NewsTrust - U.S. White House - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

The victory OWS has already won - AlterNet - Salon.com

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Joshua Holland - Oct. 27 () - In just one month, the protesters have shifted the national dialogue from a relentless focus on the deficit to a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street: the lack of jobs — and especially jobs with decent benefits — spiraling inequality, cash-strapped American families’ debt loads, and the pernicious influence of money in politics that led us to this point.

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White House Says Obama Fundraising Appeal Not Illegal

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Real Clear Politics - By Alexis Simendinger - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - President Obama appealed to supporters and donors in a videotaped message emailed by his campaign team to millions of people Monday -- a message filmed with the president inside the White House by a crew from the Democratic National Committee, according to a White House official who responded to RCP questions about the solicitation.

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Why the right hates Common

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Mary Elizabeth Williams - May. 13 (Opinion) - On Wednesday, the White House honored arts education with a Celebration of American Poetry. There was a poetry workshop for children during the day, and in the evening, performances by the likes of Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Kenneth Goldsmith. This being the administration that can turn Jay-Z references into campaign rallying cries -- and campaign rallying cries into hit videos -- there were also musical artists on the bill, including Aimee Mann and Jill Scott. And, this being the administration that never fails to provoke the outrage of that holy trinity of right-wing attention gluttons -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin – there was controversy.

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Don't kid yourself: The Senate's still broken

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Alex Pareene - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - Maybe we were all wrong about the Senate! When push finally came to shove, they ratified START, passed the food safety bill and the 9/11 first responders bill, confirmed a bunch of judges, repealed "don't ask, don't tell," and extended unemployment benefits. And they finished up their work before Christmas. I must admit, I predicted doom for a lame duck session, and I repeatedly predicted that "don't ask, don't tell" in particular would be a victim of delaying tactics and obstruction. I was completely wrong on both counts. But who could've predicted that the Senate... would work?

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Bush Boasts of Waterboard Order

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - For such a frank admission of high-level criminality, we can say, with ample justification, Shame on Bush. But that shame also sticks like Saran wrap to the rest of us – and especially to the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), which has soft-pedaled the significance of Bush’s confession, and to his make-nice successor, Barack Obama, who has refused to demand any accountability.

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Obama's Arrogance Starting to Get Noticed

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Real Clear Politics - By Jonah Goldberg - Oct. 14 (Opinion) - ‘That's all right, all of you know who I am," President Obama joked last week when the presidential seal fell off his podium during a speech in Pittsburgh. Even though the incident made headlines for no discernible journalistic reason, it was noteworthy as a succinct example of Obama's arrogance problem. Rather than make a self-deprecating joke, he opted to make a self-inflating one, as if to say that the title mattered less than the man.

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ACLU, CCR Seek To Have Obama Enjoined From Killing al-Awlaki

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - The first step: Overcoming the government's claimed power to deny U.S. citizens the right to a lawyer.

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In recent polls, GOP limited to Southern comfort

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

OregonLive.com - By David Sarasohn - Oct. 24 (Opinion) - For months, Barack Obama’s national approval rating has been hovering in the low to mid-50s. The level is respectable — his predecessor hadn’t been there for his last three years — but not exactly intimidating, not exactly a number to make congressmen think they’d better get in line

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The audacity of greed: how private health insurers just blew their cover

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Robert Reich - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - The health-insurance industry has finally revealed itself for what it is. Background: The industry hates the idea that's emerged from the Senate Finance Committee of lowering penalties on younger and healthier people who don't buy insurance. Relying on an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, insurers say this means new enrollees will be older and less healthy -- which will drive up costs. And, says the industry, these costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Proposed taxes on high-priced "Cadillac" policies will also be passed on to consumers. As a result, premiums will rise faster and higher than the government projects.

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At OpEdNews: Change is Scary! Are You Afraid?

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - By R. Francis Rubio - Sep. 07 (Opinion) - With all the confusion about health care and lets be frank some outright lies, it's getting harder and harder to get at the truth. The problem with getting at the truth is most people don't pay a whole lot of attention to policy and when they do the loudest and the most sensationalized voices usually get heard. Change is scary and unfortunately when people get scared they tend to believe the things that can justify their fear, it's human nature.

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35 Years After Nixon

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

TruthDig - By Stanley Kutler - Aug. 09 (Review) - President Richard Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the revelations of his “abuses of power” and obstruction of justice. For his involvement in criminal activities, Nixon earned his unique epitaph: an unindicted co-conspirator. As the nation watched events unfold from 1972 to 1974, a host of then-famous names passed before us: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Mitchell, Colson, Haig, Ziegler, Liddy, Hunt, Kleindienst, Magruder, Agnew, and so on. But the burglars, assorted presidential aides, congressional investigators and prosecutors now have faded into the mists of history—spear carriers at best. Only the principal remains in our consciousness for his achievements and his misdeeds.

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The Intel-Journo Alliance

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Jun. 02 (Opinion) - The neocons understood that intimidating CIA analysts and Washington journalists would clear the way for the key neocon goals: a more aggressive foreign policy and more spending on military budgets, some of which would get recycled into neocon think tanks and media outlets. So, through the 1980s, the neocons spearheaded an assault on the CIA’s analytical division by pushing a politicization of intelligence that reversed the tradition of giving policymakers the best possible information.

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Fixing America, Erasing Bush

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By William Rivers Pitt, - May. 25 (Opinion) - issues of torture and secrecy lead directly to the office of the President of the United States, and the manner in which Mr. Obama has proceeded thus far offends the very nature of the nation he presumes to lead. Mr. Obama sang the praises of our founding documents on Thursday, while failing utterly to live up to the oath he swore to them.

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Think Who Might Be 45th President

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By David Swanson - May. 24 (Opinion) - let's stop to consider what powers #45 will inherit from the previous 44 men, what powers have been used by at least one previous president in recent years without being blocked by Congress or the courts or a subsequent president: the powers to rewrite laws with signing statements, to create laws by simple decree, to draft and act on secret laws specifically written to retroactively and proactively legalize crimes, to produce phony media stories and otherwise engage in domestic propaganda campaigns, to reduce congressional oversight to one-way communications from the White House at the pleasure of the president, to launch and prolong and escalate wars, to lie the congress and the public into supporting wars, to misspend funds appropriated for other things, to rewrite tax laws, to hand out trillions of dollars without oversight, to use illegal weapons and commit countless war crimes with impunity, to spy without warrants, to detain indefinitely without charge, to torture, to murder, to run the government as an election campaign using public funds to support candidates including the president, to selectively leak classified information and to baselessly classify information, to keep anything secret, to try people in kangaroo court military commissions, to create foreign treaties and appoint high officials without consulting the congress, to read your mail and e-mail and listen in on your phone calls, to rig elections, and to throw out any court case on the basis of an unverifiable claim. I'm asking you to imagine giving these powers to the worst person who could hold them, a person who would abuse them drastically and whose abuse would be in no way disguised or hidden.

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Mr. Cheney, You Did Not Keep Us Safe

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - May. 14 (Opinion) - If 3,000 Americans had been killed on your watch, in an attack that could have been prevented, perhaps you'd be a little hesitant to accuse anyone else of endangering America. And if you had advocated torture, and the torture produced false information that you used to mislead America into an unwise, unjust and unwarranted war, you might be a tad sheepish about defending the use of torture.

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Comparing the U.S. to Russia and Argentina

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 26 (Opinion) - Desmond Lachman -- the former chief strategist for emerging markets at Salomon Smith Barney and a long-time official with the IMF (no raving socialist he) -- argues today that the most apt comparison for the U.S. now is not Japan's "lost decade," but rather, "that the United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we're trying to fix it."

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Is Obama embracing the lawless, omnipotent executive?

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 02 (Opinion) - After a few symbolic (and potentially important) decrees in the first week, which I praised at the time -- the Obama administration's approach to civil liberties, constitutional protections and the reining in of executive power abuses has been absolutely abysmal.

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Revolutionary Road: Obama's Inaugural

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jacob Heilbrunn - Jan. 20 (Opinion) - Barack Obama didn't promise a new era in his inaugural speech. He promised a new American revolution. His evocation of George Washington at the end of his address made it clear that he regards the perils that face the country as almost no less daunting than those that it confronted in battling for its independence. Now a fresh, stubbornly independent generation, Obama suggested, must emerge to renew the promise of American life. The tone of his speech was somber, but his vision of the future was not. If America can navigate the icy rapids that threaten to submerge it and tap into the "quiet force of progress," Obama indicated, it can emerge into a sunlit harbor, united by the memory of having conquered some of the greatest dangers, domestic and foreign, that it once braved. Whether that vision will be fulfilled is another matter. But Obama's inaugural address, sober and dignified, has set the foundation for constructing a new gleaming edifice of democracy. It is up to us as much as Obama to construct it.

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From George Washington To Barack Obama - A Long Way

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

YouTube - By Poldivideo - Jan. 20 (Entertainment) - (VIDEO - 3:58) A Face Morphing Video Retrospective of 44 Presidents of the United States, with Maurice Ravel's Boléro.

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Nixon's 'Treason' and Historical Gaps

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Dec. 05 (Opinion) - In listening to newly released audiotapes of President Lyndon Johnson, the U.S. news media has stumbled upon one of those unmentionable chapters of recent American history, Richard Nixon’s sabotage of the Paris peace talks in 1968.

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For the first time in history the entire National Mall Open for obama's Inauguration

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

allvoices.com - Dec. 04 (Review) - For the first time in history, the entire National Mall will be open to the public for an inauguration, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced today.

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Holder's DC Legacy: Not Much

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - If Democrats are looking for a crusader to clean house at the Justice Department and elsewhere in the federal government, Holder might not be their man.

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A Quick Sigh of Relief, Now Let's Get to Work Rebuilding Reproductive Rights

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Nancy Northup - Nov. 13 (Comment) - The election of Barack Obama heralds at long last a season of promise and opportunity: the chance to improve the lives of millions of Americans and people throughout the world by ending the Bush administration's horrific war on women and making reproductive health a priority for U.S. law and policy. Yet earlier this fall, I said that no matter who won in November, those of us on the front lines of the fight for reproductive rights and health care would have our work cut out for us.

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Louise McCready: Ruth Reichl on a White House Garden for a Nation Of Foodies

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Louise McCready - Oct. 27 (Interview) - I would like for the First Family to be eating really good food, carefully cooked, cooked with a conscious, and for the American public to know what the First Family is eating. I think it would have an enormous impact on the way the rest of America eats and it would be simple. This is not a huge agenda. Doesn't require a big budget. Doesn't require acts of congress. That would be my first profound wish.

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Are We Moving Ahead -- or Heading Back?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

OurFuture.org - By Sara Robinson - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - No model is complete in and of itself; but a good theory can allow us to draw the right lessons from history and understand the underlying forces at work when the current trends evaporate and clues on the ground grow thin. I'm finding a lot of reassurance in Clare Graves' spiral dynamics model right now. It clarifies the threats -- and possibilities -- that this moment offers America. And it offers historical support for the idea that our salvation lies in greater government involvement in creating a humane and sustainable future -- and that we now have a rare opportunity to make that next stage a reality.

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