consumed in the game of politics -- to turn every issue into running tally of who's up and who's down. I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to "go for the kill." Another Republican Senator said that defeating health reform is about "breaking" me.
So let me be clear: This isn't about me. I have great health insurance, and so does every Member of Congress. This debate is about the letters I read when I sit in the Oval Office every day, and the stories I hear at town hall meetings...This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to wait for reform any longer.
Following a meeting with the visiting Iraqi head of state, President Barack Obama expressed confidence that the U.S. is still on track to remove all its troops from Iraq by 2011.
The visit of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to the White House represented the two men's first meeting since Obama became president. It came less than a month after the U.S. military largely removed its combat troops from inside Iraqi cities and towns, a major step towards eventually withdrawing from the country entirely.
Obama cited the progress made by Iraqis and their U.S. ally despite continuing efforts to destabilize the country with bombing attacks.
But what we've seen is, is that the violence levels have remained low, the cooperation between U.S. forces and Iraqi forces has remained high, and we have every confidence that we will continue to work together cooperatively and make adjustments, where necessary, to assure that as we move into the national elections, that Iraq continues on the progress of stability, and that Iraqi security forces are continually ramping up their capabilities, so that ultimately we are going to be able to fulfill our commitment to pull out our troops entirely and interact with Iraq as a full sovereign country that it is.
President Barack Obama addresses the Ghanaian Parliament in Accra, Ghana, Saturday, July 11, 2009.
By Frank James
President Barack Obama's speech in Ghana today mixed an acknowledgment of the West's role in Africa's troubles with some straight talk about contributions Africans themselves have made to the too-often difficult conditions on so much of the continent.
In a line that is likely to be the best remembered from the speech, the first African-American president to visit sub-Saharan Africa said "We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans."
The speech was meant as an encouragement to African self-empowerment and democratization. The White House chose Ghana, after all, because its democratic process appears to be on a stable track, with the West African nation experiencing a series of elections and peaceful power transfers.
Context is everything. In a shot seen around the world, President Barack Obama appeared on a photo taken while he was in Italy for the G-8 to be doing something more than sneaking a peek at the derriere of a womanly Brazilian teenager participating in the junior summit.
The Drudge Report has played the photo big all day and the New York Post had it on its front page. The still photo obviously appears damning to many.
Drudge Report plays up photo of President Obama at G-8. Drudge Report
But video of the incident gives more context and, remember, context is everything. From the video, it appears that the president might have been looking down to assure his footing rather than checking out the teenager in a manner unbecoming to the president of the U.S. or the father of two daughters.
While the MSNBC video is helpful, ABC's video provides even more context and the case of those who say Obama wasn't being a dirty middle-aged president appears even stronger.
Alas, the same can not be said for French President Nicholas Sarkozy.
President Barack Obama is greeted in Accra, Ghana. AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari
By Frank James
President Barack Obama has landed in Accra, Ghana, marking the first trip to sub-Saharan Africa of his presidency.
It was a historic moment, the first African-American president, the son of a Kenyan father, arriving in Black Africa, the Motherland.
The president, First Lady Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia were greeted by beaming Ghanian officials as well as traditional dancers at the airport. At one point, the president could be seen rhythmically swaying among the crowd as he momentarily joined the dancers.
The White House chose Ghana for the president's first visit to sub-Saharan Africa because he wants to hold it up as a model for the rest of the continent for its relative stability and democratic institutions.
Michelle Gavin, a presidential aide for African affairs, recently explained to reporters the thinking behind the Ghana visit:
GAVIN: And the President wanted to stop in Ghana particularly because he's interested in emphasizing themes of governance -- the importance of governance for making development progress, the importance of governance for stability. And Ghana is a truly admirable example of a place where governance is getting stronger, a thriving democracy. They just had an extraordinarily close election at the end of last year, decided ultimately by about 40,000 votes, that remained peaceful, power was transferred peacefully, and they continue to pursue a development agenda and bolster the rule of law.
We'll be live-blogging President Barack Obama's today to the American Medical Association in Chicago.
The president will be speaking to one of the most important constituencies in the health-care reform debate. The AMA has torpedoed past attempts at reform. It has even been credited with coining the phrase "socialized medicine" decades ago to derail efforts at an expanded government role in health care.
While many doctors support the idea of an expanded public insurance program to insure the currently uninsured, the AMA is opposed to that idea.
The president is unable to win over the AMA today on that idea. The doctors will be listening to see what the president says about medical liability reform. Many physicians will tell you they practice defensive medicine, ordering extra tests, to protect themselves in the case of lawsuits. The president will speak to this issue in broad terms but not offer any detailed proposal in this area.
Here's one from the "it must be Friday" department. Check out the embarrassing top of this White House press release issued just minutes ago:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________
For Immediate Release
June 12, 2009
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BUSH
AND PRIME MINISTER TSVANGIRAI OF ZIMBABWE
AFTER MEETING
Oval Office
4:04 P.M. EDT
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I want to welcome Prime Minister Tsvangirai to the Oval Office. He and his delegation have been meeting with my team throughout the day. I obviously have extraordinary admiration for the courage and the tenacity that the Prime Minister has shown in navigating through some very difficult political times in Zimbabwe...
As you read this, you might want to listen to the Beatles' "Taxman" to stoke you into the correct mood of righteous anger.
If your employer provides you with a cell phone, the Internal Revenue Service is considering taxing you for your personal use of that phone, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.
Before you grab your pitchfork and take the first thing smoking for Washington, read this snippet from the WSJ:
The Internal Revenue Service proposed employers assign 25% of an employee's annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit. Under that scenario, a worker in the 28% tax bracket, whose wireless device costs the company $1,500 a year, could see $105 in additional federal income tax.
The IRS, in a notice issued this week, said employees could avoid tax liability if they showed proof they used personal cellphones for nonbusiness calls during work hours. The agency also could decide on a set number of phone minutes as "minimal personal use" that would be untaxed.In a third option proposed by the IRS, employers could use a statistical sampling to determine what portion of workers' cellphone use is personal and how much is work-related. Workers would be taxed on the difference.
The IRS move, which is spurring efforts by the wireless industry and others to kill the idea, would mark a stricter enforcement of an existing rule that classifies employer-provided cellphones as a taxable benefit, rather than a 24-hour-a-day work tool.
Under a 1989 law, workers who use company-provided mobile phones for personal calls are supposed to count the value of those calls as income and pay federal income taxes accordingly.
President Barack Obama is expected to unveil next week his proposal to overhaul the nation's financial oversight. But Simon Johnson, an economic professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the popular Baseline Scenario blog, doesn't expect anything resembling sweeping changes.
He said as much in a Q and A with NPR's Liz Halloran, Johnson, former International Monetary Fund chief economist.
I don't think real change will come this year -- my expectation is that most of the "reforms" will be technocratic tweaking with not real content. But the debate is now started and the banks are being watched more closely by civil society and outside experts.
Johnson has been very critical of the Obama Administration for caving in to financial interests and he continues his criticism:
If you meet Kenneth Feinberg, the man the Obama Administration chose to oversee the compensation packages of the top 175 officials at the seven largest financial institutions receiving federal bailout money, make sure you don't call him the compensation czar. He hates the term.
Kenneth Feinberg, "special master" for compensation at the top seven financial institution recipients of public money. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File
He told All Things Considered host Michele Norris in an interview to be heard on the show later today:
I recoil when I hear or read in the press that I'm some type of compensation czar, like I'm going to issue imperial edicts against company officials. I think that's a very poor choice of a noun describing my role.
Feinberg, a lawyer and mediation and arbitration expert who oversaw the funds that made payouts to 9/11 and Virginia Tech victims and survivors, clearly wanted to send the message to the seven institutions whose compensation packages he will have authority over that was coming in peace. (Those companies are Citigroup, Bank of America, American International Group, Chrysler, Chrysler Credit, General Motors and GMAC.)
He told Michele:
"I would rather like to think of myself as an individual who will work with these companies in a win-win situation, developing compensation structures and amounts consistent with the public interest. And that's going to be the challenge."
The legislation that created Feinberg's new role not only gives him authority over the pay of the top 175 executives at the seven largest TARP fund recipients, but power to design compensation systems and do clawbacks of compensation already received that he deems excessive.
With its proposals to rein in executive compensation, the Obama Administration is pitting itself against greed. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on greed to win.
Still, the administration had to do something to deal with the widespread public outrage over the vast incomes earned by the Wall Street types who did so much to contribute to the economic meltdown.
So as NPR's Scott Horsley reports on All Things Considered today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today outlined the administration's approach.
An excerpt from his report:
HORSLEY: For months now, the Obama Administration has been promising to reform the way executives are paid -- rewarding those who create long-term value, not just a temporary jump in the stock price. As part of that effort, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says, the administration is backing legislation that would give shareholders a non-binding vote on executive pay and ensure that corporate directors who set that pay aren't beholden to executives.
GEITHNER: "We are going to support giving the SEC legislative authority for Say-on-Pay legislation, and to make sure that compensation committees are fully independent."
President Barack Obama talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call from the Oval Office, Monday, June 8, 2009 Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
By Frank James
Who knew President Barack Obama's simple habit of throwing his feet up on his desk could lead to an international incident?
On Monday White House photographer Pete Souza snapped a photo of Obama while the president was on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Obama, as he occasionally does, had his feet up on the desk and Souza shot the photo of the president with the soles of Obama's shoes in the foreground. It's a fairly straightforward picture.
But few things involving the Middle East are simple. Some Israeli journalists are stirring the pot by suggesting Obama intended to disrespect Netanyahu and Israel by showing the soles of his shoes.
An excerpt from a piece in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
A photo released by the White House, which shows Obama talking on the phone with Netanyahu on Monday, speaks volumes: The president is seen with his legs up on the table, his face stern and his fist clenched, as though he were dictating to Netanyahu: "Listen up and write 'Palestinian state' a hundred times. That's right, Palestine, with a P." As an enthusiast of Muslim culture, Obama surely knows there is no greater insult in the Middle East than pointing the soles of one's shoes at another person. Indeed, photos of other presidential phone calls depict Obama leaning on his desk, with his feet on the floor.
All this czar talk reminds us that it's generally acknowledged that the first person to be a so-called White House czar was William Simon, who was referred to -- by the media -- at the energy czar during the 1973-74 oil crisis.
Question for discussion: Is Obama putting too much power in the hands of officials who don't need Senate confirmation?
In a blow to the Obama Administration and the auto industry, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the Indiana pension funds request to delay Chrysler's sale to Fiat. More to come.
Update: 4:12 pm:
The Associated Press has this report:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has
temporarily delayed Chrysler's sale to Fiat.
Ginsburg says in an order Monday that the sale is "stayed pending further order."
The action indicates that the delay may only be temporary.
Chrysler has said a delay could scuttle the deal.
A federal appeals court in New York had earlier approved the sale, but gave opponents some time to file an appeal with the Supreme Court.
South African President Jacob Zuma, sings and chants at a stadium rally near Bloemfontein during a celebration for MK, Umkhonto We Siswe, the African National Congress' armed wing, Tuesday Dec. 16, 2008. AP Photo/Jerome Delay
By Frank James
In at least one part of his Cairo, Egypt speech today to the Muslim world, President Barack Obama engaged in some noticeable revisionist history.
It was during the passage in which he called on Palestinians to renounce violence:
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered.
The president's inclusion of South Africa as a place where non-violent protests led to equality would come as news to South Africans old enough to recall the apartheid period era.
Armed struggle was a major tool used by the African National Congress from the 1960s forward. It is not by accident that the theme song of South Africa's new president, Jacob Zuma, is "Bring Me My Machine Gun." And that would also explain why there were so many former guerrillas in South Africa who had to be incorporated into the South African army after the ANC came to power.
Violence was even promoted by the saintly Nelson Mandela after the ANC determined that civil disobedience alone was failing against the powerful apartheid government.
The ANC's military wing known as Umkhonto we Sizwe, or MK, was responsible for a campaign of insurgency, including bombings of military, police and civilian targets, all the way through the 1980s.
NPR's Justice correspondent Ari Shapiro has learned of a heated meeting Tuesday involving Obama Administration officials and congressional types over President Barack Obama's controversial plan to close Guantanamo and continue the Bush Administration tack on military tribunals, with some tweaks, for detainees.
Congressional Democrats continue to feel like the administration has left them holding the bag by announcing its plan to close Guantanamo without actually having a plan about what to do with the detainees, obviously a key detail.
Shapiro reports, by e-mail, that:
A Democratic staffer just told me about an apparently contentious meeting that took place yesterday between Hill folks and the Administration on the issue of closing Guantanamo and military commissions. From Congress there were Judiciary, Armed Services, and leadership folks. From the Administration there was Lisa Monaco (Deputy Assistant Attorney General at Justice), Jay Johnson (DOD General Counsel's office), and Trevor Morrison (White House Counsel's office).
Egyptian novelist and political commentator Ahdaf Soueif spoke with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel today on the eve of President Barack Obama's Cairo, Egypt speech tomorrow to give her sense of what Egyptians want to hear from the American president.
Ahdaf Soueif Eamonn McCabe for The Guardian
Soueif's view is that Obama needs to specifically address Palestine and Gaza for his speech to be viewed as credible by Egyptians. Furthermore, she said Obama should refrain from the anodyne statements about how great a religion Islam is. Muslims have heard that before, even from his predecessor. They want to hear more substance.
An excerpt from their conversation:
ROBERT: Is Cairo the right place for a U.S. president to address Arabs and Muslims all over the world?
SOUIEF: Yeah, I think it's a good place. Obviously the president needed a country that was part of the so-called moderate part of the Arab world. And Egypt has always been a natural leader. It's fallen off this position in the last few years but it's a necessary if not sufficient sort of player for anything to happen in the region. It's a very good place.
SIEGEL: Put us in the mind of students at Cairo University who might hear this speech. What could an American president say or do that would conceivably say or do that would be meaningful to them?
SOUIEF: Right, well if we're talking about a wish list, I think just listening to a lot of people here over the last few days people would really like to hear something substantive rather than sort of affirmations that Islam is a great culture and so on.
It would really be quite nice if the president's speech would address all the people of the world. The constant pinpointing of Muslims and the Muslim world that has been so much of Western discourse over the last decade is really something that President Obama needs to turn away from.
It was very much the discourse of the previous administration and even when it's used to say 'Oh, Islam is a great faith, we have no problem with it,' it is still fudging the issues. Because the issues are political rather than cultural.
And so that's really point number one, which is to address political, economic issues and to address the interest of the people rather than make cultural statements to do with Islam.
SIEGEL: When you speak of those issues, you mean what for example?
SOUIEF: Well, topmost in everybody's mind really is the question of Palestine. That is absolutely at the center of all the conflicts in the region. The conflicts that we're living through. The one's that we've had... The president has already spoken about settlements.
We need to hear more. That's what I hear everybody (say). And we need a specific mention of Gaza. The predicament of the people of Gaza, the 1.5 million who are under siege is a very, very hard one and it's close to everyone's heart.
Listen to All Things Considered for more of this interview.
Mohsin Hamid, a Pakistani novelist who attended college and law school in the U.S. and now lives in London, spoke with All Things Considered host Melissa Block today in advance of President Barack Obama's highly anticipated speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt tomorrow.
Mohsin Hamid Ed Kashi
Hamid was interesting on a number of issues, including the Obama's choice of Cairo as the venue for his speech. Salient points by Hamid: the Muslim world's center of gravity in terms of population and democracy, is actually further east than the Middle East.
An excerpt from their conversation
MELISSA: Do you see a see a logic in his choice of Cairo as venue for this speech or would you have rather seen him go maybe outside the Arab world, maybe even give the speech in Pakistan, for example.
HAMID: I think if he had given the speech in Pakistan that would have been incredible.
There's both pros and cons about the choice of Cairo.
If the intention is to speak to the Arab world, then of course Cairo is the capital of Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world. And geographically right in the middle of the Arab world.
But people often forget that the majority of Muslims are not Arabs, countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh all have more people than any Arab country.
And more than half of Muslims live from Pakistan to Indonesia, far more than live between Iran and Morocco.
So I think this kind of Arab centric or Middle East centric view of Islam is perhaps a bit, it tends to misunderstand, I think, where the Muslim population lives and what the concerns of that population are.
MELISSA: What would those concerns be? What would the misunderstanding be that you might want to see him address in addressing this broader population outside the Arab world.
Ahmid: Well its interesting if you look at Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, these countries have done much more to advance democracy than really any country in the Arab Middle East,. When you talk about the emerging Muslim democracies, in Malaysia as well, a number of countries are beginning to make forward progress in this area. I think reaching out to those countries is of great importance.
Of course, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Gulf, with its enormous oil reserves, tends to pull American attention back toward Saudi Arabia, back towards the countries surrounding the gulf. But that's a concern really about natural resources perhaps more than about human beings.
You can hear more from the interview on All Things Considered
When President Barack Obama first met Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz al Saud as the U.S. head-of-state earlier this year in London, he bowed to the Protector of the Two Holy Places, creating a stir, especially among conservatives who held that American presidents bow to no foreign head of states.
The White House denied that Obama had bowed, asking reporters to believe Press Secretary Robert Gibbs instead of their own lying eyes.
Upon meeting the king today however, there was no bow. According to Fox News's White House blog called Row 4, Seat 2 after its assigned seat in the Brady Press Briefing Room, the greeting was more business-like:
President Obama arrived in the Saudi capital Wednesday afternoon and was greeted King Abdullah with a hand shake and a nod of the head, forgoing the bow that Mr. Obama controversially gave the King back in April at their first meeting.
Neither did the King hold Mr. Obama's hand, as he did with former President George W. Bush during the King's visit to Mr. Bush's Texas ranch.
Despite the 108 degree temperature in Riyadh, the 84 year old king awaited Mr. Obama on the tarmac - a show of hospitality reserved for special guests. As the two men greeted, a 21 gun salute went off in the vicinity. And after a review of the troops, the two men greeted each others' delegations in a gazebo protecting them from the sun's strong rays, but then proceeded inside the airport terminal to share a cup of Arabian coffee.
President Barack Obama did something you don't often see a president do during his time with NBC's Brian Williams; he playfully growled like a dog as he showed off First Dog Bo to the anchor.
Actually, as my NPR colleague Liz Halloran described it, the growl was part dog, part pirate. So maybe it was a pirate dog growl.
We're thinking the dog whisperers out there will probably weigh in to accuse the president of unwisely teasing his dog and of teaching his puppy bad manners. To them we say in advance, lighten up.
President Barack Obama gave NPR hosts Michele Norris and Steve Inskeep a preview of the message he intends to carry to the Middle East later this week where he will give a much-awaited speech in Cairo, Egypt aimed at the Muslim world. (Read more NPR coverage of the interview.)
Michele, an All Things Considered host, asked the president what would be his message to Muslims who say the U.S. policy constantly tilts too far towards Israel.
NORRIS: Many people in the region are concerned when they look at the U.S. relationship with Israel, they feel that Israel has favored status in all cases. What do you say to people in the Muslim world who feel that the U.S. has repeatedly over time blindly supported Israel?
THE PRESIDENT: What I'd say there's no doubt that the U.S. has a special relationship with Israel. There are a lot of Israelis who used to be American. There is huge cross-cultural ties between the two countries. I think that as a vibrant democracy that shares many of our values obviously we're deeply sympathetic to Israel.
And I would also say that given past statements surrounding Israel, the notion that they should be driven into the sea, that they should be annihilated, that they should be obliterated, the armed aggression that's been directed towards them in the past, you can understand why not only Israelis would feel concerned but the U.S. would feel it was important to back this stalwart ally.
Now having said all that what is also true is that part of being a good friend is being honest. And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory in the region is profoundly negative not only for Israeli interests but for U.S. interests. And that's part of a new dialogue I'd like to see encouraged in the region the Muslim countries should be able to understand.
NPR News hosts Steven Inskeep and Michele Norris interviewed President Barack Obama this afternoon on the eve of his trip this week to the Middle East. The first part of the interview is airing on All Things Considered today.
Security personnel remove Brenda Lee from near Air Force One after Lee attempted to give President Obama a letter, Thursday May 28, 2009, at Los Angeles International Airport. AP Photo/Nick Ut
By Frank James
President Barack Obama and his aides like to remind audiences and journalists that he reads the letters of real Americans to know their concerns.
But judging by what happened to Brenda Lee, a woman who describes herself as a journalist and a "Roman Catholic priestess," there's a right way and a wrong way to try and get a letter into the president's hands.
Lee literally got carried away in Los Angeles International Airport after she insisted on trying to give a letter to Obama before he left the West Coast for Washington today.
As the Associated Press reports:
Lee said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that she wanted to hand Obama a letter urging him "to take a stand for traditional marriage."
She said she asked a Secret Service agent to give the president her letter, but he refused and referred her to a White House staffer. Lee said she refused to give the staffer the letter.
"I said, 'I'll take my chances if (the president) comes by here,"' said Lee, who identified herself as a Roman Catholic priestess who lives in Anaheim, Calif. "He became annoyed that I wouldn't give him the letter."
Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court is being hailed as a proud moment for Hispanic Americans. But it makes all of us former Project Americans very warm inside, too.
Butler Houses project, The Bronx, NY. From New York City Housing Authority website
Sotomayor and I grew up in two different housing projects in the South Bronx, she in the Bronxdale buildings, I in the Butler buildings at roughly the same time, the 1960s and 1970s.
It was a period of transition in the Bronx and New York City as a whole. The projects started out as integrated. There were middle-class services like milk and newspaper delivery. Yes, children, milk was once delivered to households just like newspapers.
But as middle-class whites fled the borough for the suburbs, only to be replaced by the poor and near poor, the projects became high-rise hellholes. Delivery services vanished. Elevators broke down constantly. Some residents began using the darkened stairwells as restrooms.
Crime, drug use, you name it, became rampant. There were the passed-out heroin addicts in the stairwells. A teenager who lived on my floor was severely beaten by a gang for wanting out. A friend's young sister was raped and killed. It wasn't all horror but there was horror. Too much of it. So many people raised in the projects have their own version of these stories. No doubt Sotomayor does too.
President Barack Obama congratulates Jack McCain at today's U.S. Naval Academy graduation. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
As the commencement speaker at the U.S. Naval Academy's graduation ceremony today, President Barack Obama had the chance to congratulate the newest Ensign John McCain, the fourth of that name and from that family to be graduated from Annapolis.
It made for terrific photos.
Sen. John McCain and wife Cindy watch the commencement ceremony. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
President Barack Obama's decision to ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on from the Bush Administration continues to pay dividends as Gates, in his typically plain-spoken, unemotional, everyman way provided a fairly pragmatic defense of Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison facility.
He made his comments to Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show this morning.
SEC. GATES: I think that one of the points the president made was that he had no interest whatsoever in releasing publicly detainees who might come back to harm Americans. So the question is, where do you put them? I mean, the real issue is, do you close Guantanamo and put them in a prison in the United States in some way or somewhere, or are you forced to keep Guantanamo open because all the other possibilities are closed off legislatively?
The truth is, it's probably one of the finest prisons in the world today, but it has a taint. It is -- the name itself is a condemnation. What the president was saying is this will be an advertisement for al Qaeda as long as it's open.
Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson told All Things Considered host Melissa Block in an interview this afternoon that Kansans don't want any of the 240 Guantanamo detainees sent to the federally controlled prisons in his state.
Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson. Official State of Kansas photo
"... I can assure you that we have no interest in these 240 prisoners being moved to Kansas," Parkinson told Block.
And that's despite Kansas being home to Ft. Leavenworth, the famous military prison facility, and a medium security federal civilian prison in Leavenworth, Kan.
The military prison would be inappropriate for the detainees since the facility consists of dormitory style housing, Parkinson said. And that's despite Ft. Leavenworth being the only maximum-security prison run by the Defense Department.
"As President Obama stated in his speech, if these prisoners are moved they need to be sent to highly secure prisons," Parkinson said. "The military prison at Ft. Leavenworth is not a highly secure prison and it really wouldn't meet the criteria that President Obama has set out...
"... It's a very open facility which we believe would place our local citizens at risk if the Guantanamo Bay prisoners were transferred there," Parkinson said.
Parkinson added that because his position was that the Guantanamo detainees shouldn't be held in civilian prisons, that ruled out the civilian facility at Leavenworth. He's all for the detainees being kept in a military prison, just not in his state.
Federal officials said they expect fewer major tropical storms to threaten the U.S. mainland this year compared with last, predicting nine to 14 named storms compared with 16 in 2008.
"It only takes one to make it a very bad season," said National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read.
This year's named storms are forecast to include four to seven hurricanes with one to three of them expected to be major.
Earlier this week, the Homeland Security Department also warned Americans in coastal areas along the Gulf Coast and the Eastern Seaboard to gird themselves for likely storms.
Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, federal officials responsible for hurricane preparedness have spared no opportunity to warn the public to be ready for hurricane season while federal officials have repeatedly rehearsed their own preparations.
Below is the full text of President Barack Obama's national security speech at the National Archives this morning.
------------------------------------
Remarks of President Barack Obama -- As Prepared for Delivery
Protecting Our Security and Our Values
National Archives Museum
Washington, D.C.
May 21, 2009
These are extraordinary times for our country. We are confronting an historic economic crisis. We are fighting two wars. We face a range of challenges that will define the way that Americans will live in the 21st century. There is no shortage of work to be done, or responsibilities to bear.
And we have begun to make progress. Just this week, we have taken steps to protect American consumers and homeowners, and to reform our system of government contracting so that we better protect our people while spending our money more wisely. The engines of our economy are slowly beginning to turn, and we are working toward historic reform of health care and energy. I welcome the hard work that has been done by the Congress on these and other issues.
In the midst of all these challenges, however, my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe. That is the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It is the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night.
This responsibility is only magnified in an era when an extremist ideology threatens our people, and technology gives a handful of terrorists the potential to do us great harm. We are less than eight years removed from the deadliest attack on American soil in our history. We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again. We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it.
Congressional Democrats continue to tell President Barack Obama "not so fast" on closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, refusing to approve funding until he provides them with a workable plan for what to do with the detainees.
NPR's David Welna has this report:
A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide has confirmed to NPR that funding for closing down the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention facility is being removed from the 2009 supplemental appropriations bill.
Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee had included $50 million in the supplemental bill for the Guantanamo shutdown, while stipulating that such funding would only become available once President Obama submitted a detailed plan for the shutdown and relocation of inmates.
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