More Democrat Plans

 

7) Fox News writes: Under the guise of a "referendum" (set for 9 January 2011) that will be observed by a 110-person European Union team of imperial busybodies, Sudan's primarily Christian south will be severed from the Sudanese nation-state, setting the stage for a continuation of the decades old Muslim-Christian Sudanese civil war. The difference will be that henceforth - as is occurring in Somalia - the U.S. and the West will be obliged to protect the new nation they created by theft and oil lust with diplomacy, funding, arms, military training, and eventually troops.
And what is America's interest in becoming involved to the hilt and inextricably in Sudan? What is so vital to the United States in Sudan that President Obama is pressing the leaders of Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and the other states of the African Union to support "our intense interest in having a successful referendum" - read that as "our intense interest in carving up Sudan to suit our imperial purposes and corner access to Sudanese oil." (As an aside, one must admit Rudyard Obama is nothing if not an aggressive proponent of improving - that is, "Westernizing" - the lives of "our little brown brothers," although the blatant theft of Islamic land is a rather odd component for the kinder and more gentle "Muslim outreach program" Obama announced in Cairo and Jakarta.)
The answer is that Obama, our bipartisan political elite, the mainstream media, and the rich, immature, libertine, and anti-U.S. Hollywood set lead by Clooney, et al, want to feel good about themselves by doing "good" for foreigners. For these elite U.S. citizens-of-the-world, ordinary Americans and their kids can starve, freeze, live on the streets, fail to find work, and remain illiterate forever. In essence, they can rot while Washington spends their taxes on Darfur - a place where absolutely no genuine U.S. interest is at stake.
Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/2011/01/03/clooney-falling-bin-laden-s-sudan-trap#ixzz1A0oi9RFf

 

8) National Review reports: The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has no time to pursue voter-intimidation cases against black defendants. But it has plenty of time to pursue local school boards that make common-sense decisions about student dress codes and accommodations for teachers’ religious practices.

The contrast between what the division does and doesn’t regard as important reveals a radical ideology on the loose — and the willingness of this administration’s political appointees to abuse the civil-rights laws they are supposed to enforce. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255994/civil-rights-gone-wild-hans-von-spakovsky


9) Breitbart reveals: The Obama administration says 13 companies whose deepwater drilling activities were suspended last year may be able to resume drilling without detailed environmental reviews. Companies will be allowed to resume work at previously drilled wells, as long as they meet new policies and regulations. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9KH2DOG0&show_article=1

10) The NYT writes:  legal advisers, confronting the prospect of new restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo detainees, are debating whether to recommend that he issue a signing statement asserting that his executive powers would allow him to bypass the restrictions, according to several officials. 
One provision bars the military from using its funds to transfer detainees to the United States, making it harder to prosecute them in federal court. Another prohibits the transfer of detainees to any other country unless the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, certifies that the country has met a strict set of security conditions.
The deliberations over whether Mr. Obama should challenge those provisions were reported Monday by ProPublica, an investigative journalism site, and were confirmed by several officials familiar with the discussions.
Before the vote on the bill last month, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told Congress that the restrictions would be “an extreme and risky encroachment on the authority of the executive branch.” But lawmakers included them in the final legislation anyway, and Mr. Obama is considered unlikely to veto the measure because it authorizes billions of dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/us/politics/04gitmo.html?_r=1

11) “Net neutrality” rules must be implemented for content control while the government should quintuple federal funding for public and community broadcasting, Ben Scott, the State Department’s recently appointed policy adviser for innovation, argues. http://patriotupdate.com/1077/look-who-wants-500-bump-in-funding-for-government-media

12) From Congress.org: Democrat Jim Webb sent a letter to Barack Obama saying: In a further indication that the "North American Union" agenda is quietly proceeding under what remains of the Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative in the Obama administration, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano signed an agreement in Mexico with little fanfare that would extend special "trusted traveler" access to the U.S. to an estimated 84 MILLION MEXICANS.

"In Mexico City, Secretary Napolitano and Mexican Ministry of the Interior Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora signed an agreement expressing their intent to develop a Global Entry international trusted traveler pilot program between the United States and Mexico - leveraging the success of the United States' Global Entry program to facilitate secure, legitimate travel between the two nations," announced a DHS statement Nov. 30. 
Under the SPP, the U.S., Mexico and Canada organized some 20 different "shadow government" bureaucratic working groups composed of agency heads and undersecretaries in the three nations. The groups spanned a wide range of policy areas, from e-commerce, to aviation policy, to borders and immigration, trilateral travel, transportation, energy, environment, food and agriculture, health and financial services.
Frequently reported, beginning in 2006, that the SPP was intended to implement a stealth plan to produce a North American Union composed of the United States, Mexico and Canada. 

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/userletter/?id=51210&letter_id=6232729456&content_dir=congressorg

13) President Barack Obama named veteran political manager William Daley to be his new chief of staff Thursday, selecting a centrist with Wall Street ties to help navigate a newly divided Congress and a looming re-election. [Don't forget that William Daley, was Al Gore's Campaign Manager in 2000 and initiated 90% of the re-count strategy that occurred in Florida. He is the son of Richard Daley, ex-Mayor of Chicago, and brother of Richard Daley Junior, present Mayor of Chicago.   Rahm Emmanuel will probably inherit that job. Does this put a different perspective on the appointment? By setting Rahm Emanuel and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs free from White House work, they are now able to run Obama's reelection campaign.  So this looks to be all about helping Obama get re-elected, and about having yet another man experienced with rough-and-tumble Chicago politics in charge at the White House.]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110106/ap_on_re_us/us_white_house_shakeup 

Addendum to yesterday: Asked last weekend in a televised interview how he planned to stop U.S. EPA regulation of carbon -- rules he says have the potential to inflict serious harm on the economy -- House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton mentioned only one specific strategy: using the Congressional Review Act. [There is a major problem with this plan.  This must be done within 60 Legislature days of the regulation, and that time period is over... It is easy to believe that this was one well thought out plan of the Dems, to do it so that the time would expire before the new Congress was seated - a farewell gift.]

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” — James Madison, The Federalist Papers, #47.
Read more: http://www.propublica.org/article/administration-prepares-to-defy-efforts-to-limit-obamas-options-for-guantan#ixzz1A0o1nSW5

Some Democrat Plans for 2011 - More Plans in Tomorrow's Blog.....

Responding to the request of one of my readers, I hereby report on some of the plans of Democrats in this Congress: look for more tomorrow.
1) According to our President: "If the Republicans have ideas for how to improve our healthcare system, if they want to suggest modifications that would deliver faster, more effective reform ... I am happy to consider some of those ideas," Obama told a news conference at the White House.  [There are two problems with this statement: Obama has been saying this for several years and has done none of it; and he is the one who proudly said we Republicans have to sit in the back of the bus - ok, car.]

2) The Obama administration plans to pursue the White House's global warming agenda through new rules and regulations issued by existing federal agencies, without Congressional edict. 

a) Fox News reports: After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means.
On Jan. 2, new carbon emissions limits will be put forward as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations that would force companies to get permits to release greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Critics say the new rules are a backdoor effort to enact the president’s agenda on global warming without the support of Congress, and would hurt the economy and put jobs in jeopardy by forcing companies to pay for expensive new equipment. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/28/white-house-plans-push-global-warming-policy-gop-vows-fight/

          b)  As David Limbaugh wrote: "Texas, for example, has adamantly refused to roll over for the administration's climate commands, so the EPA is preparing to subsume greenhouse gas permitting authority indefinitely in that little obstreperous state."
        c) Also from David Limbaugh: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has decreed that the Bureau of Land Management will establish new rules to make it more difficult to develop natural resources on government-owned land, which will also drive up the cost of gas and electricity and increase our dependency on foreign energy sources. All these developments serve as a nice complement to Obama's seven-year ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.[This, as the same time our government loans billion of dollars to Brazil to do offshore drilling of its own.]
        d) Front Page Magazine reveals: This Administration is also putting more and more lands into government control. Front Page Magazine wrote:  Have you heard of the “Great Outdoors Initiative”? Chances are, you haven’t. But across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land. It’s another stealthy power grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American way of life. The federal government, as the memo boasted, is the nation’s “largest land manager.” It already owns roughly one of every three acres in the United States. This is apparently not enough. At a “listening session” in New Hampshire last week, government bureaucrats trained their sights on millions of private forest land throughout the New England region. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack crusaded for “the need for additional attention to the Land and Water Conservation Fund — and the need to promptly support full funding of that fund.”
Property owners have every reason to be worried. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is a pet project of green radicals, who want the decades-old government slush fund for buying up private lands to be freed from congressional appropriations oversight. It’s paid for primarily with receipts from the government’s offshore oil and gas leases. Both Senate and House Democrats have included $900 million in full LWCF funding, not subject to congressional approval, in their energy/BP oil spill legislative packages. The Democrats have also included a provision in these packages that would require the federal government to take over energy permitting in state waters, which provoked an outcry from Texas state officials, who sent a letter of protest to Capitol Hill last month: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/08/16/obamas-land-deal-power-grab/

3) Lawmakers say Nancy Pelosi is consulting marketing experts about building a stronger Democrat brand. The most prominent is Steven Spielberg, it is rumored, though Spielberg has denied it.  Lawmakers said Spielberg has not reported to Pelosi with a recommendation.

4)  “I think it’s unAmerican.” (to enforce immigration law), said Ms. Pelosi to an Hispanic audience, and refused to clarify the statement when Fox News called her office later on for comment.

5) Politico wrote in late 2010: There has been growing pressure from liberals in Congress for President Barack Obama to be more aggressive in tapping into Wall Street’s wealth to help finance Main Street job-creation programs. Just Thursday, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) helped introduce a labor-backed bill that would impose a .25% tax on securities transactions in hopes of raising $150 billion for deficit reduction and jobs related programs including highway transportation projects.
“We need a shift in priorities in this country to ask not what America can do for Wall Street, but ask what Wall Street can do for America,” said Harkin,

Business lobbies are watching with growing alarm. Pelosi, like Brown, has argued that any such fee must be imposed on transactions around the globe in order to protect the competitiveness of major exchanges such as those in New York and London.

“I believe the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit,” Pelosi said, and if agreement can be reached among the G-20 nations, “It is really a source of revenue that has really minimal impact on the transaction but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30200.html

6) The Huffington Post wrote: Senate Democrats will make a dramatic effort to reform the rules of the chamber when the next Congress begins, one of the body's primary filibuster-reform advocates said Wednesday morning.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who has championed a weakening of the procedural mechanism that allows the minority party to hold up legislation, predicted "fireworks" on Jan. 5, 2011 -- the day on which the Senate can, he argued, revamp its rules by a simple majority vote.
"[Former Sen.] Robert Byrd in 1975, the last time that we changed the rules and [brought the filibuster threshold] from 67 [votes] down to 60, actually stated on the floor that a majority, 51 senators, could change the rules. And that's what we intend to do and that is what we are working on right now. We are coming on the fifth to basically send a motion to the vice president ... that will change the rules and there is a procedure to provide 51 votes to do that. Robert Byrd said that in 1975 and that's what we are going to try to do."
Essentially, that path to reform requires Vice President Joe Biden -- who supports weakening the filibuster -- to rule on the first day of the next session that the Senate has the authority to write its own rules. Republicans, presumably, would immediately move to object, but Democrats could then move to table the objection, setting up a key up-or-down vote. If 50 Democrats voted to table the objection, the Senate would then move to a vote on a new set of rules, which could be approved by a simple majority. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/15/tom-harkin-filibuster-reform-fireworks_n_797019.html

Net Neutrality; Stimulus Money Buys Detroit Schoolchildren's Computers; Brian Williams' Schmegeggy; Deficit Reduction High Priority of Last House; Federal Debt Ceiling Deal; High Oil Prices Must Delight Obama

Patriot Update writes: “Net neutrality” rules must be implemented for content control while the government should quintuple federal funding for public and community broadcasting, Ben Scott, the State Department’s recently appointed policy adviser for innovation, argues.
Scott’s writings, last year in a radical magazine, were in an article co-authored by Robert W. McChesney, an avowed Marxist activist who has called for the dismantlement “brick-by-brick” of the U.S. capitalist system, with America being rebuilt as a socialist society.
McChesney is the founder of the George Soros-funded Free Press, which petitions for more government control of the Internet and news media. http://patriotupdate.com/1077/look-who-wants-500-bump-in-funding-for-government-media
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Detroit Public Schools will spend $49 million in federal money to push technology in the district, including distributing 40,000 new laptop computers to students in grades 6-12 for use in class, as well as more than 5,000 new desktop computers

The massive technology infusion totals 50,000 pieces of equipment -- including 4,300 printer/scanners and more than 500 HP desktop computers for the 138 early childhood classrooms in the district. [There is already a report that one of the teachers has tried to pawn her computer.  This demonstrates the Law of Unintended Consequences, doesn't it?]
Read more: Detroit Public Schools: 40,000 kids to get laptops from stimulus funds | freep.com | Detroit Free Press http://www.freep.com/article/20110104/NEWS05/101040378/Detroit-Public-Schools-40-000-kids-to-get-laptops-from-stimulus-funds#ixzz1A4U4X300
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NBC's Brian Williams, on air travel: "They go, they go right in. This new thing, they go right after Dave and the twins. ... Either you go in the little thing and you put your arms up and parade around, and somebody in a booth somewhere looks at you naked through your clothing, or you can get the prod of your schmegeggy."
http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1101/brian_williams_tsa_groped_me_.html
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And here is my first candidate to be a Quote of the Year 2011, as reported by Fox News: At her final press conference as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, "Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go."
The numbers tell a different story.
When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. The last day of the 111th Congress and Pelosi's Speakership on December 22, 2010 the national debt was $13,858,529,371,601.09 - a roughly $5.2 trillion increase in just four years. Furthermore, the year over year federal deficit has roughly quadrupled during Pelosi's four years as speaker, from $342 billion in fiscal year 2007 to an estimated $1.6 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2010. http://nation.foxnews.com/nancy-pelosi/2011/01/04/speaker-pelosi-leaves-whopper
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National Review opines: Unlikely as it may seem at the moment, I’m becoming more and more convinced that congressional Republicans can get a lot — in terms of spending cuts, entitlement reforms, and the like — in exchange for agreeing to raise the federal debt ceiling at some point in the next few months.

My argument is dead simple.
P1) The debt ceiling won’t be raised without a ‘yea’ vote from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.)
P2) Senator Graham said on Meet the Press that

“I will not vote for the debt ceiling increase until I see a plan in place that will deal with our long-term debt obligations, starting with Social Security, a real bipartisan effort to make sure that Social Security stays solvent, adjusting the age, looking at means tests for benefits. On the spending side, I’m not going to vote for debt ceiling increase unless we go back to 2008 spending levels, cutting discretionary spending.”

P3) The debt ceiling must be raised.  http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256230/why-republicans-will-get-lot-exchange-raising-debt-ceiling-daniel-foster
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Financial Times writes: High oil prices threaten to derail the fragile economic recovery among developed nations this year, the leading energy watchdog has warned, putting pressure on the Opec oil cartel to increase production.

“Oil prices are entering a dangerous zone for the global economy,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist. “The oil import bills are becoming a threat to the economic recovery. This is a wake-up call to the oil consuming countries and to the oil producers.”

[I am sure this pleases our President, as the next item will demonstrate.]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/056db69c-1836-11e0-88c9-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1AADl4poQ

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PajamasMedia writes: While campaigning for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama spoke to the $4 a gallon gasoline prices Americans were facing by making it clear he had no problem with gas prices at that level. He simply “would have preferred a gradual adjustment” toward that price. In other words, he wasn’t bothered that gasoline hit $4 a gallon, just that it did so too quickly.
Fortunately for the American consumer, shortly after fuel prices had skyrocketed to those levels they dropped enough that when Obama took office they were hovering around $1.81 a gallon. But two years into the Obama presidency, and one offshore drilling moratorium later, prices are well over $3 a gallon in much of the country and climbing fast. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/when-gas-hits-four-dollars-a-gallon-will-it-be-slow-enough-for-obama-this-time/
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Abraham Lincoln's Warning; Bush and Obama Criminally Offered Positions for Favors; Death Panels Secret Passage; Auto Czar Settles Suit with $10 Million Fine

Abraham Lincoln issued this warning in his inaugural address: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.” 

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Floyd Reports: This weekend, the Republican Congressman responsible for investigating presidential misconduct said that Barack Obama’s decision to offer a position to Joe Sestak as an incentive for him to drop out of a Democratic primary “was a criminal event under the law” — and that he is going to do absolutely, positively nothing about it.

ISSA: It is in fact an example of misconduct, in my opinion. Now, what happened throughout this process — and I’ve made this very clear — is we’ve discovered the problem’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than President Obama.
President Bush’s people said we did the same thing. Guess what? It was a criminal event under the law — a criminal event, when President Bush’s people did it, and I don’t know when they did it. They’ve just admitted that they did it…When you offer a position, paid or unpaid, existing statute makes it illegal to offer that job in return for affecting an election. That is — that is something we’ve got to get to stop. The American people do not want ambassadorships or any other position handed out to save a party money.
http://floydreports.com/watergate-so-what-issa-wont-investigate-sestak-crime/?utm_source=Expose+Obama&utm_campaign=170f51d0cc-EO_01_03_20111_3_2011&utm_medium=email
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Expose Obama writes: The Democrat who started the latest national debate over the inclusion of so-called “death panels” by the Obama administration into federal regulations now regrets doing so.
The office of Representative Earl Blumenauer, an assisted suicide advocate from Oregon who works closely with pro-euthanasia groups like Compassion and Choices, alerted supporters of the change the Obama administration implemented and worked to ask them to keep the news quiet.
“We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists e-mails can too easily be forwarded,” his staff wrote. “Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this [regulation] goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”
The memo talked of a “quiet” victory and had the congressman worrying about how Republican leaders would “use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”
But LifeNews.com reported on the new regulations and, weeks later, the New York Times got a copy of the memo Blumenauer wrote and the national dustup began.
Now, Blumenauer told The Hill that he regrets the secretive language used in the email, which he says he did not see beforehand. [The regulation, which was taken out of the bill because Americans despised it was then secretly put back in with even stronger language: doctors will be paid EVERY year to provide this service, not once every 5 years!.  This is a perfect demonstration of the extreme power Obamacare gives to the Secretary of Health, forever - without the consent of Congress or the governed.]  http://www.exposeobama.com/2011/01/03/oops-democrat-who-outed-obamas-death-panels-is-sorry-you-found-out/?utm_source=Expose+Obama&utm_campaign=170f51d0cc-EO_01_03_20111_3_2011&utm_medium=email
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Forbes writes: The investment banker who helped lead the Obama administration’s auto industry overhaul has agreed to pay $10 million to settle influence-peddling allegations in New York.
Former “car czar” Steven Rattner admitted no wrongdoing as part of the deal, which was announced by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Thursday.
Cuomo’s office had filed civil lawsuits against Rattner in November, accusing him of paying kickbacks to help his company land $150 million in state pension fund investments in 2004 and 2005. He denied the charges. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/12/30/general-specialized-consumer-services-us-pension-probe-rattner_8230177.html
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Reminding me of a proposal discussed by our own Progressives in government to convert all private 401(k)'s into government annuities which the government will inherit upon the death of the owner, the Washington Examiner writes about Europe: The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/01/europe-starts-confiscating-private-pension-funds#ixzz1A4SulreV

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Do you recall how President Obama got 6 Republicans to vote yes on the new Start Treaty by saying the we would still be able to produce defensive weapons? Townhall writes: The lower house of the Russian Duma has now taken up New START, and -- surprise! -- they're insisting that limits on US missile defense capabilities are a central element to the treaty:
"During the ratification of START in the US Congress the American lawmakers noted that the link between strategic offensive armed forces and antimissile defense systems is not juridically binding for the parties. They referred to the fact that this link was fixed only in the preamble of the document. Such an approach can be regarded as the US’ attempt to find an option to build up its strategic potential and the Russian lawmakers cannot agree with this," Kosachev says.  http://townhall.com/tipsheet/GuyBenson/2011/01/03/surprise_russian_duma_to_codify_missile_defense_language_in_new_start
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The American Indians' Rights; Obama Acting Outside Constitutional Authority; Obama Travels; The IRS; Phoenix Snow; UK Pipes Burst in Coldest Weather Since Records Began

Mediaite.com wrote: It all started when Obama announced that the United States would support the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People which was adopted in 2007 but opposed by President Bush. The trouble started when people read the Declaration and noticed some suspicious wording in Article 26:

“Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.” [Following Obama's reparations to black farmers, fraudently administered to far more farmers than actually existed, there is concern as to just what parts of America will be given to indigenous people, including Manhattan, for instance.  Heaven knows that our government has a history of dishonoring most treaties back in the day, however.  Therein lies the rub.]

http://www.mediaite.com/online/latest-way-obama-will-ruin-america-giving-back-manhattan-to-the-indians/

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Creators.com writes: This administration is abusive enough when it acts outside its constitutional authority, but it is even more tyrannical when it affirmatively thwarts the express will of the Congress on matters within the legislative domain.
When Congress denied Obama authority to transfer money to the International Monetary Fund, he did so anyway, issuing an executive order promising to give that body $140 billion for redistribution to Third World countries.
Now he's made another mockery of bipartisanship and the Constitution in making six recess appointments, including two people so objectionable that a near supermajority of Democratic senators wouldn't confirm them: James Cole as deputy attorney general, whose lax position in the war on terror is disturbing, and Francis J. Ricciardone Jr. as ambassador to Turkey. http://www.creators.com/conservative/david-limbaugh/the-administration-s-administrative-tyranny-marches-on.html
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Obama spends nearly half his presidency outside Washington, plans to travel more

Washington Examiner [DC], by Byron York

On "Meet the Press" December 26, top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said President Obama's "biggest regret" is that the severity of the economic crisis forced him to "spend almost every waking hour in Washington focusing very hard on solving that crisis" and thus kept him from traveling the country to connect with the American people.

According to Knoller, Obama has spent 176 days on domestic trips, 70 days on foreign travel, 58 days on vacation, and 35 days at Camp David.  (You can add a couple more vacation days to the total before the president returns from his break in Hawaii.)  Nevertheless, Jarrett claimed that Obama has had to spend "almost every waking hour in Washington" since taking office.  The truth is more like half of that.
And the president will likely spend more time away from the capital in the months ahead.  Jarrett is no doubt right that Obama believes he needs to devote more time to "engaging" the American people.  But Knoller's figures show that the people already see a lot of the president.  Of Obama's 712 days in office, just 45 days have passed without a presidential public appearance or statement of some sort, according to Knoller.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/01/obama-spends-nearly-half-his-presidency-outside-washington-plans-#ixzz19slbxqQz

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CNN warns: The IRS said that it needs until mid- to late-February to reprogram its processing systems because Congress acted so late this year cleaning up the tax code. The bill, which includes deductions for state and local sales taxes, college tuition and teacher expenses, wasn't signed into law until Dec.17.  http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/31/pf/taxes/irs_filing_delay/index.htm?hpt=T2
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News from Arizona: Plunging temperatures and lingering cloud cover brought a rare sight to many parts of the Valley today - brief periods of snow flurries, the National Weather Service said.
Sightings were reported in Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Fountain Hills, Cave Creek, Peoria, Glendale and Anthem and parts of Phoenix.
The Weather Service confirmed the reports in several of those communities.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/2010/12/30/20101230phoenix-area-residents-report-snow-falling-valley.html#ixzz19dZuEtIK

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The UK Telegraph notes: As we emerge, temporarily perhaps, from weeks of the coldest weather since records began – with snow disasters right round the northern hemisphere, from the US and Europe to China and Mongolia – more examples come to light of how the cost of extreme cold is far greater than that of warming.  Another frozen chicken which came home to roost was the crisis confronting many of the eight million homes now heated by condensing boilers, made compulsory by John Prescott in 2005 as a way of reducing Britain’s carbon footprint. What Mr Prescott failed to do was impose, on this tightly regulated industry, any requirement that the pipes to take away the resulting water should not be placed on the outside of buildings. (Responsibility for this crucial system failure has since been passed to the Health and Safety Executive.) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8235283/As-we-count-the-cost-of-the-freeze-Government-prepares-for-global-warming.html