Page 7 - Florida Sentinel 12-4-15 Edition

White House News
President Obama Asks For Gun Reforms In Wake Of San Bernardino Massacre
President Barack Obama
reiterated his call for more gun control reforms to make mass shootings in the U.S. "rare as opposed to normal" in the wake of a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.
Speaking moments after news broke of the shooting, Obama called for "common sense gun safety laws" and urged lawmakers to pass a law to prevent individuals on the "No Fly List" who are barred from boarding commercial flights from legally purchasing firearms.
" We don't yet know what the motives of the shooters are but what we do know is that there are steps we can take to make Americans safer," President Obama said in the interview. "We should never think that this is just something that just happens in the ordinary course of events because it doesn't happen with the same fre- quency in other countries."
President Obama said the pattern of U.S. mass shootings "has no parallel anywhere else in the world."
The shooting occurred at the
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Inland Regional Center, a facil- ity for people with develop- mental disabilities in San Bernardino, California.
Emergency personnel re- sponded late Wednesday morning to reports of a shoot- ing that killed or injured as more than 20 people, accord- ing to law enforcement.
Law enforcement officials are now on the lookout for as many as three suspects believed to be armed with AK-47-type weapons who reportedly fled the scene of the shooting in a black SUV.
It is unclear as of now who the suspects are and what the motives were behind the shoot- ing.
Republicans In Congress Plan To Gut Medicaid Expansion For Low-Income Americans
Putting an Obamacare repeal on the President’s desk would mark a major psychological — if not an actual — victory for Re- publicans. But it also could come with electoral repercus- sions that Democrats believe could boost their efforts to re- capture the Senate in 2016.
This week, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will clinch the elusive 51 votes he needs to pass a repeal after de- vising a bill to appease a small group of conservative Republi- can senators. But the new ver- sion also would gut an expansion of Medicaid that’s put millions of Americans from low-income households on the insurance rolls.
And it just so happens that some of the most vulnerable Re- publicans up for reelection next year are from states that have expanded Medicaid and ex- tended health care benefits to thousands of their constituents.
Democrats see a campaign ad that writes itself: Sen. X voted just last year to take away health insurance from tens of thou- sands of constituents.
President Obama’s Final State Of The Union Speech Will Be January 12th
President’s final speech is Jan. 12. Here he visits the suicide bomb site in Paris, with France’s President Hollande.
In the heat of the 2016 pres- idential contest and earlier in January than usual, Presi- dent Obama will deliver his final State of the Union ad- dress.
President Obama’s
speech, kicking off his last 12 months in office, is expected to blend a long list of domestic and international challenges the President knows he will hand to his successor, framed against achievements he sees as hallmarks of his time in of- fice.
The address will be delivered well ahead of January’s final week, which is when the Presi- dent and many of his modern predecessors delivered ad- dresses in past years. Since 1934, State of the Union as- sessments occurred at the be- ginning rather than the end of years. And while a written
message to Congress was suffi- cient for Presidents Tru- man, Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford and Carter as they prepared to leave office, presidents since Ronald Rea- gan stuck with televised speeches in the Capitol to kick off their final months in power.
President Obama’s Jan. 12 address, officially scheduled at the invitation of Congress, was negotiated to accommo- date competing events, law- maker schedules and the swirl of politics.
Rather than dwell on a loom- ing budget standoff with Re- publicans, as President Obama has done during State of the Union addresses since 2011, he may be able to tout areas of budgetary common ground, or at least deferred de- cision making.
President Obama And Russia’s President Putin Meet Again: The U.S., Russia And The War In Syria
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama suggested Russia’s President Vladamir Putin take lessons from Soviet military history.
For years, President Obama has followed a "lais- sez-fail" policy for Syria's Bashar Assad--a hands-off waiting for him to fall from power--that has been driven by what he considered the wrong- headed, and costly,
American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush. Similarly, the President said, when Soviet president Vladamir Putin weighs his decision to inter- vene to support Assad in Syria, he should keep in mind the Soviet Union's own no-win intervention in Afghanistan, which began in 1979 and lasted nine long and bloody years.
That’s how the President described his big takeaway from his two brief meetings with President Putin in the past two weeks—one after the Russian commercial plane ex- plosion in Egypt and the ter- rorist attacks in Paris and the
second on Monday on the side- lines of the international cli- mate conference--all during a month of stepped up Russian military involvement in Syria that included last week’s down- ing of a Russian fighter jet by the Turks.
“I think Mr. Putin under- stands that, with Afghanistan fresh in the memory for him, to simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict is not the outcome that he’s looking for,” Presi- dent Obama said at a press conference wrapping up his visit to the French capital.
Facebook Founder And Wife Welcome New Baby; Plan To Give Away 99% Of Their $45 Billion Fortune
Chicago Police Department And Mayor Under Fire
Mayor Rahm Emanuel left the Obama administration to become mayor of Chicago. He fired the city’s police chief re- cently. He is underfire along with the Chicago police depart- ment.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have welcomed their first child - a baby girl called Max - into the world, and used her arrival to announce plans to give away most of their $45 billion fortune. The Silicon Valley billionaire and his wife shared the news of the baby's birth in a Facebook post entitled, 'A letter to our daughter'. Included in the lengthy post was the couple's pledge to donate the vast majority of their fortune to future generations. They will donate 99% of their Face- book shares - currently valued at $45 billion - to the work of their charitable foundation, the letter claims. That would leave them with $450 million for themselves and their new child - based on Facebook's current valuation. The letter was accompanied with a picture of the proud new parents tenderly holding their new- born wrapped in a blanket covered in cartoon caterpillars.
Chicago's police department is facing a federal civil rights in- vestigation after cops were caught appearing to 'deleting' footage of Laquan McDon- ald's shooting.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether the depart- ment's practices violate federal and constitutional law.
It came after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ousted the city's police chief after a public outcry over the handling of the the case after McDonald was shot 16 times by a white police officer.
However, footage has emerged on social media in which a Chicago police officer accuses Emanuel of colluding in the cover-up.
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