President Obama lines it up perfectly, getting ready to throw the football from the White House all the way to the site of today’s Superbowl in New Orleans. Or maybe he’s getting ready to pass it to Hillary Clinton in 2016!
Category: Politics
Fox News was suppose to be a safe zone for Wayne Lapierre. The network has taken the very same positions as LaPierre and the NRA. But LaPierre’s visit to Fox today was not a sunday walk in the park, as the NRA’s mouthpiece was called out on numerous occasions as an “out of touch elite” making “ridiculous” statements.
Here’s a clip of LaPierre’s most recent visit. Host Chris Wallace asked LaPierre if he stands by the claims made in a recent ad by the NRA targeting the President’s children. In the ad, the narrator asked, “are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school.”
Asked if he agrees with that ad, LaPierre tried to wiggle himself out of the hot seat, saying that the ad was not about the President’s daughters. Wallace stated that the ad specifically spoke about the president’s daughters. He then asked LaPierre;
“Do you really think that the president’s children are the same kind of target as every school child in America? That’s ridiculous and you know it, sir.”
Later on in the discussion, Chris Wallace pointed out the hypocrisy of Wayne LaPierre for criticizing “the elite” for having personal security although he has them too. This fact left LaPierre physically twitching in his seat as he looked for an answer to Wallace’s accusation.
Watch the video below.
So it’s true.
The White House is responding to critics who questioned whether President Obama has ever been skeet shooting.
White House Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted out this picture on Saturday morning after much skepticism about the president’s claim that he participates in the sport “all the time.”
“POTUS shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David on Aug. 4, 2012,” reads the tweet, with a link to the photograph.
The photo would appear to quiet the controversy that arose after an interview with The New Republic, in which Obama talked about frequent skeet shooting.
The publication asked: “Have you ever fired a gun?”
Obama responded: “Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time.”
The comment caused a stir, as people asked why he had never mentioned the hobby before and why they had never seen photos.
In an interview with CNN on Monday night — before the photo was released — Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said, “If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this? Why have we not seen photos?”
She then added: “I think he should invite me to Camp David, and I’ll go skeet shooting with him. And I bet I’ll beat him.”
h/t USA Today
President Obama called on Congress to work together and come up with bipartisan ways to pay down the debt and grow the economy.
We began this year with economists and business leaders saying that we are poised to grow in 2013. And there are real signs of progress: Home prices are starting to climb again. Car sales are at a five-year high. Manufacturing is roaring back. Our businesses created 2.2 million jobs last year. And we just learned that our economy created more jobs over the last few months than economists originally thought.
But this week, we also received the first estimate of America’s economic growth over the last few months. And it reminded us that bad decisions in Washington can get in the way of our economic progress.
We all agree that it’s critical to cut unnecessary spending. But we can’t just cut our way to prosperity. It hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work today. It could slow down our recovery. It could weaken our economy. And it could cost us jobs – now, and in the future.
American employers added 157,000 jobs in January compared with a revised 196,000 jobs the previous month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The unemployment rate was little changed at 7.9 percent, about where it has been stuck since September.
On the bright side, revised government data showed that the economy added 335,000 more jobs than originally estimated during all of 2012, including an additional 150,000 in the last quarter of the year. That was on top of the previously reported fourth-quarter job growth of 603,000 and 2012 growth of 2.2 million.
The higher revisions, in particular, encouraged traders on Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones industrial average over the 14,000-point mark for the first time since 2007.
NEW YORK (AP) — Ed Koch’s favorite moment as mayor of New York City, fittingly, involved yelling.
Suddenly inspired to do something brash about the rare transit strike that crippled the city in 1980, he strode down to the Brooklyn Bridge to encourage commuters who were forced to walk to work instead of jumping aboard subway trains and buses.
“I began to yell, ‘Walk over the bridge! Walk over the bridge! We’re not going to let these bastards bring us to our knees!’ And people began to applaud,” the famously combative, acid-tongued politician recalled at a 2012 forum.
His success in rallying New Yorkers in the face of the strike was, he said, his biggest personal achievement as mayor. And it was a display that was quintessentially Koch, who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the world.
Koch died at 2 a.m. Friday at the age of 88 from congestive heart failure, spokesman George Arzt said. The funeral will be Monday at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.
Koch was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital on Monday with shortness of breath, and was moved to intensive care on Thursday for closer monitoring of the fluid in his lungs and legs. He had been released two days earlier after being treated for water in his lungs and legs. He had initially been admitted on Jan. 1
h/t USA Today
Retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, went on the Fox News Network on Tuesday and was interviewed by Bill O’ Reilly. Powell, and outspoken Republican who voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, was asked by the host to defend his voting record for the Democratic president.
“What is it that you object to mostly, that caused you to vote for President Obama twice,” Reilly asked, to which Powell answered that the economic policies offered by the Republican candidates in 2008 and 2012, would not have fixed the economy. But that answer was not enough for Reilly and he ventured into trying to paint Colin’s votes for Obama, as based on race.
After pointing out that African-Americans are still suffering under President Obama, Reilly questioned Powell’s previous answer that the economy made him vote for President Obama. Powell seemed irritated by Reilly’s insertion of race into the conversation. “Why are you only seeing me as an African-American Bill?” Powell asked. “I’m an American.”
He then goes on to explain that although the economy is not where it needs to be, it is better now than it was before Obama took office. Powell also pointed out that when the general economy improves, as it’s doing now, then the economic outlook for other minority groups will improve as well.
The conversation progressed to immigration and voting, with Powell correctly stating that Republicans in the last election tried to “disenfranchise” minority by requiring voter ids and limiting voting days. “I want to see a Republican party that rather than try and make it more difficult to vote and restricting the days and hours you can vote,” Powell said, “a Republican party that says we want everybody to vote and we want you to vote for us.”
Powell and O’Reilly also spoke about Sarah Palin and other Republicans who turned him off during the previous campaigns.
President Obama is riding a wave of personal popularity into his second term, with his highest favorability ratings since his first year in office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Fully 60 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama in the new poll, up slightly from October but a clear shift in opinion from an election year in which his ratings hovered in the mid-to-low 50s. And by 39 percent to 26 percent, the president now has more “strongly” positive ratings than strongly negative reviews, breaking a two-year stretch in which intense opposition was on par with (or higher than) intense support.
h/t WashingtonPost
Wow. The Dow is approaching 14000 for the first time since 2007. This, in spite of the fact that taxes on the top 1% went up for the first time in over a decade.
Seems Republicans were wrong on this too.
Last week the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed above 1,500 for the first time in five years. This week the Dow Jones industrial average has been flirting with 14,000, a level it hasn’t seen since October 2007.
In early trading Tuesday, the Dow added 22 points, or 0.2%, to 13,905.
Stocks are a bit pricey relative to their earnings, but are nowhere near the overheated levels they’ve seen before, said Robert Shiller, a famed Yale University economist who identified the stock market and housing bubbles of the last decade.
Shiller, who may be best known for a widely reported index tracking U.S. house prices bearing his name, also created an index to track whether stocks were cheap or overpriced.
His CAPE index — which stands for cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio — factors in 10 years’ worth of earnings. He has collected data stretching back to 1871.
A new PPP Poll found that Texas voters- even Republicans- have had enough of Rick Perry.
PPP’s newest poll finds that only 31% of voters think Perry should seek reelection next year, compared to 62% who think it’s time for him to step aside. He’s among the most unpopular Governors in the country, with only 41% of voters approving of him to 54% who disapprove.
Perry could face great peril in a primary challenge next year. Only 41% of GOP primary voters want him to be their candidate again, compared to 47% who think it’s time for someone else. And in a head to head match up with Attorney General Greg Abbott, Perry leads by only a 41/38 margin. What makes those numbers particularly worrisome for Perry is that Abbott only has 59% name recognition at this point with primary voters. Among voters who are familiar with Abbott- whether they like him or not- he leads Perry 55/33. That suggests the potential for things to get worse for Perry if Abbott does indeed go forward with a bid.
At a time when Republicans are trying to get the Hispanic vote, this is not something they should be saying.
Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) thinks that Republicans should not take up immigration reform or even make an effort to compete for the votes of the fastest growing demographic in the country because he believes that Hispanics are “low-skilled” and dependent on social programs who will vote for Democrats because of it.
It’s about the worst possible messaging for the party still ringing from defeat at the polls in November, during an election which saw President Barack Obama trounce his Republican opponent by a 3-to-1 margin among Hispanics — but that didn’t stop Barletta from saying it.
“I hope politics is not at the root of why we’re rushing to pass a bill. Anyone who believes that they’re going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken,” Barletta said, according to Pennsylvania newspaper The Morning Call. “The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”
The White House and a bipartisan group of Senators are outlining plans this week to reform the nation’s immigration system in a way that will permit the children of undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and become citizens, as well as provide a pathway to citizenship for individuals who broke the law to come to the U.S.
The Hagel saga continues, and like expected, Republicans are not happy with President Obama’s pick for Secretary of Defense. Democrats on the other hand, are okay with President Obama’s nominee according to a recent count and they will vote to approve Chuck Hagel for the cabinet position in the President’s administration.
Hagel, whose nomination has drawn fire from his fellow Republicans, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday for his hearing. Though the session with the panel is expected to be testy, Hagel will likely clear that hurdle before facing a 60-vote threshold in the full Senate. But even Republican aides are quietly conceding he is likely to get the three-fifths majority he needs to prevent a filibuster.
“We did whip it. And the numbers were very positive on the Democratic side,” Durbin said of a preliminary vote count his office did last week of the Senate Democratic Conference’s 55 members.
“I didn’t whip the Republican side so I can’t say,” Durbin continued when asked whether he thought he could pick off at least five Republican votes to get to 60. “I need to do it again this week, but as of last week, we were doing very, very well among Democrats. There were no ‘no’ votes. There were some who wanted to wait until after his testimony.”