by Mark Silva and updated with transcript
There is a ''disconnect'' between what the public wants out of health care reform -- lower costs -- and what President Barack Obama wants -- heatlh care coverage for the millions of uninsured -- according to that Battleground Poll today.
But [...]
by Mark Silva
While President Barack Obama's approval rating has slipped to 49 percent in another poll released today, most Americans surveyed still say that Obama has "a new approach'' to politics in Washington.
That's a slim majority, however, according to the results of a Pew Research Center poll: While 53" [...]
by Mark Silva
How about those New York City bankers who couldn't make it to the White House this week, the transportation secretary was asked. How was it that he managed to make it to New York for a TV show?
"Amtrak,'' he explained. "Amtrak runs in the fog.''
Ray LaHood,' [...]
by Mark Silva
Anger among independent voters about the economy and the direction the nation is taking offer Republicans a significant opportunity to reclaim power in the 2010 midterm congressional elections, according to the results of a bipartisan "Battleground Poll'' released today.
A lack of passion among President Barack Obama's core" [...]
by Mark Silva
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression who has fought to avert another one, is Time magazine's "person of the year.''
It was Bernanke, and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who were said to have sucked the oxygen from a roomful of'" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, who knows his way around the dictionary, certainly could not have been channeling former President George W. Bush today when he said:
"From the discussions we had, it's clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, who knows his way around the dictionary, certainly could not have been channeling former President George W. Bush today when he said:
"From the discussions we had, it's clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for" [...]
by Mark Silva
The jumpin' jazz band in the East Room of the White House last night was new: This isn't your father's Marine Band, which has been known to serenade guests crossing the Cross Hall with traditional tunes at the annual holiday reception for the press.
So was [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama went to Home Depot today.
"Seeing how Christmas is right around the corner, and we're at Home Depot, I figured I might knock out some of my shopping,'' the president said at the icon of the big-box stores in Northern Virginia.
"My press secretary wants something' [...]
by Mark Silva
George W. Bush wasn't an e-mailer.
But plenty of others in the Bush White House were.
Two nonprofit groups that have been at odds with the White House over access to emails say they have reached an agreement with the White House for the restoration of 22 million emails' [...]
by Mark Silva
After the Big Three automakers' executives caught flak for flying private jets to Washington for meetings with the overseers of the auto-industry bailout, the bailed out bankers weren't likely to be taking private jets to Monday's summit at the White House.
And, after [...]
by Mark Silva
Maybe now we know why President Barack Obama, leader of the free world, and Warren Buffett, "oracle of Omaha,'' get along so well.
They're related.
So says the research of Ancestry.com, the online genealogical enterprise that's gained a name for making long-lost connections.
Obama and Buffett apparentl are even'" [...]
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by Mark Silva
During the tour of the White House at Christmas that Oprah Winfrey gave viewers last night, she also got the president of the United States to give himself a grade.
After [...]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
by Mark Silva
Payback is bittersweet.
Actor William Shatner has done enough beat-poetry readings of Sarah Palin's summer farewell address from Anchorage and her newly published memoir that he might have expected the surprise guest' [...]
by Mark Silva and updated with GOP response.
Slowing the growth of health-care costs - "bending the curve,'' as it's become known - is one of the goals that reformers have in mind.
The bills which Democratic leaders have pushed through the House and are pushing through the Senate do that,'" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama says the nationally televised speech before an assembly of cadets at West Point where he announced his reasoning for the deployment of another 30,000 troops in Afghanistan was, for him, "the most emotional'' speech that he has delivered.
It "hit me in the gut,'' the [...]
by Mark Silva
Larry Summers, the president's chief economic adviser, says the shedding of jobs in an economy emerging from recession should end by Spring.
"It will take time,'' Summers said in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union with John King today. "A year ago, the question was [...]
by Mark Silva
Both President Barack Obama and Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee are bound for Copenhagen next week, among the many U.S. representatives at an international conference that will conclude with an attempt at a framework for an agreement on controlling climate change.
"If President Obama has his" [...]
by Mark Silva
Republicans voted against the economic stimulus in the House. They voted against the health-care overhaul in the House. Most of them voted against the "cap and trade'' energy bill in the House, though the handful of Republicans who supported that bill helped pass it.
And, today, Republicans in" [...]
by Mark Silva
When Jill Biden wants to get the vice president's attention on an important political issue she tapes a message to the bathroom mirror at the Naval Observatory mansion.
" If I want him to get my position on something, I Scotch Tape it to" [...]
by Mark Silva,
with a noon posting moved up for the evening: We're hard-pressed for more pressing news heading into the first of the holiday weekends. Cheers.
Bo has a stocking.
This is only part of what's to be revealed Sunday night on "Christmas at the White" [...]
by Mark Silva
Bo has a stocking.
This is only part of what's to be revealed Sunday night on "Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special.''
The first family and the first lady of daytime television sat in the Green Room of the White House, where" [...]
by Mark Silva and Michael Muskal
We recall today one of the stranger stories of the year, the day that South Carolina's governor went missing and his office said he had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
Now Jenny Sanford, estranged wife of embattled Gov. Mark Sanford, has [...]
by Mark Silva
It's probably going to be impossible to forget listening to Vic Damone singing Sen. Orrin Hatch's Jesus' Love is Like a River in a nearly empty tent on a hot day at the Iowa GOP Straw Poll.
That's precisely what we were doing one day one [...]
by Mark Silva
America is in debt.
Congressional leaders have been reminded of that at every turn of the health-care debate, in the energy debate, the stimulus debate, the bailout debate and the unemployment debate. The accumulated national debt is $12 trillion and rising -- with Congress getting ready to lift [...]
by Mark Silva
There was no poll here.
Just a selective recall from random memories of a year run amok with certifiably dumb ideas, which leads to our offering this afternoon of the 10 dumbest lines of the year:
by Mark Silva
Behind every successful man (In Saudi Arabia and Japan, perhaps), there stands a successful woman.
But she stands in front of the man (from the United States, in this case) when there's lint on the lapel of a president in line to receive a Nobel Peace [...]
by Mark Silva
There was a time, early in this most eventful year soon coming to an end, when most people thought the country would be better off with Congress controlled by the Democrats, as it was then and is now.
That also was a time when the new president's' [...]
by Mark Silva and updated again at 3 pm EST
Today, on the day that President Barack Obama accepted a Nobel Peace Prize which even the recipient acknowledges has arrived early in his presidency, reviews of his Nobel Lecture are certain to arrive swiftly as well.
We'll collect some' [...]
by Mark Silva
It's one thing, perhaps, to challenge the White House -- as FOX News Channel's Glenn Beck has been doing -- for inviting an "ex-con" to a State Dinner: Robert Creamer, the former Illinois Public Action Fund director who did some prison time for check kiting and tax [...]
[...]