Bill O'Reilly Is to Journalism What the WWE Is to Fighting

President Obama grants a one-on-one television interview to a broadcast journalist, and I sit at home cursing the interviewer for going easy on him. "Would you consider amending the law in way x to make good on your promise?" Or O'Reilly could've raised the issue of Obama's credibility. What response could this possibly elicit other than the banal official line that Obama repeated? Said O'Reilly, "Your detractors believe that you did not tell the world it was a terror attack because your campaign didn't want that out." Even if that were true, is Obama really going to appear in a one-on-one with O'Reilly and say, "Well, Bill, I knew it was a terror attack from the beginning but I tried to pretend otherwise for a couple of days because I thought I could get away with it-it was a naked political calculation designed to hide my core softness on terrorism." O'Reilly covers well-trod ground less sure-footedly than many who've gone before him, trots out a few right-wing theories that even he won't put his name behind, and produces an interview that serves his interests and Obama's interests just fine, but shortchanges everyone who has an interest in more information.
Source: THE ATLANTIC


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TRANSCRIPT: Full interview between President Obama and Bill O'Reilly

PRESIDENT OBAMA - Well, that, bottom line is what we're gonna do is to, uh, the process now goes agencies comment on what the State Department did, public's allowed to comment, Kerry's gonna, uh, give me a recommendation, uh -. PRESIDENT OBAMA - Because they think that that somehow, uh, uh, makes them complicit. PRESIDENT OBAMA - Bill - we've just run through an interview in which you asked about health, uh, health care not working, IRS where-where we, uh, wholly corrupt, Benghazi -. PRESIDENT OBAMA - If you want to - if you want to be President of the United States, then you know that you're going to be subject to criticism, and -.
Source: FOX NEWS


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Obama Tells Bill OReilly He Isnt The Most Progressive President In History - HUFFINGTON
National Briefing Washington Bill to Help Veterans Pay Tuition Advances - NEW YORK TIMES
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The Champion Barack Obama

He becomes a champion of black imagination, of black dreams and black possibilities. How does a black writer approach The Man when The Man is not just us, but the Champion of our ambitions? More, how do you approach the offices that have so often brutalized black people when those offices are occupied by the Champion? How do you acknowledge the president's many gifts, his actual accomplishments, while still and all outlining the depressing limits of his own imagination? The president is correct that there is a long history of black leaders addressing "Personal responsibility." But as a diagnosis for what has historically gone wrong in black communities, the tradition is erroneous. So great is this weakness that the experience of black fatherlessness can connect Barack Obama in Hawaii to young black boys on the South Side, and that fact-whatever the charts, graphs, and histories may show-is bracing.
Source: THE ATLANTIC


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Charlie Crist's The Party's Over Reviewed by Isaac Chotiner

Charlie Crist's new book, lazily titled The Party's Over, is a cause for both anger and sadness. At one moment in the book-after recounting an irksome Rubio profile in The New York Times-he quotes Rubio on the Tea Party: "An important part of a bigger movement in America united behind the idea that you don't have to get rid of everything that's right about America to fix what is wrong about our great country." To this, Crist adds: "What empty platitudes! I remember thinking when I read that." It's touching to see "The people's governor" express dismay over platitudes, although Rubio's statement doesn't even really qualify as platitudinous. The Rubio-Crist match-up is indeed the soulless heart of the book, because it marked the moment when Crist formally ditched the Republican Party. Crist highlights his Palin concerns to underline his own worries about the Republican Party being too conservative, even though it took him until 2010-when he was on the verge of being crushed by Rubio-to finally see the light.
Source: THE NEW REPUBLIC


Swirl >>

Rep Paul Broun Would Back Obama Impeachment - ABC
The Champion Barack Obama - THE ATLANTIC
Fox News to show second part of Bill OReilly interview with Barack Obama - THE GUARDIAN
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The End of American Exceptionalism

A 2013 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that while almost two in three Americans over 65 call themselves "Extremely proud to be American," among Americans under 30 it is fewer than two in five. According to a 2011 Pew poll, young Americans were 14 points more likely than older Americans to say that the wealthy in America got there mainly because "They know the right people or were born into wealthy families" rather than because of their "Hard work, ambition, and education." And as young Americans internalize America's lack of economic mobility, they are developing the very class consciousness the United States is supposed to lack. A 2011 Pew study found that while Americans over 30 favored capitalism over socialism by 27 points, Americans under 30 narrowly favored socialism. Perhaps young Americans, having in their formative years watched Bush's epic post-9/11 vision breed lies, brutality, and state collapse, and America's celebrated capitalist system descend into financial crisis, have gained their own appreciation of American fallibility.
Source: THE ATLANTIC


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Obama urges calm in Central African Republic

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - President Barack Obama is urging the people of the Central African Republic to remain calm amid mounting sectarian violence. The White House says Obama taped the audio message Monday in Dakar, Senegal, as Air Force One was refueling on its way to Johannesburg for a memorial service honoring former South African President Nelson Mandela. Obama addressed his remarks to the "Proud citizens of the Central African Republic" and said they have the power "To choose a different path" than the violence that led to more than 400 deaths in two days of violence last week between Christians and Muslims. Obama says he joins Muslim and Christian leaders in calling for calm and peace and says those who are committing crimes should be arrested.
Source: SAN FRAN CHRONICLE


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Negotiators Reach Compromise on Defense Bill

WASHINGTON - House and Senate negotiators reached final agreement Monday on a Pentagon policy bill that would strengthen protections for military victims of sexual assault and keep the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, open over President Obama's strenuous objections, as Congress rushed to wrap up work for the year. The new measure would prevent commanding officers from overturning sexual assault verdicts, expand a special victims counsel program for the survivors of sexual assault throughout the military and make retaliation for reporting assault a crime. Significantly, for criminal complaints, including sexual assault, courts of investigation - known as Article 32 hearings - would act more like preliminary hearings looking for probable cause to pursue a court-martial. The measure is the first change to law governing sexual assault in the military in years, stemming from the furor that has erupted over the rising numbers of sexual assaults in the military; there were 3,553 sexual assault complaints reported in the first three quarters of this fiscal year, a nearly 50 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.
Source: NEW YORK TIMES


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