Well, it has become a regular bit of self degradation on PBS NewsHour to hear Ms. Awful, Woodruff et al, grovel for approval from the psycho-fanatic-Right, by parroting GOP propaganda and fraudulent criticisms of President Obama. They don't even need flash cards anymore over at Fox News - Light, they have this crap committed to memory. (although, they must practice in a mirror at delivering it with as much affected ingenuousness as possible. - Woodruff shows a particular facility for this sort of thing in impersonating a journalist.)

In the interview of the President broadcast Wednesday, Aug 28th, Judy Woodruff, gave the PBS equivalent of a chimp throwing shit at a focus of primitive resentment - by asking the phony question (a question which importunes to put words in the President's mouth):

"... how much does it weigh on you that your policies haven’t made more of a difference in those areas?"

The President, always keeping his composure in the face of offensive, ignorant remarks gave a reasoned and measured response to Woodruff's shit blob of a 'question':
(emphasis my own)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it certainly weighs on me. In my first term, essentially, my job was to make sure, as you said, that the economy didn’t just completely collapse. It collapsed, but it didn’t go into a deep depression. And the reason that had to be a top priority was because, if it did, the folks who would have been hurt even worse were those middle-class families and folks trying to get into the middle class, who would have lost even more than they did. And what we were also able to do, at least in my first two years, was to initiate expansions Pell Grant programs, or make sure that we were providing help to cities so that they could hire young people during the summers. But, you know, obviously, an agenda that puts more people back to work has met resistance from the Republicans in Congress, and I recognize that.

But the – what is both troubling but also, I think, gives me a greater sense of urgency is the fact that this is a trend that’s actually been going on for a couple of decades now. As I mentioned in the speech, you’ve got technology that has reduced manufacturing jobs that used to be a foothold into the middle class, that has reduced things like bank tellers or travel agents that used to provide a good middle-class livelihood, and the new jobs that have been produced don’t pay as much. You’ve got global competition, jobs being shipped overseas.

All these things reduce the leverage that workers have, and as a consequence, it’s a lot harder for every worker – black, white, Hispanic, Asian – to ask for a raise. And employers know that. And companies are making great profits, but they’re not reinvesting.

So what we need to do is to go back to that principle that, if you look at our economic history, has always been the case. When we have broad-based growth, when the middle class does well, when people at the bottom have a shot, it turns out that’s good for everybody. It’s good for folks at the top. It’s good for businesses, because now they’ve got consumers who are spending more money.

And you know, a lot of what I’m going to be talking about over the next several months is specific steps, whether it’s helping keep down the cost of college or helping to do more to spur on the recovery in the housing industry or, as I’ll be talking about probably in the next several weeks, specific tools that we know work, proven practices that we know work to get more ladders of opportunity for people who are poor to be able to succeed.

The President could have elaborated upon the words "resistance from the Republicans in Congress".

..... He could have said something like:

"Just to bring you up to speed Judy, with what's been happening in Washington since I was elected - the Republicans have set a new record in filibustering (..oh, I'm sorry, that's a taboo word on M$M, isn't it) any and all of my efforts to get people back to work (GOP obstructed, at a minimum,4.2 million jobs), to invest in much needed infrastructure rehabilitation and just about anything else we tried to do to stimulate and rebuild our economy.

Two highly respected Political Scientists, Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institute, and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute (no less) characterized the Republican Party as an 'insurgent outlier' in American Politics for their implacable opposition to everything I have tried to do to repair the economic and social damage their policies (specifically Judy, Deregulation of Wall Street banks (particularly with regard to trading in occult financial instruments e.g. Credit Default Swaps), protection of Predatory Lenders from regulation - and policies promoting concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people) have produced (perhaps they were afraid the contrast between the Democrats proficiently fixing an economy nearly destroyed by Republican style 'absentee government', deregulation and impoverishment of the '98%' was too much for them to allow happen without doing everyting they could to prevent it). ..... Thankfully, even with their rather remarkable animus towards me and all things Democratic, they did not succeed. Although they did succeed in significantly diminishing the recovery to their Trickle Down - Deregulation Disaster.

So you see Judy, it wasn't "my policies" which "haven't made more of a difference" as you asserted within your question - but that the Republicans have in their internecine war on me have succeeded in preventing me from getting much of my policies realized, making the livelihoods of millions of Americans the 'collateral damage' in their pursuit of their top priority - to make Obama a one term president (to quote Mr. McConnell).


OF course, Woodruff probably would have said, without batting an eye:

"Do you think Mr. President, with all due respect, your rather combative style of partisanship, could have caused the Republicans to give up hope of achieving any bi-partisan progress?"

...uhh, maybe Judy, you meant to say 'caused the Republicans to [FONT SIZE="3"]anticipate [/FONT] a lack of partisan comity - ON THE EVENING OF PRES. OBAMA'S FIRST INNAUGURAL'?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324110404578628120816706946.html


also see Economic Policy Institute: http://www.epi.org/publication/repealing-sequestration-create-900000-jobs/

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10184

This 14-year old Canadian girl, Rachel Parent, is tremendous. Watch her clean the clock of the TV host who bad-mouthed opponents of Monsanto and their GMOs and those who support the "Right to Know" campaign to require genetically modified foods to be labelled as such.

She's just fantastic. My favorite part (and there were many), was when the jackass host accuses her of being a "shill" for "extremists"...just moments after he basically accused her of wanting to kill millions of children with her advocacy.

Color me very impressed with this young lady...

http://www.dccc.org/page/content/grandobstructionparty/

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/08/12205/alec-40-turning-back-clock-prosperity-and-progress


read Full report here.

[font size="4"]This will only Get Worse[/font]


http://texas.construction.com/yb/tx/article.aspx?story_id=188608188

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/08/2436291/constituents-confront-congressman-for-supporting-obamacare-repeal-weve-got-to-have-it/

In Washington, D.C., Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) issues countless press releases boasting about his votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, insisting that his constituents in North Carolina are clamoring for relief from the law. But during a town hall in Swannanoa on Wednesday, voters confronted the five-term Congressman with an entirely different sentiment: they demanded to know why Republicans would take away the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions without offering any credible other alternative for reforming the health care system. One grieving mother, who spoke to reporters before the event, said that her son was denied insurance because of a pre-existing health condition and eventually died of colon cancer.

These comments forced McHenry — who had repeatedly advocated for “full repeal” of Obamcare — to admit that he does support some of its most popular provisions:

(Skip) Edwards and his wife, both 63, had health insurance until he lost his job during the recession and the East Asheville couple found themselves in financial trouble despite staying relatively healthy.

Both had pre-existing conditions and were denied insurance, making them eligible for a state plan called Inclusive Health.

“It cost us $1,300 bucks a month — extremely expensive,” Edwards said. “It taps us out every month. But at our age and health, we’ve got to have it.”

McHenry, 37, has repeatedly voted against the Affordable Care Act, choosing to either defund, repeal or delay it. In defending his position, he said he did agree with some aspects of the act, including ending discrimination against pre-existing conditions and extending the age a children can stay on their parents’ health insurance. [...]

Edwards and others wondered why McHenry would vote against a plan they feel is better than nothing at all. He said he would not vote for something he feels is bad policy.

(more)

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/08-6

Community activists, labor groups, and other progressives are making noise outside a downtown Chicago hotel on Thursday in order to draw attention to the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council's (or ALEC)—derisively known as the rightwing's regressive "law factory"—being held inside.

The anti-ALEC rally—led by groups that included StandUp! Chicago, the Center for Media & Democracy, ColorOfChange, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and others—was taking place outside the Palmer House Hotel with a call to put an end to the powerful lobbyist group.

Described as the engine of the corporate "retrograde agenda" by CMD's Mary Bottari, the laws proposed by ALEC members include "bills to roll back wages, worker rights, access to paid sick leave, and even renewable energy standards."

CMD's Brendan Fischer, who has studied the group extensively, called their operations a collusion between corporate interests and rightwing lawmakers.

ALEC is celebrating its 40th anniversary of operation this year, but the meeting in Chicago—though designed to be more secretive than ones in the past—will follow the same playbook in which "lobbyists from U.S. and foreign corporations will vote as equals alongside state legislators to adopt ALEC "model" bills, which then will be distributed nationwide with little or no disclosure of their ALEC roots."



(more)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/07/30/pelosi-nsa-gop-obamacare-2014/2600157/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/03/walter-reed-meets-sequestration-cutbacks-ensue/2602427/