{"id":698585,"date":"2010-03-23T11:28:28","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T15:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=74728"},"modified":"2010-03-23T11:28:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T15:28:28","slug":"president-obama-signing-health-care-legislation-a-semi-liveblog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/698585","title":{"rendered":"President Obama Signing Health Care Legislation (A Semi-Liveblog)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_74729\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 310px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/whitehouse\/4455978713\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-74729\" title=\"Obama smiles\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static1.firedoglake.com\/1\/files\/2010\/03\/Obama-smiles-300x199.jpg?resize=300%2C199\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Obama celebrates passage of health reform legislation Sunday night (WH photo: Pete Souza)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>At this hour, the President will sign the health care legislation in the East Room of the White House.  You can watch this on <a href=\"http:\/\/cspan.org\/Watch\/C-SPAN.aspx\">C-SPAN<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Multiple members of the Congress and the cabinet are joining the President for this ceremony.  Ted Kennedy&#8217;s widow, Vicki, is also in attendance.<\/p>\n<p>The President will also speak about the health care law at the Interior Department, to an larger audience, around noon eastern.<\/p>\n<p>Consider this a semi-liveblog.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026It is super-exciting to liveblog things like \u201cBobby Rush is checking his Blackberry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026It does look like the entire Democratic Congressional caucus is in the room. A bunch of them were taking pictures in front of the podium before. It\u2019s like liberal Woodstock, man\u2026 Rosa DeLauro\u2019s starting a mud pile with Lois Capps\u2026 it\u2019s a free concert from now on.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026They\u2019ve started a \u201cFire it up, ready to go\u201d chant as Biden and Obama come out to applause. Biden starts by saying \u201cThis is a historic day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026Biden says \u201cYou are literally about to to make history.\u201d  He just couldn\u2019t refrain from using the word literally, could he?<\/p>\n<p>\u2026I find it amusing that Bobby Rush is sitting dead center in the front row, presumably mouthing \u201cI beat you\u201d to Obama throughout the ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026Obama admits all the delays were intentional to line up the bill signing with the turning of spring.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026This is the first stage of \u201cselling the bill,\u201d the first of many large events designed to emphasize immediate benefits and the importance of reform.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-74728\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"tagList\">Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/barack-obama\/\" rel=\"tag\">Barack Obama<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/bobby-rush\/\" rel=\"tag\">Bobby Rush<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/democrats\/\" rel=\"tag\">Democrats<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/health-care\/\" rel=\"tag\">Health care<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/joe-biden\/\" rel=\"tag\">Joe Biden<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/liveblog\/\" rel=\"tag\">liveblog<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/signing-ceremony\/\" rel=\"tag\">signing ceremony<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/white-house\/\" rel=\"tag\">White House<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"16\" width=\"16\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.firedoglake.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-this\/share-icon-16x16.gif?resize=16%2C16\" alt=\"Share This icon\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=74728&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"Email, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_74728\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"noindex nofollow\">&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama celebrates passage of health reform legislation Sunday night (WH photo: Pete Souza) At this hour, the President will sign the health care legislation in the East Room of the White House. You can watch this on C-SPAN. Multiple members of the Congress and the cabinet are joining the President for this ceremony. Ted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2824,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2VJv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2824"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}