Speaking at an Organizing for America event yesterday, President Obama reassured his supporters about his efforts to pass health reform. “We’ve been through this before,” Obama said, recalling that around this time last year, the media was claiming, “Obama’s lost his mojo.” “There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up,” Obama said.
In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 49 percent of respondents expressed confidence that President Obama “will make the right decisions for the country, down from 60 percent at the 100-day mark in his presidency.” Additionally, 55 percent “see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared that there’s “no way” she can pass a health reform bill through Congress “without a public option.” She added that a watered-down compromise was unacceptable because “I don’t know when we’d do it [comprehensive reform] if we don’t take that giant step now.”
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and his top challenger Abdullah Abdullah are each positioning themselves as the winner of Afghanistan’s presidential election. Preliminary results are expected tomorrow. Dozens of rocket attacks from the Taliban did suppress turnout, but “enough voters had cast ballots that Afghan officials could declare they had thwarted efforts by the insurgents to derail the vote.”
Economists say that after a 30-year rise, “the rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon.” “Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million dropped 24 percent, according to CapGemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.”
The massive health insurer United Health Group is asking its employees to lobby their members of Congress and attend health care town halls. One of the talking points being given to employees is to oppose a public plan.
A new analysis performed by USA Today finds that defense lobbyists spent $750,000 during the first six months of Obama’s term to honor administration officials. “Most of their business is with the government. Spending $50,000 is nothing if it warms up people to give them the next $100 million contract,” Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told USA Today.
President Obama “dropped in on a White House meeting with more than 100 immigration reform backers” yesterday, making clear that he would “push for immigration reform even as the health-care debate continues to unfold.” “He didn’t give an inkling that he’s going to back away from immigration reform,” said CAP immigration reform expert Angela Kelley, who was at the meeting.
A South Dakota judge upheld a state law requiring women to be told that abortion “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” But the judge also ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood “by concluding that pregnant women do not need to be told abortion increases the likelihood of suicide or that they have an existing relationship with the fetus.”
And finally: Will Helen Thomas be joining Twitter anytime soon? Unlikely.
Follow ThinkProgress on Twitter.
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.