Restitutor Orbis

We hear from Reuters that "President Barack Obama forecast the biggest U.S. deficit since World War Two in a budget on Thursday that urges a costly overhaul of the healthcare system and would spend billions to arrest the economy's freefall."

While this is not good news, it's not surprising. We must spend to get out of this depression and only the government has the ability to do that spending. Still:

An eye-popping $1.75 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year underlined the heavy blow the deep recession has dealt to the country's finances as Obama unveiled his first budget. That is the highest ever in dollar terms, and amounts to a 12.3 percent share of the economy -- the largest since 1945. In 2010, the deficit would dip to a still-huge $1.17 trillion, Obama predicted.

Reuters also reports:

President Barack Obama requested about $205 billion in war funding through the end of fiscal 2010 on Thursday, as he sought to withdraw tens of thousands of troops from Iraq and boost forces fighting a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

Obama's first budget proposal asked for $75.5 billion through September, which would bring total war spending to $141.4 billion for the current fiscal year. Obama also requested a slightly smaller $130 billion to fund the wars for fiscal year 2010, which starts on October 1.

Obama asked Congress to increase the Pentagon's regular budget to $533.7 billion next year -- up 4 percent, or $20.4 billion, from its spending plan for the current year, drawn up under the Bush administration.

This will likely not sit well with many on the left who are opposed to both wars. I predicted continued high military spending, however. Clearly, the military, despite ghastly high levels of funding, is worn down. Equipment needs to be replaced, more (and better) equipment is needed and bringing the troops home from Iraq (and sending others to Afghanistan) will not be cheap. In addition, equipment will be left behind because of our accelerated withdrawal and will need to be replaced.

U.S. military spending accounts for roughly half the global total, according to independent experts.

Obama, who took office on January 20, made a campaign promise to bring U.S. troops home from the unpopular Iraq war and was expected to announce his withdrawal plans in a speech on Friday at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in North Carolina.

But Obama has also authorized the deployment of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, where insurgent violence is worsening. The costs of pulling out of Iraq and building up in Afghanistan mean the price of the wars will remain high.

The US has 142,000 troops in Iraq and 38,000 in Afghanistan.

This last bit is no surprise at all:

U.S. congressional Republicans, having vowed to return to the conservative ideals of limited government, denounced President Barack Obama's $3.55 trillion budget on Thursday as excessive and misdirected.

Of course, Republican responses are typically amusing: "I have serious concerns with this budget, which demands hard-working American families and job creators turn over more of their hard-earned money to the government to pay for unprecedented spending increases," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. Wow, unprecedented? The Republicans conveniently forget who got us into both of these wars - and who mismanaged them both, and who ran our economy into the ground. Amazing that they become fiscal conservatives only when they're no longer in power.

"I think we just ought to admit we're broke. We can't continue to pile debt on the backs of our kids and grandkids," said House Republican Leader John Boehner. Right, John. And whose fault is this? Being broke wouldn't have anything to do with two wars and a mismanaged economy, would it? Under Republican auspices? Ring a bell?

President Obama's weekly address:


1/31/09: Your Weekly Address from White House on Vimeo.

This was an interesting development, reported by Yahoo News:

NEW YORK – Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama's economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care.

Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors would welcome the money from Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are more skeptical of Obama's spending priorities.

The most interesting aspect of this story is that Sarah Palin was among those pressing for release of her state's share of the recovery package.

From the White House blog dated January 30th, a last bit of news from yesterday:

America's middle class is the economic engine of this nation. Our road to economic recovery begins with restoring the prosperity of working families and small business owners. That is why today, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum creating a task force dedicated to raising the living standards of middle class families – and he put the nation’s number two guy in charge, Vice President Joe Biden:

"America’s middle class is hurting. Trillions of dollars in home equity and retirement savings and college savings are gone. And every day, more and more Americans are losing their jobs. President Obama and I are determined to change this. Quite simply, a strong middle class equals a strong America. We can’t have one without the other. This Task Force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting the middle class. It is our charge to get the middle class – the backbone of this country – up and running again."

President Obama went on to say the following:

I'm going to be signing three executive orders designed to ensure that federal contracts serve taxpayers efficiently and effectively. One of these orders is going to prevent taxpayer dollars from going to reimburse federal contractors who spend money trying to influence the formation of unions. We will also require that federal contractors inform their employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. Federal labor laws encourage collective bargaining, and employees should know their rights to avoid disruption of federal contracts.

And I'm issuing an order so that qualified employees will be able to keep their jobs even when a contract changes hands. We shouldn't deprive the government of these workers who have so much experience in making government work.

Vice President Joe Biden made a few remarks as well:

And our first task force meeting will be held in -- on February 27th in Philadelphia. The focus of that meeting will be green jobs -- those jobs that pay well, can't be outsourced, and will help us move toward a cleaner, more self-sufficient energy future. Each month to follow, we will focus on a different concern in a different part of the country: how to make retirement more secure; child and elder care, how to make it affordable; improving workplace safety; getting the cost of college within reach of the vast majority of the American people; help weary parents juggle family and work; and create the jobs for the future.

All in all, very exciting news. I was hoping President Obama would find useful and meaningful employment for Biden and I know that's what Biden wanted.

A last bit of news from CNN:

After initially vowing to unveil a new financial rescue package this coming week, senior Obama administration officials are now pushing the rollout date back an extra week in a sign of just how difficult it may be to craft such a massive plan — especially while the White House is simultaneously trying to sell a separate $819 economic stimulus plan.

Two senior administration officials told CNN that the full rescue plan, which is being put together by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other top economic advisers, is now expected to be unveiled the second week of February. But the officials held out the possibility that Geithner could start teasing out some aspects of the rescue plan this coming week.

Officials said the rescue plan will include a crackdown on bonuses and other compensation for companies that receive federal bailout money.

The war between Rush Limbaugh and President Obama seems to be heating up and it is possible there is more to it than meets the eye. Our new president is clearly no intellectual slouch and he has already shown a great capacity to plan ahead, to be prepared for every contingency. We may be seeing more of that now. I just saw this in the Huffington Post:
Media critic Michael Wolff thinks Limbaugh is just being played by Obama:

Right now Rush is being played. The Obama dinner with conservative columnists, shortly before his inauguration, was as much about excluding Rush as coddling the columnists. Not only did the conservatives fawn, but Rush fumed. It got under his skin. Indeed, the rumor that he might in fact be there (likely coming from the Obama camp), and then his evident lack of an invitation, highlighted the slight. He's tried to make it out to be a political point ever since, but mostly he sounds like a guy who's hurt he didn't get invited to the hot party.

HuffPo also reports that Politico reports (why do they do this, it drives me mad) that "Republican House member Phil Gingrey has a message for Limbaugh: back off.

"I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach," Gingrey said. "I mean, it's easy if you're Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don't have to try to do what's best for your people and your party. You know you're just on these talk shows and you're living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn't be or wouldn't be good leaders, they're not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell."

This seems to be a shared sentiment. On the radio Monday, Limbaugh said Obama wished the same for him (to fail).

"He's obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He's more frightened of me, then he is of say, John Boehner, which doesn't say much about our party," Limbaugh said.

The HuffPo headline Obama Allies use Limbaugh to Hammer GOP on Stimulus seems to be right on and it would appear that Rush has Obama right where Obama wants him. He has certainly played into Democrat hands. While some liberals oppose giving Rush any air-time at all (even to refute him) I applaud the strategy (along with the petition hosted by the Democratic National Committee). If you let the other party control the terms of the debate, you also let them control its outcome. Rush has gone unanswered for too many years, spreading too much propaganda, for it to go unanswered. This is what HuffPo had to say yesterday:

Key Democratic groups are launching a series of radio advertisements on Friday designed to tie Republicans to Rush Limbaugh and put pressure on GOP Senators to support the stimulus package.

MoveOn, Americans United for Change, AFSCME and SEIU are releasing the spots in three states with Senate Republicans who could potentially switch party lines on the stimulus vote: George Voinovich in Ohio, John Ensign in Nevada, and Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. The ads are designed to drum up support for the president's economic recovery package. But they do so in somewhat of a round-about manner, not just touting the jobs that could be created from the bill but tying Republicans to some of Limbaugh's most caustic and controversial anti-Obama comments.

Finally, I'd like to point to a great Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, by Paul Krugman, Health Care Now. Krugman asks a very critical question, one for which there is no answer at this point:

Why has the Obama administration been silent, at least so far, about one of President Obama’s key promises during last year’s campaign — the promise of guaranteed health care for all Americans?

If anything ever proves the old adage that a picture is worth 10,000 words it is this piece, by PunditKitchen.com:


see Sarah Palin pictures

Who doesn't want a president with an inner Samuel L. Jackson?

Update 8:09PM: This just in from FOX news, a bit of good news to offset the less happy vents of the day:

The chairman of the Senate banking committee claimed Thursday that he would "look at every possible legal means" to recover billions in bonuses to Wall Street executives, after President Obama called the bonuses plain "outrageous."

The president reacted harshly Thursday to reports that corporate employees got paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year.

"That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful," he said.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., released a statement saying: "I'm demanding that the Treasury Department figure out some way to get this money back."

Finally some bad news coming out of the Obama Administration. Funding was included in the House's version of the stimulus package for Bush's unconstitutional "Faith Based Initiative." I earlier sent a letter to my senator to urge the Senate to remove this part of the bill. But this is not the end of the story. I just received the following from Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

Media outlets reported today that President Barack Obama will name Joshua DuBois, a Pentecostal minister who did religious outreach during the campaign, to head a revamped White House office of “faith-based” initiatives.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called on Obama to act quickly to overturn executive orders and other policies from the Bush administration that undercut civil rights and civil liberties.

“I urge President Obama and his staff to work expeditiously to fix several glaring problems with the ‘faith-based’ initiative,” Lynn said. “Time is of the essence. Every day the initiative operates under Bush-era rules is another day rights are violated and tax money is squandered.”

Lynn said the Obama administration should work to implement a series of recommendations the new president made in July. During a speech in Zanesville, Ohio, Obama vowed to end taxpayer-funded job bias in faith-based programs, forbid proselytizing in these programs and subject them to oversight to make sure they are effective.

Clearly, this is a mistake of epic proportions. If Church and State are separate, how can the State appoint anyone to oversee anything that is not, according to the Constitution, in any way within the purview of the federal government?

According to the UPI, "The White House declined to comment."

I hope the news is not true. It will be a huge disappointment if Obama does indeed appoint a "religious czar." We have enough czars already, and frankly, I'd like to see the term done away with, given its unhappy connotations.

On another front, as I reported last night, the stimulus package was approved by the House and must now face the Senate. The New York Times observes that while

While the House and Senate measures are similar, they are most likely to differ in ways that could snarl negotiations between Democrats from the two chambers, and delay getting a measure to the president. In particular, House and Senate Democrats are split over how to divide $87 billion in relief to the states for Medicaid, with senators favoring a formula more beneficial to less-populous states.

Democrats’ own differences aside, they also are under pressure from the White House to be open to proposals from Senate Republicans who might support the final legislation if their interests are accommodated, and which might draw a few Republican supporters on a final vote next month in the House.

The New York Times this morning had a piece about Obama's style, including his overturning Bush's dress code - the President and his staff have been photographed working in the Oval Office sans jacket. Scandalous! The article also discussed his work habits:

Although his presidency is barely a week old, some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already becoming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights andcardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.)

He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second commute downstairs — a definite perk for a man trying to balance work and family life. He eats dinner with his family, then often returns to work; aides have seen him in the Oval Office as late as 10 p.m., reading briefing papers for the next day.

Finally, on the diplomacy front, Reuters reports that

Officials in U.S. President Barack Obama's administration are drafting a letter to Iran from the president aimed at unfreezing relations and opening the way for direct talks, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.

The U.S. State Department has been working on drafts of the letter since Obama was elected last November, the report said. It was a response to a letter of congratulations sent by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after Obama's poll victory.

The letter gives assurances that Washington does not want to overthrow the Iranian administration, but instead seeks changes in its behavior, the paper said. It would be addressed to the Iranian people and sent directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or released as an open letter.

Update: 10:54PM CBS News is reporting that "The House of Representatives late Wednesday passed President Barack Obama's $819 billion plan to stimulate the economy and curtail the nation's year-old recession. The 244-188 vote proceeded along party lines as expected. Only 12 Democrats opposed the measure, and no Republicans supported it."



The House of Representatives votes on the stimulus package today. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Tuesday called the bill "most critical piece of legislation [Congress] will consider this session." Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the House so it will pass without difficulty. Obama reached out to House Republicans yesterday but they seem primarily interesting in imposing their already failed policies on Obama. After all, if it didn't work in eight years, maybe four more will do the trick. That seems to be their thinking. Obama tried, apparently they were impressed by the gesture, but it will have no effect in the long-term because apparently most if not all of them will vote against the package. Obama on the meeting:

"I don't expect 100% agreement from my Republican colleagues, but I hope that we can put politics aside...The main message I have is that the statistics every day underscore the urgency of the economic situation," the president said. "The American people expect action."

Of course, the House is only phase 1. Next comes the Senate. On Tuesday, CNN reports,

key Senate committees took up the Senate's separate but similar version of the bill. Next week, the full Senate will vote on its version. Should both the Senate and House pass different versions, the two bills would have to be conferenced together. Then, both chambers would have to vote on the new, conferenced version in the coming weeks.

MSNBC reported last night that the final form of the bill will likely be what Obama wants, despite Republican opposition, which is spreading disinformation and sometimes making things up in a desperate attempt to derail the package. It won't work. Obama has the highest approval rating of any incoming American president in history. Those who seek to obstruct him are, at present, swimming against the tide. So whatever the opposition, reports are that the deal will be done by the mid-February deadline. There are things in the package that can legitimately be quibbled with, and it's clear that the boost to the economy will not be immediate (Republicans claim their suggestions will lead to immediate improvement, though how that can be claimed given that their policies put us here in the first place, is anyone's guess. Ideology is blind, after all).

A final thought for the day. I was reading a report from Gallup called "State of the States: Political Party Affiliation".


The caption for this map reads:

The accompanying map shows party strength by state for 2008, ranging from states that can be considered solidly Democratic (a Democratic advantage in party identification of 10 percentage points or more) to those that can be considered solidly Republican (a Republican advantage in party identification of 10 percentage points or more). States in which the partisan advantage is less than 5 points in either direction are considered "competitive."

The implications, argue the Gallup site, are that "The political landscape of the United States has clearly shifted in the Democratic direction, and in most states, a greater proportion of state residents identified as Democrats or said they leaned to the Democratic Party in 2008 than identified as Republicans or leaned Republican."

A full week of Obama's presidency has gone by, and it's been the most enjoyable week of the past eight years. In fact, I don't think I've been this happy since Clinton was president. If Bush hadn't done all in his power to bring America to her knees, I'd be even happier. But as I've been saying, at least we have hope now.

Speaking of Bush, Obama is now facing some hard work fixing the breakdown of environmental protections weakened and, in places, outright destroyed by Bush's maliciousness.

Time Magazine reports

when it comes to environmental regulations, he's still in the grip of yesterday. In his last few months in office, former President George W. Bush's Administration pushed through over 150 "midnight regulations," many of them weakening existing environmental protections. Although Obama is now in charge, most of Bush's new rules are on the books, and changing them will take time and effort from an already burdened White House. "The Obama Administration will be saddled with reversing harmful Bush rules at the same time that Obama wants to enact his own agenda," says John Walke, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Time observers that "The Obama Administration isn't completely helpless. As the President, Obama of course can push through regulations of his own, but that can take months."

That said, Obama has already made at least one important move: MSNBC reports that

President Barack Obama is poised to let California and other states set their own more stringent auto emission standards in their drive to slash greenhouse gases, an official familiar with the decision said Sunday.

. This is great news. I well remember how angry I was when Bush denied California's request for a waiver. It seemed small minded and mean spirited. Obama, however, is made of better stuff. As MSNBC notes, "he move is significant on two fronts: It could empower states to set tougher standards in targeting emissions, which are blamed for contributing to global climate change."

Obama is also expected to direct the Transportation Department to get moving on rules for automakers to improve fuel economy. A 2007 law requires that by 2020 new cars and trucks meet 35 miles per gallon, a 40 percent increase over current standards. The Bush administration ended its tenure before putting the new fuel-economy rules in place.

I would love to see Bush prosecuted for all his crimes against America and against the American people. The world, I think, should have to get in line and have whatever is left of him when we're through. I don't know if that will happen, but it needs to be done. We can't let a president do the things Bush has done ever again.

Finally, MSNBC reports that "The president on Monday is also expected to tout proposals that he says would boost clean energy supplies while also producing badly needed jobs in so-called "green" industries."

Hopefully, this will not include "clean coal" which is a canard if there ever was one. There is no such thing as recent troubles in Tennessee.

A final bit of news today: The Senate voted today to confirm Tim Geithner as the next treasury secretary. He was sworn in by Joe Biden. He appears to be the best man for the job, and he promises far better oversight on the stimulus money than previously displayed by Bush's people.

We are nearly at the end of Obama's first week in office. These have been momentous days, pregnant with hope and promises fulfilled. Most significant of all the changes Obama has brought to the presidency is his willingness to embrace diplomacy. And this openness, this willingness to talk before shooting, is already bearing fruit. According to the Associated Press,

Fidel Castro is said to like the new American leader, and North Korea and Iran both sounded open to new ideas to defuse nuclear-tinged tensions...Iran still considers the U.S. the "Great Satan," but a day after Obama was sworn in, it said it was "ready for new approaches by the United States." Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country would study the idea of allowing the U.S. to open a diplomatic office in Tehran, the first since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

I have been reading a very compelling book, David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerilla (Oxford, 2009), who points to the problems long plaguing US relations with Iran. I have to wonder if Obama isn't familiar with Kilcullen, who served General Petraeus in Iraq as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor. This is what Kilcullen has to say:

There is a certain amount of irrationality in our Iran policy, arising in part from the experiences of the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran in 1979-80...There is baggage on both sides, of course; some Iranians remember the U.S.-led overthrow of the Mossadeq government in 1953 with equally vivid bitterness while others, opposed to the current regime, blame America for the revolution of 1979. This baggage sometimes makes American policy-makers reluctant to accept the historical and geopolitical fact of Iran's importance in its region, and hence the underlying legitimacy of Iran's long-term aspirations to play a regional role, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, the United States and the rest of the international community have a clear interest in ensuring Iran plays a constructive role in those countries, rather than its current highly destructive and de-stabilizing role. Still, it seems clear that distinguishing Iran, as a country, from the clericist regime in Tehran and from the Iranian people it opposes, is fundamental to developing an effective Iran policy. The youthfulness of Iran's population, and Iranians' widespread dissatisfaction with the only regime many of them have ever known, are key advantages for the United States. But lack of diplomatic representation in Tehran, along with limited willingness to engage in discussion with Iran's leadership group - backed by force and international consensus, and addressing the broadest possible range of issues in partnership with other Muslim allies - severely limits U.S. options and restricts situational awareness. This makes it hard to clearly discern the Iranian role in an Islamic civil war, or to formulate viable policy responses to it (pp. 20-21).

Clearly, the US has understood as little of Iran's real and legitimate concerns as it did those of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. We always tend to think in terms of Good vs. Evil and those are not useful demarcations. The real world is more complex than that. We're not always innocent of blame; the other side is not always guilty of the blame.

The Brookings Institute has released a paper studying the issues, Europe, the United States, and Middle Eastern Democracy: Repairing the Breach. They suggest the following steps:

• Avoid concretizing divergent rhetoric in disparate European and American mechanisms or institutions. Brussels and Washington should consider setting up a higher-level transatlantic forum for coordinating policies in the Middle East, along the lines of the U.S.-E.U. strategic dialogue on Asia established in 2005.


• Continue issuing joint diplomatic statements on the need for and desired shape of Middle Eastern reform. The Atlantic community should leave Arab leaders in no doubt of the West’s continued interest in and attention to democratic growth and human rights improvements in the Middle East.


• Coordinate rewards on offer for democratic reform. The Atlantic allies should seek common criteria for determining such rewards and coordinate on the use of positive conditionality to induce greater reform and ease the costs of change.


• Uphold the principle that local civil society can seek and accept foreign assistance. The European Union and the United States should articulate clearly and forcefully that their links to and support of Arab civil society are non-negotiable.


• Coordinate positions on engagement with Islamists. Western defense of peaceful political activism should not be selective, and transatlantic pressure should be wielded when regimes crack down on nonviolent Islamist organizations or prevent them from meeting with Western donors.


• Improve coordination in the provision of non-governmental aid. American and European government funders should engage in more sustained and regular dialogue on funding strategies for democratic development in specific states, and how to use their funds most efficiently to achieve common goals.


• Stress jointly that democratic development in the Middle East is a common interest of Europe, the United States, and the peoples of the region, not a means to other ends. Democracy should be supported as a system that meets the aspirations of Middle Eastern citizens for greater say in their government, and not simply because it is judged as instrumental for Western interests.

The paper points out the Europe and the US approach the problem from different angles and conclude that "If European and American policymakers wish to move beyond the ructions of recent years, they can and should focus on their points of relative similarity as a foundation from which transatlantic cooperation in the Middle East can, cautiously, be rebuilt."

On the economic recovery front, the full text of the bill to be introduced is now available from the US House of Representatives Committee on Rules here.

The New York Times reports that
"The Obama administration plans to move quickly to tighten the nation’s financial regulatory system":

Officials say they will make wide-ranging changes, including stricter federal rules for hedge funds, credit rating agencies and mortgage brokers, and greater oversight of the complex financial instruments that contributed to the economic crisis.

The Times observes that "Some of these actions will require legislation, while others should be achievable through regulations adopted by several federal agencies."

The best news of all is perhaps this: "Administration officials have begun to study ways to control executive compensation."

“Excessive executive compensation that provides inappropriate incentives,” Mr. Geithner said, “has played a role in exacerbating the financial crisis.”

Hail to the chief!

President Obama's first internet address, Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 5:55 am:



Download the Recovery Plan Metrics Report

This is a new era. We've gone from radio addresses by FDR to television addresses and now internet addresses. And you can download them for posterity, to share, or listen to later, when you have some quiet time away from kids and other distractions. Technology is amazing. And I love how this new president embraces it. This is a forward thinking man, not a neobarb like the last bunch to infest our nation's capital.

This is obviously a very contentious issue. It has been and it will remain so, whatever is finally decided about the stimulus package.

Republican opposition is almost laughable. They say "You can't do this! It doesn't have any trickle-down economics in it!"

Of course, we've tried trickle-down economics before. It doesn't work. No matter how often they try it, it doesn't work. The wealthy just pocket the money. They don't create new jobs with it.

They have had their chance. It's time for a change. It's their failed economic policies that got us here in the first place.

AssociatedContent.com put Obama's response this way:

After listening to a critique of the nearly nine hundred billion dollars stimulus package from Republican Congressional leaders, along with some helpful suggestions on how to fix it, President Barack Obama had a two word answer.

"I won," President Obama said, indicating why the Republicans were not going to have any significant input into the bill.

Some of Obama's supporters are upset with him regarding the Palestine issue. There are some real opponents of Israel in this country and they see this whole situation in terms of Israel=evil, Palestinians=good. There is talk of holocaust - by the Jews this time and not against them. To be sure, the news out of Palestine is grim. To be sure, atrocities have been committed. And to be honest, I do not see any drastic changes in the future. I warned of this on Digg over the past few days. The cost to Obama in political capital would be too great. The Israel lobby is very strong. The US has had a special relationship with Israel since 1948. The US has invested a great deal in the State of Israel. It's not likely we'll abandon them now.

That said, I think it's too early to condemn Obama. He has been president for less than a week. Isreal is holding new elections and it's not like he can go there and talk to...who? He has no idea who will be elected. He has appointed Mitchell as his special envoy but Mitchell has not had a chance to go over there yet either (according to Reuters, he's expected to go next week).

The truth is, people are impatient. They want change now. They're used to living in a world that offers immediate gratification. This sounds trite, but change doesn't happen overnight. We need to be patient. We need to give diplomacy a chance. We need to give Obama a chance.

I'm a little disappointed in people who are willing to condemn him so quickly, or who think the Gaza situation is the most important situation facing either Obama or our country.

Finally, Pakistan is still in the news. So far, the US has made no official announcement about the rocket attacks. It's been suggested that CIA-controlled drones made the strikes. We won't know for sure what's going on until somebody accepts responsibility.

All this goes to show that the problems facing Obama are many and varied. I would not want to be that man right now.