What President Obama isn't saying about Medicare - Jonathan Martin. Also on the table during the aborted talks between Vice President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: higher premiums for seniors at higher income levels.
It’s almost certain that any fiscal agreement will include some sort of expanded Medicare means testing. The president has already demonstrated a willingness to further raise premiums on wealthy seniors and to broaden the reach of the premiums to have more beneficiaries pay for services. Continue Reading Obama, in an interview with Woodward, acknowledged he was open to nudging reluctant liberals on Medicare and Social Security if Republicans were willing to deal on taxes. Polls Show Obama Widening Lead in Ohio and Florida. Marc Thiessen: Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings? I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule.
Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” One Term, Four Trillion-Dollar Deficits. Obama Pressed by Rights Groups to Back Same-Sex Marriage. Gay-rights advocates are seeking a definitive answer from President Barack Obama on same-sex marriage after two senior administration officials backed giving gay couples the same rights as heterosexual married couples.
Vice President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in separate television interviews that they support gay marriage. Obama supports equal rights for gays while stopping short of endorsing same-sex marriage. Such mixed messages will hurt Obama with gay voters, who will be less inclined to volunteer for and donate to the president’s re-election campaign, said John Aravosis, a gay- rights advocate and 2008 Obama supporter. Obama: Same-sex marriage should be legal. President Obama became the first U.S. president to endorse same-sex marriage today, telling ABC News that it "should be legal.
" "I've just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," Obama told ABC's Good Morning America. After years of what he had called an "evolving" view of the issues, Obama said family and friends gradually persuaded him that gay and lesbian couples should be treated the same as heterosexual ones. Facing a re-election bid in which gay rights are a hot button issue, Obama also said his endorsement is a personal view, and that states should set their own marriage laws. The interview took place a day after voters in North Carolina approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Obama a 'Metrosexual Abe Lincoln'? Absurd GOP Attack Plan Exposed. On gay marriage, Obama will make a change you can believe in - in 2013. “If there is one thing that we learned in 2008, it’s that nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change.”
—Barack Obama on Saturday at his campaign kickoff rally in Columbus, Ohio The next day, Joe Biden added his voice (more or less) to the millions calling for change in the laws that ban gay marriage. Then Monday morning, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a Chicagoan like the president, endorsed gay marriage during an MSNBC interview. Before the week is over, it is a safe bet that other prominent members of the Obama administration—when pressed by reporters—will join the chorus. That is how a social movement builds, one public conversion at a time. GOProud Chairman gets better of MSNBC Host.
By The Right Scoop This was a great segment and honestly I was proud to be in Barron’s corner.
While I disagree with his lifestyle choices, I thought he did a great job defending both the Republican Party and the conservative movement against Cenk’s accusations – especially that the Republican Party ‘doesn’t like him’. Rush has tried to make this point over and over, that conservatives are much more tolerant than are liberals. Vice President Joe Biden Tells 'Meet The Press' He's 'Comfortable' With Marriage Equality. WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden became the highest-ranking official in the Obama administration to signal support for same-sex marriage on Sunday during an interview with "Meet The Press.
" Biden stopped just a touch short from outright saying that he backs marriage equality. No, ‘Obamacare’ isn’t ‘the largest tax increase in the history of the world’ (in one chart) Since the Supreme Court decision, Republicans have been calling the Affordable Care Act "the largest tax increase in the history of the world.
" Politifact rates this false. Kevin Drum's got a table of the 15 significant tax increases since 1950, and the Affordable Care Act, which amounts to a tax increase of 0.49 percent of GDP, comes in 10th. Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises. WASHINGTON -- A critical document from President Barack Obama's free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises.
Obama Invites Mexico To Join Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Talks. WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's administration on Monday formally invited Mexico to join controversial free trade negotiations known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, reinforcing consumer and environmental group concerns that the deal may establish broad new powers for corporations.
The invitation comes less than one week after a leaked U.S. document sparked an uproar because it proposed terms that would grant corporations the ability to bypass U.S. public interest laws and regulations in courts here and appeal directly to international tribunals. U.S. advocacy groups and some members of Congress have criticized the U.S. proposals. The U.S. has granted corporations similar powers under trade pacts extending back to the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. Secret ‘Kill List’ Tests Obama’s Principles. Obamacare Wealth Redistribution: Health Reform To Add $52,000 To 1 Percenters Tax Bill To Pay For Benefits For Poorest Americans. Obamacare is designed to increase the health care coverage of Americans but doing so will, in part, yield something else: Wealth distribution. The Affordable Care Act will raise taxes by $52,000 on average for families among the top 1 percent of earners in order to finance $250 to $2,000 worth of health benefits for the poorest half of American families by 2016, a recent report from the Tax Foundation has found.
The added taxes are just one way that the government is expected to increase measures that will likely reduce the wealth gap as Americans face added pressures from globalization and an aging population, according to The New York Times. Though redistribution of wealth through Obamacare and other means may seem like a certainty in the coming years, it still holds quite a stigma. Following the release of Mitt Romney’s infamous 47 percent video, a 1998 speech at Loyola surfaced where Obama declared that he “believe[s] in [wealth] redistribution.” Obama clarifies: ‘The economy’s not doing fine’ On defense over the defining issue of his reelection fight, President Barack Obama clarified Friday that "the economy is not doing fine" and accused Republicans of playing "political games" by turning his own earlier words against him. Obama had triggered the onslaught a few hours beforehand by telling reporters that "the private sector is doing fine" and that "where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy" is in cash-strapped states and cities that are cutting jobs for teachers, firefighters, police and other workers.
Republicans, including Mitt Romney, pounced on the remark, saying it showed the president was out of touch. So, in a brief photo opportunity, Obama revisited the issue. Decoding President Obama's Rolling Stone Interview. Keystone XL Pipeline Project. Keystone Pipeline. The Keystone Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, commissioned since 2010. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and also to oil tank farms and oil pipeline distribution center in Cushing, Oklahoma.[7] Three phases of the project are in operation, and the fourth is awaiting U.S. government approval. They are: The first two phases have the capacity to deliver up to 590,000 barrels per day (94,000 m3/d) of oil into the Mid-West refineries.[8] Phase III has capacity to deliver up to 700,000 barrels per day (110,000 m3/d) to the Texas refineries.[10] By comparison, U.S. oil production was about 9,000,000 barrels per day (1,400,000 m3/d) in early November, 2014;[11] and in the preceding twelve months through August 2014, the US imported an average of about 7.5 million barrels of oil per day.[12] Description[edit] Additional phases (III and IV) have been in construction or discussion since 2011.
Poll: 74 Percent of Americans, Including 67 Percent of Republicans, Want Obama to End Medical Marijuana Crackdown. A poll conducted earlier this month by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research on behalf of the Marijuana Policy Project finds that 76 percent of Americans want President Barack Obama to end his crackdown on medical marijuana in states where medicinal use of the plant is legal. According to MPP's release, "Support for keeping the federal government out of state medical marijuana issues was universal across all demographics. With respect to political affiliation, 75% of Democrats, 67% of Republicans, and, notably 79% of Independents said that President Obama should respect state medical marijuana laws.
The Choom Gang: President Obama’s pot-smoking high school days detailed in Maraniss book. Political blogs went to pot on Friday. The Internet is buzzing after the Washingtonian published a review of Washington Post associate editor David Maraniss’s forthcoming book “Barack Obama: The Story,” including an excerpt about President Obama’s high school clique and their favorite pastime. Let’s just say jobs weren’t the president’s first green initiative. The group of friends smoked marijuana frequently enough to nickname themselves the “Choom Gang.” But enough of my bad weed puns. Here’s what other blogs are writing about the excerpts. Yahoo: Bill Clinton he was not. Poll: Obama Soft On Wall Street Banks, Swing State Voters Not Happy. Poll shows strong swing state disapproval of Obama on housing. Campaign for a Fair Settlement, a liberal housing group which formed to pressure state Attorneys General like California’s Kamala Harris to not agree to a bad robosigning settlement deal, has released a poll that paints a brutal picture of how voters in swing states view President Obama’s handling of the housing crisis.
Why Obama Must Hold Wall Street Accountable. White House visitor logs show lobbying going strong. And at 4 p.m., a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs arrived in the Old Executive Office Building for a meeting with Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. It was an unremarkable January day, with a steady stream of lobbyists among the thousands of daily visitors to the White House and the surrounding executive office buildings, according to a Washington Post analysis of visitor logs released by the administration.
From 'Hope' to Hypocrisy: The Senator Who Became A Sellout. The Big Fail - Top 5 Failed Obama Policies. How to Beat Obama - By Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. In an American election focused on a lousy economy and high unemployment, conventional wisdom holds that foreign policy is one of Barack Obama's few strong suits. But the president is strikingly vulnerable in this area. Hannity Debuts Breitbart Obama College Video Reveals “Controversial” Hug With Embattled Professor. The fine print in Obama’s ‘Promises Kept’ ad. Did Obama Win In Debt Ceiling Deal? Obama Supporters Disgusted By Debt Ceiling Deal.