President Barack Obama came precariously close to having a “bring ‘em on” moment Saturday.
 
Back in 2003, when U.S. forces were struggling to establish order in Iraq, President George W. Bush was roundly pilloried when he taunted militants plotting attacks on American troops to “bring ‘em on.”
 
Obama, trying to push his first budget through Congress, is not feuding with Iraqi militants — he’s got his own axis of evil.
 
They are the powerful lobbyists and wealthy special interests who drive up healthcare costs, sponge off federal education loan money and soak up other government subsidies and tax breaks.

Obama says they are spoiling for a showdown over his plan to squeeze their funding out of his $3.55 trillion budget.
 
“I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak,” Obama said in his radio address.
 
“My message to them is this: So am I.”

2/28/09: Your Weekly Address from White House on Vimeo.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama speaks to Marines at Camp Lejeune Friday)

Team Obama accomplished Saturday what the president’s beloved Chicago Bulls basketball team was unable to do the night before: win. 
 
President Barack Obama played basketball in the morning at the newly renovated Interior Department court with friends and staff, including Chicago pal Marty Nesbitt, press aide Ben Finkenbinder and Reggie Love, who serves as Obama’s personal assistant and Saturday also carried the basketball.
 
White House officials declined to comment on details of the outing.
 
“The president enjoys playing basketball when possible. This was a private game with friends and some staff,” one administration official said.
 
One of the players on Obama’s team, however, said the president’s side had won the game.
 
The president left the White House wearing track pants, a black jacket, running shoes and his White Sox baseball cap for the five-block motorcade to the Interior Department.
 
The game was played on the department’s newly renovated basketball court, one of the original amenities of the 72-year-old building. The court was recently renovated and its massive skylight was uncovered and restored during the work.
 
Friday night the president took in the Chicago Bulls-Washington Wizards basketball game played at the Verizon Center sitting courtside opposite the Wizards bench.
 
The Bulls lost 113-90.
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Molly Riley (Obama watches Bulls-Wizards basketball game Friday)

Some things never change. Take, for instance, the fact that a president does not make decisions based upon the polls.

Polling seems to be a flourishing business. Pollsters survey us on just about anything. Click on the Pew Research Center’s website  and you’ll find polls on such issues as our views on torture and warrantless wiretapping, or President Barack Obama’s skills as a communicator.

George W. Bush said over and over again he did not make decisions based on polls. So we wanted to point out that Obama borrowed some of Bush’s phraseology in talking about polls with interviewer Jim Lehrer of PBS’ “Newshour.”

He was talking about his decision to remove most U.S. troops from Iraq over 18 months while leaving up to 50,000 troops there with all to be out by the end of 2011.

Roll the videotape:

MR. LEHRER: You’re not the least bit uneasy over the fact as John McCain and John Boehner, the Republican leader of the House, have praised your plan while the Democrats are criticizing it?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, I don’t — I don’t make these decisions based on polls or popularity. I make the decisions based on what I think is best. This is consistent with what I said during the campaign. The fact — if anything I think people should be interested in the fact that there’s been a movement in the direction of what I thought was going to be the right plan in the first place.

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama at Camp Lejeune talking to Marines about Iraq plans)

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush has kept a low profile since leaving the White House on Jan. 20 and moving back to Texas, but we’re starting to hear some bits and pieces of what he has been up to.

For one thing, we know that President Barack Obama phoned him on Friday to tell him most of the U.S. troops that Bush put into Iraq are going to come out over the next 18 months.

“President Bush appreciated the courtesy call from President Obama regarding the administration’s plans for Iraq,” said the former president’s spokesman, Rob Saliterman.

And then we hear Laura Bush gave an interview to ABC News and talked about George thumbing things into his BlackBerry and riding his bicycle around their new Dallas neighborhood.

You’ll recall that Bush gave up email to be president because he didn’t want every idle musing to end up as a presidential document that he would have to sort through once he got his library up and running. Or something like that.

Anyway, he has been in touch with his former staffers via email, the former first lady said.

“George is on the BlackBerry to them now all the time. But, you know, it’s a very, very different life, especially for the president, who had every problem in the world on his desk one day and then an empty desk the next day,” she told ABC News.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Pool (Documents from President Bush’s White House years unloaded in Texas)

WASHINGTON - For Americans United for Change, the left-leaning political action group that worked to defeat President George W. Bush’s Social Security private accounts proposal, it’s conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh.

Americans United joined forces with the public employees union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to finance a hard-hitting “No” ad linking the Republican party with Limbaugh, who said on his radio show that he wanted President Barack Obama to fail.

It’s part of a strategy by top Democratic strategists to associate Republicans, who opposed Obama’s economic stimulus plan, with those comments by Limbaugh.

“He is better known among Republicans than any of the leaders and when he speaks they listen and follow just as they did on the recovery package,” Brad Woodhouse, who heads Americans United for Change, said in a message to reporters.

“If you look at the polls he led them off a political cliff on the recovery package - and now they are - at his instruction - lining up to oppose the Obama budget and the rest of his agenda just like they did the recovery package hoping - as Limbaugh does - that Obama fails,” Woodhouse added.

The ad will run through early next week in the Washington, D.C. market and on some cable channels. Other ads linking Limbaugh’s comments to Republicans are planned, Woodhouse said.

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Micah Walter (Rush Limbaugh speaks to group in June 2006.)

WASHINGTON - With Congress likely to pass a big budget bill with a lot of pet spending projects in it, Republican John McCain is literally twittering away his annoyance at the legislation.

McCain, a strong advocate of controlling government spending, gave fair warning of his complaints to come in a tweet he issued on Thursday night: “Tmr I am gonna tweet the TOP TEN PORKIEST PROJECTS in theOmnibus Spending bill the Congress is about to pass”

When last we checked he was counting down from #10 and was at #4. Here you go, complete with his own editorial comments (His humor is back after it went away during the last months of last year’s presidential campaign):

#4. $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York - quick peel me a grape.

#5. $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi

#6. $1 million for mormon cricket control in Utah - is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?

#7. $300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center - enough said

#8. $200,000 “tattoo removal violence outreach program to could help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past” REALLY?

#9. $475,000 to build a parking garage in Provo City, Utah

#10. $1.7M “for a honey bee factory” in Weslaco, TX

Photo credit: Reuters/Mitch Dumke (McCain walks through Capitol in January)

CAMP LEJEUNE, North Carolina - So much for those adoring crowds.

President Barack Obama, who is used to screaming masses and loud applause from his 2008 campaign events, got a more tepid response on Friday from a hall of Marines and sailors who listened to his announcement on pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Obama, who said U.S. combat forces would be out of Iraq by August 2010, drew polite clapping from the crowd for his policy announcements, but most of his presumed applause lines fell a bit flat.

“We sent our troops to Iraq to do away with Saddam Hussein’s regime - and you got the job done,” he said. Polite applause from the crowd of roughly 2,000.

“We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a sovereign government - and you got the job done,” Obama continued. Modest clapping. 

“We will raise military pay,” he declared. Whoops, cheers, and very loud clapping. 

“I figured that’d be an applause line,” Obama said. He was right about that.

In contrast, former President George W. Bush typically received thunderous applause when he addressed military crowds.

Military members, who were approved to speak to reporters, played down the crowd’s responsiveness to Obama’s remarks.

Sergeant Adryon Johnson, 22, of Pennsylvania said he was excited to see the president in person.

“I’ve been over there,” he said. “I’m all supportive of whatever the commander-in-chief says.”

As for the tepid applause: “Marines are pretty disciplined so, you know, at times we’re going to do our jobs and maintain a professional appearance,” he said.

“As far as when the president, as you heard him talk about pay and, you know, family benefits and things that really matters to us, applause came.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama addresses Marines in North Carolina)

How do you buy $750 billion of toxic bank assets with only $250 billion of taxpayer money?

If you know to play U.S. budget rules like a violin.

President Barack Obama told Congress in passing this week he might need more money than lawmakers have already approved to stabilize banks and pull the economy out of the ditch. 

How much? His budget virtuoso Peter Orszag said on Thursday he could support buying up to $750 billion in bad assets but only needed to set aside $250 billion to do it.

Regular US budget rules assume government credit subsidies will recoup some of their value. Appropriators budget for such items according to how much they think the government will lose — not the full amount of the credit.

Orszag explained his thinking on Thursday:

“Honest budgeting suggests, when you pay a dollar for a financial asset, that doesn’t make the government worse off by a dollar,” he said at a news conference. “It’s not the same thing as a net cost of a dollar, because you are getting something in exchange for it.”

Why didn’t they do this earlier? Well, in the knock-down-drag-out fight to get Congress to approve the first bailout plan, the $700 billion TARP, the Treasury Department had to agree that money used would be counted dollar for dollar against the total. Thus, when the Treasury had committed $247 billion of the first half by the end of 2008, it counted as an increase of the debt held by the public of $247 billion.  

Some thought this approach overstated the costs of the bailout, including the venerable Congressional Budget Office.

 ”The budget should only record the subsidy cost of those purchases (an estimated $64 billion),” the independent agency wrote in January, referring to the $247 billion that had been spent by the end of the previous year.

New administration, new outlook. Asked whether he was taking leave to do something a little different, Orszag, who ran the CBO until Obama named him budget director,  replied:

“That is the way the Congressional Budget Office - which, since I used to run it, would say it has a very good reputation for doing things honestly and well — that’s the way it does it, and that’s the way we’re doing it also.” 

In the end Congress will have to decide whether it is in tune  with the Obama administration’s get-three-for-the-price-of-one way scoring of the next bank bailout initiative. 

REUTERS/Jim Young (President Barack Obama makes statement on 2010 Federal Budget)

President Obama makes no small plans. One day after announcing the biggest budget deficit since World War Two, Obama flies to a Marine base in North Carolina to announce a withdrawal timetable for troops in Iraq.

Obama envisions an end to combat operations by August 2010, though a force of around 50,000 will remain. That’s too many for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a fellow Democrat, but former Republican presidential rival John McCain thinks it’s about right.

The Iraq news should provide a welcome change of focus from the economy, which continues to be terrible. Government data showed the U.S. economy contracted more sharply than estimated in the fourth quarter, with gross domestic product falling at an annual rate of 6.2 percent. The Treasury Department has said it will convert its $25 billion stake in Citigroup to regular shares, giving it 36 percent ownership of the troubled banking giant. Citi’s shares are down 19 percent in premarket trading.

What about the other troubled banking giant? Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis flew to New York yesterday so state attorney general Andrew Cuomo could press him to release a list of employees who got bonuses in 2008. Lewis said he cooperated, but the AG’s office said otherwise.

How did Lewis get to the meeting? He flew in a $50 million private jet, according to ABC News.

One bit of good news: it’s almost the weekend.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen (U.S. forces in Baghdad, Feb. 20)

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Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee didn’t attend the latest U.N. Security Council meeting on Iraq. But the moment the 3-hour session was over the Iranian delegation was circulating a strongly worded letter from Khazaee that had a very clear message for the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama: Stop talking like Bush.

He was responding to less than two dozen words on Iran in U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice’s speech to the council during a routine review of U.N. activities in Iraq. Rice said that U.S. policy "will seek an end to Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capacity and its support for terrorism.”

Those words clearly infuriated the Iranians, who have been toning down their anti-U.S. rhetoric since Obama took over from George W. Bush five weeks ago.

"It is unfortunate that, yet again, we are hearing the same tired, unwarranted and groundless allegations that used to be unjustifiably and futilely repeated by the previous administration," Khazaee said in a letter to the council's current president, Japanese Ambassador Yukio Takasu.

"Instead of raising allegations against others, the United States had better take concrete and meaningful steps in correcting its past wrong policies and practices vis-a-vis other nations, including the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Khazaee's remarks were among the most critical of the new U.S. administration by a senior Iranian official to date.

Is the Obama administration simply repeating the “same tired” language of the Bush administration? The accusations aren’t new, U.N. diplomats say, but the promises of a new approach could herald a radical shift in U.S. policy on Iran.

Obama, Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said repeatedly that Washington would use all tools, including direct talks, to deal with Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.

Iran has reacted cautiously, saying it’s open to fair talks while demanding fundamental changes in U.S. policy. Western envoys in New York say that not everyone in the Islamic Republic is happy about the outstretched hand of Obama and his promises of change.

Tehran had often criticized the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, which labeled Iran a member of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and pre-war Iraq. It’s harder to criticize Obama at the moment, diplomats say. That could be one of the reasons Khazaee seized the opportunity to attack Rice’s speech to the council.

“The hardliners in Tehran find it easier to have a U.S. administration that turns its back on them,” said a European diplomat. “It’s easier to deal with a ‘Great Satan’. It gives them someone to blame their troubles on.”

It’s nearly three decades since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took a group of U.S. diplomats and officials hostage.

Present-day Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel should be “wiped off the map”, has repeatedly ruled out a suspension of the country’s uranium enrichment program, prompting the Security Council to impose three rounds of sanctions.

U.N. diplomats say that Obama administration officials have signaled that they do not believe the Iranian nuclear program can be stopped with U.S. or Israeli air strikes. Instead, Obama wants to use a combination of pressure – possibly by imposing further U.N. sanctions – and inducements to persuade the Iranians to halt their enrichment program. The details of the new approach are being worked out in a thorough review of the U.S. policy on Iran, U.S. officials say.

“Will a kindler, gentler U.S. approach work?” asked the European diplomat. “We’ll have to wait and see. Iran’s one of the countries that invented chess and it’s a very good player.”