Did you notice anything different last night when President Obama spoke from the Oval Office? Yup, it looks quite different from how it was when he moved in. About the only remaining item is the desk, called the Resolute, used by every president since Rutherford B. Hayes, except LBJ, Nixon and Ford.
In case a teabagger asks you, none of this was done at taxpayer expense. The monies came from the White House Historical Society via contributions from the Inaugural Committee.
Nor was it Obama's choice to actually make any changes to the Oval Office. After arriving to his new office, his concerns were working on changes to the country, not his office. He considered that quite secondary.
There are five quotations embroidered into the edge of the new rug. They are:
“Government of the People, By the People, For the People” – President Abraham Lincoln
“The Welfare of Each of Us Is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us” – President Theodore Roosevelt
“The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt
“No Problem of Human Destiny Is Beyond Human Beings” – President John F. Kennedy
“The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Towards Justice” – Martin Luther King Jr.
If you missed the speech, both text and video are after the jump.
The President, DNC Chairman Tim Kaine, and the DNC grassroots project Organizing for America this week lay out 2010 election plans in detail for the first time. POTUS' remarks go out in a 13-million e-mail blast today. Kaine will continue rolling out 'Vote 2010' on Wednesday at Dave Cook's Christian Science Monitor lunch, followed by a strategy session with activists. The DNC will spend $50 million on cash and services, emphasizing turnout of the 15 million voters who came out for the first time in 2008. In an effort to leverage the president's special relationship with these voters, the video is designed to be sure supporters know that he has a stake in this election, that he is willing to expend his capital and that they should, as well -- that to keep his agenda for change they voted for in 2008 moving forward, they need to support his allies in 2010.
Last summer, in replacing David Souter, Obama made a political choice. Not a choice for the ages, not even a reasoned choice: a strictly political choice based on demographics and a desire to shoot for bipartisanship. You can disagree with me: that Sotomayor was chosen for her gender and ethnicity, but time will tell. Take a look at someone like Clarence Thomas: can you name one majority opinion that he wrote? Not offhand, huh? History will not remember him for anything other than being someone who dissented a lot of time, except with Scalia, with whom he virtually always agreed. Time will tell: will Sotomayor author any remarkable majority opinions? Will she write a dissent up to the level of Stevens or Scalia? Or will she be remember for being the first female Hispanic justice? And by the way, despite the hue and cry, she was NOT the first Hispanic justice, that was Benjamin Cardozo.
But I digress from the real point: Obama made a political decision last summer, and in so doing, continued the rightward march of the Supreme Court. The march towards not just an activist court, but an activist court in the most fascist and corporate way imaginable. (Think FEC vs Citizens United)
If Obama does this once more, for the sake of politics, the court will be unrecoverable for at least a generation: 30 years of horror. It will be worse than the Bush appointments: we expect mediocrity and partisanship from lackluster mentality: we should be able to expect a great choice from an intellect as keen as Obama's. A choice from someone who actually has read the Constitution, has taught it, pledged to uphold it, and theoretically agrees with it.
WHO is appointed to the Supreme Court really matters. Especially now, when Obama's choice has the potential to make most decisions 6 - 3, right wing fascist decisions, devoid of civil rights. Most Americans cannot name the 9 current justices, much less any 20 all together. They cannot name three SCOTUS decisions, nor who wrote them, nor whether they upheld or overturned previous decisions. Most people care only about the politics....and that is a tragedy. Especially if Obama (who I'm sure can easily name 25 justices and 25 cases, and has a list of favourite dissents.....) chooses to go with politics, again. At least when Obama spoke about picking Justice Steven's successor and said that he'd like the position filled before the start of the next term, he knew that means the first Monday in October. Honest, most Americans don't.
SCOTUS decisions affect us every day, in ways we often take for granted. Especially those of us who don't know what those decisions are....
Whoever Obama picks will ignite a political war. But that shouldn't matter: at last count, we still held a majority, and Obama still headed the party. And, um, judges are up or down votes barring nonsense from the IIE. Obama can, and should, say: "Here is my nominee. You folks have from now until Labour Day to advise and consent. If he/she loses in committee, or in an up and down vote on the floor, so be it, back to the drawing board. But if there is so much as a minute of filibustering, holds, anonymous holds, or any other form of obstruction for the sake of obstruction, I will make a recess appointment on Labour Day."
And then he should appoint someone who passes all the litmus tests: pro-civil rights, pro-choice, pro-Voting Rights Act, pro-Miranda, anti-Citizens United decision, anti-death penalty....the list goes on, but it comes down to someone who knows the law, knows the Constitution, and whose beliefs are, well, liberal. Because in a lot of ways, the salvation of the court, the ability for it to hear cases and adjudicate them within the context of what the Founding Fathers intended and codified in the Constitution rests on Obama's shoulders and no one else's. That he could turn the court over to the right wing fringe by appointing someone like Elena Kagan, or her ilk, is a dismal thought indeed. And if he does it just because "we need another woman", more's the pity.
Then again, if Obama turns the court over to the far right fringe, his abandonment of the progressives will be complete. And that complicity will last at least another generation.
Some days, "health care" is a moment: a speech, a vote, a heartbreaking story. Today, it is a series of anecdotes which, taken together, still lead to "crapshoot".
First, we have Nancy Pelosi on the Sunday shows saying that she'll have the votes in the House to pass health care. But, voting for the bill might cost several reps their seats. If, in fact, there were a bill, which there isn't. She seems confident that while there are major differences between the House and Senate, a compromise will be able to be reached. One that will seemingly need to pass the Senate via reconciliation.
Then, Barack Obama had a physical yesterday. He's in good health. Still having a bit of trouble with tobacco, but they told him to stay on the gum. A physical. Something so easy for those of us with health insurance, and such a pipe dream for those of us who don't. To the best of my knowledge (although I'm certainly willing to be wrong) there is no law that mandates a president must have a physical. IMAGINE the leadership had President Obama said that he would forgo any and all physicals for himself and his family until all families could have preventative care via a true health reform bill. Imagine the power of that. The commitment. The honour. Leading by example.
Meanwhile, we have the White House, via Nancy DeParle, saying the Obama administration wants a straight up or down vote. And indicating they'll help push it through that way.
Remember, this is the Senate that has 290 House bills already waiting for a vote. The one led by Harry Reid who split the jobs bill, pulled out the unemployment extension, passed the corporate part, and then allowed Jim Bunning to hold everyone hostage Friday night so that today 1.2 million Americans lose that part of the safety net. THAT Senate.
We all understand the need for health reform to pass, in some form, for political reasons. Believe it or not, even the Republicans want some form of health reform to pass. No, I'm not misspeaking: the difference is that most (NOT ALL) Democrats want some form of reform to pass which actually makes the situation better for actual Americans. The Republicans want something to pass which makes things worse.
In all of this, the thing I find most interesting is the idea that Pelosi believes that she can whip her members to get something passed that will cost them their livelihood. I wonder if she would be willing to give up her seat to pass health care. If she wouldn't, she'll never be able to convince someone else to. It is once again a matter of leadership. One of the things that could have been done a while back would have been for those Reps and Senators who believe in reform to opt out of government coverage (remember, they all have health care paid for by OUR tax dollars) until every American has the options they do. Again, incredibly powerful. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one person who has done that, but I just can't remember his name. If memory serves, he's a doctor from Wisconsin serving in the House.
33% strongly approve (was last higher in mid-September)
50% total approval (was last higher in mid-November)
38% strongly disapprove (was last lower in mid-November)
49% total disapproval (was last lower in mid-November)
Interestingly, the biggest part of the bump didn't show up until the weekend. Either it took a while for the effect of the State of the Union to reverberate, or the bigger influence was the Q & A with the Republican members of Congress on Friday.
So is this just a bounce that will fade in a few weeks, or does it represent the beginning of a turnaround for the Obama administration?
Yesterday, President Obama smacked down the House Republicans. In GRAND style. If you haven't seen it, click here for the video. For a lot of us who elected Obama in part because he is brilliant, this is the best kind of payback: he was prepared for anything they could throw at him. He had complete control of facts and figures. He didn't dodge, he didn't equivocate. I don't know of a time in American history when a president went to a function like this, completely unscripted, fully televised (by everyone except Fox) stared down the opposition, and put them in their collective place.
He even spoke truth. Well, except for one thing.
There was an arrest outside the GOP House gathering.
Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris were carrying a sign that said: Just Letting You Know: Medicare for All.
"We were on the hotel property holding our sign," Dr. Flowers said. "The Secret Service said we had to go across the street. We said we would go across the street if our letter was delivered to the President. The Secret Service said that wasn't possible. They said if we didn't go across the street we would be arrested. We refused to leave because we didn't want to continue to be excluded, marginalized and ignored. And they arrested us."
This is the letter they wanted delivered:
President Barack Obama 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama,
I was overjoyed to hear you say in your State of the Union address on Wednesday night:
"But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know."
My colleagues, fellow health advocates and I have been trying to meet with you for over a year now because we have an approach which will meet all of your goals and more.
I am a pediatrician who, like many of my primary care colleagues, left practice because it is nearly impossible to deliver high quality health care in this environment. I have been volunteering for Physicians for a National Health Program ever since. For over a year now, I have been working with the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care/National Single Payer Alliance. This alliance represents over 20 million people nationwide from doctors to nurses to labor, faith and community groups who advocate on behalf of the majority of Americans, including doctors, who favor a national Medicare-for-All health system.
I felt very optimistic when Congress took up health care reform last January because I remember when you spoke to the Illinois AFL-CIO in June, 2003 and said:
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program." (applause) "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
And that is why I was so surprised when the voices of those who support a national single-payer plan/Medicare-for-All were excluded in place of the voices of the very health insurance and pharmaceutical industries which profit off the current health care situation.
There was an opportunity this past year to create universal and financially sustainable health care reform rather than expensive health insurance reform. As you well know, the United States spends the most per capita on health care in the world yet leaves millions of people out and receives poor return on those health care dollars in terms of health outcomes and efficiency. This poor value for our health care dollar is due to the waste of having so many insurance companies. At least a third of our health care dollars go towards activities that have nothing to do with health care such as marketing, administration and high executive salaries and bonuses. This represents over $400 billion per year which could be used to pay for health care for all of those Americans who are suffering and dying from preventable causes.
The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. You said that you wanted to "keep what works" and that would be Medicare. Medicare is an American legacy of which we can feel proud. It has guaranteed health security to all who have it. Medicare has lifted senior citizens out of poverty. Health disparities, which are rising in this nation, begin to disappear as soon as patients reach 65 years of age. And patients and doctors prefer Medicare to private insurance. Why, our Medicare has even been used as a model by other nations which have developed and implemented universal health systems.
Mr. President, we wanted to meet with you because we have the solution to health care reform. The United States has enough money already and we have the resources, including esteemed experts in public health, health policy and health financing. Our very own Dr. William Hsiao at Harvard has designed health systems in five other countries.
I am asking you to meet with me because the solution is simple. Remove all of the industries who profit off of the American health care catastrophe from the table. Replace them with those who are knowledgeable in designing health systems and who are without ties to the for-profit medical industries. And then allow them to design an improved Medicare-for-All national health system. We can implement it within a year of designing such a system.
What are the benefits of doing this?
It will save tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of American lives each year, not to mention the prevention of unnecessary suffering.
It will relieve families of medical debt, which is the number one cause of bankruptcy and foreclosure despite the fact that most of those who experienced bankruptcy had health insurance.
It will relieve businesses of the growing burden of skyrocketing health insurance premiums so that they can invest in innovation, hiring, increased wages and other benefits and so they can compete in the global market.
It will control health care costs in a rational way through global budgeting and negotiation for fair prices for pharmaceuticals and services.
It will allow patients the freedom to choose wherever they want to go for health care and will allow patients and their caregivers to determine which care is best without denials by insurance administrators.
It will restore the physician-patient relationship and bring satisfaction back to the practice of medicine so that more doctors will stay in or return to practice.
It will allow our people in our nation to be healthy and productive and able to support themselves and their families.
It will create a legacy for your administration that may someday elevate you to the same hero status as Tommy Douglas has in Canada.
Mr. President, there are more benefits, but I believe you get the point. I look forward to meeting with you and am so pleased that you are open to our ideas. The Medicare-for-All campaign is growing rapidly and is ready to support you as we move forward on health care reform that will provide America with one of the best health systems in the world. And that is something of which all Americans can be proud.
I want someone to explain to me why the administration won't even LISTEN to the idea of Single Payer. I understand what the president said to the IIE yesterday: that some things are political. He said that you couldn't promise to insure an additional 30 million people and undertake insurance reform and have it cost nothing. He could say that, he said, but it would be politics and not reality.
Single Payer is a bad political move, but it is a great reality move. I understand why it can't be implemented politically, but to not even take half an hour and hear a proposal? What is so frightening that those 30 minutes cannot be allocated?
President Obama put forth his first State of the Union Address last night. In case you missed it, or wish to read it and digest parts you may have missed, the full text is after the jump.
But there is something that President Obama didn't talk about, related to the economy. And that's NOT his fault. NO ONE ever talks about it. And it's the most important thing. More than the deficit. More than spending. More than taxes. Gene Steuerel and Tim Roeper call it the "Fiscal Democracy Index."
Imagine that you have a family budget. You earn X dollars a year, and you have Y dollars of required outgo (taxes, mortgage, etc.) and discretionary spending (food, dry cleaning, entertainment). If you have money left at the end of the year, you've run at a surplus, and if you have to rely on credit cards to pay for things, you end up with a deficit. The government is no different: taxes, fees, and bond sales are its income, everything else is outgo, and it borrows to deficit spend. You may wonder why I put "food" as a discretionary item, and it's important to the concept. If you go to the store to buy an apple, you're going to either pay cash or buy it on credit. If you buy it with cash, and eat it, that's straightforward. If you buy it with a credit card, that apple could easily cost double by the time you pay it off. If you have no cash or credit to buy an apple, you'll go hungry.
The Fiscal Democracy Index lists how much money is available to spend after every required outgo is paid for. It is how much money you have for an apple. And here is their chart:
That huge dip? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There is a lot of blame for that: perhaps 1,000 individual human beings, Americans all. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, a number of generals and admirals, some neo-con advisers, and every member of Congress who voted to allocate money to the wars and related expenses. Some of those people are now dead. And still, we owe the money.
If you look at the chart moving forward, you'll notice that no matter how much we take in through taxes, fees, and bond sales, and no matter how much we cut from our current "apple purchases" we actually cannot 'get square' because of prior commitments. Borrowing won't help, printing more money won't help: until we address the base outgo requirements, we'll forever be in the hole.
We promised more: to Social Security, to Medicare, to Medicaid, in government contracts, in subsidies, etc., etc., etc., then we could ever pay. We, as a country, have done this for year. States complain about unfunded mandates, when it has truly been the greatest fiscal shame of administrations and congresses going back decades.
So we come to Barack Obama who is brilliant, and honestly means well in attempting to fix this mess. But one guy is going to need a lot of help in fixing things.
It will take not just what he talked about last night in terms of policy and program changes, as well as patience and the set-aside of cynicism - but people will have to take a hard look at what they pay, what they get, and what we really can do as a society to right the ship.
One of the major things would be to implement single payer health care. Once the profit motive is removed from 1/6th of our national budget, that's a whole sector healed. The second major action will be if we are truly out of Iraq by August, and out of Afghanistan in a year. And then, CUT military spending. It certainly can be done. The discretionary military budget is 11 times the mandatory side. How many times over do we really need to be able to obliterate the rest of the world?
First though, we have to talk about these things. We must be willing to slowly decrease previously promised benefits - like putting everyone on a diet whether they're overweight or not. If we ALL do with a little less, we can have a working economy (e.g. able to pay for apples with current coins) within Obama's term.
Of course, there goes your mortgage deduction. And the increases to Medicare Advantage. And ag subsidies, and arts programs, and foreign aid, and all sorts of other things we take for granted.
Still, you sleep better with money in the bank...and it's all a nightmare when the bill collectors never cease.
When I was a young girl, I read a book called The Secret Garden. In it, a little girl took a nap in India, and when she woke up, most everyone she loved had died of cholera, and she was sent to England. To her, an alien land. There was a lot more to that book, but the part that stays with me is her sense of waking up and everything being different.
I'm thinking I shouldn't have taken a nap this afternoon.
Last night I heard that Obama would be acting like a Republican (namely Herbert Hoover) tomorrow night in recommending that non-defense spending be held to 2010 levels for the last three years of his term. Stuff like that no longer makes me appalled, I have come to expect it. The president's abdication of the base is complete. It's a TERRIBLE idea, a stupid idea, and while I'm not angry, I am nauseated that Obama would play to the neo-con right this way.
Today, though, I read about his college plan, and I'm confused. REALLY confused. What I've read is that student loan payments would be capped at 10% of income for new grads, above a threshold for basic living expenses, and then after 20 years, the remainder of the debt would be forgiven. Can someone PLEASE explain that to me?
Here's what I'm looking at: borrow $50,000 for college, make payments of $100/month to start, eventually $200/month, and then after 20 years, the remaining $20,000 is forgiven. Does that make sense? Would YOU L-E-N-D someone money knowing it wasn't coming back? A grant, I would understand, but a loan that doesn't have to be repaid? And you, the lender, knows that upfront? Is it just me? Somehow we can't make the banks lend money to small businesses because the government "shouldn't" be involved in that, but we can let them make loans and then cap the repayment?
As if the President wasn't doing enough, you have the Senate, which is pushing anti-Bernanke forces to vote yes on cloture, and then they'll only need 50 to pass his re-confirmation. Like they couldn't have done that with a Public Option? It's Wall Street over Main Street AGAIN?
I'm going back to nap-time. Maybe when I wake up the past 24 hours will have been a bad dream.
In two days, the president will deliver his first State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress and to the nation. It will be a tricky speech, and it will be interesting to see to which audience President Obama speaks.
President Obama was in Elyria, Ohio a couple days ago, giving a veritable stump speech. You can view it here. If you loved him on the trail, you'll enjoy the Town Hall. He came off populist, which is new for him. Maybe he'll run that way during the State of the Union.
The White House has said that the State of the Union will focus on jobs. That can mean a lot of things, and it is truly a tightrope. Tricky.
"Jobs" can mean a tax policy which provides a payroll tax holiday on new employees to encourage businesses to hire additional workers. On the other side, it can be a CETA-like program which pays parts of salaries of new workers to the same end. The first is a Republican approach, the second is a Democratic approach. While they both accomplish the exact same thing, that is, a business pays fewer of its dollars for a new employee, the couching is completely different. Sadly, most people don't understand the reality vs. the spin.
"Jobs" can certainly mean other things, but it is beyond my imagination that Obama would suggest things like direct government employment a la TVA, CCC, etc. Nor that he would put forth a legitimate industrial policy. The latter would include, but not be limited to, government purchase of good exclusively made by American workers, and not American companies, a tax policy which gave preference to companies that utilized American workers, and the funneling of remaining stimulus funds to direct private sector jobs and not private sector companies.
So, his jobs policy can run right or left. Or it can be "campaign style" where there are a lot of lofty statements, but no detailed policy.
He will walk the same tightrope where deficits are concerned. Historians and left-wing economists contend that any governmental pullback now risks a replay of 1937, when FDR listened to deficit hawks and caused a second major dip. On the other side, you have people saying that the deficit will swallow us whole, and therefore we must cut spending. Note: those folks never want to cut money for war, corporate charity, or anything benefiting the rich and powerful, no no, these folks only want to cut money that helps our weakest citizens.
Again, left or right?
The election of Scott Brown has given many people fits. There are those who contend that his election said the government is too far left, and needs to pull back. Others say that the true lesson is that "change" has not gone far enough, and any change is better than none. Still others see it as a referendum on health reform, which is certainly how the Democratic Congressional leadership sees it. Point is, it means something, and it will filter into the tone and frame that Obama uses in his State of the Nation speech.
Obama has contended from the start that he wanted to be the President of all the people. It has been a constant theme from which he has not deviated. In this, his first State of the Union, he is the president of all the people, and the vast majority of them are angry. Strip away everything else, and what you have is a sense that things are not going well. For some, it's the same racist junk they've spewed all along, for others, buyers' remorse. But it's all anger all the same. For the past couple months, close to 60% of the nation believes it's heading in the wrong direction.
This speech is Obama's chance to "right the ship", as it were. Or "left the ship" - you get the idea.
There is no better orator today, and if anyone can find a way to hit just the right tone, it will be the president. But will that be enough, or will there need to be details? Obama has never gotten into trouble with details. Take closing Gitmo. He said he wanted it done in a year. He directed Congress to get it done. It didn't happen, but there is no doubt that closing Gitmo was his intention, foiled by others. If he clearly communicates policy, in terms most people can understand, complete with details of the precise outcomes he wants to see, the speech will be a winner. If he has a specific jobs policy, the politicos may not like it, but the people affected by the employment-population ratio currently at 58.2 percent, and in free fall, certainly will.
To accomplish this, Obama will have to aim his tightrope to the right or the left. A centrist tightrope hasn't worked for him, and won't this time, either. I'd like to poll whether you think he should run left or right, but my polling problem is down for maintenance. Floor is open..
If you're a regular reader, you know I know better than to even attempt anything relating to sports, but I actually DO know the difference between basketball and golf. Mostly because of the clothing: my recollection is that basketkball players have very long legs and very tight short shorts. Golfers wear plaid below their knees.
So, we know that candidate Obama played a lot of basketball on the campaign trail. That he had a mean game, he played with all sorts of different people, and he played publicly. Have you seen him playing recently? There was that one game of politicos, and a White House tennis court has been remade into a hoops court, but he doesn't seem to have been playing. The Wall Street Journal says Obama has played seven basketball games since becoming president.
Yup, WSJ - this is one of the articles on their FRONTPAGE today. (Yet another reason I read USA Today. No nonsense.)
WSJ says that President Obama, like 15 of the last 18 presidents, has been playing golf. They say he's played 25 times since taking office. And that NO ONE gets to watch. The WSJ spends the rest of the article dissing the President's golf game, taking shots at President Clinton's golf game, and goes on to lie about Shrub pretending to give up golf because of the soldiers serving in Iraq. I trust their sports reporting as much as I trust their other reporting: I found a bunch of pictures of Obama playing golf.
This a waste of dead trees: if the president wants to play golf, he's an American, let him play. If he wants to play basketball, fantastic. It pleases me that the right wingnut press has chosen this as something to place on their front page. I'm glad this is what Rupert Murdoch is sending his minions out to investigate. I wonder if he'll apply that "no error" thing to WSJ....they're related to Fox Noise.
For me, I am just confused since in the photos, he's playing basketball in long baggy pants, and he's lacking plaid on the golf course....
WASHINGTON – With the investigation into the tragedy at Fort Hood ongoing, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to call for a careful and complete review of what happened before the tragedy.
Remarks of President Barack Obama Weekly Address November 14, 2009
Did you notice anything different last night when President Obama spoke from the Oval Office? Yup, it looks quite different from how it was when he moved in. About the only remaining item is the desk, called the Resolute, used by every president since Rutherford B. Hayes, except LBJ, Nixon and Ford. 
That huge dip? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There is a lot of blame for that: perhaps 1,000 individual human beings, Americans all. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, a number of generals and admirals, some neo-con advisers, and every member of Congress who voted to allocate money to the wars and related expenses. Some of those people are now dead. And still, we owe the money. 
In two days, the president will deliver his first State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress and to the nation. It will be a tricky speech, and it will be interesting to see to which audience President Obama speaks.
So, we know that candidate Obama played a lot of basketball on the campaign trail. That he had a mean game, he played with all sorts of different people, and he played publicly. Have you seen him playing recently? There was that one game of politicos, and a White House tennis court has been remade into a hoops court, but he doesn't seem to have been playing. The Wall Street Journal says Obama has played seven basketball games since becoming president. 
