Tag: Barack Obama

Buy Photos I give you fair warning: This is largely a lecture. One given often, but always desperately needed. The president recently vowed that the United States would never be a socialist country. Regardless of your own political orientation, that statement is the kind of idiot, superlative claim that I constantly warn students against. Both of these propositions are nonsense without nuance. : “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” Making this statement was stupid on its face regardless of the content of the ACA. To my second point, guess what, people: as much as capitalism is here, socialism is also in large degree already here and not going away. Many people in American, and also global, political economies in the developed world seemingly prefer the provision of certain goods and services through public funding as opposed to private venture. I will work to that end.” Nuance is not a sexy sell however, and no amount of grammatical nagging by an educator will change much about that. Sponsored

The former president expresses worry about progressives 'shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues.' Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is challenging the DCCC for trying to shut down primary challenges from the far-left.…

But despite almost five decades in the political arena, Mr. Biden, 76, did not have an agile, fully staffed campaign in place to confront it. He issued three statements and one online video attempting to explain his conduct, only to joke about the issue in a speech to a union conference Friday. Far from remaining above the fray, Mr. Biden will enter the campaign as bruised as any of the 16 other candidates already in the race. But if the attacks from Mr. Trump and his allies illustrated that Republicans are worried about facing Mr. Biden, the controversy this past week has also shined a light on the risks Democrats would be taking in nominating him — and not just because of his recent problems. Yet his decision to wait on announcing his candidacy has come with a cost, in part because he did not use the time to better prepare for some of the most inevitable questions about his lengthy record in politics. (Mr. Obama himself has been tight-lipped during his former running mate’s difficult week; a spokesman for the former president declined to comment while noting that Mr. Obama had praised Mr. Biden warmly in recent months.) His aides have contacted at least two Democratic officials, James Singer and Helen Smith, about research jobs, but Mr. Singer went to work for Ms. Harris and Ms. Smith is planning to work on a House race. Patti Solis Doyle, who managed Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in 2008, said Mr. Biden had already sacrificed some of his political strength by waiting so long. After declaring at a Democratic fund-raising dinner in Delaware last month that he would be “the most progressive candidate” in the race, Mr. Biden clarified on Friday that he meant his positions on issues like race and L.G.B.T. Mr. Biden’s “only sin,” he said, “is he loved people.” But, Mr. Morgan added, it was past time for Mr. Biden to make a decision about the race.

Seventeen-and-a-half years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and a decade after President Barack Obama ordered the C.I.A. black sites. By law, prosecutors cannot use evidence gained through torture — or any other involuntary statements — at the war court, where eight of Guantánamo’s 40 prisoners are accused of being complicit in terrorist attacks. Prosecutors have made clear that nothing the defendants said at the black sites will be used as evidence. Defense lawyers in those cases have sought for years to get access to eyewitnesses and graphic details from the C.I.A. sites. The lawyers want to use descriptions of torture to ask the judge to exclude some of the defendants’ own statements after they left the black sites. In his second year of C.I.A. calls this “rectal feeding.” Defense lawyers call it rape. Mr. Khan’s lawyers now want to call witnesses and gather evidence to show his sentencing jury what happened to him.

Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times WASHINGTON — President Trump backed off plans to introduce a Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act after Senator Mitch McConnell privately warned him that the Senate would not revisit health care in a comprehensive way before the November 2020 elections. Reversing himself in the face of Republican consternation, Mr. Trump said his party would not produce a health care plan of its own, as he had promised, until after the elections, meaning he will only try to fulfill his first-term promise to repeal and replace his predecessor’s signature program if he wins a second term. “He did say, as he later tweeted, that he accepted that and that he would be developing a plan that he would take to the American people during the 2020 campaign.” The president’s last attempt to replace Mr. Obama’s health care program blew up in 2017 when his party controlled both houses of Congress. Mr. Trump had surprised allies by ordering his administration to ask a federal court to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act and then promised a Republican replacement. Democrats, consumer groups, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies have said that 20 million people could lose health coverage if courts accept the administration’s argument. Hours later, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, “The Republicans are developing a really great HealthCare Plan with far lower premiums (cost) & deductibles than ObamaCare.” “In other words it will be far less expensive & much more usable than ObamaCare,” he said in a string of three tweets posted Monday night. “I see what the Democrats are doing; it’s a disaster what they’re planning and everyone knows it,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday at the White House. Soon after the president decided last week to intervene in a Texas court case on the side of invalidating the entire Affordable Care Act without a Plan B, Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence held a conference call with Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, and Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager. Mr. Trump denied on Tuesday that Mr. McConnell asked him to back off, saying, “I wanted to delay it myself” because Republicans do not control the House. Mr. Trump has basically commissioned four Republican senators to devise a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.

Panelists include John Temple, investigative reporting program director at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism; David Snyder, attorney and director of the First Amendment Coalition; and civil rights attorney Daniel Sheehan, who worked on the Pentagon Papers case. Sponsored by the Community Water Center, Sierra Club California, and the David Brower Center. Sponsored by YR Media and the Commonwealth Club’s Inforum. $30 for non-Commonwealth Club members, $10 for students. Sponsored by St. Andrew’s Society of San Francisco. 7 p.m., 1088 Green St., San Francisco. 7 p.m., 2969 Mission St., San Francisco. 10 a.m., starting and ending at the Women’s Building, 3543 18th St., San Francisco. 7 p.m., Evans Hall, UC Berkeley. $30 for non-Commonwealth Club members, $10 for students.

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—After praising Donald J. Trump, on Sunday, for cutting aid to “three Mexican countries,” the cast of “Fox & Friends” blamed former President Barack Obama for creating additional Mexicos during his tenure in the White House. “When Barack Obama took office, there was only one Mexico,” the host Ed Henry said. “He allowed these additional Mexicos to develop.” Henry’s co-host Jedediah Bila agreed that the problem of multiple Mexicos was Obama’s fault. “It was bad enough having one Mexico without Obama going out and creating a bunch of new ones,” she said, noting that there had been a three-hundred-per-cent increase in the number of Mexicos on Obama’s watch. The third host, Pete Hegseth, praised Trump for doing everything in his power to “reduce the number of Obama’s Mexicos.” “Everyone agrees that there are way too many Mexicos right now,” he said. Later in the day, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that, after watching “Fox & Friends,” President Trump was committed to finding out “just how many Mexicos there are,” and that he had put the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, in charge of counting them.

Marg Elliston, chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, lauded the party’s recent electoral wins and sought to prepare local party activists for 2020 during a visit to Roswell recently. Last year, she was elected chair of the state party. Michelle Lujan Grisham — many are long-sought legislative goals by progressives. New Mexico has demonstrated its Democratic leanings in recent presidential elections, with the party’s nominee carrying the state’s five electoral votes in five of the last six presidential elections. Elliston said she talked recently in Taos with a political scientist who described the state as not blue or red, but “violet.” Even within the party ranks, there is not unanimity. Unlike members of the House, the state Senate is only up for re-election every four years. Part of the diversity of opinion within the party and state politically, is between urban and rural areas. State Democrats in 2018 helped the Chaves County party invest in a campaign headquarters and sent volunteers to help energize voters. Democrats did not field a candidate in any of the state legislative or judicial races in Chaves County. The state party will be working with the county parties to try to encourage people to run in those areas that have been neglected by Democrats.