Now on to the news …
THE ROAD AHEAD: President Obama Looks To Skip Republican Input And Push His Partisan Agenda Via Executive Action
President Obama Further Demonstrates His Lack Of Desire To Work With Republicans. As President Obama remakes his senior staff, he is also shaping a new approach for the second half of his term: to advance his agenda through executive actions he can take on his own, rather than pushing plans through an increasingly hostile Congress. … "It's fair to say that the next phase is going to be less about legislative action than it is about managing the change that we've brought," White House senior advisor David Axelrod said in an interview. … the best arena for Obama to execute his plans may be his own branch of government. That means more executive orders, more use of the bully pulpit, and more deployment of his ample regulatory powers and the wide-ranging rulemaking authority of his Cabinet members. … "This would fit into the status quo for the White House," said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for House Republican whip Eric Cantor of Virginia. "The White House is showing no effort to work with Republicans. It has shown no interest in listening to the American people and has at all costs tried to ram through legislation that was tremendously unpopular." The Los Angeles Times
THE ECONOMY: Instead Of Focusing On Actually Solving Problems, Democrats Continue To Point Fingers
Democrat Inaction May Leave Americans Paying More In Taxes Than They Have To. Lack of congressional action on 2011 income taxes may force the Treasury Department to make unprecedented moves to prevent U.S. workers from seeing large tax increases in their January paychecks. The issue: 2011 tax-withholding tables. Treasury officials usually release the tables, which determine the take-home pay of millions of wage-earners, by mid-November because it takes payroll processors weeks to adjust their systems before Jan. 1. … Any Treasury move to extend the status quo involves risks: If lawmakers don't follow through, taxpayers could wind up owing big tax bills at the end of the year. And such moves would be a radical departure from past practices, said Dennis Danilewicz, a recent president of the American Payroll Association who has done payroll work for three decades."I have never seen withholding tables based on assumptions about the law," he said. … Payroll officials are "very concerned" about next year's withholding, said Mr. Danilewicz, head of payroll at New York University's Langone Medical Center, which has 15,000 employees. "It takes large employers three to four weeks to process and test these changes, and the government needs time before that to determine and publish them." The Wall Street Journal
Nearly Half Of Missourians Say The Economic Conditions Are Getting Worse. Only seven percent (7%) of Missouri voters rate the U.S. economy as good, while 58% describe it as poor. Twenty-eight percent (28%) say economic conditions are getting better, but 49% say they are getting worse. Rasmussen
Only 38% Of Americans Approve Of President Obama's Handling Of The Economy. The President's rating on the economy, however, has taken a further plunge in the latest CBS News Poll. Now, only 38 percent say they approve of the job he is doing handling the issue – which has been the problem weighing most heavily on the nation's collective mind for months. Half of those questioned (50 percent) say they disapprove of his work on the economy. CBS News
Rep. Jenkins: Instead Of Focusing On The Problems Facing The Nation, Democrats Focus On Making Excuses and Blaming Others. When President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, the Democratic majority told us it would cost $787 billion and keep unemployment below 8 percent. Neither proved to be true. Unemployment has risen to 9.6 percent, and the Congressional Budget Office anticipates that the law will increase deficits by $814 billion. In addition to historically high unemployment, this year's annual federal deficit is set to exceed $1.3 trillion, and our national debt is more than $13.5 trillion. However, instead of focusing on job creation or doing our constitutionally obligated task of passing a budget and annual appropriations bills, the president's staff and congressional Democrats have sought out a boogeyman to blame. The Washington Times
AGENDA WATCH: Chairman Spratt, Rep. Perriello Double Down On The Obama/Pelosi Agenda
Chairman Spratt: I Don't Just Implement The Speaker's Policies, I Design Them. "I'm a player in the process here. I'm not a backbencher," said Spratt. … "I am, to some extent, in the Democratic leadership," says Spratt. "The policies that come from the speaker's office aren't necessarily the speaker's policies but the product of a collegial effort that sometimes includes me." Politico
Rep. Tom Perriello: A Test Case For Voting Against Your Constituents and Supporting The Obama/Pelosi Agenda. Rep. Tom Perriello is this election's test case of whether casting tough votes is better than ducking them and whether a progressive who fashions an intelligent populism can survive in deeply conservative territory. … The normal course for a Democrat in a Southern countryside district would be to declare himself a conservative, ally with the Republicans on as many roll calls as possible and tell the president to find his votes elsewhere. Perriello didn't do that. Instead, he supported the stimulus package, the cap-and-trade bill and health-care reform. The Washington Post
NOT EVEN CLOSE: Only 7% Of Americans Believe The Ethical Situation Has Improved Under Speaker Pelosi. Most voters think Congress's ethics have gotten worse in the past two years, according to a new poll in key battleground districts. The finding suggests that people likely to have a big say in who controls the House in the next Congress believe that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has failed to keep her 2006 promise to "drain the swamp" of congressional corruption. The Hill/ANGA 2010 Midterm Election Poll finds that 57 percent of likely voters in 12 competitive districts believe that the ethical situation on Capitol Hill has deteriorated since President Obama took office. Thirty-two percent of respondents say there has been no change, and only 7 percent claim it has improved. The Hill
THE WAR ON TERROR ROUNDUP
Intelligence Leaks Frustrate President Obama, Bring About Talk Of Compartmentation. "I was at a meeting yesterday with the president," he said. "I was ashamed to have to sit there and listen to the president express his great angst about the leaking that is going on here in this town." The intelligence chief continued, chastising "anonymous senior intelligence officials who, for whatever reason, get their jollies from blabbing to the media." … "There is always this dilemma between compartmentation and sharing and collaboration and all that sort of thing," he said. "In this day and age with the hemorrhage of leaks in this town, I think compartmentation, appropriate, reasonable compartmentation, is the right thing to do." The Washington Times
Editorial: The First Guantanamo Case In Civilian Court Is An Instant Disaster. The disastrous folly of trying Al Qaeda enemy combatants in civilian court stands proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the case of the first Guantanamo detainee brought to New York to face justice. There is abundantly conclusive proof that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani participated in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. At least 5,000 were wounded. … The CIA grilled Ghailani in the interest of national security – to prevent further terrorist attacks – and not as a run-of-the-mill criminal suspect with full U.S. constitutional rights. … … Thus, Ghailani had no lawyer. Thus, in the words of Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, Ghailani was subjected to a "combination of social influence approaches and extremely harsh interrogation methods to obtain evidence" – techniques that were used "to obtain intelligence from a handful of detainees believed to possess particularly high-value information." … Kaplan's grounds are open to debate, and one can hope an appeals panel reverses. Either way, the important point is that force-feeding Guantanamo detainees, arrested in the drive to prevent a new 9/11, through civilian courts is insane.New York Daily News
WHAT TO WATCH
Midwest May Prove To Be Brutal For Democrats … The Wall Street Journal
Did The Obama Administration Stop Scientists From Explaining How Bad The Oil Spill Actually Was? Government scientists wanted to tell Americans early on how bad the BP oil spill could get, but the White House denied their request to make the worst-case models public, a report by the staff of the national panel investigating the spill said Wednesday. White House officials denied that they tried to suppress the information. The allegation was made by unnamed government officials cited in a staff working paper released Wednesday by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Although not a final report, it could raise questions over whether the Obama administration tried to minimize the extent of the BP oil spill, the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history. The staff paper said that underestimating the flow rates "undermined public confidence in the federal government's response" by creating the impression that the government was either incompetent or untrustworthy. The paper said that the loss of trust "fuels public fears." McClatchy Newspapers
Did CEA Chairman Austan Goolsbee Illegally Access Confidential Tax Information? The Washington Post
IN OTHER NEWS
- NYT: New York Asks To Bar Use Of Food Stamps To Buy Sodas
- Kadlec: An Explanation Of the Obama Jobs Gap
- Rove: Democrats and 'Poisoned' Politics
- Newsweek: Old, Unelectable Democrats Have Lots of Advice for Barack Obama
- WSJ: ObamaCare and the Election
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