Public opinion polls are showing a dip in the president's approval. Critics in Congress are piling on his healthcare plan. And lots of Americans are questioning why the mega-billion stimulus plan has not sparked a new era of job creation.
So the White House must have been less than thrilled at the timing of the Group of 8 meetings in Rome this week. Just
at a time when he might have been needed politically on the home front, President
Obama found himself in meetings with Russian officials in gilded halls in the Kremlin -- where those officials made sure the streets were empty of the usual Obamamania -- talking about climate control to a few European nations but without China, a critical player on the issue, and getting a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI in the august halls of the Vatican.
Even Obama, at a press conference from Rome, wondered about the wisdom of so many G-whatever meetings in so many forums to so little effect.
The one thing I will be looking forward to is fewer summit meetings,
because, as you said, I've only been in office six months now and there
have been a lot of these. And I think that there's a possibility of
streamlining them and making them more effective. The United States
obviously is a absolutely committed partner to concerted international
action, but we need to, I think, make sure that they're as productive as
possible.
The president also had a lot to say about healthcare, Iranian nuclear weapons and food security. You can read the full transcript below.
Then it was off with First Lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, to meet with the Pope, followed by a trip to Ghana, a country Obama praised as "a functioning democracy [with] a president who's serious about reducing corruption, and ... significant economic growth."
Photo: Activists perform in masks of President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Rome this week where the G-8 failed to get developing nations on board for climate control. Credit: Reuters
Ponzi scheme swindler Bernard Madoff, the 71-year-old financier whose greed wiped out fortunes, ruined retirements, bankrupted several prominent Jewish charities and even led some investors to commit suicide, was sentenced today to 150 years in jail.
Victims pleaded with the court to throw the book at him as federal prosecutors sought the maximum term -- 150 years -- for what is considered the largest heist in Wall Street history, now estimated at $13 billion. And he did.
Madoff apologized to his victims -- "I'm sorry," he said, turning to face them. But Judge Denny Chin gave the perp the maximum because, he explained, Madoff never cooperated with prosecutors -- about either who might have helped him in his elaborate deception or where the money had gone to. When the judge pronounced his verdict, the courtroom erupted in applause. For once, the judge did not gavel them to silence.
Even as the Bernard Madoff sentencing took center stage, Ruth Madoff, the swindler's wife of 49 years, was drawing almost as much ink as her husband.
Two weeks ago, in a piece entitled "The Loneliest Woman in New York," the New York Times reported that her usual salon, Pierre Michel, on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side, had told her not to return for her every-six-weeks blond foil highlights.
Ruth Madoff made a deal with federal prosecutors last week to sell most of the couple's assets -- the $7.5-million co-op and primary residence in Manhattan, the $11-million house in Palm Beach, Fla., the $3-million beach house on Montauk, at the tip of Long Island and, as the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, jewelry insured at more than $2.6 million and two fur coats valued at $48,500. In exchange, the Justice Department agreed to let the 68-year-old woman keep $2.5 million.
Now, the New York Post is reporting that landlords don't want to rent to Mrs. Madoff, who is shopping for an apartment. She has started using her maiden name, Alpern, but no luck there either.
"She has nowhere to go," a top broker said. "No one wants someone with her name in their building. People like their privacy."
You don't need to be a basketball-loving president of the United States to know that if you're trying to block opponents' shots in your end, you sure aren't increasing your own totals. You can't score points on D.
So President Obama's news conference this morning is his bid to steal the ball from his opponents and scoot down the court for his own layup. It's a classic political reset of the play clock. At 9:30 a.m. Pacific (12:30 p.m. Eastern, 4:30 p.m. GMT), Obama will make a statement in the White House Rose Garden and then take questions.
Obama has lost some mojo in recent days on this month's pressing issues, especially Iran's ongoing protests and healthcare reform. Obama's printed Saturday statement about Iran on his way out the White House door for ice cream with his daughters was insufficient media competition for the appallingly graphic video of the young woman Neda dying on a Tehran street. Some called the presidential statement ineffective and "mealy-mouthed."
On Father's Day, while the president played golf out of camera-sight, others were on TV declaring the U.S. must say more to support the unarmed protesters in Iran.
Here's the scary thing for the new White House: the terrifying words "Jimmy Carter" have started appearing in print and on the air, recalling the ex-Georgia governor's ineptness and....
Investigators are looking into lots of causes that would explain why Air France Flight 447 exploded over the Atlantic, killing all 228 passengers and crew members aboard.
One possibility is that a lightning strike disabled the plane’s computers, which caused the pilots to fly directly into a massive turbulence. Another is that a faulty air speed indicator on the Airbus could have misled the pilots into flying faster than the aircraft could withstand, or faster than it should into turbulence.
The Weekly Standard chided the New York Times and the Washington Post for minimizing the prospect of terrorism, saying "Either scenario -- massive instrument failure or midair terrorism -- is a nightmare to contemplate, but one might be forgiven for wondering why our 'newspaper of record' and its rival in Washington would choose to dismiss one of them out of hand."
Now, according to Britain's IBTimes, the French have cleared the two men, saying they shared the same name as that of known Islamic radicals, though French Defense Minister Herve Morin has not ruled out terrorism as a possibility in the crash.
"We launched an urgent inquiry into the men's backgrounds as soon as they were pinpointed as having possible terrorist links," the French Interior Ministry said in a statement. "This deep and wide-ranging investigation has allowed us to clear them."
One week after President Obama was at Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany denouncing intolerance, a gunman walked into the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington with a long gun and opened fire, according to witnesses.
Sgt. David Schlosser, a public information officer of the U.S. Park Police, said the suspect exchanged fire with one security guard and two other guards returned fire against the gunman.
(UPDATE: The suspect and one of the security guards have died. And President Obama issued a statement published in its entirety below.))
The Los Angeles Times is covering the unfolding story -- check updates here.
I just wanted to add this piece of information.
A friend of mine volunteers at the museum on Wednesdays. I called her just after I heard the news to find out how a gunman could penetrate the building, which requires all visitors to go through a metal detector.
I reached my friend on her cellphone as she and other staffers were heading toward the subway. Although she did not want her name to be used, she said me the gunman came into the building firing, even before he got to the metal detectors.
“I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms. No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world.
“Today, we have lost a courageous security guard who stood watch at this place of solemn remembrance. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends in this painful time.”
In a speech that took almost an hour and gracefully highlighted the major tensions between Muslim countries and the West, President Obama reached out for what he called "a new beginning" with Islamic countries.
And the White House made sure that the speech was widely disseminated -- sent out via text message in four languages, translated into 13 languages, and broadcast on social media sites from Google's Orkut to Facebook, which has 20 million users in Muslim countries. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called it a "far broader" than any past effort by a White House much touted for its tech savvy, including live streaming at www.whitehouse.gov.
One fascinating aspect of the speech was the president's outreach to young Muslims, urging them to shed the old prejudices of their cultures. "There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the
years," he said. "But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move
forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every
faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the ability to
reimagine the world, to remake this world."
President Barack Hussein Obama, born to a Muslim father and educated in a Muslim country, won a rousing response in Cairo today with an outreach to a Muslim world that reviled his Republican predecessor George W. Bush.
The Democrat won a gasping cheer at the start, greeting a packed audience at Cairo University with words of Arabic: "I am also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people,
and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country:
assalaamu aleikum." (Note: An earlier version of this post said Obama greeted a packed audience at Al Azhar University.)
And toward the end of the speech, when someone shouted, "We love you!" Obama replied, "Thank you."
He thrilled them with a recitation of Muslim countries' contributions to world civilization -- algebra, the compass, pens and printing, medical treatment of disease, architecture, poetry, calligraphy, music.
He used the speech to teach as well, reminding the Egyptian audience that the first nation to recognize the United States was an Islamic country, Morocco, and that recently, when Keith Ellison became the first Arab American elected to Congress, he took the oath of office on a Koran that had been in the personal library of founder Thomas Jefferson.
Turning to the thorniest problems in his foreign policy portfolio, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the audience, Obama promised that American troops sought no territorial gains in Afghanistan but were there only to protect U.S. interests.
"Make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We
seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our
young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue
this conflict.
We would gladly bring every single one of our troops
home if we could be confident that....
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan got the royal treatment today in Washington. Though her husband was a Republican who often tussled with Democrats on Capitol Hill, and though she was often reviled for her expensive clothes and socialite friends, today there was no sign of partisanship or any long knives.
At the Capitol Rotunda, leaders of Congress honored President Ronald Wilson Reagan with a statue celebrating what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called "that storied life." Calling Reagan "one of the giants of the 20th century," McConnell said that the former Hollywood actor and governor of California "stood taller than any statue." The source of his height, said McConnell, "is here with us." Praising Mrs. Reagan for helping to lift the nation "when we needed it most," he added, "America is still grateful."
(As each state gets two statues in the Capitol, the state Legislature earlier cleared the way by knocking from his pedestal Thomas Starr King, a 19th century San Francisco Unitarian Universalist preacher whose image has graced the Capitol for 78 years.)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the Reagan marriage "one of great love stories of all time" and said that the American people benefited from the first family's partnership.
Thanking Mrs. Reagan for her activism, Pelosi said, "Your support for stem-cell research made a significant difference in lives of many Americans." Noting Reagan's fierce belief in....
It's no secret that Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly was instrumental in publicizing the activities of George Tiller, the 67-year-old Kansas doctor who was one of the few physicians in the country to perform late-term abortions in the face of protests, bombings at Tiller's clinic and death threats.
Now, liberal bloggers are speculating that what one called O'Reilly's "jihad against Tiller" may have contributed to the doctor's death.
"There's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose," said Salon.com's Gabriel Winant. Tiller has been vilified in 29 episodes of O'Reilly's "The Factor," Winant reports, usually described as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and often as a doctor who "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."
On March 15, 2006, O'Reilly said Tiller was the moral equivalent of Al Qaeda. On Nov. 9, 2006, he likened the physician who gave women legal abortions to China's Mao, Germany's Hitler or the Soviet Union's Stalin. And on Dec. 12, 2006, he unleashed all his hatred in this episode. See what you think.
For the most part, both pro-choice and antiabortion groups of the mainstream variety were careful to condemn Tiller's slaying.
Maybe, as MSNBC's political team suggested this morning, the culture wars are about to return big time.
Corrected, 7:25 p.m.: An earlier version of this post said that the right-wing blogosphere was defending O'Reilly by blaming the Obama administration, and quoted John Aravosis, who blogs for AmericaBlog.com, as noting that the White House withdrew a domestic terrorism report that warned of abortion protest violence. AmericaBlog is a liberal outlet, and its sarcastic post took us in. We apologize for mislabeling AmericaBlog and for misunderstanding Aravosis' intent.
With his wife Michelle way, way out in California, giving an eagerly-awaited commencement address in Merced, which The Ticket already wrote about here, President Obama made a meaningful Saturday parental excursion outside the White House today to watch daughter Sasha play soccer.
But before that he made some major international and domestic political news.
As initially reported by The Ticket here late Friday evening (see what you'd already know if you checked back here more often!), President Obamaappointed Utah's popular Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. as U.S. ambassador to China. (Not much worry over Senate confirmation either with fellow Mormon Harry Reid of Nevada at the helm of the Democratic majority there.)
We fully examined the political import of this very savvy move a few hours ago here; be sure to check it out. Appointing the national co-chair of Sen John McCain's losing Republican presidential campaign against Obama is not only bipartisan, it is very useful; it gets the potential GOP candidate out of the country and on the Democrat's team with only 42 months until the next presidential election. Beijing's a long ways from those Lincoln Day dinners in Ames and Clear Lake.
Right now, we have the full remarks of both the president and his new bipartisan, bilingual team member -- and one who's not from New Hampshire. (As previously reported here, Vice President Joe Biden had today off in Delaware. Also tomorrow.)
Or as Gov. Huntsman might put it:**
你好，我叫洪博培，我从犹他州来的
-- Andrew Malcolm
Remarks by President Obama nominating Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah as Ambassador to the People's Republic of China
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. I am here to announce today the distinguished public servant I'm appointing as our nation's new ambassador to the People's Republic of China. I'm making this appointment mindful of its extraordinary significance.
Given the breadth of issues at stake in our relationship with China, this ambassadorship is as important as any in the world –- because the United States will best be able to deal effectively with....
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Our Bloggers
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the Countdown to Crawford blog here at The Times.
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