Today in a speech at the Brookings Institution, President Obama plans to outline “a major push to tackle one of the biggest threats to the economy and to his administration:” the nation’s high unemployment rate. He will also announce a proposal to decrease our rising deficits and $12 trillion debt burden.
In a little-noticed aside during last week’s jobs forum, President Obama criticized the media for focusing on trivial issues, specifically targeting some in the White House press corps who interviewed him during his trip to China. “Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy,” Obama said. “I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin’s book.” Obama laughed. “True!”
The latest USA Today/Gallup Poll puts Obama’s job approval rating at 47 percent, a new low for his 10-month administration. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin’s popularity “appears to be on the rebound.” 46 percent of Americans have a favorable view of her, according to a CNN survey.
In October, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) announced that he was leading a “truth squad of three” to Copenhagen to oppose a global warming treaty. He said that Sen. John Barrasso ((R-WY) and “another secret person” would be traveling with him. Yesterday, the identity of that secret person was revealed to be Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).
After arriving unannounced in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates held a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in which he said the United States “will never turn our back” on Afghanistan. Back in America, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry are testifying to Congress today about President Obama’s new Afghanistan policy.
In a new Quinnipiac University poll, “public support for the war in Afghanistan is up nine percentage points” from three weeks ago “as American voters say 57 – 35 percent that fighting the war is the right thing to do.” Approval of President Obama’s handling of the war has risen seven percentage points in the same time period to a 45 – 45 percent split.
A series of five coordinated car bombings “has killed at least 127 people and wounded 448″ in the center of Baghdad. “The first blast targeted a police patrol” and “four our others occurred near official buildings within minutes.” Former Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie blamed al-Qaeda militants seeking to “destabilise the country ahead of general elections” in March.
“More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years,” according to an analysis by the New York Times. The water, which goes to more than 49 million people, “has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.”
The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that would legalize gay marriage in the state by a narrow 7-6 vote yesterday. “The marriage-equality movement in America starts again right here,” said Steven Goldstein, the executive director of Garden State Equality, in response to the vote.
And finally: Police arrested a man for throwing two tomatoes at former governor Sarah Palin while she was doing a book-signing at the Mall of America. Jeremy Paul Olson “threw the tomatoes at Palin from a second floor balcony” in the mall, but ended up hitting two police officers. He is facing charges of “suspicion of assault and disorderly conduct.”
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