This is a weekly series called "the week in review" that will summarize and highlight important achievements, news and policy proposals from credible sources that are key and often not discussed in depth so that we can share and shape the message by highlighting the positives in favor of Democrats and our President.
The President's Weekly Address: Winning the Future
Over the last month, I’ve been traveling the country, talking to Americans about how we can out-educate, out-innovate, and out-build the rest of the world. Doing that will require a government that lives within its means, and cuts whatever spending we can afford to do without. But it will also require investing in our nation’s future – training and educating our workers; increasing our commitment to research and technology; building new roads and bridges, high-speed rail and high-speed internet.
In cities and towns throughout America, I’ve seen the benefits of these investments. The schools and colleges of Oregon are providing Intel – the state’s largest private employer – with a steady stream of highly-educated workers and engineers. At Parkville Middle School outside of Baltimore, engineering is the most popular subject, thanks to outstanding teachers who are inspiring students to focus on their math and science skills.
Transcript
May be we can win the messaging war if we take a lesson from The Tea Party:
The Tea Party is winning By E.J. Dionne Jr.:
Any analysis of the economic struggles many elderly people endure would get in the way of the "greedy geezer" storyline being spun to justify big cuts in Medicare benefits and Social Security.
Thanks to the Tea Party, we are now told that all our problems will be solved by cutting government programs. Thus the House Republicans' budget bill passed Saturday. They foresee nirvana if we simply reduce our spending on Head Start, Pell grants for college access, teen pregnancy prevention, clean-water programs, K-12 education and a host of other areas.
Does anyone really think that cutting such programs will create jobs or help Americans get ahead? But give the Tea Party guys credit: They have seized the political and media agenda and made budget cutting as fashionable as Justin Bieber was five minutes ago.
And if you think they will not be proud to shut the Government down, you might want to read what Frank Rich said:
Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down? By FRANK RICH
The highest priority of America’s current political radicals is not to balance government budgets but to wage ideological warfare in Washington and state capitals alike. The relatively few dollars that would be saved by the proposed slashing of federal spending on Planned Parenthood and Head Start don’t dent the deficit; the cuts merely savage programs the right abhors. In Wisconsin, where state workers capitulated to Gov. Scott Walker’s demands for financial concessions, the radical Republicans’ only remaining task is to destroy labor’s right to collective bargaining.
That’s not to say there is no fiscal mission in the right’s agenda, both nationally and locally — only that the mission has nothing to do with deficit reduction. The real goal is to reward the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons by crippling what remains of organized labor, by wrecking the government agencies charged with regulating and policing corporations, and, as always, by rewarding the wealthiest with more tax breaks. The bankrupt moral equation codified in the Bush era — that tax cuts tilted to the highest bracket were a higher priority even than paying for two wars — is now a given. The once-bedrock American values of shared sacrifice and equal economic opportunity have been overrun.
What do Republican gain with their $61 billion dollars spending cut? 500K lost jobs!
How spending cuts hurt the economy -- dueling estimates
The big spending cuts proposed by House Republicans could weigh on economic growth and jobs, but forecasts vary widely.
Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics said Sunday that if all $61 billion in proposed cuts for the rest of this year were enacted, the economy's growth could be reduced by half a percentage point. Many forecasters expect the economy to grow at around 3.5% this year.
By the end of the year, Zandi said, those spending cuts could cost the economy between 400,000 and 500,000 jobs.
"I think it's premature to engage in that kind of budget cutting," Zandi said. "We can't do that, I don't think, until the economy is off and running."
Thank You President Obama for being the best advocate for equal rights:
Obama administration will no longer defend DOMA:
President Obama has instructed the Justice Department to no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, the legal prohibition on federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that the department will stop defending the policy because it has now been challenged in the Second Circuit, "which has no established or binding standard for how laws concerning sexual orientation should be treated."
"After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny," he said. "The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President's determination."
U.S. ratchets up pressure on Gaddafi
Moments after a charter aircraft departed Libya with all remaining U.S. diplomats there Friday, the Obama administration shuttered the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and moved to freeze assets in this country belonging to leader Moammar Gaddafi, his family and his government.
In an executive order issued Friday night, President Obama accused Gaddafi and his government of taking "extreme measures against the people of Libya, including by using weapons of war, mercenaries and wanton violence against unarmed civilians." The order blocking the transfer or withdrawal of any funds applies to all Libyan government entities, Gaddafi and all of his estimated eight children, specifically naming three sons and a daughter.
It is never a win win situation when critics want to be the President and say stupid things but whateva. Nothing would satisfy them critics. They can go ahead and critic away...
Everyone want to be the President indeed...
A different perspective from Rachel Maddow on Libya...and the US dropping the hammer.
In case you have been consumed with other news and haven't paid attention to the number of new application for unemployment benefits, well...
Weekly jobless claims decline 22,000 to 391,000
New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits declined last week by 22,000 to 391,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected initial claims in the week ended Feb. 19 to drop to a seasonally adjusted 405,000 from a revised 413,000 the week before.
You just have to love Joe Biden. The President sure knows to make the right decisions including selecting a VP:
"You have a president who I admired before I took the job but I have come to admire in a way that is hard to even explain. I watched this guy make incredibly difficult decisions every single day." Biden told the audience. "I think you are going to see not only the United States but him sort of sprout their wings a little bit."
The latest on Wisconcin -- Many protesters refuse to exit Wisconsin Capitol
On Sunday, Walker said he would not back down in his confrontation with the public sector unions and repeated his threat to lay off state workers if the standoff continues.
"If we do not get these changes and the Senate Democrats do not come back, we're going to be forced to make up the savings in layoffs and that to me is unacceptable," Walker said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
What the Governor of Wisconsin will do to please his boss -- of course his bosses are not the people of Wisconsin but the Koch Brothers (transcript of prank phone call between Gov. Walker and Koch pretender):
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