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Fiscal FactCheck

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Jul. 15 (Fact Check) - Washington's spending has recently been higher as a percentage of the nation's economic output than at any time since World War II. But by the same measure, Washington's revenues are the lowest in more than 60 years. So does the U.S. have "a spending problem," as Republicans keep repeating in the current debate over how to reduce the nation's record deficits? Or is the problem that taxes are not high enough? Those questions frame a long-running partisan debate, and as usual we won't offer an opinion one way or the other. But for those seeking their own answers, we can offer some fiscal history and factual context.

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House GOP criticizes White House visitor logs

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

iWatch News - By Fred Schulte - May. 05 (News) - House Republicans criticized the Obama administration for failing to disclose the names of thousands of visitors to the White House and suggested Obama staff met with lobbyists in nearby coffee shops to avoid listing their names in the official records system.

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White House Deficit Talks Coming Apart At The Seams

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jennifer Bendery, Elise Foley - Apr. 20 (News Report) - House and Senate Republican leaders announced Tuesday that their sole appointees to the May 5th meeting would be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)--neither of whom are budget leaders and both of whom function largely as political mouthpieces for their party. GOP leaders also each opted to send only one appointee, instead of the requested four, to the meeting.

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How Reagan Brought the World to the Brink of Nuclear Destruction

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Tad Daley - Feb. 09 (Special Report) - Before he assumed the presidency, Ronald Reagan said "the day of Armageddon isn't far off. ... Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained down upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they'll be destroyed by nuclear weapons." He told voters that American national interests would best be served if the United States proceeded to build and deploy several new kinds of nuclear weapons and delivery systems -- the B-1 bomber, the neutron bomb, the Trident nuclear submarine, and the MX nuclear missile. He denounced Soviet leaders as "monsters" and "godless communists." He attacked the SALT II treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev as "an act of appeasement." Indeed, prior to assuming the presidency, Ronald Reagan had opposed every single nuclear arms control agreement negotiated since the dawn of the nuclear age.

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Reaganomics Was Pro Business, Not Pro Free Market

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Real News - By Yves Smith, Paul Jay - Feb. 06 (News Analysis) - So we're hearing President Reagan was one of the great presidents, and the front that he is perhaps lauded most on is on the economy. ...

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Obama Expresses Displeasure With Guantanamo Restrictions But Signs Them Into Law

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Dafna Linzer - Jan. 10 (News Analysis) - "Obama should have issued no statement rather than this one, which is a confession of impotence"

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Obama Ditches Tax Cut Presser, Bill Clinton Takes Control

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Real Clear Politics - By I. Schwartz - Dec. 10 (News) - Former President Bill Clinton gave a statement after his meeting with President Obama about his tax compromise with the Republicans.

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President Obama to This Week Name Elizabeth Warren to Special Advisory Role to White House/Treasury Dept to Form New Consumer Agency

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

blogs.abcnews.com - By Jake Tapper - Sep. 15 (News Report) - President Obama will announce this week that Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who first proposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will be named to a special position reporting to both him and to the Treasury Department and tasked with heading the effort to get the new federal agency standing, a knowledgeable Democrat told ABC News. Political Punch Blog

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Second Arrest for Dan Choi: Protesters to Be Arraigned for Chaining to White House Fence

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

SouthFloridaGayNews.com - Apr. 21 (Breaking News) - GetEqual.com reports that the six military service members who were arrested yesterday after chaining themselves to the White House fence will be arraigned on April 21st. The protest against the U.S. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, included protester Lt. Dan Choi, who was previously arrested for the same act a few weeks ago.

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Gorbachev, Bush, Kohl Remember Cold War

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

sptimes.ru - By Agence France Presse - Nov. 03 (News Report) - Helmut Kohl, George Bush, and Mikhail Gorbachev hailed their excellent relations at a Berlin cabaret on Saturday, 20 years after the Cold War leaders watched over the Wall’s fall.

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Reveals That The White House Garden Cost Only $180 To Plant

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Katherine Goldstein - Oct. 29 (News) - She [Michelle Obama] then revealed the answer: "Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land..... It [cost] about $180.

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WH: We're Happy To Exclude Fox, But Didn't Yesterday

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Christina Bellantoni - Oct. 24 (News Report) - Adding to the Fox News v. White House feud today is a dust-up over an interview with pay czar Ken Feinberg. Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents asked to get the comments on camera; Treasury agreed to one pool camera, giving the list of those who asked. (Fox was not among them)

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Attack on White House criticism of Fox follows years of GOP assaults on media

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media Matters - Oct. 23 (News Analysis) - Following White House communications director Anita Dunn's entirely justified criticisms of Fox News as an "arm" of the Republican Party, conservative media figures have attacked both Dunn and the Obama administration. But Media Matters for America has compiled a list of organized attacks that GOP leaders -- often aided by Fox News -- have conducted against media outlets based on groundless complaints of bias; those attacks have included boycotts or threatened boycotts of media outlets, efforts to revoke journalists' credentials or ban them from press planes, and even calls to have journalists prosecuted.

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Truth-O-Meter: Statements on Health Care

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Oct. 08 (Special Report) - PolitiFact fact-checks statements about health care by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups -- and rates them on their Truth-O-Meter.

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Is the tide turning for the public option?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Mike Madden - Oct. 06 (News Analysis) - None of the various healthcare reform bills kicking around Congress would order doctors to make house calls. But the White House decided that was exactly the treatment the administration's top domestic priority needed to maintain some legislative momentum. And so about 150 physicians showed up on the Rose Garden lawn Monday morning for a pep rally -- with at least one coming from every state, naturally, the better to gin up local media coverage of the event back home.

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The Many Layers of Nahalat Shimon beg the question: Where's the money coming from?

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

arabisto.com - By Eileen Fleming - Aug. 09 (Special Report) - Last Sunday morning just before sunrise, Israeli forces evicted seventy more Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which is being taken over by the Nahalat Shimon settlers. "The events in Sheikh Jarrah garnered international censure from the European Union, the United Nations (UN) and from Britain, which said it was 'appalled' at the move. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday night called the Israeli evictions "deeply regrettable" and she urged "the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions."

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White House Admits Obama Hasn't Fixed Everything Yet

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Gawker - By John Cook - Aug. 04 (Investigative Report) - Check out Gawker's use of the ProPublica Changetracker in this story, to call attention to the subtle backpedaling in the language on whitehouse.gov.

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AIDS Activists Sound the Alarm on Obama's Budget | OneWorld.net (U.S.)

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OneWorld - Jul. 10 (News Report) - Over two dozen AIDS activists were arrested just outside the U.S. Capitol building yesterday while protesting President Barack Obama's failure to honor his campaign promises of increased funding for AIDS programs. During the election, Obama pledged to spend over $1 billion a year on global AIDS and to fully fund housing for HIV-positive people in need. Activists say the administration's 2010 budget proposal does not live up to these promises.

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President Tries To Put Out Fire From Emanuel's Health Care Remarks

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Jul. 07 (News Analysis) - In an effort that seemed designed to appease concerned progressive advocates, President Barack Obama issued a clarifying statement about the administration's commitment to a "public option" for health insurance while traveling in Russia on Tuesday. "I am pleased by the progress we're making on health care reform and still believe, as I've said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest," read the statement. "I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals." The vague reassurance came hours after Obama's own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel suggested that the White House would be comfortable with legislation that had a public plan "triggered" in only by worsening economic conditions.

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Media Call for Immigration Reform | OneWorld.net (U.S.)

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OneWorld - By Jeffrey Allen, OneWorld US - Jul. 02 (News Report) - One week after U.S. President Barack Obama re-opened the national conversation on immigration, much of the country's ethnic media have banded together to press Congress to make reform a reality this year.

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Lobbyists Skirt Disclosures on Stimulus Lobbying

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Olga Pierce, Brian Boyer - May. 15 (News Report) - We know that, like any giant pot of government money, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act attracted lobbyists’ interest. Lobbyists have long been required to give Congress quarterly disclosure reports outlining their lobbying efforts. In the latest quarterly reports, no less than 871 lobbyists [2] indicated lobbying on the stimulus. But only 12 of those lobbyists appear in the filings that agencies are now required to post online almost immediately after they speak to a lobbyist

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Obama's First 100 Days: How the President Fared In the Press vs. Clinton and Bush

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Journalism.org - By Tom Rosenstiel, Amy Mitchell, Mark Jurkowitz - Apr. 28 (News Analysis) - As he marks his 100th day in office, President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George Bush during their first months in the White House, according to a new study of press coverage. Overall, roughly four out of ten stories, editorials and op ed columns about Obama have been clearly positive in tone, compared with 22% for Bush and 27% for Clinton in the same mix of seven national media outlets during the same first two months in office, according to a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study found positive stories about Obama have outweighed negative by two-to-one (42% vs. 20%) while 38% of stories have been neutral or mixed. When a broader universe of media—one that includes 49 outlets and reflects the more modern media culture of 2009, is examined, the numbers for Obama’s coverage are similar, though somewhat less positive and somewhat more negative. In this expanded universe of media—which includes news websites, additional regional and local newspapers, plus cable news, network morning news, and National Public Radio, 37% of Obama’s coverage has been positive, 40% neutral and 23% negative. Several factors may be at play in the favorable tone Obama has received during these first months. One element is the pace and sweep of Obama’s activities. Bush and Clinton both started their presidencies pursuing policy agendas much more of their own making than Obama has. But the data suggest the current president has managed the media narrative anyway by responding to the economic crisis with so many new proposals and doing so many events that it has been hard for both his critics and the media to keep up.

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What Obama Has Shown, So Far, About His Style of Governing

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Adriel Bettelheim - Apr. 27 (News Analysis) - in the case of Barack Obama , who will mark his 100-day milestone on Wednesday, the benchmark is being treated with unusual significance. As the first new president in eight years, the first African-American president ever, and a president called upon from the start to manage both a deep recession and two wars, his every move has been guaranteed an intense level of attention — and comparisons to FDR are more direct than most new presidents face.

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The Obama White House vs. the Truth-O-Meter

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Apr. 23 (Special Report) - President Barack Obama and his top administration officials have faced the Truth-O-Meter 21 times since they took office, and they can claim a small victory: They haven't earned any Pants on Fire ratings. But their record for their first 100 days is far from perfect. We've given the Obama White House four False and two Barely True ratings. The Barely True ratings, along with a couple of the Half Trues, illustrate that the Obama White House has quickly learned the art of cherry-picking, selectively choosing the best scenarios and most favorable numbers for their claims.

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CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Cybercast News Service - By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief - Apr. 21 (Special Report) - Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.” In the memo itself, the Justice Department’s Bradbury told the CIA’s Rossi: “Your office has informed us that the CIA believes that ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qa’ida has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.”

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