Alabama Crimson Tide Once Again Invited to the White House
President Barack Obama called University of Alabama football Coach Nick Saban on Thursday to congratulate him and the university on their BCS National Championship and their exceptional 2011-2012 season, according to an e-mail press release from the White House.
The President said that he watched the entire championship game and could not have been more impressed with the Crimson Tide’s performance.
Mr. Obama commended the coach on his outstanding record and said that he looks forward to congratulating the team in person at the White House.
President Obama and the First Lady Speak to Troops at Fort Bragg
by Glynn Wilson
Bush’s illegal and ill-fated war in Iraq is finally over. All of the U.S. troops are coming home after eight long years.
It was the longest war in American history, although the news media is not covering the war’s end as much as it did the “Shock and Awe” campaign that started it all on March 20, 2003.
President Barack Obama marked the occasion in a low-key, solemn fashion, by saluting the troops upon their return at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but with “little fanfare,” according to the AP headline.
The wire service did report that Obama never tried to declare victory in this war, as Bush did with a “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Although it is doubtful that story made the front page of many newspapers or the top 10 minutes of many local news broadcasts in this country. It is a war we wish would just go away quietly, and for good reasons. It was started under faulty pretenses based on bad intelligence about a non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction program on the part of Saddam Hussein.
“It was a war that (Obama) opposed from the start, inherited as president and is now bringing to a close, leaving behind an Iraq still struggling,” the wire service reported.
Alabama Democratic Party Executive Director Bradley Davidson responded Tuesday to comments posted by new state Republican Party chairman Bill Armistead blaming the local unemployment situation on President Barack Obama, rather than Republican Gov. Robert Bentley and the Republicans who now control the state Legislature and the state Supreme Court.
“This is what Republicans like Karl Rove, George Bush, and Bill Armistead do – they make stuff up,” Davidson said.
When President Bush took office and inherited one of the strongest economies in American history, we were well on our way to paying off the national debt. When Bush left office, our economy was hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs a month — and his $800 billion big-bank bailouts did nothing to help.
“Apparently Bill Armistead and Shana Kluck have nothing better to do than regurgitate whatever misguided talking points they get sent by the Republican National Committee,” Davidson said. “Unfortunately for them, their bosses in D.C. aren’t paying any attention to what’s actually going on in Alabama.”
In an interview Monday with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain visibly struggled to explain his position on President Obama’s Libya policy.
The video is particularly damaging for Cain, according to the Washington Post, since he has struggled on matters of foreign policy in the past.
Asked if he agreed with the president, Cain said, “Okay, Libya,” and then was silent for about ten — yes, ten — seconds, before asking, “President Obama supported the uprising, correct?”
President Barack Obama is the Most Admired Man in America for 2010, while Hillary Clinton is the Most Admired Woman, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject.
Obama ranks substantially higher than of the former presidents named along with iconic religious leaders and others who fill out the top 10 list. This is the ninth consecutive year Clinton comes in at No. 1.
Obama first became Americans’ Most Admired Man in 2008, shortly after his election as the nation’s 44th president, and has held the title since then. He is the runaway favorite for Most Admired Man among Democrats nationwide: 46 percent choose him, followed by 7 percent who pick Bill Clinton and 5 percent Nelson Mandela. Obama also leads among independents, with 17 percent, but ranks second among Republicans — behind George W. Bush.
An analysis of key indicators in the 2010 congressional midterm elections continues to suggest that the Republican Party will make significant gains in November, according to the latest Gallup poll.
President Barack Obama’s job approval rating is below 50 percent, and both congressional job approval and satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. are well below 40 percent — levels that generally predict large seat losses for the party of the sitting president.
Gallup’s generic ballot for Congress for the week of Sept. 20-26 shows the race tied among all registered voters. However, Republicans’ continuing higher enthusiasm coupled with the usual GOP turnout advantage suggest a significant Republican edge in the nationwide vote for the U.S. House, and, in turn, significant Republican House seat gains.
With five weeks to go before the Nov. 2 elections, and campaigning intensifying, these indicators could shift, but it would require a major reorientation of voter sentiment to shift the probabilities significantly in the Democrats’ direction.
For comparison purposes, look at the job approval of other presidents and see how their party’s faired in midterm elections during their terms. President George W. Bush’s approval rating was just 38 percent in 2006 when the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress.
Under orders from President Barack Obama and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, the Minerals Management Service is drafting a plan to nationalize the Gulf oil assets of the British Petroleum corporation and to seize all revenue from the company’s Gulf drilling operations to pay for a massive cleanup operation in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Minerals Management Service staff is now conducting an inventory of all of BP’s drilling operations in the Gulf and calculating quarterly royalty payments to the U.S. Treasury from oil and gas leases, according to a source who works for the agency, who insisted on anonymity for fear of losing the job at MMS since the Obama administration has been cracking down on leakers.
The new policy, which could be announced any day now, perhaps when Obama visits Dauphin Island Monday afternoon, is designed to ensure recovery of enough money to pay for the cleanup. A side benefit is that it will make BP less subject to bankruptcy or a hostile takeover, according to the source, who admitted to having his job at the MMS because of connections to President George W. Bush.
The public affairs office of the Minerals Management Service and the White House press office did not immediately return an e-mail message seeking comment over the weekend. We will follow up on Monday when the president visits Dauphin Island.
President Barack Obama met with members of his Cabinet Friday to get another comprehensive update on the ongoing administration-wide response to the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf region, and the President made clear his frustration with BP and the other parties involved in the spill. He committed once again to ensuring they are held accountable for picking up the tab, and recapped the administration’s efforts to tighten up the regulation of offshore drilling sites.
“The potential devastation to the Gulf Coast, its economy, and its people require us to continue our relentless efforts to stop the leak and contain the damage. There’s already been a loss of life, damage to our coastline, to fish and wildlife, and to the livelihoods of everyone from fishermen to restaurant and hotel owners,” President Obama said. “I saw firsthand the anger and frustration felt by our neighbors in the Gulf. And let me tell you, it is an anger and frustration that I share as President. And I’m not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods.”
Now, the most important order of business is to stop the leak, the president said.
An Alabama Senator with long-standing ties to the US military-industrial complex and an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama is backing down from a direct confrontation with the White House today after taking the unprecedented step of announcing last week that he would filibuster all the president’s appointments to secure earmarks for his home state.
US Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who switched from the Democratic Party to be part of the Gingrich revolution in 1994, placed a hold on more than 80 presidential nominations before the Senate last week. He relented on Monday, saying he had simply been trying “to get the White House’s attention.”
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
