Rise and Shine

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Today:

12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press

2:55: President Obama hosts a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov of Bulgaria

4:0: Delivers remarks to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction symposium

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Paul Krugman: In the ongoing battle of the budget, President Obama has done something very cruel. Declaring that this time he won’t negotiate with himself, he has refused to lay out a proposal reflecting what he thinks Republicans want. Instead, he has demanded that Republicans themselves say, explicitly, what they want. And guess what: They can’t or won’t do it.

No, really …. And there’s a reason for this reticence. The fact is that Republican posturing on the deficit has always been a con game, a play on the innumeracy of voters and reporters. Now Mr. Obama has demanded that the G.O.P. put up or shut up — and the response is an aggrieved mumble.

Full article here

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ThinkProgress

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Steve Benen: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner appeared on several Sunday shows yesterday, and for the first time, made explicitly clear that higher rates on income above $250,000 is a precondition to any fiscal agreement.

…. this, in a nutshell, is why talks aren’t going anywhere. The White House has a plan on the table, which includes $1.6 trillion in new revenue, relying largely on higher rates on income above $250,000. Congressional Republicans, by their own admission, have no plan….

For those who take arithmetic seriously, the GOP approach borders on laughable….

Full post here

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CNN: Mitt Romney supporter Kid Rock said on Sunday that he told President Obama there are “no hard feelings” over his re-election victory. In an interview with CNN, the rock singer said he spoke with the President on Sunday at the Kennedy Center Honors event. (Video at link)

No hard feelings? Aw, that’s nice of him. 🙄

Loved what the President said to him when they met: “I’m still here.” 😎

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Kathleen Geier (Washington Monthly): One of the more surprising voting trends in American politics over the past two decades is the dramatic shift of Asian Americans toward the Democratic Party. Only 31% of the Asian American electorate voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, but 73% supported Barack Obama in 2012. What accounts for this change? Working with data from the National Asian American Survey, two political scientists have some answers.

The professors reject a variety of explanations that have recently been offered. No, it’s apparently not because, as David Brooks proposed, Asian American voters are less individualistic or less antagonistic toward government than are other Americans …. Rather, there are are cluster of “push and pull” factors …. Some of the pull factors: Asian Americans like President Obama’s policies on health care, education, and the Iraq War…..

As for the “push factors”: well, the Republican’s anti-immigrant bias and its alliance with the Christian right are not doing them any favors so far as Asian Americans are concerned….

Full post here

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Business Insider: One month before Election Day, David Paleologos threw himself into the poll-heavy discussion of the 2012 campaign with a bold prediction.

Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said that he would no longer poll three key swing states — North Carolina, Virginia and Florida — because he was certain Republican Mitt Romney would win them.

That prediction, obviously, turned out to be horribly wrong. Romney won North Carolina, but Romney lost Virginia by nearly 4 points — and one of the biggest surprises of the election came when President Barack Obama won Florida.

…. Paleologos said that Suffolk would re-evaluate its likely voter screen ….

More here

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ABC: When Inauguration Day falls on a Sunday, the Constitution won’t wait …. The iron beams are in place jutting out over Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House.They will become the roof of the presidential reviewing stand for the second Obama inaugural next month.

But the traditional parade with its bands and floats will not march on January 20th, the day the Constitution requires the President to be sworn in. That falls on a Sunday this time so by tradition there will only be a small Sunday ceremony for the oath-taking at noon.

…. President Obama will also have to take the oath twice: At noon Jan. 20 as the Constitution requires, and again Monday at the US Capitol with the whole world watching.

More here

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Completely random pics:

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Mooooooooorning everyone.

evening all

President Barack Obama walks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, left, and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico following their joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House, April 2 (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

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Ed Kilgore: Every day there’s at least one headline coming across the transom that doesn’t make you laugh, cry, cheer, or think, but simply scratch your head in puzzlement. Today’s winner is from Politico’s Lois Romano: “Ann Romney is the Romney Democrats Fear Most.”

…. Huh! Everybody thinks Ann Romney is a “rock star?” I did not know that. The “political arena” is all abuzz about her? Missed that, too; the buzzing must be confined to weekends, when I kinda check out from politics as much as possible.

…. If you read this long piece, however, it begins to appear that most of the buzzing Romano is hearing is coming from busy bees inside the Romney campaign itself….

….. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the Romneys as a team that Romano’s account mentions is that their handlers can’t decide whether Ann is more valuable on the road as a speaker, or behind the scenes as a steadying influence on the candidate. It sounds like Mitt needs a road manager and a psychologist as much as he needs a dazzling opening act. Indeed, he seems to be a very needy dude….

More here

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Nick Anderson

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unelectable

Andrew Romano (Daily Beast): …. disaffected conservatives think they’ve found their man. His name? Rick Perry …. The only problem? Perry has almost no chance – unlike, say, Romney, Pawlenty, or even Jon Huntsman – of beating Barack Obama in the general election.

This isn’t because he “sounds too much like” George W. Bush, as almost every pundit in Washington has been repeating, ad nauseum, since Perry first hinted in May that he might run. And it’s not because he’s “too religious”, either.

The real reason Perry will find it nearly impossible to win a general election is, believe it or not, substance. He holds three positions that vast majorities of the American public, Republicans included, will simply refuse to stomach – that America would be better off without the federal programs known as Social Security and Medicare, and that the government should do nothing (zero, zilch, nada) to counteract an economic crash.

…. I spent the better part of an hour talking to Perry about his political philosophy and policy prescriptions back in the fall….

In the interview, Perry hints that he would do more to limit the power of the federal government than any president since Calvin Coolidge. His argument is basically that we should dismantle most of the last 75 years of national policy and relinquish even Washington’s least controversial responsibilities to the states.

Perry believes, for example, that the national Social Security system, which he calls a “failure” that “we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now,” should be scrapped and that each state should be allowed to create, or not create, its own pension system. “I would suggest a legitimate conversation about let[ting] the states keep their money and implement the programs,” he says.

Perry also includes Medicare in his list of programs “the states could substantially better operate,” suggesting that each governor should be “given the freedom from the federal government to come up with his own innovative ways [of] working with his legislature to deliver his own health-care innovations to his citizens.”

And Perry thinks TARP was a total mistake – along with all subsequent efforts to backstop or stimulate the economy. Instead, he prefers an entirely laissez-faire approach to job-destroying financial crises. “I think you allow the market to work its way through it,” he says. “I don’t understand why the TARP bill exists. Let the processes find their way.”

No Social Security. No federal health-care program for seniors. And no Beltway involvement – at all – during a crash or recession. These views will undoubtedly endear Perry to the Tea Party faithful. But they would alienate nearly every other voter in the country …. Somewhere, Obama’s aides are already dreaming up the attack ads.

Full article here

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Meet Rick Perry (Texas Democrats)

Thanks Linda

‘from wimp to winner’

Andrew Romano (Daily Beast): Obama outmaneuvers his opponents – and his allies – every time … Andrew Romano looks at how the president’s pragmatism gets results.

….nary a day has passed without some Republican, somewhere, calling him a weakling, a wimp, or worse. But last week, as Obama prepared to respond to Paul Ryan’s long-term budget plan with a proposal of his own, an unlikely group of kvetches joined the girlie-man chorus to carp about the president’s once and future fecklessness: the nation’s top liberal pundits.

….Paul Krugman mocked the president as a “bland, timid guy who doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular”. The Daily Beast’s Eric Alterman likened the leader of the free world to “a boxer who … [spends] the entire fight taking punch after punch on the ropes” … the only thing missing was Keith Olbermann flapping his arms and clucking “chicken”.

To hear Krugman & Co. tell it, Obama was all set to stride on stage at George Washington University, collapse into the fetal position, and announce that he was willing do whatever John Boehner wanted. What actually happened, however, was quite different. In a forceful 40-minute speech, the president outlined a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years. The speech wasn’t wholly liberal. But it hit most of the notes – raising taxes on the rich, shrinking the defense budget, protecting the social safety net – that liberals longed to hear.

…he is a hard-nosed pragmatist determined to maximize results. When liberals whine, says White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, it’s like “a fourth-inning analysis of a nine-inning game. People say ‘he screwed up the negotiations,’ but the deal ends up being very good given the political reality”.

…Obama’s initial leadership strategy was tailored to a time when Republicans couldn’t torpedo his agenda. In policy terms, the approach paid off, helping him put more points on the board during his first two years – the stimulus package, health-care reform, financial regulation, and so on – than any president since LBJ….

..Last week reports revealed that Obama’s agreement with Republicans to slash $38 billion from the 2011 budget – the supposedly timid compromise that kindled the left’s conniption – actually contained less than $25 billion in spending cuts, few of them to cherished Democratic programs. The same day, Public Policy Polling released a survey showing that independents, who backed Republicans 56 percent to 37 percent in 2010, now prefer Democrats 42 percent to 33 percent – a 28-point reversal. If those are the sort of things that happen when a president takes “punch after punch on the ropes,” then Obama might want to keep getting slugged.

Full article here