The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Obama unveiling $3.8T federal budget blueprint
The $3.8 trillion budget blueprint President Obama is submitting to Congress today calls for billions of dollars in new spending to combat persistently high unemployment and “bolster a battered middle class”. But it also would slash funding for hundreds of programs and raise taxes on banks and the wealthy to help rein in soaring budget deficits.
Despite those efforts, the White House expects the annual gap between spending and revenue to approach a record $1.6 trillion this year as the government continues to dig out from the worst recession in more than a generation, according to budget documents released Sunday by the White House. The red ink would recede to $1.3 trillion in 2011 but remain persistently high for years to come under Obama's policies.
The new budget projects that the deficit will increase by $8.5 trillion over the next decade, a slight improvement over the $9 trillion, 10-year increase that the White House projected in August. Still, the deficit spending would drive borrowing from private sources to more than 68 percent of the economy by the end of next year, and to 77 percent of the economy by 2020.
GOP idea: Slash cash for Gitmo shutdown
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday is threatening to try cutting off the cash the Obama administration will need to shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and hold terrorism trials in U.S. courts.
A day after the White House abruptly changed course and said it was reconsidering its decision to hold a terrorism trial in downtown New York, the Kentucky Republican mocked the Obama administration for citing former President George W. Bush as a precedent for holding such trials on U.S. soil. More “Bush did it” Democrat defensiveness.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican, also said the administration should shift the trials to military courts, which he said have been reviewed by Congress to ensure fairness. He and other Republicans have criticized officials for charging Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court instead of turning him over to military authorities. Mr. Abdulmutallab is accused of plotting to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/01/gop-idea-slash-cash-for-gitmo-shutdown/
Obama Wants to Win the Next Election More Than Afghanistan
Human Events writer, Sally McNamara notes Obama devoted just 89 of his 7,000-plus word speech to discussing the war, and at the outset stressed his self-imposed July 2011 timeline for withdrawal thus giving Islamic terrorists a most helpful time line.
McNamarra notes that the burden of the war in Afghanistan is nowhere near fairly shared among NATO allies. Germany continues to have a numerically large, but mostly ineffective, deployment in the North of the country.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy humiliatingly snubbed Obama on national TV on Monday night to inform the world that France won’t be sending a single extra soldier to Afghanistan. And national caveats continue to bedevil the International Security and Assistance Force, as wounded servicemen lie dying in Afghanistan’s combat zones while perfectly good helicopters stand idle less than a mile away restricted from entering “hot’ areas.
Opinion:
Last week in review – who won?
Expect a lot of debate over who came out ahead in last week’s political mud wrestling. Initial responses to Obama's State of the Union address have not been “game changing” for Democrats. Obama’s “man in the arena” performance Friday at the Baltimore retreat of Republican House members, is too recent to judge, given it came on the cusp of a week-end in which bad weather captured headlines.
George Gallup’s tracking poll, finds a flat line, with Obama’s performance approval rating falling shy of the 50% mark.
Today, Democrats come out swinging. Liberal Bob Beckel was most desperate to set a tone for Democrats through a reference to Friday’s meeting in which he claims Obama had taken Republicans to the woodshed. Beckel’s obvious overreach provides a hint at just how concerned Democrat strategists are these days. Beckel made the prediction that there will be no Democrat candidate this year who will not eagerly jump at a chance to have Obama come and campaign for him.
Maybe he hadn’t had his morning coffee.
Campaigning for Democrats by Obama has, so far, been a disaster. He dedicated several days to vigorous campaigning for Democrats in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, and a single day of tireless oratory and hand shaking in behalf of Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts. All three elections were debacles.
They may not admit it, but it’s a safe bet Obama’s schedulers will not be penciling in potential campaigning appearances for their guy any time soon. Obama’s face to face with Republicans on GOP turf will not likely help improve the potential all that much.
For one thing, Obama handed GOP writers with an immortal moment – proclaiming brashly: “I am not an ideologue” This draws a direct parallel with Richard Nixon’s own brash monent: “I’m not a crook”. It's a potential simply too good to miss or avoid. Both moments reveal embattled presidents responding to deep seated personal fears.
Republican Congressman Tom Price of Georgia notes, “there were chuckles in the room when he said that, because I don’t think the American people believe that.”
The face-to-face meeting in Baltimore was designed to improve bipartisan cooperation. It quickly devolved into a series of accusations from both sides. Obama blasted Republicans for portraying his health-care plan as “some Bolshevik plot” and telling the American public that he is “doing all sorts of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America.”
Actuallly, he is.
Look at the record: Obama’s health care plan was not (as Obama desperately tries to claim) crafted in the open with honest input from all sides. It was born in secret, closed door inner sanctum sessions by Senate Leader Harry Reid. When a series of bribes by Reid to gain the votes of several key Democrat Senators, the entire health care story unravelled and confirmed the darkest suspicions of ordinary Americans about how politics really work on Capitol Hill. It is not a pretty picture to say the least – but Democrats are extremely desperate to pass a health care bill. ANY health care bill. They must have it for crassly political reasons.
Democrat House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi revealed just how desperate and frenzied she and other far left politicians are with her out-of-control rant about “parachuting in” if that’s what it takes to pass a health care takeover.
Also greeting Democrats as this new week dawns, is a growing understanding they are going to lose big time in their efforts to have trials of the 9/11 radical Islamic terrorists held in New York City. It was a very stupid idea to begin with – handing the terrorists a podium from which to preach their message of hate. Now there are questions of just how fit Obama Attorney General Eric Holder is for his job. Such questons increased as details of the incredibly irresponsible handling of the “underwear bomber” become known. It is now admitted that less than an hour of interrogation was allowed before the terrorist was advised of “rights” that were not actually due. He was given a lawyer who shut off all interrogation.
Expect Democrats to surrender on their plans for allowing the terrorists to get show trials in the Big Apple.
Thus the week begins. As if all this had not been enough, the first thing today, Obama unveilled a federal budget blueprint totaling $3.8 trillion.
As might be expected, as Obama addressed the nation on his budget, admitting the grim economic figures – he offered his usual alibi – “it's all Bush’s fault”.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
A GOP Senate Majority May Not Be Out of Reach in 2010
Jillian Bandes
A few weeks ago, if you said “The GOP could take back the Senate majority in 2010” you would’ve been laughed out of the room.
Now, you would be taken a little more seriously.
Recent shifts in few key Senate races have made Republican gains more likely. Combine that with momentum from Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts and it seems as though even the strict toss-up races have better prospects of turning red. All in all, it would still be an uphill battle for Republicans to take the Senate. But it’s no longer impossible.
“A few months ago, even GOP leaders said that taking over the Senate was a pipe dream, and it is still not probable. But as some independents sour on the Democratic Party, the possibility for a GOP majority can no longer be dismissed out of hand,” writes Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Republicans have eighteen seats to defend this cycle and Democrats have sixteen. Republicans need to maintain all of their seats and “flip” five of the Democratic seats to regain the majority. And what do you know – five Democratically-held seats are looking better and better for Republicans to take. But none of the Republican seats are looking better for the Democrats.
In North Dakota, Delaware, Nevada, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania, Democratic Senators have retired or are looking vulnerable. Along with the polling and retirements, the political mood is definitively shifted, with markers for GOP enthusiasm outweighing their opponents.
“In fact, it is likely that the Republicans will gain at least 3 to 5 Senate seats in November,” said Sabato. “Even more startling, in the aftermath of the Massachusetts special election, Republicans would do even better if the general election were being held today.”
Eric Herzik, chair of the Department of Political Science University of Nevada, Reno, says that it’s possible that even his state’s stalwart Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid, could be de-throned.
“If Harry Reid goes down, if Mary Landreiu goes down, and Bill Nelson, [Republicans] have a good chance [to take back the majority]. They have to hold everything, win all the close ones, and its possible,” said Herzik. “Democrats will say, oh, that’s not gonna happen. But wait a minute – that’s how Democrats got control in 2006. They held everything, won all the all the close ones, and they ran the table.”
Analyst Charlie Cook said that Republicans hold a 15-point lead – 50 percent to 35 percent – in voters who are most likely to turn out in November. That sentiment is clealy illustrated in the election of Scott Brown, with Cook calling the Massachusetts Republican an “ear splitting alarm” for Democrats. The biggest unknown at this point, it seems, is whether Democrats will hear it.
2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029081345559198.html
The State of the Union Is No 'Reset' Button
Presidential ratings usually drop after the speech.
KARL ROVE
It was a tense moment in the West Wing. Less than a year into a new president's term, a Senate seat was slipping to the opposition and taking with it the balance of power in the upper chamber. The president's agenda was suddenly at risk.
If this sounds like Republican Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts last week, it was actually Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords's defection in 2001. Mr. Jeffords's decision to bolt the party cost the GOP not the 60th vote, but a razor-thin majority. Yet following the defection, George W. Bush passed his signature tax-cut package, No Child Left Behind education reform, and a budget that cut in half the growth of discretionary domestic spending from the sizzling 16% rate of President Bill Clinton's last budget.
As congressional Democrats back away—for now—from Mr. Obama's health-care agenda, it is worth asking if this president's agenda is really aligned with what Americans want. This was supposed to be a historic presidency. But if it's undone by the loss of the 60th Senate Democrat, was Mr. Obama actually prepared for the challenges of governing?
The Massachusetts defeat, Mr. Obama said on Sunday on ABC's "This Week," caused him "to try to reset the tone" in his State of the Union address because "we had lost some of that sense of common cause that existed a year ago."
But that "sense of common cause" wasn't lost. It was abandoned when Mr. Obama attempted to do things he hadn't prepared Americans for, such as a government takeover of health care, and when he failed to revive the flagging economy.
Now Mr. Obama wants to hit the reset button with his State of the Union address. But since World War II, presidential job approval ratings have dropped an average of 1.8 points after a president's first State of the Union speech. Over the past 25 years, presidents have experienced virtually no change—an average drop of 0.1 points in Gallup's job approval ratings—after giving a State of the Union address. That indicates that last night's teleprompter special is unlikely to stop Mr. Obama's decline.
Mr. Obama entered 2010 with 49% job approval, according to Gallup. That's down from 67% last January. Those who strongly disapprove of his performance outnumber those who strongly approve by 41% to 26%, according to Rasmussen's latest poll.
Mr. Obama's slide over the past year has been led by independents (whose support is down 17 points since last January), seniors (down 19 points), those making $60,000 to $90,000 a year (down 19 points), Republicans (down 23 points) and conservatives (down 24 points).
On the generic ballot, a measure of party strength, Republicans lead Democrats by five points in National Public Radio's latest poll and by eight points in Rasmussen's latest survey.
These numbers are worse than Democrats faced at this point in 1994. If Democrats fare better this year than they did 16 years ago, it will likely only be because they have fewer open seats to defend and because they are taking their challengers more seriously than they did in 1994.
One of Mr. Obama's first reactions to last week's Massachusetts debacle was to install his 2008 campaign manager as an über-election czar for Democrats. But the White House tried to boost Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia last year. They lost anyway.
Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100131/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bailout_watchdog
Watchdog: Bailouts created more risk in system
DANIEL WAGNER and ALAN ZIBEL, AP Business Writers –
WASHINGTON – The government's response to the financial meltdown has made it more likely the United States will face a deeper crisis in the future, an independent watchdog at the Treasury Department warned.
The problems that led to the last crisis have not yet been addressed, and in some cases have grown worse, says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the trouble asset relief program, or TARP. The quarterly report to Congress was released Sunday.
"Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car," Barofsky wrote.
Since Congress passed $700 billion financial bailout, the remaining institutions considered "too big to fail" have grown larger and failed to restrain the lavish pay for their executives, Barofsky wrote. He said the banks still have an incentive to take on risk because they know the government will save them rather than bring down the financial system.
Barofsky also said his office is investigating 77 cases of possible criminal and civil fraud, including crimes of tax evasion, insider trading, mortgage lending and payment collection, false statements and public corruption.
One case concerns apparent self-dealing by one of the private fund managers Treasury picked to buy bad assets from banks at discounted prices. A portfolio manager at the firm apparently sold a bond out of a private fund, then repurchased it at a higher price for a government-backed fund. A rating agency had just downgraded the bond, so it likely was worth less, not more, when the government fund bought it. The company is not being named pending the outcome of Barofsky's investigation.
Barofsky renewed a call for Treasury to enact clearer walls so that such apparent conflicts are less likely.
Treasury said it welcomed Barofsky's oversight but resisted the call to erect new barriers against conflicts of interest. The new rules "would be detrimental to the program," Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in a statement. The existing compliance rules "are a rigorous and effective method of protecting taxpayers," she said.
Much of Barofsky's report focused on the government's growing role in the housing market, which he said has increased the risk of another housing bubble.
Over the past year, the federal government has spent hundreds of billions propping up the housing market. About 90 percent of home loans are backed by government controlled entities, mainly Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.
The Federal Reserve is spending $1.25 trillion to hold down mortgage rates, and millions of homeowners have refinanced at lower rates.
"The government has stepped in where the private players have gone away," Barofsky said in an interview. "If we take government resources and replace that market without addressing the serious (underlying) concerns, there really is a risk of" artificially pushing up home prices in the coming years.
The report warned that these supports mean the government "has done more than simply support the mortgage market, in many ways it has become the mortgage market, with the taxpayer shouldering the risk that had once been borne by the private investor."
Barofsky's report echoed concerns raised by housing experts in recent months, as home sales and prices rebounded. They warn that the primary reason for the turnaround last year has been billions of dollars in federal spending to lower mortgage rates and prop up demand.
Once that spigot of cash is turned off, they caution, the market will be vulnerable to a dramatic turn for the worse. Daniel Alpert, managing partner of investment bank Westwood Capital, wrote in a report that national home prices are bound to fall 8 to 10 percent below the lows of last spring.
"The lion's share of the remaining decline will occur in markets that saw sizable bubbles but have not yet retrenched," he wrote.
Officials from the Obama administration counter that massive federal intervention has helped the housing market stabilize and prevented more dire consequences.
Barofsky's report also disclosed that, while the Obama administration has pledged to spend $75 billion to prevent foreclosures, only a tiny fraction — just over $15 million — has been spent so far. Under the Making Home Affordable program, only about 66,500 borrowers, or 7 percent of those who signed up, had completed the process as of December.
He said the key to preventing future crises is to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, create and improve loan underwriting and supervision of banks. He stopped short of endorsing specific proposals for overhauling financial regulation, but said many of the proposals would go far to improving the system.
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