White House
“The White House is lukewarm about proposals by congressional Democrats to introduce broad legislation to create jobs, instead favoring targeted measures that would be less likely to inflate the deficit,” the Wall Street Journal says. “There is as yet no agreement within the White House or in Congress on how to try to curb the U.S. jobless rate. But the differences in opinion suggest that rifts could emerge among Democrats as they wrestle with how to beat back the highest unemployment rate in a generation.”
The president said his Asia trip was about American jobs. "As we emerge from the worst recession in generations, there is nothing more important than to do everything we can to get our economy moving again and put Americans back to work, and I will go anywhere to pursue that goal," Obama says in his weekly radio/Internet address, recorded in the South Korean capital of Seoul, his last stop. "That’s one of the main reasons I took this trip. Asia is a region where we now buy more goods and do more trade with than any other place in the world -- commerce that supports millions of jobs back home."
Video:
A Morning Meeting panel debates how President Obama should handle the growing unemployment problem.
The New York Times has a primer on the military options President Obama is weighing on Afghanistan.
Writing about the president’s campaign to promote science and math education, which he announces later this morning, the New York Times says the White House is recruiting Big Bird, Elmo, and video-game programmers. “The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, will focus mainly on activities outside the classroom. For example, Discovery Communications has promised to use two hours of the afternoon schedule on its Science Channel cable network for commercial-free programming geared toward middle school students. Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May.”
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“After taking his message as the ‘first Pacific president’ through four countries in eight days, President Obama wrapped up his tour of Asia on Thursday with talks with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and a planned visit to U.S. troops stationed in the shadow of nuclear-armed North Korea,” the Washington Post’s Kornblut writes. “The Seoul stop was the last on a trip that has notably lacked concrete achievements but has seen Obama's personal narrative on full display, as he reminisced about the ice cream he ate during a childhood visit to Japan, invoked his "historic ties" to Indonesia and recalled his mother's work in the villages of Southeast Asia. After more than a week of using his biography to connect to audiences in Asia -- perhaps the last corner of the globe where he had yet to take his story -- Obama appeared as popular as ever among ordinary citizens in the region. But is his biography-as-diplomacy approach beginning to show its limits?”
“President Barack Obama said Thursday the United States has begun talking with allies about fresh punishment against Iran for defying efforts to halt its nuclear weapons pursuits. Obama's tough talk came as Iran indicated it would not ship its low-enriched uranium to Russia for processing, the centerpiece of deal aimed at a peaceful resolution to Iran's contested nuclear program. ‘They have been unable to get to ‘yes,’ and so as a consequence, we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences,’ Obama said in a brief news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.”
The New York Times: “Mr. Obama’s words were his strongest to date and seemed to signal that he was ready to move to sanctions.”
“Congress approved stimulus funding to jump-start the economy, mostly by creating jobs, but also by paying for existing public services and cutting-edge research. In many cases, the $3.9 billion awarded in Massachusetts is financing precisely such ventures,” the Boston Globe says. “But millions of dollars are going to investments that seem further afield from the stimulus plan’s mission.”
The New York Daily News looks at what it sees as the aging of this president: “President Obama didn't look his age when he took office in January. Ten months later, nobody would mistake him for a kid.”
From NBC's Athena Jones
SEOUL -- President Obama's trip to Asia was a success, so declared White House senior adviser David Axelrod in response to questions about just what has been accomplished during the president's weeklong first foray to the region.
Axelrod argued the president had done what he set out to do -- lay a solid foundation for diplomacy and strengthen relationships, even as he prepared to return to Washington without the kinds of solid takeaways previous presidential trips have generally produced.
"We didn't come halfway across the world for tickertape parades," he told reporters after Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak held a joint press appearance at the Blue House here. "We came here to lay a foundation for progress. We've done that."
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From NBC's Ken Strickland
In what appears to be the administration making a a last-minute push to curry votes for health care, Vice President Joe Biden is up there lobbying as is former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
Interior Secretary
Ken Salazar, a former centrist U.S. Senator has also been spotted in the hallways, but he says he's just up there to see friends and that he's not really lobbying for health care.
But it's worth noting that Salazar is still friends with many of the key moderate senators whose votes will be crucial in defeating a potential Republican filibuster. Salazar said he was going to see his old friend Arkansas
Sen. Mark Pryor (D), for one.
He certainly picked an odd day to go to the Hill just to hang out, especially since Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is hoping for a vote as early as Friday.
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From NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Sue Kroll
Despite Hillary Clinton's recent praise for what she called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's "unprecedented" steps on the controversial issue of settlements, the traveling White House has issued a very tough statement slamming Israel for further expansion of settlements in Arab East Jerusalem.
Issued just now under White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' name, the statement reads:
We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee's decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem. At a time when we are working to re-launch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations. The U.S. also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes. Our position is clear: the status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Tuesday that the Israeli plan to expand the Gilo settlement in East Jerusalem is "dismaying."
According to news reports, Israeli officials set forth a plan on Tuesday to build 900 more housing units in a Jewish neighborhood that had been claimed by Palestinians.
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Here’s the New York Times wrapping up Obama’s day in China: “President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China met in private off Tiananmen Square here on a frigid Tuesday morning to discuss issues like trade, climate change and the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, in a session that signaled the central role of China on the world stage. The leaders told reporters afterward that the United States and China were in agreement on a range of issues, but they spoke only in general terms.”
The Washington Post adds, “A stiff joint appearance by Obama and Hu in the Great Hall of the People overlooking Tiananmen Square crystallized the state of the relationship between the two world powers: increasingly important to both countries, but also curiously bereft of warmth or intimacy.”
The AP looks at Obama's bow -- which is being criticized on the right -- and it finds lots of spin in opponents' criticism: "While it may have been an awkward moment, it wasn't without precedent. And it appeared to be well within protocol guidelines that the State Department issues for foreign service officers working in other countries."
According to Politico, "White House aides say the approach is deliberate – part of Obama’s determination to deliver on his campaign promise of directly engaging friends and enemies alike, giving America a less belligerent posture abroad. 'I think it's very important for the United States not to assume that what is good for us is automatically good for somebody else,' Obama told the students at the town hall, in Shanghai. 'And we have to have some modesty about our attitudes towards other countries.'"
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From NBC's Wendy Jones
Introduced by the First Lady of Colorado (Jeannie Ritter), Michelle Obama addressed a group of young women at a luncheon in Denver, part of the White House initiatve on mentoring.
In her opening remarks, Ritter told her audience that "as young women you also have to be ready to accept that mentoring ... and you have to have done some interior work about what your strengths are."
Obama noted that there were many successful women in the room -- cabinet secretaries, CEOs, a former ambassador, an astronaut. But, she cautioned, "They didn't get to this stage because of some magic." Like her, some came from modest backgrounds. All worked hard.
Said the First Lady: "We've all found someone who told us we were not good enough .... We've all failed, all made mistakes ... but we did not let those mistakes shatter us .... That is what you can learn from the women in this room .... Everything you need to be successful you own."
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From NBC's Mark Murray and Mike Viqueira
Not surprisingly, Republicans are pouncing on the news that the Justice Department plans to bring accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 detainees from Guantanamo Bay to stand trial in federal court in New York.
"These terrorists planned and executed the mass murder of thousands of innocent Americans. Treating them like common criminals is unconscionable," said GOP Sen. John Cornyn. "The attacks of September 11th were an act of war. Reverting to a pre-9/11 approach to fighting terrorism and bringing these dangerous individuals onto U.S. soil needlessly compromises the safety of all Americans."
House Minority Leader John Boehner adds: "The possibility that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators could be found 'not guilty' due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American pause."
And here's Rep. Buck McKeon, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee: "By choosing to prosecute these terrorists in our domestic criminal system, the President has revealed that he views the terrorist attacks on New York City and the nation's capital as a crime-not as an act of war. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts violated the law of war and should be prosecuted in a war tribunal."
*** UPDATE *** The guys at the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo counter, "195 terrorists have been convicted in U.S. federal courts since 2001. The terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 were tried and convicted in U.S. courts and are now locked away in a federal supermax prison. Yet Republicans in Congress will no doubt attack the transfer of these detainees as a threat to Americans."
*** UPDATE 2 *** NBC's Ken Strickland adds that McCain and Jeff Sessions hit Obama:
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The Washington Post on Obama’s day in Japan: “Obama appeared for a short news conference in with newly elected Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, a few hours after arriving in Tokyo for the start of a week-long trip to Asia. The trip will span four countries and is Obama's first to the region as president. During a 90-minute meeting with Hatoyama at the Kantei, the Japanese equivalent of the White House, the two world leaders discussed climate change, Afghanistan and nuclear proliferation. Both leaders exchanged warm praise for one another, embracing the close relationship of the two countries. They minimized their differences, such as the location of a Marine Corps airfield on Okinawa, emphasizing instead their hopes for peace and stability in the region.”
The New York Times: "President Obama, seeking to mend fences with America’s most important Asian ally, agreed on Friday to reopen talks on the contentious issue of the relocation of an American Marine base in Okinawa. The decision to establish what Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama described as a high-level working group represents a concession for the Obama administration, less than a month after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appeared to have shut the door on reopening the issue, which was agreed to in 2006."
More: "American relations with Japan are at their most contentious since the trade wars of the 1990s. Japan’s newly elected Democratic Party has been blunt about seeking a more “equal” relationship with the United States, and Japanese officials say they now intend to focus more on cementing their relationships with other Asian nations."
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From NBC's Chuck Todd
NBC News has learned the long-rumored departure of White House Counsel Greg Craig will likely be made official tomorrow. Craig will be replaced by veteran Democratic Party campaign attorney Bob Bauer. This is the highest-level departure in the Obama White House this year.
In 2008, Bauer served as lead counsel for Obama's campaign.
Bauer is married to outgoing White House communications director Anita Dunn. Among the reasons for Dunn's decision to leave was so that both of them weren't working in the administration at the same time for their own family situation.
Craig has had a rocky tenure, beginning with the politically charged decision to shut down GITMO.
It is not yet known when this change will become official, but it likely will be before the end of the year.
