Motley Moose – Archive

From the White House – Weekly Address

President Obama used his weekly address to tell the American people about the Budget he is sending to Congress this week, which makes the tough choices required to grow our economy and shrink our deficits.  The President’s Budget calls for a balanced approach to deficit reduction, including reforms that strengthen Medicare for future generations and tax reform that closes wasteful loopholes, so we can afford the investments required to grow grow the economy, create new jobs, and reignite the engine of our economic growth: a rising, thriving middle class.

From the White House – Weekly Address

Three months after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama says that the Senate has taken important steps forward to help protect our kids by reducing gun violence. The American people made their voices heard, and the Senate made progress to make it harder for criminals and people with serious mental illnesses to get guns, to crack down on anyone trying to funnel guns to criminals, and to reinstate and strengthen a ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons. Each of these ideas deserves a vote. The President urges Congress to pass these commonsense measures while affirming our nation’s tradition of responsible gun ownership.

From the White House – Weekly Address

President Obama discusses the need to harness American energy in order to reduce our dependence on oil and make the United States a magnet for new jobs. He highlights his all-of-the-above approach to American energy — including a proposal to establish an Energy Security Trust, which invests in research that will help shift our cars and trucks off of oil.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In his weekly address, President Obama says that businesses have created jobs every month for three years straight – nearly 6.4 million altogether, and have added 246,000 new jobs in February. We must keep this momentum going, and that’s why the President recently met with Republican leaders to discuss how we can replace the harmful, arbitrary budget cuts, called the “sequester,” with balanced deficit reduction.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In his weekly address, President Obama tells the American people that a series of harmful budget cuts-called the sequester-have taken effect because Congress failed to act. Because Republicans in Congress refused to compromise to close tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans, hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose their jobs or see their paycheck reduced, and middle class families will be hurt. Congress must join the President now to replace these cuts with a balanced approach that reduces our deficit while also making smart investments in areas that help our economy grow.

From the White House – Weekly Address

President Obama urges Congress to stop the sequester — the harmful automatic cuts that threaten thousands of jobs and affect our national security from taking effect on March 1.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama calls for quick action on the proposals he made during the State of the Union to grow our economy and create jobs, including making America a magnet for manufacturing, strengthening our education system through high-quality preschool for every child, and raising the minimum wage.

While it’s the awkward lunge for the water bottle that everyone will remember from Marco Rubio’s rebuttal of the State of the Union, what the content and tone of the address convey is significant.  Yes, Rubio flubbed the speech, although what impact that has upon his chances for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination remains to be seen.  However, the defensive tone of the speech, combined with the content, indicates a Republican Party on the ropes that is struggling with messaging and ideas.  That was evident from the moment he opened his mouth and began to speak last night.

At the very outset it was clear that Rubio was on the defensive against what Republicans are correctly perceived as wanting to do.  He discussed what Republicans didn’t want to do.  He launched into the same old, and tired, attacks against President Obama.  He effectively called him a communist, socialist, take your pick of various scare tactics used against anyone left of center.  It was straight out of the Republican playbook, but with a tone that made clear the speaker was unsure if those scare tactics would work.  After all, Mitt Romney ran on those exact same scare tactics and he’s still Former Gov. Romney, while President Obama just delivered another State of the Union address.

Most remarkable, though, was a prescient criticism of the Rubio rebuttal that I heard, although I forgot the person who mentioned it.  It basically went along these lines:

Marco Rubio just criticized ‘big’ government by pointing out everything that government has done for him and his family.

From the newswires …

On Gun Violence: Obama in Minneapolis

As the debate over guns after Newtown moves into the often bitterly partisan halls of Congress, President Obama flew Monday to the Midwest to remind the country there’s more unity on gun control than the rancorous debate in the nation’s capital might suggest

Read More: Minneapolis’ Progressive Approach to Reducing Gun Violence

Read More: PCCC Ad Targets Mitch McConnell on Gun Control

Violence Against Women Act Flying Toward Senate Passage

The Senate overwhelmingly agreed Monday to advance legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, winning over strong bipartisan support to bypass a filibuster and consider the renewal of domestic abuse funding that is currently on life support. […]

“It is unthinkable that Republicans in the House would prevent us from taking action – again refuse to do anything as they did last Congress,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said before the vote Monday. “Allowing partisan delays to put women’s lives at risk is simply shameful. … I hope the Senate’s bipartisan action this week will send a strong message to House Republican leaders that further partisan delay is unacceptable.”

Read More: Eight Senators Vote To Block Violence Against Women Act

Read More: DCCC Ad Targets Eric Cantor over VAWA

Hillary Clinton Debuts New Website

Hillary Clinton appears to have a new website. So far, hillaryclintonoffice.com has a picture of the former secretary of state and a form for contacting her.

Read More: Hillary Clinton: The Most Powerful Woman in American Politics

S&P expects U.S. lawsuit over pre-crisis credit ratings

Feb 4 (Reuters) – Standard & Poor’s said it expects to be the target of a U.S. Department of Justice civil lawsuit over its mortgage bond ratings, the first federal enforcement action against a credit rating agency over alleged illegal behavior tied to the recent financial crisis.

Read More: McGraw-Hill Tumbles Most Since ’87 as U.S. Prepares S&P Lawsuit

CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries ‘offered covert support’

The full extent of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme has been laid bare with the publication of a report showing there is evidence that more than a quarter of the world’s governments covertly offered support.

A 213-page report compiled by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organisation, says that at least 54 countries co-operated with the global kidnap, detention and torture operation that was mounted after 9/11, many of them in Europe.

Sea Urchins Chalk Up Global Warming Win

Sunshine may ‘reduce arthritis risk’

‘Well, That Was Cool,’ Say Archaeologists Before Dumping Bones Of King Richard III Back Into Hole

President Barack Obama views a portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama before

a church service at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.,

on Inauguration Day, Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

From Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall: Guided by the ancestors

When I heard these words spoken by President Obama at his second inaugural

We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall

and the echo of those same words in the invocation delivered by Myrlie Evers-Williams

we celebrate the spirit of our ancestors, which has allowed us to move from a nation of unborn hopes and a history of disenfranchised votes, to today’s expression of a more perfect union…

we ask for your guidance toward the light of deliverance and that the vision of those who came before us and dreamed of this day, that we recognize that their visions still inspire us. They are a great cloud of witnesses unseen by the naked eye, but all around us, thankful that their living was not in vain.

I was moved.