Tag Archives: president obama

Analysis: Obama’s ‘blame me’ means ‘move on’

President Obama topped a town hall appearance Wednesday by claiming responsibility for the bonuses paid out to executives at the bailed-out insurance giant American International Group, saying, "I’m outraged, too." Cushioned by high approval ratings, analysts said Obama can emerge from this controversy relatively unscathed, but there’s only so many times he can get away with saying, “Blame me.” AIG accepted more than $170 billion in federal assistance in the past six months. It was revealed this week that since accepting those funds, the company doled out more than $165 million in bonuses.

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Obama to appear on ‘Tonight Show’

Guests on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" usually appear to promote a movie, TV show, book or album, but President Obama will visit the NBC show Thursday to make the case for his financial rescue plans. While presidential candidates — as far back as Richard Nixon’s performance on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in 1968 — have used comedy shows for campaigning, Obama becomes the first sitting president to appear. “We don’t look at it as the process of demonstrating the president’s sense of humor,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs

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Obama blasts AIG bonuses, admits ‘buck stops with me’

President Obama said Wednesday that no one in his administration had been responsible for supervising ailing insurance giant AIG but that ultimately, the buck stops with him. “Nobody here drafted those contracts; nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in,” he said outside the White House. “[But] we are responsible, though.

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Robert Gibbs takes verbal slap at Cheney

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs launched a sarcastic barb at former Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday, but then the Obama administration spokesman pulled back a bit as he acknowledged the "seriousness" of the subject — terrorism. The comments came at the daily White House briefing, during which Gibbs dismissed Cheney’s statement Sunday on CNN that several of President Obama’s policies had left the country less safe.

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Zakaria: Obama impresses with first foreign policy moves

President Obama is halfway through his first 100 days in office and, although he has focused primarily on domestic policy, he also has made a number of foreign policy moves. NEW YORK (CNN) — President Obama is halfway through his first 100 days in office and, although he has focused primarily on domestic policy, he also has made a number of foreign policy moves. Obama selected Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and she has made several overseas trips.

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Cheney says Obama’s policies ‘raise the risk’ of U.S. terror attack

The Obama administration has endangered Americans and opened the country to further attack by reversing Bush administration anti-terrorism policies such as harsh interrogations of suspects, former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday. Cheney told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Bush administration’s “alternative” interrogation techniques were “absolutely essential” to preventing further assaults like the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Critics said those techniques amounted to the torture of prisoners in American custody.

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Brazil’s Lula: A Bridge for Obama to Latin America’s Left?

The problem facing President Barack Obama in Latin America is that under the peevishness and negligence of his predecessor, the continent saw a stunning expansion of the anti-U.S. left. The solution to that problem may be Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who on Saturday becomes the first Latin American leader to visit the Obama White House — an invitation that all but anoints him as President Obama’s liaison to the region

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