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Right away, the implications rippled across the political spectrum, stirred up the presidential campaign and even hardened feelings with Canada, a trusted U.S. ally and neighbor. For a U.S. electorate eager for work, the pipeline has become the very symbol of job creation for Republicans, but Obama says the environment and public safety must still be weighed too.

The plan by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. would carry tar sands oil from western Canada across a 1,700-mile pipeline across six U.S. states to Texas refineries.

Obama was already on record as saying no, for now, until his government could review an alternative route that avoided environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska – a route that still has not been proposed, as the White House emphasizes. But Obama had to take a stand again by Feb. 21 at the latest as part of an unrelated tax deal he cut with Republicans.

This time, the project would go forward unless Obama himself declared it was not in the national interest. The president did just that, reviving intense reaction.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Obama said in a written statement. “I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision.”

Republicans responded unsparingly.

“President Obama is destroying tens of thousands of American jobs and shipping American energy security to the Chinese. There’s really just no other way to put it. The president is selling out American jobs for politics,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. Insisting that the pipeline would help the economy, he declared: “This is not the end of the fight,” signaling that Republicans might try again to force a decision.

The State Department said the decision was made “without prejudice,” meaning TransCanada can submit a new application once a new route is established. Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer, said the company plans to do exactly that. If approved, the pipeline could begin operation as soon as 2014, Girling said.

It did not take long for the Republicans seeking Obama’s job to slam him.

Newt Gingrich, campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination in South Carolina, called Obama’s decision “stunningly stupid,” adding: “What Obama has done is kill jobs, weaken American security and drive Canada into the arms of China out of just sheer stupidity.”

Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said the decision was “as shocking as it is revealing. It shows a president who once again has put politics ahead of sound policy.”

Project supporters say U.S. rejection of the pipeline would not stop it from being built. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said Canada is serious about building a pipeline to its West Coast, where oil could be shipped to China and other Asian markets.

Harper on Wednesday told Obama he was profoundly disappointed that Obama turned down the pipeline, Harper’s office said.

Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada’s president for energy and oil pipelines, said last week the company soon will have a new route through Nebraska “that everyone agrees on.”

The proposed $7 billion pipeline would run through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma en route to Texas.

The pipeline is a dicey proposition for Obama, who enjoyed strong support from both organized labor and environmentalists in his winning 2008 campaign for the White House.

Environmental advocates have made it clear that approval of the pipeline would dampen their enthusiasm for Obama in the upcoming November election. Some liberal donors even threatened to cut off funds to Obama’s re-election campaign to protest the project, which opponents say would transport “dirty oil” that requires huge amounts of energy to extract.

But by rejecting the pipeline, Obama risks losing support from organized labor, a key part of the Democratic base, for thwarting thousands of jobs.

“The score is Job-Killers, two; American workers, zero,” said Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.

O’Sullivan called the decision “politics at its worst” and said, “Blue collar construction workers across the U.S. will not forget this.”

Yet some unions that back Obama oppose the pipeline, included United Auto Workers, Service Employees International Union and Communications Workers of America.

TransCanada says the pipeline could create as many as 20,000 jobs, a figure opponents say is inflated. A State Department report last summer said the pipeline would create up to 6,000 jobs during construction.

Obama appeared to have skirted what some dubbed the “Keystone conundrum” in November when the State Department announced it was postponing a decision on the pipeline until after this year’s election. Officials said they needed extra time to study routes that avoid an environmentally sensitive area of Nebraska that supplies water to eight states.

The affected area stretches just 65 miles through the Sandhills region of northern Nebraska, but the concerns were serious enough that the state’s governor and senators opposed the project until the pipeline was moved. The new route, which has not been chosen, would have to be approved by Nebraska environmental officials and the State Department, which has authority because the pipeline would cross an international border.

Obama said his decision does not “change my administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil.”

To underscore the point, Obama signaled that he would not oppose development of an oil pipeline from Oklahoma to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. TransCanada already operates a pipeline from Canada to Cushing, Okla.

Refineries in Houston and along the Texas Gulf Coast can handle heavy crude such as that extracted from Canadian tar sands – the type of oil that would flow through the Keystone XL pipeline.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said he doesn’t believe the Keystone XL is a dead project. He said the Obama administration did not have enough time to review the project, given the Republican-imposed timeline.

“I don’t believe this is the end of the story,” Conrad told The Associated Press. “My personal view is that it should be constructed. It’s clear Canada is going to develop this resource, and I believe it is better for our country to have it go here rather than Asian markets.”

Bill McKibben, an environmental activist who led opposition to the pipeline, praised Obama’s decision to stand up to what he called a “naked political threat from Big Oil.” Jack Gerard, the oil industry’s top lobbyist, had said last week that Obama faced “huge political consequences” if he rejected the pipeline.

“It’s not only the right thing, it’s a very brave thing to do,” McKibben said. “That’s the Barack Obama I think people thought they were electing back in 2008.”

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Currently, illegal immigrants must leave the country before they can ask the government to waive a three- to 10-year ban on legally coming back to the U.S. The length of the ban depends on how long they have lived in the U.S. without permission.

The official said the new rule would let children and spouses of citizens ask the government to decide on the waiver request before the illegal immigrant heads to his or her home country to apply for a visa. The illegal immigrants still must go home to finish the visa process to come back to the U.S., but getting the waiver ahead of time could reduce the time an illegal immigrant is out of the country.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposed policy change had not been made public.

The waiver shift is the latest move by President Barack Obama to make changes to immigration policy without congressional action. Congressional Republicans repeatedly have criticized the administration for policy changes they describe as providing “backdoor amnesty” to illegal immigrants.

Immigrants who do not have criminal records and who have only violated immigration laws can win a waiver if they can prove that their absence would cause an “extreme hardship” for their citizen spouse or parent. The government received about 23,000 hardship applications in 2011 and more than 70 percent were approved, the official said.

Applications for the waiver can take as long as six months to be acted upon, the official said. The new rule is expected to reduce that processing time to just days or weeks, the official added.

“This would streamline the process (and) reduce the time of separation between family members,” the official said.

The proposal will be published in the Federal Register on Friday. The official said the administration hopes to change the rule later this year.

Immigration has become a difficult issue for Obama ahead of the November election. As a presidential candidate, he pledged to change what many consider to be a broken immigration system.

To that end, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced plans last year to review some 300,000 pending deportation cases in an effort to target criminal illegal immigrants, repeat immigration law violators and those who pose a national security or public safety threat. Napolitano said the DHS would delay indefinitely the cases of many illegal immigrants who have no criminal record and those who have been arrested for only minor traffic violations or other misdemeanors.

A pilot program to review about 12,000 cases pending in immigration court in Baltimore and Denver was launched in November and ends next week. The review is expected to expand to other jurisdictions later this year.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton also issued a memo in June outlining how immigration authorities could use discretion in deciding which illegal immigrants to arrest and put into deportation proceedings. Morton wrote in the memo that discretion could be used in a variety of cases, including for people with no criminal record and young people brought to the country illegally as children.

Congressional Republicans have decried the policy changes, arguing that the Obama administration is circumventing Congress to essentially provide amnesty to countless illegal immigrants.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has been among the most vocal critics and has accused Obama repeatedly of not enforcing immigration law.

Several attempts at an immigration law overhaul have failed in recent years, including the so-called DREAM Act, which would have allowed for some young illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to earn legal status if they went to college or joined the military.

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“He is `The One,’” said Oprah Winfrey, his biggest and most influential celebrity champion.

“The best candidate I’ve ever seen,” said George Clooney.

Halle Berry said she’d “collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.” Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am chimed in with the famous “Yes We Can” video.

But you can’t be the Next Big Thing twice and as a new election year dawns, there’s clearly a different mood in heavily Democratic Hollywood.

That means less gushing, not to mention snippets of criticism, most prominently from actor Matt Damon, who campaigned for Obama last time but now makes no secret of his disillusionment.

“I think he misinterpreted his mandate,” Damon said earlier this year. He recently told Elle magazine the country would have been better off with a one-term president with guts, although he used a saltier word.

The adulation of the 2008 election may be significantly muted among Hollywood liberals, as with liberals elsewhere, but Obama’s supporters say that’s only natural, given the circumstances. Fundraisers there say that events have been selling out and there’s plenty of enthusiasm.

They also say the nation has focused on the GOP race to pick a challenger to Obama and that once that choice is made, the Democratic base will become energized.

“The moment the Republicans have their nominee is when you’re going to see anyone still on the fence jump in,” says Chad Griffin, a Los Angeles-based communications strategist and Democratic fundraiser. “Once you have a head-to-head matchup, the contrast will be grand.”

Numbers compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics show that while overall political contributions were up in Hollywood for the first three-quarters of this year compared with the same period four years ago, contributions to Democrats were slightly down.

According to the group, the movie, television and recording industries gave $17,639,267 in the first three-quarters to federal candidates and parties. The breakdown was 71 percent to the Democrats and 29 percent to Republicans, as opposed to $15,642,561 four years ago, when 77 percent went to the Democrats and 23 percent to Republicans.

But numbers for the Democrats were down by more than $2.5 million from four years ago – $9,249,303 this year compared with $11,966,077 four years ago.

Obama’s fundraisers note that four years ago, Obama was locked in a tense primary battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and primaries drive early fundraising.

“A re-election is always different,” says Andy Spahn, a longtime political adviser to one of the top Democratic fundraisers in the nation, DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, along with his partners Steven Spielberg and David Geffen.

He calls the current mood among Hollywood Democrats a “matured enthusiasm,” but says support is strong.

Though Damon’s remarks about the president have been the most pointed, other celebrities have expressed disappointment, or at least mild disillusionment.

“I love the president like most of us,” Sean “Diddy” Combs told Source magazine this year. “I just want the president to do better.”

And will.i.am, creator of that viral video that ended with the word “HOPE,” told The New York Times earlier this year: “I don’t want to hope anymore.” Asked if he was disappointed in Obama, he said: “I don’t feel disappointed. I feel like, Argggh! Speak louder! I feel like, Do something!”

What about core Obama celebrity supporters Clooney and Winfrey? Far from being disillusioned with Obama, Clooney said recently: “I’m disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama.”

“Democrats eat their own,” the actor said. “I’m a firm believer in sticking by and sticking up for the people whom you’ve elected.” He went on to list the accomplishments of the Obama administration, wondering why Democrats weren’t selling them better.

Winfrey, credited with helping Obama win over many women in 2008, told Politico in August: “I’m in his corner for whatever he needs me to do.”

There already have been plenty of celebrities hosting or showing up at Obama fundraising events. Actress Eva Longoria hosted one at the home of Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. Lady Gaga attended a September fundraiser at the home of Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. Alicia Keys performed at a New York fundraiser.

Over the summer, film executive Harvey Weinstein held a Manhattan event sprinkled with celebrities including Keys, Jimmy Fallon, and Gwyneth Paltrow and husband Chris Martin. A 50th birthday-themed fundraiser in Chicago featured performances by Jennifer Hudson, Herbie Hancock and the band OK Go.

Of course, celebrity support isn’t always a win-win for a candidate. Just as Obama’s opponents in 2008 tried to use his taste for arugula to paint him as elitist, they tried to use his celebrity connections to imply he was lightweight, all pizazz and no substance – most pointedly in an ad tenuously linking him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

The tactic seemed to scare Obama’s campaign enough to play down the role of celebrities at the Democratic convention that summer. Will the campaign similarly seek to downplay the celebrity role this time?

“Celebrities are helpful in terms of exciting a base,” says Griffin, the fundraiser. “I don’t think the president will have any shortage of surrogates.”

One thing is clear: They won’t include Damon, and the president wasn’t shy about making a few jokes at the actor’s expense back in May, at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance,” the president noted. Then he referred to one of Damon’s recent films. “Well, Matt, I just saw `The Adjustment Bureau,’ so right back atcha, buddy.”

Damon, whose representatives did not respond to a request for comment, has given no sign that he plans to do anything as dramatic as switch sides in November. The real danger, say some Obama supporters, is that comments like his would lead voters, especially younger ones, to stay home.

That’s a threat the president faces in places well beyond Hollywood.

Ken Sunshine, a prominent public relations consultant who has represented entertainers and politicians, thinks that ultimately “the activist community in entertainment and everywhere else will come home and support the president’s re-election with the same degree of enthusiasm as before – if for no other reason than … consider the alternative!”

“But once we help him get re-elected,” Sunshine adds, “then we really hold his feet to the fire in the second term.”

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Devoid of any major policy pushes, much of the year will instead focus on the biggest goal of all: winning a second term. The president will keep up a robust domestic travel schedule and aggressive campaign fundraising and use executive action to try to boost the economy.

Unlike the partisan, down-to-the-wire fights over allowing the nation to take on more debt and sharply reducing government spending that defined 2011, there are almost no must-do pieces of legislation facing the president and Congress in the new year.

The one exception: negotiations in early 2012 on a full-year extension of a cut in the Social Security payroll tax rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Democrats and Republicans are still divided over how to implement the extension. But the White House believes GOP lawmakers boxed themselves in during the pre-Christmas debate on the tax break and will be hard-pressed to back off their own assertions that it should continue through the end of 2012.

Once that debate is over, the White House says, Obama’s political fate will no longer be tied to Washington.

“Now that he’s sort of free from having to put out these fires, the president will have a larger playing field. If that includes Congress, all the better,” said Josh Earnest, White House deputy press secretary. But, he added, “that’s no longer a requirement.”

Aides say the president will not turn his back on Congress completely in the new year. He is expected to once again push lawmakers to pass elements of his jobs bill that were blocked by Republicans last fall.

If those efforts fail, the White House says, Obama’s re-election year will focus almost exclusively on executive action. Earnest said Obama will unveil at least two or three directives per week – a continuation of the “We Can’t Wait” campaign the administration began this fall – and seek to define Republicans in Congress as gridlocked and dysfunctional.

Obama’s election year retreat from legislative fights means this term will end without significant progress on two of his 2008 campaign promises: comprehensive immigration reform and closing the military prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Piecemeal presidential directives are unlikely to make a sizeable dent in the nation’s 8.6 percent unemployment rate or lead to significant improvements in the economy, the top concern for many voters and the issue on which Republican candidates are most likely to criticize Obama.

In focusing on small-bore executive actions rather than ambitious legislation, the president risks appearing to be putting election-year strategy ahead of economic action at a time when millions of Americans are still out of work.

“Americans expect their elected leaders to work together to boost job creation, even in an election year,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Still, Obama and his advisers are beginning 2012 with a renewed sense of confidence, buoyed by a series of polls that show the president’s approval rating climbing as Congress becomes increasingly unpopular. And they believe his victory over Republicans in the payroll tax debate has boosted his credentials as a fighter for the middle class, a mantle Obama will look to seize on in his Jan. 24 State of the Union address.

Aides say that while the president is just starting to brainstorm ideas for the speech, he’s certain to strike a populist tone and tap into middle-class frustrations with growing income inequality. And he’s expected to focus on similar themes when he’s campaigning around the country.

Obama’s campaign-driven, domestic-travel blitz starts in Cleveland on Wednesday, the day after GOP presidential hopefuls square off in the Iowa caucuses. He will also keep up an aggressive re-election fundraising schedule, with events already lined up in Chicago on Jan. 11.

Campaign officials say Obama will fully engage in the re-election campaign once the Republicans pick their nominee. He will focus almost exclusively on campaigning after the late summer Democratic National Convention, barring unexpected developments at home or abroad.

Among the issues that could disrupt Obama’s re-election plans: further economic turmoil in Europe, instability in North Korea following its leadership transition and threats from Iran.

The president’s signature legislative accomplishment will also come under greater scrutiny in the new year, when a key provision in his health care overhaul is debated before the Supreme Court. White House officials say Obama will not shy away from the measure. Instead, he will double down in his defense of it and highlight new aspects of the law that go into effect in 2012.

With domestic issues a top concern for voters, Obama’s foreign travel next year will be limited mainly to the summits and international gatherings every U.S. president traditionally attends. He’s expected to travel to South Korea in March for a nuclear security summit and to Colombia in April for the Summit of the Americas. He’s also likely to visit Mexico in June for the G-20 economic summit.

Two other major international gatherings – the NATO summit and the G-8 economic meeting – will be held in Chicago, giving Obama a chance to promote his standing in the international community on his home turf.

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry both ripped Obama this week for his remarks, which he made during a speech during last week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Hawaii.

Although Obama was referring to America’s pursuit of foreign investment, his detractors immediately pounced.

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“Can you believe that? That’s what our president thinks is wrong with America. That Americans are lazy?” says a denim-clad Perry in a new campaign ad released Wednesday evening in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Perry makes the remarks after a clip of Obama plays of the president saying, “We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think over the last couple of decades.”

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Obama, who kicked his smoking habit to the curb this year, slammed tobacco companies in a video on the White House website for attempting to ban new graphic warning labels required on cigarette packages.

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“Today some big tobacco companies are trying to block these labels because they don’t want to be honest about the consequences of using their products,” said Obama

In the spot, the President congratulates everyone taking part in Thursday’s 36th annual Great American Smokeout, a day on which the American Cancer Society encourages smokers to quit smoking.

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The day was historic for many not just in the United States, but across the globe as people of African descent rejoiced America turning the page and electing one of its own.

The Democratic candidate was the first African-American to be nominated by a major party tallying 365 electoral votes to 173 for his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. He is the 44th President of the United States.

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A White House official said the president planned to sign an executive order Monday instructing the FDA to take action. The order would be the latest in the president’s campaign to move on initiatives that do not require congressional approval.

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Last year, the FDA reported 178 drug shortages, and the agency says it continues to see an increase in shortages this year. These scarcities tend to affect cancer drugs, anesthetics, drugs used in emergency medicine, and electrolytes needed for intravenous feeding.

Obama also will announce his support for House and Senate legislation that would require drug makers to notify the FDA six months ahead of a potential shortage, the official said. Under current regulations, drug manufactures are only required to notify the FDA if medically necessary drugs are being discontinued. Notification of shortages is strictly voluntary.

The White House official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the order had not been officially announced.

The executive action is part of an overarching push by the White House to portray Obama, who is facing re-election, as an effective counterpoint to congressional Republicans blocking his jobs legislation. Last week, he issued an executive order to help homeowners refinance at lower mortgage rates and to allow college graduates to simplify and lower their student loan payments. On Friday he directed government agencies to shorten the time it takes for federal research to turn into commercial products in the marketplace

The FDA says major causes of drug shortages are quality or manufacturing problems, or delays in receiving components from suppliers. Drug makers also discontinue certain drugs in favor of newer medications that are more profitable. The FDA does not have authority to force drug makers to continue production of a drug.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and FDA Commissioner Peggy Hamburg were expected to join Obama at the White House on Monday when he signed the executive order.

Also invited to attend was a Boston hospital pharmacy manager who has regularly encountered drug shortages, and a 49-year-old San Francisco cancer patient who told an FDA workshop last month how he grappled with a shortage in his chemotherapy drug.

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Some questions and answers about student loans:

Q: How big a problem is student loan debt?

A: Total outstanding student debt has passed $1 trillion, more than the nation’s credit card debt, and average indebtedness for students is rising. The College Board said Wednesday that the average in-state tuition and fees at four-year public colleges rose an additional $631 this fall, or about 8 percent, compared with a year ago. The cost of a full credit load has passed $8,000 — an all-time high. The board said about 56 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients at public schools graduated with debt averaging about $22,000. From private nonprofit universities, 65 percent graduated with debt averaging about $28,000. Experts say those average amounts usually are still manageable, at least for those who finish a degree. But they are concerned about the rate of increase, the growing numbers with substantially more debt and the increase in those apparently in over their heads repaying them. The Education Department said in September that the national student loan default rate for the 2009 budget year had risen to 8.8 percent.

Q: What does Obama’s plan do?

A: Obama will accelerate a law passed by Congress last year that lowers the maximum required payment on student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income annually to 10 percent for eligible borrowers. It goes into effect next year, instead of 2014. Also, the remaining debt would be forgiven after 20 years, instead of 25. The White House said about 1.6 million borrowers could be affected.

Obama also will allow borrowers who have a loan from the Federal Family Education Loan Program and a direct loan from the government to consolidate them at an interest rate of up to a half percentage point less. This could affect 5.8 million borrowers, according to the White House.

Q: How much does it save borrowers?

A: Some borrowers will save several hundred dollars a month in payments.

Q: What’s the difference between government-backed student loans and private student loans? And, does Obama’s plan impact private loan borrowers?

A: Before the law change, borrowers wanting a student loan backed by the government could get loans directly from the government or from the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Those from the Federal Family Education Loan Program were issued by private lenders, but basically backed by the government. The law eliminated the private lenders’ role as middlemen and made all such loans direct loans. The law was passed with the overhaul of the health care system with the anticipation that it would save about $60 billion over a decade. Private loans are one students typically get when they get all they can get from the government. They’re typically from banks, and they are where students tend to get into the most trouble because they don’t have the same government protections and they usually have higher interest rates. Obama’s plan won’t help students stuck in those. The amount of private lending has fallen sharply in recent years as lenders have cut back and demanded higher credit scores. However, for extremely expensive colleges, students may hit the maximum federal borrowing limits and have no choice but to look for private loans.

Q: Are there others who don’t benefit?

A: Borrowers already in default won’t qualify. The accelerated component of the income-based repayment plan only applies to borrowers who take out a loan in 2012 or later and who also took out a loan sometime between 2008 and 2012, according to the Education Department. To be eligible for the consolidated loan component, a borrower must have both a direct loan from the government and a loan from the Federal Family Education Loan Program.

Q: The White House says the plan is free to taxpayers. How can that be?

A: A White House official says it doesn’t cost taxpayers anything because when the loans are consolidated, the government no longer has to pay a subsidy to private lenders on the Federal Family Education Loan Program loans.

Q: What do Republicans say?

A: Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement that Obama crafted his plan behind closed doors and “we are left with more questions than answers.” Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a former U.S. education secretary, said the real way to reduce the burden of student-loan debt is to slow down the growth of tuition and the best way to do that is to “reduce health care costs and mandates that are soaking up state dollars that in the past have gone to support public colleges and universities.”

The outreach effort, called “Greater Together,” will tap Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites and target students on college campuses in key states, such as the University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University and Penn State.

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The initiative’s website will go up Tuesday, and the first of a series of “Obama Student Summits” will be held Nov. 2 in Philadelphia, featuring Mayor Michael Nutter and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. The summit and future ones on other campuses will solicit questions and feedback on a live Twitter feed.

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The president’s day-long swing through Virginia also has deep political undertones. Obama won the traditionally Republican-leaning state in 2008, but his poll numbers here are down, and some of the state’s high-profile Democrats are staying away from the president’s events.

Obama will first make a joint appearance with his wife, Michelle, Wednesday before airmen and soldiers at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, to announce a deal with the private sector to hire 25,000 veterans and military spouses. The White House said the American Logistics Association, which includes major companies like Tyson Foods Inc. and Coca-Cola Co., is aiming to meet that goal by the end of 2013.

“We ask our men and women in uniform to leave their careers, leave their families and risk their lives to fight for our country,” Obama said in a statement released ahead of the event. “The last thing they should have to do is fight for a job when they come home.”

As Obama has been traveling through North Carolina and Virginia this week, lawmakers back in Washington were taking the first steps to break his nearly $450 billion jobs bill into pieces for possible votes. It’s the only way elements of the measure stand a chance of passing, given that Senate Republicans blocked action on the full package last week.

The bus trip has given the president the opportunity to promote elements of his jobs plan in places the White House says would benefit most should the measures pass. Obama has spoken at high schools and community colleges where the administration says new spending would prevent teacher layoffs, as well as a small, regional area airport near Asheville, N.C., where Obama pressed for government funds to renovate an outdated runway.

Wednesday’s stops were to follow a similar pattern.

During his remarks at the military facility Wednesday, Obama was expected to single out a provision in his jobs bill that calls for new tax credits for businesses that hire veterans and wounded troops. He’s proposed a Returning Heroes tax credit of up to $5,600 for businesses that hire unemployed veterans who have been out of work for six months or more, as well as a Wounded Warriors tax credit of nearly $10,000 for unemployed veterans with service-related disabilities who also have been looking for work for at least six months.

From there, Obama will get back in his imposing, million-dollar bus for a three-hour drive to North Chesterfield, Va., where he was to speak at a local fire station. He’s trying to rally support for the first piece of the jobs bill Senate Democrats plan to take up, a $35 billion package of assistance for state and local governments aimed at keeping firefighters, as well as police officers and teachers, on the job.

Though Obama solidly won Virginia in 2008, his poll numbers in the state have dropped into the mid- to low-forties, in line with national trends. Top Virginia Democrats, including Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb, are not expected to appear with the president Wednesday, nor is Tim Kaine, the former governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who is running to replace the retiring Webb.

However, Virginia’s popular Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell will appear with the president in Hampton Wednesday morning.

McDonnell has invited Obama to join him on a tour of Mineral, Va., epicenter of a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that rattled the East Coast in August. The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied Virginia’s request for disaster aid from the quake, and the White House said Obama has no plans to travel to Mineral.

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GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry has received the most positive news coverage; while presidential contender Herman Cain has surged since his Florida Straw Poll victory; and Romney has received balanced coverage. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin also enjoyed more positive reports, with good assessments of Palin outweighing poor assessments 3:2.

The study, which looked at stories from 1,500 news outlets from the past 23 weeks, found that negative assessments of President Obama outweighed positive assessments by almost 4:1. The stories, which largely focused on the economic crisis, brought him the second-highest level of negative press, as well as the lowest amount of positive press. This means that, overall, his net coverage is the most negative of any candidate. That’s a very steep drop from the early days of Obama’s presidency, when Pew found him receiving 42 percent positive coverage.

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The idea behind it was to reiterate legislation that already exists: denying federal funding of abortions. It passed, but will go nowhere, do nothing and help no one. The measures it proposed are already fully codified in law. Waste of time, energy and paperwork? Absolutely.

Earlier this week, Democrats in the Senate voted 51-49 to advance President Obama’s American Jobs Act, but lacking any Republican support, it failed to reach the crucial, 60 vote margin necessary to move forward. Waste of time? Absolutely. Your time.

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A fast-food restaurant in Beijing called Obama Fried Chicken was derided in America yesterday as a racist rip-off.

Its sign shows a grinning caricature of President Obama’s head on a skinny version of Colonel Sanders’ body.

Below it, written in Chinese, is the slogan: “We’re so cool, aren’t we?”

“It’s insulting, offensive and plays to racial stereotypes,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told The Post.

“What makes it even worse is that when we deal with this global competition between the US and China, for them to be mocking the leader of the free world, I find it even more appalling.”

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President Obama’s approval rating is at an all-time low as concerns for his re-election grow. With a bad economy and an even worse job market, morale in the “Yes We Can” believers has taken a big hit in the past three years.

Even though there are now more women serving on the Supreme Court than at any point in its history, August’s unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent. Osama Bin Laden may be captured and deceased but the U.S credit rating has been downgraded from its AAA status for the first time since it was first issued in 1917. And even though Obama just announced a new initiative to get veterans back to work, foreclosures are still on a wild roller-coaster ride placing families into unimaginable situations.

While there are probably 40 more reasons why Obama shouldn’t be re-elected, here are 40 more why he should.

Obama’s top 40 accomplishments during his presidency:

1. Authorized the housing resucue plan and new FHA residential housing guarantees.

2. Authorized a $789 billion economic stimulus plan – 1/3 in tax cuts for working-class families; 1/3 to states for infrastructure projects; 1/3 to states to prevent the layoffs of police officers, teachers, etc., at risk of losing their jobs because of state budget shortfalls.

3. Instituted a new rule allowing the public to meet with federal housing insurers to refinance (in as quickly as one day) a mortgage if they are having trouble paying.

4. Authorized the “Cash for Clunkers” program that stimulated auto sales and removed old, inefficient, polluting cars from the road.

5. Convened a “jobs summit” to bring experts together to develop ideas for creating jobs.

6. Authorized the federal government to make more loans available to small businesses and ordered lower rates for federal loans to small businesses.

7. In November 2009, Obama extended unemployment benefits for one million workers.

8. Signed historic Wall Street reform bill – Designed to re-regulate and end abusive practices and promote consumer protections.

9. Instituted enforcements for equal pay for women (Lilly Ledbetter Bill).

10. Signed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (2010) -  To curb wasteful spending.

11. Signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which provides small tax cuts for 95% of “working families” -  The tax cuts were not as big as was suggested during the 2008 campaign.

12. Reduced taxes for some small businesses to stimulate the economic recovery.

13. Extended the Home Buyers Credit for first-time home buyers.

14. Overturned the Bush-era practice of not listing certain federal programs in the federal budget – Bush did this (so did Reagan) in an effort to hide programs and make the budget look smaller; such “off budget” items are now included in the annual budget.

15. Ordered the Pentagon to cover expenses of families of fallen soldiers if they wish to be on site when the body arrives back in the US.

16. Working to increase pay and benefits for military personnel.

17. Fulfilled campaign promise to have combat troops (90,000) out of Iraq by August 31, 2010.

18. Appointed Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina, to the Supreme Court.

19. Appointed a diverse Cabinet and diverse White House staff.

20. Spoke at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization.

21. Signed the first major piece of federal gay rights legislation that includes acts of violence against gays under the list of federal hate crimes.

22. Allowed the State Department of offer same-sex benefits for employees.

23. After eight years of neglect, the Justice Department and EEOC are again enforcing employment discrimination laws.

24. Increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

25. Programs to assist Spanish speakers with the US Census.

26. Increased funding available for student loans.

27. Expanded the national youth service program.

28. Initiated a “Race to the Top” competitive federal grant program for states who develop innovative policies.

29. Proposed that the Pentagon repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy; placed a “freeze” on current efforts to remove alleged homosexuals from the military.

30. Increased investment in technologies for schools/education.

31. Ordered a review of hurricane and natural disaster preparedness.

32. FEMA once again reports directly to the president – Bush removed FEMA (prior to the Hurricane Katrina disaster) from this status.

33. Visited more countries and met with more world leaders than any president in his first six months in office.

34. Health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays.

35. Reversed some of the Bush-era restrictions that prevented Medicare from negotiating with pharmaceutical firms for cheaper drugs, allowing government to again competitively bid.

36. Individuals living at or below the poverty line were eligible for healthcare under Medicaid, but by 2014 individuals/families living slightly above (making up to $14,404/$29,327) the poverty line will also be eligible for benefits.

37. Individuals/families making less than $43,320/$88,200 per year will qualify for government subsidies to help purchase health insurance.

38. Families can keep their children in college on their healthcare plans through age 26.

39. Childhood Obesity Act (spearheaded by Michelle Obama) – purposed to subsidize free meals in low-income areas to ensure that children receive well-balanced and nutritious school meals; and also to provide free or reduced-price meals to nearly 31 million low-income children; and ultimately reduce childhood obesity.

40. Obama proposes Jobs Bill to help put Americans back to work.

Could Cornel West’s Obama Attacks Could Affect 2012 Election?

Obama Begins Midwest Bus Tour To Hear From Voters

I’m criticized incessantly at my Factotum-type day gig—well, actually not at the gig, because I’m the HNIC there, but every month we have this thing, a Manager’s call, where bosses from sites around the country phone in and discuss topics.

I dread these things like the Black Death.

Without fail, there’s some nit to pick with my site; this despite the fact that I’m one of the painfully few managers computer literate enough to do payroll — and the fact that whenever some mass e-mail goes into circulation detailing countrywide site deficiencies — my site never makes the list.

I try not to let this piss me off but, well, you can imagine how well that’s working.

And see, the thing is, I knew that when Obama got elected there was going to be a racial backlash.

I knew that our poor white brothers and sisters who had always dreaded the idea of Black people “taking over” were now going to use Obama’s election as evidence that just such a thing had happened.

I also knew that this would spur them towards being overly critical of any Black person holding any vestige of what they believed to be “power.”

And believe it or not, it would have probably been a better thing if Obama had been an absolutely horrible president.

That would have provided people with the opportunity to say of the concept of a Black president, “We tried it, it didn’t work out,” therefore salving their conviction that they are not, in fact, racist, while allowing them to return to overt racism with hard evidence of its effectiveness.

But Obama hasn’t been that bad.

Even things that I personally thought he’d blown, like the whole Libyan fiasco, now seem to be working in his favor.

This is why the few miracles he hasn’t been able to perform, like reducing unemployment, have been made to seem as ghastly as if he’d murdered his actress girlfriend, plunged the country deeper into Vietnam, broken into his rival political party’s headquarters, fallen down the stairs of Air Force One, gotten American hostages taken in Iran, fought covert wars in Central and South America, lied about raising taxes, had an affair with a White House intern, and started two wars against non-threatening sovereign nations.

Still, despite knowing in advance that the common Black man (me) would take the backlash from people impotent to actually affect him, I’d vote for Obama again.

If he can take it, I can too.

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama tapped labor economist Alan Krueger for a top administration post Monday, rounding out his White House economic team ahead of a highly-anticipated announcement next week on a new jobs initiative.

Speaking in the Rose Garden, Obama said he expected Krueger, a former Treasury Department official and Princeton economist, to provide him with unvarnished economic guidance, not partisan political advice.

“That’s more important than ever right now,” Obama said. “We need folks in Washington to make decisions based on what’s best for the country, not what’s best for any political party or special interest.”

With the nation’s unemployment rate stubbornly stuck above 9 percent and much of the public deeply dissatisfied with Obama’s handling of the economy, the president has promised a new set of jobs proposals. He said Monday that he would make those announcements next week.

“Our great challenge as a nation remains how to get this economy growing faster,” Obama said. “That’s our urgent mission.”

Obama has already called for an extension of a payroll tax cut that expires at the end of the year and he wants to continue jobless benefits. Aides are considering other measures, including tax incentives for businesses to hire and direct infusions of government money into construction projects. The president has said he intends to call for additional long-term deficit reduction to help pay for the short-term spending his proposals would require.

In Krueger, Obama will gain an economist with expertise in unemployment and the labor market. If confirmed by the Senate, Krueger would replace previous CEA chair Austan Goolsbee, who left the administration earlier this month to return to the University of Chicago.

Goolsbee was the latest in a string of top White House economists to leave over the past year, forcing Obama to do a wholesale makeover of the economic team that came to the White House with him three years ago. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the only remaining top official left l from Obama’s original economics team. Last month, the Treasury Department announced that Geithner would stay on, ending speculation he would leave the administration.

Krueger spent the first two years of the Obama administration as an assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy. In 2010, he returned to Princeton University, where he has served on the faculty for more than 20 years.

While at Treasury, Krueger worked on the popular “Cash for Clunkers” program that gave people rebates for buying new, more fuel-efficient vehicles and the HIRE Act, which gave businesses tax incentives to give jobs to the unemployed.

Krueger is likely to become an important public face for the administration on the economy. Both Goolsbee and Christina Romer, Obama’s two previous CEA chairs, were frequent spokesmen for the president, appearing on television and at White House events to promote the president’s policies.

That role could be even more important in the coming months, as a host of would-be Republican successors travel around the country, campaigning hard for the GOP presidential nomination by focusing, in no small part, on Obama’s handling of the economy.

The national unemployment rate remains at 9.1 percent and has shown little improvement over the past year, despite the more than $800 billion stimulus program that Obama got Congress to pass not long after he took office. The economy also has been on a dual track of slow growth and ballooning deficits, and Obama saw the nation’s credit rating downgraded by Standard & Poor’s earlier this year as he fought congressional Republicans for weeks for a program to slow the flow of red ink.

The White House and Republican congressional leaders ultimately agreed to a compromise deal to increase the government’s borrowing authority in early August, on the cusp of default, but the S&P credit rating was lowered from AAA to AA+, nevertheless.

Obama took to the road for a series of town-hall style meetings just before he went on vacation, seeking to explain his efforts to promote economic growth and attack the stubborn high joblessness.

Appearing earlier Monday on MSNBC, Goolsbee said that “we’re still in a pretty tough spot” on the economy.

“When you come out of a recession, especially one as deep as we were in, you can’t just go back to do what you were doing before,” he said. He said growth had picked up in 2010 but “this year we’ve taken some heavy blows.”

Goolsbee, who is expected to play an informal role in Obama’s re-election bid, said investing and focusing on the “industries of the future” are the kinds of policy directions the country needs to pursue. He also said he doesn’t think that bringing another stimulus program forward is necessarily a good idea, and instead suggested tax incentives for companies to hire.

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I would hope and expect that President Obama can recover from his political slide, but it’s difficult to move the country forward when the economy isn’t giving you the political engine that you need. Bush’s extreme drop in popularity was also connected with the decline in the economy and pending crash in the banking industry, but the former president helped things along by simply being an incompetent leader.

President Obama is not an incompetent leader, just a weak one. Americans who went to the polls believing in the carefully-packaged marketing gimmick called “Hope and Change” are now wondering if  Obama actually has the courage to pursue the kind of political change he sold to us in 2008. Rather than the bold leadership our country needed and expected, we’ve seen compromise to the point of surrender, and an administration that has rarely shown any willingness to take meaningful political risks.

You can break Obama dissidents into two “Hope and Change” categories:  Those who hope that we are going to change presidents, and those who hope that Obama himself will change leadership styles. It’s hard to build bridges to nowhere, when the man across the table from you has been given a blank check from his constituents to get you out of the White House at any cost. The friendly white folks that President Obama hung out with at Harvard University have been replaced by ruthless gangster-hillbillies who will scorch the earth to get what they want.

As expected, Republicans smell blood in the water and are seizing their chance to take over the White House. But any intelligent person can see that the Republicans have been a key reason the president hasn’t been able to get anything done – they are no different from the man who murders a woman’s boyfriend and then tries to go on a date with her after the funeral.

Republicans have also shown that their racist disdain for President Obama is even stronger than their love for America. By threatening to drive the nation off an economic cliff during recent debt negotiations, Republicans have made it clear that they will destroy heaven and earth to get President Obama out of the White House.  None of this reflects the patriotism needed to make our country a better place, and it also represents a step backward in our quest for true racial equality.

The job for President Obama is going to become even more difficult, since getting out of recessions costs money. The original stimulus package in early 2008 was not only too small, it was targeted toward the very same Wall Street bankers who caused the crisis in the first place. As a result, Wall Street executives were the first to recover economically, and many of these bankers are back to getting their multimillion dollar bonuses. The Obama Administration can only blame themselves for much of this, because too many members of Obama’s economic team came right out of Wall Street themselves.

I’m sure there are top secret reasons that the Obama Administration appears to maintain more loyalty to corporate America than to the rest of us. But the president’s political aspirations may go down bloody and burning because of his willingness to play the political game instead of trying to change it. Using the title of one of the president’s books, I have the audacity to hope that President Obama has learned some political lessons and will allow his leadership to evolve over time. I truly wonder, however, if he himself has the audacity to believe he can do it.

Even more sinister is whether or not Hillary Clinton is lurking in the background, waiting to pounce on an opportunity to steal the Democratic nomination away from President Obama. I can hear the quiet little “I told you so,” from the woman whose face possesses the seasoned wrinkles of someone with more than her share of Washington battle scars. At this point, the temptation to replace President Obama with a Republican is less appealing (to most) than the idea of replacing him with a more ferocious Democrat. Personally, I hate the idea of concluding that the Black man wasn’t the best fit for the job, so a better version of Obama would be preferable to the same old Hillary Clinton.

Mr. President: You can’t spend your life trying to make your enemies comfortable. True leadership requires sacrifice and courage, almost none of which you’ve shown, especially on the issue of racial inequality. America needs a strong Commander-in-Chief during difficult times.

There’s a famous statement by Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata who said, “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” The only thing worse than living on your knees is dying on them; but this may be exactly what happens to the seemingly weak Obama presidency. By tap dancing on territory where he should have been stomping, President Obama may be slowly digging his own political grave.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and author of the book, “Black American Money.” To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A judge on Friday threw out Obama administration rules that sought to slow down expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on federal land.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of a petroleum industry group, the Western Energy Alliance, in its lawsuit against the federal government, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

The ruling reinstates Bush-era expedited oil and gas drilling under provisions called categorical exclusions on federal lands nationwide, Freudenthal said.

The government argued that oil and gas companies had no case because they didn’t show how the new rules, implemented by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service last year, had created delays and added to the cost of drilling.

Freudenthal rejected that argument.

“Western Energy has demonstrated through its members recognizable injury,” she said. “Those injuries are supported by the administrative record.”

An attorney for the government declined to comment but Kathleen Sgamma, director of government and public affairs for the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, praised the ruling.

“She completely discounted the government’s argument that the harm was speculative,” Sgamma said of the judge.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 allows the BLM and Forest Service to invoke categorical exclusions and skip new environmental review for drilling permits under certain circumstances.

The circumstances include instances where companies plan to disturb relatively little ground and environmental review already has been done for that area. A categorical exclusion also can be invoked when additional drilling is planned at a well pad where drilling has occurred within the previous five years.

Categorical exclusions were widely used throughout the West – especially in the gas boom states of Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – until last year.

In Wyoming, the BLM invoked categorical exclusions for 87 percent of the new gas wells drilled in the Upper Green River Basin between 2007 and 2010. Those drilling permits added up: Close to 3,000 over those three years in the basin’s Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline gas fields.

The Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline ranked fifth and sixth for gas production in the U.S. in 2009.

Federal land agencies adopted new rules for interpreting the Energy Policy Act last year in response to an environmentalist lawsuit over the use of categorical exclusions. The Western Energy Alliance sued over the new rules last fall.

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WASHINGTON — It has been a lousy month for President Barack Obama. And August is not yet two weeks old.

Running for re-election, he’s getting beaten up from the political left for making too many concessions and for abandoning the positions on which he campaigned. And he’s being attacked from the right by Republican conservatives who claim his spending and taxing policies are hampering the economic recovery.

Over the past days, Obama has been confronted with humiliating blows on both the economy and in Afghanistan, while polls show deteriorating public support for both him and Congress amid growing public disillusionment with the nation’s policymaking process.

Usually, August is a steamy, lazy time in the nation’s capital when not much gets done and when both Congress and usually the president go on vacation.

But so far this month, the government avoided – just narrowly – a first-ever default on its financial obligations as it came just hours within beginning to run out of cash to pay its bills. A last-minute compromise with Republicans helped avoid the default but wasn’t enough to keep the government’s credit rating from being downgraded one notch from AAA to AA-plus by Standard & Poor’s.

Americans want their presidents to be problem solvers. But polls suggest that a majority of the public has lost faith in the ability of both the president and Congress to fix the ailing economy. More than two years into Obama’s presidency, the nation’s unemployment rate remains painfully high, and the Federal Reserve warns there’s little chance of major economic growth over the next two years.

“Obama’s trapped. He’s trapped by what happens with the financial crisis in Europe. He faces a Congress where Republicans will stop him dead in the tracks on his economic and jobs proposals,” said Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. “And there’s a near consensus of pundits that he’s fundamentally flawed as a consequence of his personality.”

“He should be glad it’s more than a year before Election Day and not next August,” Mann added.

In its downgrade, S&P cited the inability of the political parties to find common ground on getting the U.S. financial house in order – and poor prospects for doing so anytime soon.

A Washington Post poll released Wednesday showed that just 26 percent – barely one in four – have even some faith the government can solve its economic problems. And 71 percent see S&P’s political analysis in its downgrade – lambasting the nation’s policymaking process – as accurate.

Obama’s restive Democratic base grumbles about his concessions to Republicans. They cite his failure to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of last year for the wealthy; his failure to get more education and construction-project spending in the deal that averted a government shutdown this past spring; and his decision to drop his push for tax increases as part of last week’s compromise to raise the government’s debt ceiling.

The stock market has plunged more than 1,000 points from late July as investors worried about the twin economic perils of a financial meltdown in Europe and political near-paralysis in Washington.

The tumble, which continued Wednesday with a 519-point drop in the Dow industrials, along with slower-than-expected U.S. economic growth, reinforces expectations that the economy could be on the verge of slipping back into a new, or “double dip,” recession.

Obama spoke from the White House earlier in the week in an attempt to calm markets, claiming that “lack of political will” – not the nation’s financial status – led to the debt deadlock and the downgrade. But it did not have its intended effect.

Even his comments that “no matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and will always be a triple-A country” drew some snickers and dismissive comments from both parties.

To many, his performance reinforced fears that Obama has been doing too little to try to fix the economy and promote job creation.

Trying to answer such criticism, the president was going to a battery factory in Holland, Mich., on Thursday to promote his jobs agenda, followed by an economic-themed bus tour through the Midwest next week.

He’s going to Martha’s Vineyard with his family on vacation at the end of this month.

Shouldn’t Obama do something extraordinary, given the severity of the economic problem, such as cutting his vacation short or summoning Congress back into session?

Presidential spokesman Jay Carney, responding to that question at his daily briefing, said the president is “focused on the things that he can do that can be effective. … When you say `extraordinary,’ I mean … if you’re talking about a stunt, I don’t think a stunt is what the American people are looking for.”

Carney said taking hits from all sides comes with the territory. “We don’t spend a lot of time focusing on that. Because if you did, you’d spend all your time focusing on it.”

As if the nation’s economic woes weren’t enough, Obama also had to deal with the nation’s single deadliest day of the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

He flew to Dover, Del., on Tuesday to pay tribute to the 30 Americans who were killed when Taliban insurgents shot down their helicopter in Afghanistan.

Adding to his economic worries: It became clear this week that his former partner in trying to prod the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, couldn’t do much more to help. The Fed has now held interest rates that it directly controls at near zero percent for more than two years. Bernanke and Washington leaders do not have many arrows left in their stimulus quivers.

Bernanke’s Fed, with three dissenting votes, issued a statement Tuesday saying it was leaving short-term interest rates alone for at least two more years. The decision at first lifted financial markets, but then caused them to drop even further by signaling how weak the Fed believes the economy to be, further fueling fears of a new recession.

“Apprehension about the future stems not merely from the constant bickering between Republicans and Democrats on spending and taxes, but more fundamentally on the growing realization that monetary policy is spent – the Federal Reserve has some ammunition left, but it is not likely to be very potent,” University of Maryland business economist Peter Morici said.

Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University, said the pundits and politicians pronouncing Obama dead “aren’t any better than flipping a coin. You absolutely cannot judge a president’s prospects by events of the moment.”

“Anyway, the left isn’t going anywhere,” Lichtman said. “They may be disappointed with Obama, but they find the Republicans impossible.”

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Rev. Jesse Jackson called into question President Obama’s toughness this weekend in regards to his handling of the debt ceiling talks.

Obama, who has been criticized by many for compromising with the stalwart Republicans, struck a deal that helped the country avert a financial crisis.

Jackson, who spoke to Politico.com, said that the president is to trusting of Republicans when he shouldn’t be.

“He has a propensity to be trusting, on the side of reconciliation,” Jackson said to POLITICO. “He kind of underestimates how ideological these guys are and how determined they are to destroy him.”

Read more at YourBlackPolitics

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The term “tar baby,” which landed Senator John McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in trouble in the past, refers to having your hand touch a sticky situation. But many African Americans also look at the word as racist — especially when you refer to the first Black president of this country in that manner.

Read more at Gawker

The Oxford English Dictionary (but not the print version of its American counterpart) says that tar baby is a derogatory term used for “a black or a Maori.”

Here is a little history on the word “tar baby” – Link

Do you think this congressman meant it in a racist way?

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WASHINGTON — In unprecedented back-to-back appearances on nationwide television, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner clashed Monday night over the cause and cure for the nation’s debt crisis. The two men spoke as Congress remained gridlocked on legislation to avert a threatened default after Aug. 2.

Decrying a “partisan three-ring circus” in the nation’s capital, Obama assailed a newly minted Republican plan to raise the nation’s debt limit as an invitation to another crisis in six months’ time. He said congressional leaders must produce a compromise that can reach his desk before the deadline.

“The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government,” the president said in a hastily arranged prime-time speech. He appealed to the public to contact lawmakers and demand “a balanced approach” to reducing federal deficits – including tax increases for the wealthy as well as spending cuts.

Responding moments later from a room near the House chamber, Boehner said the “`crisis atmosphere” was of the president’s making.

“The sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today. That is just not going to happen,” the speaker said. “The president has often said we need a `balanced’ approach, which in Washington means we spend more, you pay more.”

Obama stepped to the microphones in the East Room of the White House a few hours after Republican lawmakers, then his own Democrats, drafted rival emergency legislation to head off a potentially devastating default.

The back-to-back speeches did little to suggest that a compromise was in the offing, and the next steps appeared to be votes in the House and Senate on the rival plans by mid-week.

Despite warnings to the contrary, U.S. financial markets have appeared to take the political maneuvering in stride – so far. Wall Street posted losses Monday but with no indication of panic among investors.

Without signed legislation by day’s end on Aug. 2, the Treasury will be unable to pay all its bills, possibly triggering an unprecedented default that officials warn could badly harm a national economy still struggling to recover from the worst recession in decades.

Obama wants legislation that will raise the nation’s debt limit by at least $2.4 trillion in one vote, enough to avoid a recurrence of the acrimonious current struggle until after the 2012 elections.

Republicans want a two-step process that would require a second vote in the midst of the 2012 campaign with control of the White House and both houses of Congress at stake.

Monday night’s speeches were a remarkable turn in a six-month-old era of divided government as first the president, then his principal Republican opponents appealed to the nation in a politically defining struggle.

Obama quoted Ronald Reagan – a hero to many conservatives – who also spoke of a balanced plan and stressed a need for compromise. Obama stopped well short of threatening a veto of the GOP-drafted legislation that he criticized.

Boehner’s remarks seemed aimed at the general public and also at conservatives – tea party advocates included – who installed the Republicans in power in the House last fall.

There were concessions from both sides embedded in Monday’s competing legislation, but they were largely obscured by the partisan rhetoric of the day.

With their revised plan, House Republicans backed off an earlier insistence on $6 trillion in spending cuts to raise the debt limit.

And while the president didn’t say so, his embrace of legislation unveiled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively jettisoned his longstanding call for increased government revenues as part of any deficit reduction plan.

The measure Boehner and the GOP leadership drafted in the House called for spending cuts and an increase in the debt limit to tide the Treasury over until sometime next year. A second increase in borrowing authority would hinge on approval of additional spending cuts sometime during the election year.

Across the Capitol, Reid wrote legislation that drew the president’s backing, praise from House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi – and criticism from Republicans.

Not all Republicans were happy with their leadership’s decision to scale back legislation that had cleared the House last week, only to die in the Senate.

Among House conservatives who have provided the political muscle for the Republican drive to cut spending, the revised legislation was a disappointment. “I cannot support the plan,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the leading advocates of legislation that cleared the House last week and died in the Senate.

But two rank-and-file Republicans said their constituents were voicing concerns other than the rising federal debt.

Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., said his office is getting calls from constituents saying, “If I don’t get my Social Security check, it’s your fault.”

Rep. Tom Reed, a New York freshman, said many of his constituents are telling him to stand firm in his drive to cut spending. “But I will admit there’s some anxiety in the district” about Social Security and other programs, he added.

As Boehner readied his legislation, Senate Democratic leaders called a news conference to announce their own next steps.

The Democrats’ measure would cut $2.7 trillion in federal spending and raise the debt limit by $2.4 trillion in one step – enough borrowing authority to meet Obama’s bottom-line demand.

The cuts include $1.2 trillion from across a range of hundreds of government programs and $1 trillion in savings assumed to derive from the end of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Boehner ridiculed the $1 trillion in war savings as gimmicky, but in fact, they were contained in the budget the House passed earlier in the year.

The legislation also assumes creation of a special joint congressional committee to recommend additional savings with a guaranteed vote by Congress by the end of 2011.

Yet in the maneuvering it appeared another of the president’s long-held conditions appeared to be in danger of rejection.

Neither Boehner’s measure nor the one Reid was drafting included additional revenue, according to officials in both parties.

In addition to a two-step approach to raising the debt limit, the House measure would require lawmakers in both houses to vote later this year on a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.

An earlier bill, passed in the House last week but then scuttled in the Senate, would have required Congress to approve an amendment and send it to the states for ratification.

That same bill would have made $6 trillion in spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.

Obama promised to veto that bill even before the House voted on it.

Each side offered accounts of secret maneuvering designed to put the other side in a poor light.

Democratic officials said Obama called Boehner on Saturday night, one day after the collapse of compromise talks, and offered to reduce his demand for new tax revenue by $400 billion.

In return, Obama said that he wanted Republicans to abandon their demand to cancel parts of the year-old health care law if future deficit cuts did not materialize.

This official said Boehner rejected the proposal on Sunday.

Republicans disputed that account – and offered one of their own.

In their version of events, Reid agreed on Sunday night to a two-step approach to raising the debt limit that Obama has rejected.

Democrats denied it.

None of the officials involved would agree to be quoted by name.

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Boehner slams Dems on debt-ceiling: “They have done nothing”

As Jackson and many members of the Black community see it, Republican’s reluctance to raise the debt ceiling when it has been raised numerous times for other presidents shows the unwarranted flack Obama is receiving.

“I do not understand what I think is the maligning and maliciousness [toward] this president. Why is he different?…In the minority community, that is the question that is being raised. Why is this president being treated so disrespectfully? Why has the debt limit been raised 60 times? Why did the leader of the Senate continually talk about his job is to bring the president down to make sure he is unelected?….I am particularly sensitive to the fact that only this president — only this one, only this one — has received the kind of attacks and disagreement and inability to work, only this one…. Read between the lines.”

Read more at YourBlackWorld.com

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Gingrich’s comments come as the president is negotiating a new federal budget with Republicans, and just days after the latest job reports show few signs of economic recovery.

“Housing prices have dropped deeper than in the great depression and it’s very clear that under Obama’s job killing policies, we’re not going to get out of this deep unemployment.”

Read more at ABC News:

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“For the first time in our history, we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive and less confident than the one we got,”  Huntsman said. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is totally unacceptable and totally un-American.”

See Video Below:

Despite working in the Obama administration, Huntsman says he and the president have “a difference of opinion on how to help the country [they] both love.”

President Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod said that he was “surprised” by Huntsman’s bid for president, but added he certainly takes his candidacy seriously.

The Huffington Post Reports:

In large part, Huntsman has attempted to distance himself from the president amid recent speculation about his plans for 2012. Obama, however, has made light of the prospect that his former ambassador could run against him in the next election cycle.

“I’m sure the fact that him having worked so well with me will be a great asset in any Republican primary,” the president joked earlier this year.

In an email to his supporters Huntsman addressed his presidential aspiration.

“I’ve recently had the honor of serving as U.S. Ambassador to China. That view of America from 10,000 miles away is a picture of liberty, opportunity and justice; people secure in their rights and in love with their freedom, who’ve done more good for more people than any other nation in history,” he said.

“Perhaps our strength at home has waned, but that perspective from afar has helped me see a path back to greatness.”

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

Bolling went on a mini-rant while criticizing the president’s meeting with Ali Bongo, president of the African nation of Gabon, who is viewed by some as a corrupt leader.

Bolling went on to say it’s not the first time Obama has had “a hoodlum in the hizzouse.”

Taking his sensational ridicule a step further, Bolling inquired “What’s with all the hoods in the hizzy?” in reference to the White House inviting rapper Common for a poetry reading.

See his controversial remarks below:

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=G71PK406HDT55RT7&read_more=1&widget_type_cid=svp

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Aboard Air Force One during a trip to Raleigh, N.C. Carney said, “The president feels, we feel at the White House, this is a distraction, as Congressman Weiner has said himself, his behavior was inappropriate; dishonesty was inappropriate.”

While many Democrats have called for Weiner to step down from his Congressional seat, Carney told reporters that the president’s staff has not been involved in calling for Weiner’s resignation.

Read More At CNN.com

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