President Obama Re-Elected - Page 504

On September 14 2012 08:29 Voltaire wrote:
Dodd-Frank is a TERRIBLE piece of legislation.

It doesn't even touch what needs to be done (the separation of commercial and investment banks)

Instead it just penalizes trading operations and actually gives more power to large investment banks.

On September 14 2012 08:33 Souma wrote:


Dodd-Frank is lacking in some areas, but it's better than having nothing at the moment. And as I stated above, we can't even enforce what laws we currently have. Regulation reform is going to be a long and enduring process (if it ever even takes flight, Dodd-Frank is a start).

If we're going to really regulate the financial/corporate sector, we must start by overriding Citizens United.

On September 14 2012 09:18 Defacer wrote:

Update from Associated Press. The protest was cover for a coordinated 2-part assault by militants.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/libyan-attacks-said-be-2-part-militant-assault

On September 14 2012 09:29 xDaunt wrote:

This is about to turn into a disaster for the Obama administration. Not only is it looking like that the State Department had received credible warnings of the attack 48 hours ahead of time, but the militants have apparently absconded with critical intelligence information regarding American contacts in Libya.

On September 14 2012 09:35 Souma wrote:


Did they really get warnings two days before?

On September 14 2012 09:29 xDaunt wrote:

This is about to turn into a disaster for the Obama administration. Not only is it looking like that the State Department had received credible warnings of the attack 48 hours ahead of time, but the militants have apparently absconded with critical intelligence information regarding American contacts in Libya.

Source.

On September 14 2012 09:29 xDaunt wrote:

This is about to turn into a disaster for the Obama administration. Not only is it looking like that the State Department had received credible warnings of the attack 48 hours ahead of time, but the militants have apparently absconded with critical intelligence information regarding American contacts in Libya.

Source.

On September 14 2012 09:29 xDaunt wrote:

This is about to turn into a disaster for the Obama administration. Not only is it looking like that the State Department had received credible warnings of the attack 48 hours ahead of time, but the militants have apparently absconded with critical intelligence information regarding American contacts in Libya.

Source.

On September 14 2012 09:58 Silidons wrote:

So are we supposed to take every single threat seriously now? You know how many threats they probably get every hour?

On September 14 2012 08:25 sunprince wrote:


Does anyone have citations/numbers which show how Obamacare and/or Dodd-Frank have actually affected the little guy?

If a firms with at least 50 workers has a full-time employee who is getting federally-subsided insurance through an ”exchange,” then that employer must pay a penalty for failing to offer that worker acceptable insurance on the job. (Workers that are offered qualified coverage by an employer are ineligible for the new insurance subsidies provided in the exchanges.)

http://www.obamacarewatch.org/primer/employer-mandate

On September 14 2012 09:47 darthfoley wrote:
Romney was so stupid to attack Obama for "apologizing" in the middle of a crisis...sigh, he just really doesn't get it.

On September 14 2012 11:45 kmillz wrote:


Obama's failed foreign policies are really the only thing he should be apologizing for, not for our freedom of speech!

CAIRO — Following a blunt phone call from President Obama, Egyptian leaders scrambled Thursday to try to repair the country’s alliance with Washington, tacitly acknowledging that they erred in their response to the attack on the United States Embassy by seeking to first appease anti-American domestic opinion without offering a robust condemnation of the violence.

Set off by anger at an American-made video ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, the attacks on the embassy put President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in a squeeze between the need to stand with Washington against the attackers and the demands of many Egyptians to defy Washington and defend Islam, a senior Brotherhood official acknowledged.

During a late-night, 20-minute phone call, Mr. Obama warned Mr. Morsi that relations would be jeopardized if Egyptian authorities failed to protect American diplomats and stand more firmly against anti-American attacks.

The rising breach between the United States and Egypt comes at a critical time for the longtime allies. For the Obama administration, it is a test of whether it has succeeded in efforts to shore up influence after the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and to find common ground with the new Islamist leaders of a country that is a linchpin of American policy in the Middle East.

For Egypt’s new president, the dilemma quickly became an early test of the Brotherhood’s ability to balance domestic political pressures, international commitments and its conservative religious mandate now that it is also effectively governing in a new democracy.

“We are taking the heat from both sides,” Gehad el-Haddad, a spokesman for the Brotherhood, acknowledged Thursday as the group responded belatedly with a televised presidential address, a letter to the editor in The New York Times by its top strategist, and a series of sympathetic online messages aimed at mollifying American officials.

After decades focused on disciplining its own cadre to survive underground, the Brotherhood’s leadership is still adjusting to the competing constituencies and high visibility of democratic life.

“They realized a little after the fact the degree of fallout in the U.S. and that is why you are seeing all these conciliatory statements from Brotherhood leaders today,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, who follows the group closely. “Morsi is doing a difficult dance.”

Evidently paralyzed by the conflicting pressure, Mr. Morsi had remained conspicuously silent as protesters breached the walls of the American Embassy in Cairo — a stark contrast to the help, contrition and condemnation coming from the new government of Libya, where gunmen set fire to an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama, who is campaigning, called staff members at the White House from Air Force One to arrange a telephone call to Mr. Morsi, a senior administration official said.

The president was not happy; Egypt, unlike Libya, is crucial to American security interests, given its peace treaty with Israel. At 11 p.m., from his hotel suite in Stapleton, Colo., Mr. Obama got on the phone with Mr. Morsi, who began by offering condolences on the American deaths in Libya.

But that was not what Mr. Obama was calling about.

“The president made his point that we’ve been committed to the process of change in Egypt, and we want to continue to build a relationship with the Egyptian government,” said a senior administration official. “But he made it clear how important it is that the Egyptian government work with us to lower the tension both in terms of the practical cooperation they give us and the statements they make.”

Mr. Morsi brought up the American-made video attacking the Prophet Muhammad, which had set off the violent protests, and Mr. Obama said he understood the ire felt by Muslims, but added that it did not justify attacks on the embassy.

Mr. Obama urged Mr. Morsi to publicly and strongly condemn the attacks. He had already signaled his displeasure earlier, saying in an interview on Telemundo that Egypt was not necessarily an “ally,” although White House officials were playing down the remark on Thursday.

“ ‘Ally’ is a legal term of art,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman with the National Security Council. “We don’t have a mutual defense treaty with Egypt like we do with our NATO allies.”

On September 14 2012 11:53 Defacer wrote:


What is your preferred policy?

Seriously? Do you or any of you so-called patriots have an answer? Invade the entirety of the Middle East and take it over?

Tell me. I'd really like to hear this.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Republicans used the Federal Reserve's announcement of a third round of stimulus to blast President Obama, saying the lackluster economic recovery he's overseen is behind the central bank's "artificial" and "ineffective" move.

Most Republicans, including the campaign of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, used the Fed's move to tout their main campaign message going into the Nov. 6 elections, that Obama's economic stewardship has failed.

"The Federal Reserve's announcement of a third round of quantitative easing is further confirmation that President Obama's policies have not worked," said Lanhee Chen, policy director for the Romney campaign, in a statement Thursday. "We should be creating wealth, not printing dollars."

Republicans, including Romney, have criticized quantitative easing, the Fed's prime tool for juicing the economy by buying debt to increase the flow of money in the financial system. They say Fed is risking a run-up in inflation with the moves, which they dismiss as unhelpful.

Several Republicans, including Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, went so far as to blast the central bank's actions as "beginning to do serious damage to the Fed as an institution."

"Open-ended purchases of mortgage-backed securities will politicize the Fed and add substantially to its balance sheet risks, but it will not help our economy's long-term growth prospects," Corker said in a statement.

Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, accused the Fed of adding more uncertainty to the market.

"It's time for the Fed to stop," said Brady, the top Republican on the Joint Economic Committee. "Chairman Bernanke should look President Obama and Congress in the eye and tell them the Fed has done all it can to boost the economy -- and perhaps too much."

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke defended against such criticism during a news conference Thursday, saying the central bank would continue monitoring the financial system for price stability. He added the Fed board sees no indication of unchecked inflation in the near future, but would keep an eye out.

Bernanke also dismissed any suggestion that the Fed's move might be seen in a political way to help Democrats.

"We have tried very, very hard, and I think we've been successful, to be nonpartisan and apolitical," Bernanke said . "We make our decisions entirely based on the state of the economy."

Last month, Romney said that, if elected, he would not renominate Ben Bernanke to a third term as the Federal Reserve Board chairman when Bernanke's term expires in January 2014.