Hello
This and that and videos and photos below the jump.
Oh-Oh! He's coming after the Democrats tomorrow :)
Less than a week after his electrifying parley with House Republicans, President Obama will be doing another televised question-and-answer session tomorrow morning -- this one with the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Staffers from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office and White House aides tell the Huffington Post that the president will meet with the caucus at the Newseum, where the senators will be assembled for an issues conference to discuss policy, strategy and message for the coming year.
White House advisers were thrilled with Obama's defiant, substantive and engaging dialogue at a House Republican retreat last Friday; tough and sometimes misleading questions seemed to bring the best out in him.
Reid's office tells the Huffington Post that camera crews will record Obama's remarks tomorrow -- and will be allowed to continue rolling once the questions start coming.
Despite the growing amount of frustration with Obama from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the questions at the Newseum are unlikely to be anywhere near as confrontational as those from the Republicans,
The Huffington Post asked some Democratic House lawmakers whether they would want to have an opportunity to question Obama, and the consensus was that they would hesitate to press him very hard in public, out of a sense of party loyalty.
The may want to be careful not have him press them in public...
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During his SOTU address, president Obama dedicated 100 words, more or less, to the "War on terror". He mentioned the word "Terrorism" twice, and "Bioterrorism" once, and that's all - obviously almost causing a stroke to Mr. Noun, Verb, Idiot. Obama mentioned the Christmas failed attack very briefly, but his most interesting comment on the matter was this:
And in the last year, hundreds of Al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed, far more than in 2008.
And that was all. As it turns out, this president has a lot to "brag" on when it comes to hunting down Al Qaeda and friends (touch wood). In a matter of months, both leaders of the Qaeda-allied Taliban in Pakistan have been targeted and killed.
Republicans of course continue to drive home the narrative of "Obama is soft on terror", and lying through their teeth was never a problem for these people. Still, as Steve Benen points the president insist on not debunking what is yet another false right wing talking point that took over the MSM too.
In part is because he knows that statistically there's a chance he may have to deal with terror attack during his watch. One bomb exploding outside someone's panties, and all the other successes won't matter. But it's also because president Obama is a far better man than president Cheney, and he refuse to monger in fear or to let fear define his presidency. The question is, whether there will come a moment to set the record straight. Benen continue:
Obama and his team simply don't like exploiting counter-terrorism victories for political gain. Notice, for example, that there was no grandstanding or back-slapping after Baitullah Mehsud was killed in August. Or when U.S. forces took out Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the ringleader of a Qaeda cell in Kenya and one of the most wanted Islamic militants in Africa, in September. It seems likely most Americans won't hear about Hakimullah Mehsud's death, either, despite its significance.
The president, by all appearances, finds shameless politicization of counter-terrorism offensive. And it is. But Republicans are running an aggressive misinformation scheme, and the media generally just goes along. There may come a point at which the White House reconsiders whether the public rewards or punishes leaders who act like grown-ups.
If the last year is any evidence, the answer is "punishes". Andrew Sullivan, who may just be the blogger who gets Obama better than anyone, drove the point home:
I think you can make a very solid case that in the war on Jihadist terrorism, Obama is proving far more effective - in both soft and hard power - than the Bush administration ever was.
The Republicans will not concede this, because their war is not really at this point on al Qaeda. It's on Obama.
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A little bit more about the budget. First, the president's full announcement from yesterday:
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Here's something that got lost in the noise, but Obama's new budget actually assumes passage of Health Care bill:
President Obama says he has not given up on major health care legislation, and his new budget backs him up. The $3.8 trillion budget released by the White House on Monday includes $150 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years on the presumption that a health care bill will be adopted.
As a result, it seems that the budget reflects multiple layers of optimism. First, it presumes that despite the bleak outlook at the moment, Democrats will figure out a way to get the legislation approved over fierce Republican opposition. Then, it presumes that the bill will truly reduce future deficits.
In a statement Monday night, Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, said: "Hidden clue in budget documents — health care reform is alive."
Mr. Weiner, in a statement, said that Mr. Obama’s decision to include the health care savings in the budget showed "that he still believes health care reform will pass."
Mr. Weiner added, "I hope he is right."
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The budget itself today received excellent review by the NYT Editorial but just like the rest of us, they know exactly where all of Obama's good intentions are going to die:
President Obama got his priorities mostly right in the new $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year 2011. It calls for increased spending on education and clean energy technology, shows some restraint on the defense budget, and, most importantly, calls for more spending on job creation. It also rightly lets the Bush-era tax cuts for high-income Americans expire as scheduled at the end of 2010...
...The House passed a $154 billion jobs bill late last year that incorporates some of the president’s ideas. In the Senate, all of the Republicans and a handful of Democrats have balked, insisting that they are far more concerned about adding to the deficit. That is a false and dangerous economy. No one can be happy about the $1.3 trillion deficit projected for 2011. Still, Mr. Obama’s budget calls for steps to begin to chip away at it...
...The alternative to spending more today on job creation is a prolonged downturn, or worse, renewed recession — which would only force deficits higher. In the medium- and long-term, the country must deal with the deficit and the structural problems that threaten everyone’s economic future. Mr. Obama’s budget is a step in the right direction for both problems. Now he must press Congress to do its part.
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One of the biggest winners in the new budget is the field of science. Jeffrey Mervis from Science Mag is ecstatic:
Wow. A first, quick look at what President Barack Obama wants to spend next year on science shows across-the-board increases for research and training. Those gains come despite the president's plan to freeze domestic discretionary programs in hopes of reducing a $1.4 trillion deficit.
Here's some of what the president's $3.8 trillion 2011 budget request, submitted this morning, could mean for science, if Congress were to go along:
•A $1 billion increase, to $32.1 billion, for the National Institutes of Health. That 3%-plus boost is aimed at keeping NIH on pace with inflationary costs for doing biomedical research.
•A $550 million boost, to $7.4 billion, for the National Science Foundation. Almost all of that 8% increase would go to NSF's six research directorates, with a special emphasis on clean energy and sustainability. Its education and training programs would rise by 2%.
•A $226 million hike, to $5.1 billion, for the Office of Science within the Department of Energy (DOE). The department's 3-year-old effort to jump-start a low-carbon economy, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, would get $300 million as its first annual budget. A scaled-down education and training initiative, RE-ENERGYSE, would get $74 million, after Congress rejected a much larger program proposed last year.
•A $540 million boost, to $5 billion, for science programs within NASA. The increase comes as part of the Administration's proposed reshuffling of priorities on human space exploration. That plan includes a heavy-lift rocket for exploration beyond the moon and the commercial sector taking on responsibility for getting astronauts to the low-Earth-orbit international space station.
•A $164 million jump, to $429 million, in the competitively awarded research programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
•A $67 million increase, to $587 million, for the basic science programs at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
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But for anyone who's happy, there's someone who really isn't:
Oil industry bashes White House budget plan
The White House proposal to repeal nearly $40 billion in oil, gas and coal industry tax breaks over a decade drew a quick attack from the oil industry’s largest trade group Monday.
"With America still recovering from recession and one in ten Americans out of work, now is not the time to impose new taxes on the nation’s oil and natural gas industry. New taxes would mean fewer American jobs and less revenue at a time when we desperately need both. A robust U.S. oil and gas industry is essential to the recovery of the nation’s economy," said API President Jack Gerard of the White House fiscal year 2011 budget plan unveiled Monday.
The White House wants to end over $36.5 billion in oil-and-gas tax breaks -- including repeal of a lucrative tax break for domestic manufacturing -- and another $2.3 billion in coal industry tax incentives....
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This is from yesterday's Youtube "townhall". Believe it or not, the first question had nothing to do with the economy or health care:
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Finally, some images from the townhall in New Hampshire, earlier today. The president received standing ovations when he promised again not to back down on health care reform, and told the crowed: "It is the right thing to do for America. You need to let your members of Congress know they shouldn't’t give up, they should keep pushing to make it happen."
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Asking yet again: PLEASE DON'T HOT-LINK. HOT-LINKING IS SELFISH!