Obama Still Blames Bush - Takes Little Responsibility

WASHINGTON - He says "the buck stops with me," but nearly a year into office President Barack Obama is still blaming a lot of the nation's troubles — the economy, terrorism, health care — on George W. Bush.

Over and over, Obama keeps reminding Americans of the mess he inherited and all he's doing to fix it. A sharper, give-me-some-credit tone has emerged in his language as he bemoans Washington's fleeting memory about what life was like way back in 2008.

"Yes we can"?

Try "Yes I have."

While candid about what he called his team's "screw-up" in the botched Christmas airliner attack, Obama has made a point of underlining all the good he believes his government has done, too.

"Our progress has been unmistakable," Obama said as the new year began. "We've disrupted terrorist financing, cutting off recruiting chains, inflicted major losses on al-Qaida's leadership, thwarted plots here in the United States and saved countless American lives."

Yet every time Obama tries to offer a dose of perspective like that, he faces the reality that people live in the moment.

On terrorism, Americans are less concerned about quiet successes than troubling failures, especially one that evoked harrowing memories of Sept. 11, 2001. - MSNBC

Democrats Scramble to Protect DHS Secretary

Democrats worried about protecting the homeland in wake of the Christmas Day terror plot are also working to protect one of their own: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

With at least seven congressional committees investigating the failures behind the terror plot, Democrats are carefully gaming out the testimony of Napolitano to spare her from the worst of the GOP criticism.

First, they may shield her from the Senate Judiciary Committee, keeping conservative senators like Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and others from bashing her in a major public forum. She may instead appear before the Senate Commerce Committee, where some expect her to receive gentler treatment.

Next, the White House is working on Sen. Joe Lieberman, the mercurial chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, to avoid an ugly clash in his hearings. Lieberman will grill the secretary but won’t call for Napolitano to resign, and he could reiterate his support for her remaining at the DHS post, Senate aides say.

“To some extent it’s going to be a free-for-all; we are as angry as anybody about this,” said an aide to a senior Senate Democrat. “But apart from saying the wrong thing early on, the breaches aren’t really the fault of Napolitano and DHS, so she’s not going to be the target.” - Politico Story

National Counterterrorism Center Director Takes Fire for Vacation

The National Counterterrorism Center director, Michael Leiter, is looking vulnerable as accountability for the air terror intel failures seems to be landing heavily on his agency's doorstep. President Barack Obama and other officials have indicated the problem was not one of failure to collect or share information but to analyze and integrate it — the NCTC's job.

The New York Daily News reports that it doesn't help matters that Leiter didn't come back from a ski vacation after the attempted Christmas air terror attack:

Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center since 2007, decided not to return to his agency's "bat cave" nerve center in McLean, Va., until several days after Christmas, two U.S. officials said.

"People have been grumbling that he didn't let a little terrorism interrupt his vacation," said one of the sources. ...

Leiter's spokesman declined to say when the terror-center chief returned to Washington and fully retook the helm of his analysis agency, which is near CIA headquarters just outside the nation's capital.

"It is our policy to not make our director's schedule available to the public," center spokesman Carl Kropf said in an e-mail.

Leiter has long been well-regarded, and he was not the only official in the homeland security orbit to skip town for vacation during the holidays. President Obama himself stayed in Hawaii until Jan. 4.

But Leiter's decision to stay close to the ski slopes instead of his headquarters ... has raised eyebrows among intelligence officials, who have been scrambling since Dec. 25 to figure out what went wrong and plug the holes. ...

Without mentioning Leiter or the NCTC by name, Obama made it plain in a Tuesday speech that there was intelligence in the center's hands that should have been "fully analyzed and fully leveraged" to stop Abdulmutallab from boarding Northwest Flight 253. - Politico Story

A Year in Obama Finally Takes Responsibility for Something

President Barack Obama on Thursday accepted responsibility for intelligence shortcomings that led to a failed Christmas Day bombing plot on a Detroit-bound airliner, saying, “Ultimately, the buck stops with me.

“As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility,” Obama said.

Obama said an intelligence review found that the U.S. government had the information needed to thwart the plot but failed to do so because of a series of compounding shortcomings, including that intelligence analysts didn’t focus heavily enough on information warning that al-Qaida in Yemen wanted to strike the United States.

“The U.S. government had the information scattered through the system to potentially uncover this plot and disrupt the attack. Rather than a failure to collect and share this intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence we already had,” Obama said at the White House.

The report also highlights other shortfalls, including that a misspelling of the suspect’s name initially resulted in State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa. In addition, the report cites “a series of human errors,” including a delay in disseminating a finished intelligence report that would have shed light on the attempted plot.

Obama’s buck-stops-here message marks a change in tone from earlier statements in which Obama and other officials repeatedly noted that the watch-listing system that failed to flag the suspect, Umar AbdulMatallab, was put in place under the Bush administration. - Politico Story

The Obama's Many Sacrifices

We are lucky to have President and Mrs. Obama in the White House. They have sacrificed wealth and its comforts... for us.

I know that because they keep telling us. John Dietrich has been keeping track.

The president has repeatedly stressed the need for us to tighten our belts. He has informed us, "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ..." During the campaign, his wife told us that we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. Shortly after the election, the president said that "(e)verybody's going to have to give. Everybody's going to have to have some skin in the game."

The Obamas have given up a lot.

According to Michelle Obama, one of the Obamas' first major decisions after graduating from college was, "Do I go to Wall Street and make money, or do I work for the people?" As we all know Barack, decided to "work for the people." During the campaign, Michelle informed six women in the playroom of the Zanesville Ohio Day Nursery, "We left corporate America." She advised these working-class women to do the same: "Don't go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers."

Please. The Obamas are part of the Washington elite, who have always indulged their champagne tastes while advising the rest of us to make do with less. The American people don't need any lectures from the Obamas -- or anyone else living large on the taxpayer dime -- about sacrifice.

What's good about America are its volunteers, and caregivers, and foster parents, and military families... who don’t belabor others with tales of their "sacrifice." - FOX Business News Story

Govenator On the Attack over Health Care Reform

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger savaged congressional plans for health reform in his 2010 State of the State address on Wednesday, calling the legislation "health care to nowhere" that's infected with "bribes, deals and loopholes."

With the nation's largest state enduring a fiscal crisis, Schwarzenegger said California's lawmakers should vote against the bill or push to get the Medicaid subsidies that were written into the Senate bill in order to secure Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) as the 60th and passing vote for that chamber's version of reform. The deal has been attacked as the "Cornhusker Kickback."

"While I enthusiastically support health care reform, it is not reform to push more costs onto states that are already struggling while other states get sweetheart deals," Schwarzenegger said before a joint session of the California State Legislature.

"Health care reform, which started as noble and needed legislation, has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes. You've heard of the bridge to nowhere. This is health care to nowhere. California's congressional delegation should either vote against this bill that is a disaster for California or get in there and fight for the same sweetheart deal Senator Nelson of Nebraska got for the Cornhusker State. He got the corn; we got the husk." - Politico Story

Obama Worst Approval of Any President Going into Year 2

President Barack Obama enters 2010 with one of the lowest approval ratings of any president heading into his second year, according to a new Gallup poll out Wednesday.

Fifty percent approve of how Obama has handled his job as president, the second lowest total since Gallup started polling. Obama beats only Ronald Reagan, who started 1982 with a 49 percent approval rating.

The president has a 44 percent disapproval rating.

“President Obama has been walking the public opinion tightrope represented by the 50 approval job approval line since about mid-November, with his rating wavering between 47 approval and 53 approval,” wrote Gallup’s Lydia Saad in her analysis.

Among the presidents Gallup has polled, George W. Bush entered his second year with the highest approval rating, getting 84 percent only a few months removed from the September 11 terrorist attacks and on the heels of the invasion of Afghanistan.

Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, had an 80 percent approval rating after his first year, the second highest total. - Politico Story

Conservatives Attacking Avatar Movie?

James Cameron's "Avatar" may have smashed box-office records, but it's receiving less-than-stellar reviews from some conservative writers who have panned the movie's blunt political messaging.

"I call it the 'liberal tell,' where the early and obvious politics of the film gives away the entire story before the second act begins, and 'Avatar' might be the sorriest example of this yet," wrote conservative movie critic John Nolte.

Filmmaker Cameron does little to hide the political nuances in his $230 million hit, which has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide and is on its way to becoming one of the top 10 highest domestic grossing movies of all time.

From its portrayal of the corporation that wants to take over the natural resources on the planet Pandora -- a not-so-subtle allusion to the likes of Halliburton and defense contractor Blackwater -- to distinct religious, anti-war and pro-environment themes, the film's political messaging has rubbed many conservatives the wrong way. - ABC News Story

I am pretty much a Conservative and Anti-Government. I went and saw the movie with my family a couple of weeks ago. WOW!!!! I totally missed all of this. I think people are reading more into a movie than needs to be.

It is a movie, yep you can make it out to be all of this, maybe it even was suppose to be, but to me it was just a damn good movie.

Obama and Democrats Say NO to Transparency in Health Care Debate

WASHINGTON - President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders agreed Tuesday to bypass a conference committee and keep negotiations to reconcile the Senate and House health care reform bills a closed-door affair.

They concluded that the House will work off the Senate's version, amend it and send it back to the Senate for final passage, according to a House leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private meeting.

Obama held an Oval Office meeting Tuesday evening with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his No. 2, Sen. Dick Durbin joined in by phone.

Obama himself will take a hands-on role in the final health care talks, convening another meeting with congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday, the aide said.

The aim is to get a final bill to Obama's desk before the State of the Union policy address sometime in early February.

Democrats reacted defensively to criticism that they are taking the final, most crucial stage of the debate behind closed doors, contending they've conducted a transparent process with hundreds of public meetings and legislation posted online. Republicans seized on a newly released letter from the head of the C-SPAN network calling on congressional leaders to open the final talks to the public, and cited Obama's campaign trail pledge to do just that.

Asked about that promise, Pelosi remarked, without elaboration: "There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail." - FOX News Story

Another Top Dem Retiring

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) plans to announce Wednesday that he will retire from the Senate at the end of the year, capping a 30-year career where he rose to become one of the chamber's most influential members, several Democratic sources told POLITICO Tuesday night.

Dodd’s decision to retire is, at first glance, a blessing to Senate Democrats who worried they would have trouble holding the seat with the embattled senator in the race. Now Democrats expect that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will run in Dodd’s place, giving the party a stronger nominee in a race that was widely believed to be a toss-up.

A top national Democrat said Blumenthal's candidacy was all but certain. "He's totally in," said the Democrat.

The attorney general has scheduled a 2:30 news conference on Wednesday where he's expected to announce his candidacy.

“Chris Dodd has been a great US Senator for Connecticut and the country. He’s made a meaningful difference in the lives of millions of people – here in Connecticut, and across the country," said Roy Occhiogrosso, a Connecticut-based pollster who has worked for Dodd in his past races. "Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is uniquely suited to step into this campaign, win this race, and represent the people of Connecticut as we continue to confront unprecedented challenges. The Republicans thought they might steal this seat. Not anymore.” - Politico Story

America is Less Safe than 1 Year Ago

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday night that Americans are less “safe” than they were a year ago.

During an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, the former Republican congressman from Georgia blamed a federal bureaucracy that is “so lacking in focus” that even though the father of the accused Christmas Day bomber warned a U.S. embassy about his son, “we couldn’t find a way to stop him.”

“We are not safe. We are in much greater danger than we were a year ago,” Gingrich said, though adding that “it’s not just Bush versus Obama.”

“The North Koreans had an additional year to build missiles,” he said. “Iranians had an additional year to develop their nuclear weapons and keep paying for terrorists. Al-Qaeda had an additional year. And by the way, two of the top four people in al-Qaeda in Yemen were released from Guantanamo Bay.”

Gingrich also accused the administration of “very quietly” signing an executive order that removes “all American constraints” from the international police force Interpol.

“Freedom of information acts don't apply,” he said. “All the constraints that you as a citizen could use against an American police force, based on a recent Obama signed executive order, give Interpol – which has relationships with Syria, Libya, with Iran – it gives them all sorts of extra legality in the United States in a way that has never, ever before been offered to Interpol.”

The reason, Gingrich said, that the Obama administration would provide more leeway to an international force, is that Attorney General Eric Holder is most concerned with “protecting the rights of terrorists.”

“He lives in a world where somehow the United States is dangerous and the United States government is dangerous,” Gingrich said of Holder.

In his December executive order, Obama expanded on Executive Order 12425 – signed by President Ronald Reagan – granting Interpol the same exemptions provided by numerous groups under the International Organizations Immunities Act. Reagan’s order did not include provisions blocking the search and seizure of property and records of Interpol employees – as it the act provided for other groups – or grant the organization exemptions on federal taxes, property taxes and social security. - Politico Story

Republicans Improve in Polls - Democrats Drop More

Republican candidates start the year by opening a nine-point lead over Democrats, the GOP's biggest in several years, in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 35% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

While the Republican lead has reached a new high, it should be noted that support for GOP candidates rose just one point over the past week, while support for Democrats dropped four points to its lowest level in years. - Rasmussen Reports Poll

Another Democrat Retiring - More Issues for Majority

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) announced Tuesday night that he would retire rather than run for re-election this year, a surprise move that imperils the Democrats' 60-seat majority next year.

Dorgan wasn't facing any serious opposition in what would have been a campaign for his fourth term, but North Dakota’s popular Republican Gov. John Hoeven is considering a bid and was leading in early polls.

In disclosing his decision to his staff via memo Tuesday, Dorgan insisted that he was not retiring to forestall defeat in November.

“This decision is not a reflection of any dissatisfaction with my work in the Senate, nor is it connected to a potential election contest next fall (frankly, I believe if I were to run for another term I would be reelected),” Dorgan wrote to his staff.

“But the truth is in recent months, even as I have prepared for a reelection campaign, I have wrestled with the question of whether I really wanted to make a commitment to serve another seven years in the Senate (next year plus a new six year term) following the 30 years I have already served in Congress plus the 10 years I served in elected office in the State Capitol prior to that.” - Politico Story

Even Pelosi Agrees Obama Doesn't Keep Promises

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, piqued with White House pressure to accept the Senate health reform bill, threw a rare rhetorical elbow at President Barack Obama Tuesday, questioning his commitment to his 2008 campaign promises.

A leadership aide said it was no accident.

Pelosi emerged from a meeting with her leadership team and committee chairs in the Capitol to face an aggressive throng of reporters who immediately hit her with C-SPAN’s request that she permit closed-door final talks on the bill to be televised.

A reporter reminded the San Francisco Democrat that in 2008, then-candidate Obama opined that all such negotiations be open to C-SPAN cameras.

“There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail,” quipped Pelosi, who has no intention of making the deliberations public.

People familiar with Pelosi's thinking wasted little time in explaining precisely what she meant by a “number of things” – saying it reflected weeks of simmering tension on health care between two Democratic power players who have functioned largely in lock-step during Obama’s first year in office.

Senior House Democratic leadership aides say Pelosi was pointedly referring to Obama’s ’08 pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class, which she interprets to include a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health care plans that offer lavish benefit packages to many union members. - Politico Story

CSPAN Wants Obama to Stick to Promise

The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves.

C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open "all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings," to televised coverage on his network.

"The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety," he wrote.

In a Tuesday afternoon press conference on health legislation negotiations, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared to object to the premise behind the request.

"There has never been a more open process for any legislation in anyone who’s served here’s experience," she said.

However, Republican leaders sided with C-SPAN's calls for transparency.

"As House Republican leader, I can confidently state that all House Republicans strongly endorse your proposal and stand ready to work with you to make it a reality," Minority Leader John Boehner wrote in response to the letter. "Hard-working families won't stand for having the future of their health care decided behind closed doors. These secret deliberations are a breeding ground for more of the kickbacks, shady deals and special-interest provisions that have become business as usual in Washington." - FOX News Story

Obama Looks for Do-Over for Terrorism

Hit for being too slow and diffident in his initial response to the Christmas Day terror plot, President Barack Obama is hoping for a do-over Tuesday – summoning his security chiefs to the White House to explain what went wrong.

The session in the Situation Room is Obama’s first chance to go face-to-face with those responsible for securing the nation, and a big opportunity to set the tone and tempo for the government’s response to the terror plot against Northwest Flight 253.

The White House is giving no sign Obama will ask anyone to take the fall for intelligence and security failures that led to the near-disaster. But the White House is trying to project an air of decisive action by the president, on an issue where the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“This calls for a really hard look,” Georgetown University professor Bruce Hoffman said. “Not putting in place measures to prevent the recurrence—the failure to do that is political suicide….I’m not sure that kind of threshold would have applied after the 9/11 attacks, but it would now.”

Here are five things to watch for around Tuesday’s meeting: - Politico Story

Bad News for Democrats - Congress Receives Lowest Approval

Voters feel more strongly than ever that Congress is performing poorly and that most of its members are in it for themselves.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters now say Congress is doing a poor job. That’s the highest negative finding since Rasmussen Reports began surveying on the question in November 2006.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 12% of voters believe Congress is doing a good or excellent job, the lowest total since the first of February last year.

Forty-three percent (43%) of all voters say most members of Congress are corrupt, the highest level of belief since we began asking this question in June 2008. By comparison, just 32% say most congressmen are not corrupt, but that’s the lowest level of confidence in over 20 months. Twenty-five percent (25%) remain undecided.

Another new low is the number who say most members of Congress are more interested in their own careers than in helping other people. - Rasmussen Reports Poll

Obama Administration Won't Fight Al Qaeda in Yemen?

The U.S. does not plan to open a new front in Yemen in the global fight against terrorism despite closing its embassy there in the face of Al Qaeda threats, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.

"We're not talking about that at this point at all," White House aide John Brennan told Fox News when asked whether U.S. troops would be sent to Yemen.

"The Yemeni government has demonstrated their willingness to take the fight to Al Qaeda," he said. "They're willing to accept our support. We're providing them everything that they've asked for."

The comments came in the wake of the failed Christmas Day attack against a U.S. airliner by an accused 23-year-old Nigerian who says he received training and instructions from Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

President Obama plans to return from his holiday vacation in Hawaii for a Tuesday meeting at the White House about the airliner plot.

On Sunday, the U.S. and Britain shuttered their embassies in the Yemeni capital, San'a, citing security reasons.

"We're not going to take any chances" with the lives of American diplomats and others at the embassy in Yemen's capital, Brennan said, making the rounds of four Sunday television talk shows. "There are indications Al Qaeda is planning to carry out an attack against a target inside of San'a, possibly our embassy."

Brennan said the threat against Americans and Westerners would not ease until Yemen's government got a better handle on the threat from terrorists inside the country. He estimated there are several hundred members of Al Qaeda in Yemen. "We are very concerned about Al Qaeda's continued growth there," he said. - FOX News Story

What strikes me most is, they are very concerned, just not concerned enough to continue the fight against Al Qaeda. Hell why should Obama do that? Give it a few years and this will be the new Afghanistan.

Lack of Leadership will set back the fight against terror and all of those Great Warriors who died for the USA will be in vein.

Obama Not the Chosen One Any Longer-Poll Numbers Fall

Democrats Attack the Messenger Instead of Reading the Message

Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.

The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.

On progressive-oriented websites, anti-Rasmussen sentiment is an article of faith. “Rasmussen Caught With Their Thumb on the Scale,” blared the Daily Kos this summer. “Rasmussen Reports, You Decide,” the blog Swing State Project recently headlined in a play on the Fox News motto.

“I don’t think there are Republican polling firms that get as good a result as Rasmussen does,” said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, a progressive research center. “His data looks like it all comes out of the RNC [Republican National Committee].”

“Whether intended or not, Rasmussen polls have been used by conservative voices as talking points, and when that happens on one side it inevitably produces a reaction from the other,” explained Mark Blumenthal, a polling analyst and the editor and publisher of Pollster.com. “Rasmussen produces a lot of data that appear to produce narratives conservatives are promoting, and that causes a reaction.”

While Scott Rasmussen, the firm’s president, contends that he has no ax to grind — his bio notes that he has been “an independent pollster for more than a decade” and “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant for candidates seeking office” — his opponents on the left insist he is the hand that feeds conservative talkers a daily trove of negative numbers that provides grist for attacks on Obama and the Democratic Party. - Politico Story