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President Biden said the United States "has never seen anything like Putin’s tax on both food and gas," after the Labor Department announced Friday that inflation hit a new four-decade high in May. The Labor Department said Friday that the consumer price index, a broad measure of the price for everyday goods, including gasoline, groceries and rent, rose 8.6% in May from a year ago. Prices jumped 1% in the one-month period from April. Those figures were both higher than the 8.3% headline figure and 0.7% monthly gain forecast by Refinitiv economists. The president, from the Port of Los Angeles...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday blasted Congressional Republicans for their “wrong-headed” budget brinksmanship he said led to a partial government shutdown, while maintaining that city services are still immune to the impasse in Washington. “It’s time for the Republican leaders in Congress to step up, provide leadership and tell a small minority in their party to stop trying to hold the country hostage to their ideology,” Emanuel told reporters at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday. As the first federal shutdown in nearly 18 years entered its second day, Emanuel said city services are still unaffected by the shutdown,...

President Barack Obama says his low approval rating is a reflection of public unhappiness with Congress. Obama tells CBS in an interview broadcast Sunday that he's "impacted," just like Congress, when people aren't happy with Washington.

Very short notice, but per Woofie, no info as to the subject matter, but he will be in the Briefing Room.

Breaking on all networks

In his Friday press conference to discuss gas prices, President Obama was rather defensive, straining to counter the notion that his administration has been unfriendly to oil drilling, something most people would like to see a lot more of these days. Where do people get that notion? Perhaps his Interior Department appealing a judge’s ruling that it act on several pending deepwater permits had something to with it. Obama claimed repeatedly that he is not against drilling, then made the following comments:

That's right I mean Jimmy Carter. How is that possible, well that's where our little history lesson begins.... The United States in an effort to stop Russia from reaching a port in the Middle East (via an Afghanistan invasion) decided to aim it's intelligence agency right at that region. Worried what might happen to the Arab Peninsula if the Russians succeeded in their invasion the Saudis Funded the Afghan freedom fighters.

Obama says Republicans holding recovery hostage By Caren Bohan and Alister Bull WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 10, 2010 5:07pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama accused Republicans on Friday of holding the middle class hostage and defended his efforts to stimulate the sluggish economy as he tries to reverse grim election prospects for his fellow Democrats in November. With opinion polls showing more Americans questioning his economic leadership, Obama used a rare news conference at the White House to hammer home a campaign-style message painting Republicans as obstructionist and the party for the rich. Obama has been on the...

<p>While President Obama vacationed in Martha's Vineyard, the Oval Office got a makeover, but one quote on the new carpet is wrongly attributed.</p>

According to the preview offered by Vanity Fair: [Todd] Purdum spends a day inside the West Wing and talks to Obama’s top aides, who tell him about the challenges of playing the Beltway game, ugly as it has become, even as their boss insists they find a way to transcend it. “There’s a relentlessness to this that’s unlike anything else, especially when you come into office in a time of crisis,” says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. “We did not exactly ease into the tub. The world is so much smaller, and events reverberate much more quickly, and one person...