The Obama administration has failed to meet more than half of the new health care law's deadlines, from submitting plans for new, value-based Medicare purchasing programs to publishing criteria for determining the medically underserved.

A report requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, indicates that the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies missed 18 of 30 deadlines since the Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010.

In one instance, a National Healthcare Workforce Commission created by the law was appointed but has not been funded and has not submitted two reports that were due on April 1 and Oct. 1.

In another example, the comptroller general didn't submit to Congress a report on seniors' access to vaccines that was due on June 1.

High-powered assault weapons illegally purchased under the ATF's Fast and Furious program in Phoenix ended up in a home belonging to the purported top Sinaloa cartel enforcer in Ciudad Juarez,Mexico, whose organization was terrorizing that city with the worst violence in the Mexican drug wars.

In all, 100 assault weapons acquired under Fast and Furious were transported 350 miles from Phoenix to El Paso, making that West Texas city a central hub for gun traffickers. Forty of the weapons made it across the border and into the arsenal of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a feared cartel leader in Ciudad Juarez, according to federal court records and trace documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The smugglers' tactics — quickly moving the weapons far from ATF agents in southern Arizona, where it had been assumed they would circulate — vividly demonstrate that what had been viewed as a local problem was much larger. Six other Fast and Furious guns destined for El Paso were recovered in Columbus, N.M.

Full coverage: ATF's Fast and Furious scandal

"These Fast and Furious guns were going to Sinaloans, and they are killing everyone down there," said one knowledgeable U.S. government source, who asked for anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. "But that's only how many we know came through Texas. Hundreds more had to get through."

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said in a letter to the Ford Motor Company on Thursday that he was "deeply concerned about undue political pressure exerted by the White House."

The House Oversight Committee chairman's letter comes on the heels of reports earlier this week that the company had pulled an ad critical of the auto bailout following a phone call with administration officials.

First of all, as Michael Barone said today, "Let's cheerfully and ungrudgingly give credit to Barack  Obama for approving the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama  bin Laden."

Why is it so difficult for the Obama White House to get the story straight on what actually went down in Pakistan? Reports have said that he and his team watched the events live, so there shouldn't be such wildly different stories coming from his White House. The timeline below shows what I am referring to.

Read More: http://publicnewsnow.com/politics/item/106226-obama-white-house-and-the-ever-changing-account-of-mission-to-kill-osama-bin-laden-the-world-wants-the-truth

The Obama White House won't be sending a witness to defend the economic-stimulus package before a House Oversight Committee panel Wednesday.

The committee is holding a hearing on the impact of the stimulus package, which President Barack Obama signed almost two years ago. Testimony will come from a lineup of conservative economists, plus Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, who was picked by committee Democrats.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), who is running the hearing, had asked Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer, who played major roles in preparing the package to testify or suggest another witness to represent the White House. Both declined.

New numbers from the Obama Administration came out today regarding unemployment. The Obama Administration reports that unemployment fell from 9.7% to 9.0% with only 36,000 new jobs. How could that be? Let examine the numbers. Just to keep up with population growth 125,000 jobs are needed every month. In the last 3 months job gains have averaged 128,000.

So just where and how does the Obama Administration arrive at the 9.0% number they reported? This is where they are lying to the American people. They didn't include more than 2 million unemployed that have simply given up looking for a job.

Why would they lie about these numbers you ask. Well...historical only one President has been re-elected with an unemployment rate over 8.0% and that was FDR.

You watch, they will keep lowering the unemployment rate using "creative" math all the way up to re-election time.

The San Antonio Congressman who is in line to become chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee is promising 'a number of investigations and oversight committee actions' which he vows will 'hold the administration accountable,' 1200 WOAI news reports.

Veteran Republican Lamar Smith, a Yale graduate and social conservative who grew up in the brush country of south Texas which is now transit point for illegal immigrants and drugs, said in a news conference that a number of issues will come into the sights of his committee when he takes the chairmanship in January, from cracking down on child pornography to taking the Obama Administration to task for failing to do enough to protect the southern border.

The federal bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could nearly double in size during the next three years, according to projections from the companies' federal regulator.

Fannie and Freddie, the federally controlled mortgage finance giants, will need as much as $215 billion more from taxpayers in the next three years to meet their financial obligations, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Thursday, but much of that money would automatically be returned to the government.

The growing taxpayer infusions will cover losses Fannie and Freddie suffer on home loans, as well as payments the companies must make to the U.S. Treasury in exchange for a federal guarantee to provide cash to keep the companies solvent.

It's an interesting debate. Politically, it's awkward to argue that things would have been even worse without the stimulus, even though that's what most nonpartisan economists believe. But the battle over the Recovery Act's short-term rescue has obscured its more enduring mission: a long-term push to change the country. It was about jobs, sure, but also about fighting oil addiction and global warming, transforming health care and education, and building a competitive 21st century economy. Some Republicans have called it an under-the-radar scramble to advance Obama's agenda — and they've got a point.
(See TIME's special report "The Green Design 100.")

Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's effusive Recovery Act point man, "Now the fun stuff starts!" The "fun stuff," about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. "This is a chance to do something big, man!" Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME.

An advocacy group is calling for the ouster of former Sen. Alan Simpson, the co-chairman of President Obama's bipartisan debt commission, who described Social Security as a "milk cow with 310 million tits!" in an email.

Ashley Carson, executive director of the Older Women's League, wrote in a blog post in April that Simpson is targeting Social Security to fix the deficit even though it "doesn't contribute" to the country's debt problem. She also accused Simpson of "disgusting ageism and sexism" in characterizing those who oppose cuts to benefits as "Gray Panthers" and "Pink Panthers."

House Democrats are lashing out at the White House, venting long-suppressed anger over what they see as President Obama's lukewarm efforts to help them win reelection -- and accusing administration officials of undermining the party's chances of retaining the majority in November's midterm elections.

In recent weeks, a widespread belief has taken hold among Democratic House members that they have dutifully gone along with the White House on politically risky issues -- including the stimulus plan, the health-care overhaul and climate change -- without seeing much, if anything, in return. Many of them are angry that Obama has actively campaigned for Democratic Senate candidates but has done fewer events for House members.

The boiling point came Tuesday night during a closed-door meeting of House Democrats in the Capitol. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) excoriated White House press secretary Robert Gibbs's public comments over the weekend that the House majority was in doubt and that it would take "strong campaigns by Democrats" to avert dramatic losses.

"What the hell do they think we've been doing the last 12 months? We're the ones who have been taking the tough votes," Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (N.J.) said in an interview Wednesday.

The imminent passage of financial reform, just a couple months after the passage of comprehensive health care, should decisively end the narrative that President Obama represents a Jimmy Carter-style case of naïve hope crushed by the inability to master Washington.

Yet the mystery remains: Having moved swiftly toward achieving the very policy objectives he promised voters as a candidate, Obama is still widely perceived as flirting with a failed presidency.

Eric Alterman, in a column that drew wide notice, wrote in The Nation that most liberals think the president is a "big disappointment." House Democrats are in near-insurrection after White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stated the obvious — that the party has a chance of losing the House under Obama's watch. And independent voters have turned decisively against the man they helped elect 21 months ago — a trend unlikely to be reversed before November.

The U.S. Department of Justice will conduct an independent review of the Johannes Mehserle case in order to determine whether or not the shooting merits federal prosecution, according the department.

"The Justice Department has been closely monitoring the state's investigation and prosecution," the department said in a statement.

"The Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the FBI have an open investigation into the fatal shooting and, at the conclusion of the state's prosecution, will conduct an independent review of the facts and circumstances to determine whether the evidence warrants federal prosecution."

When signs of a severe economic downfall emerged more than two years ago, then-candidate Barack Obama was quick to point a finger at the man he hoped to replace.

Seventeen months into his administration, the message is often the same, and Republicans say it's time for him to drop the Bush bashing and take ownership of the problem.

"Nothing makes a president look weaker than pointing the finger at past administrations," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. "By blaming somebody, it looks like you are playing politics and people just want jobs. They don't care about whose fault it is. Playing the blame game only boomerangs on yourself."

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term last week after landmark decisions protecting the right to have a gun and the right of corporations to spend freely on elections. But the year's most important moment may have come on the January evening when the justices gathered at the Capitol for President Obama's State of the Union address.

They had no warning about what was coming.

Obama and his advisors had weighed how to respond to the court's ruling the week before, which gave corporations the same free-spending rights as ordinary Americans. They saw the ruling as a rash, radical move to tilt the political system toward big business as they coped with the fallout from the Wall Street collapse.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose agency is charged with securing America's borders, told an audience in Washington, D.C., in reference to the U.S.-Mexico border, "You're never going to totally seal that border."

Napolitano spoke and answered questions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on "Securing the Border: A Smarter Law Enforcement Approach," on Wednesday.

When asked if she could give a timeline on when the border would be secured, Napolitano said, "The plain fact of the matter is the border is as secure now as it has ever been, but we know we can always do more. And that will always be the case.

Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession."

Appearing at a fundraiser with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) in Milwaukee, the vice president remarked that by the time he and President Obama took office in 2008, the gross domestic product had shrunk and hundreds of thousands of jobs had been lost.

White House budget director Peter Orszag plans to leave government in July, becoming the first member of President Barack Obama's Cabinet to depart, administration officials said Monday. Orszag is likely to join a think tank, colleagues said.

Presidential advisers say a possible successor as director of the Office of Management and Budget is Rob Nabors, who was Orszag's deputy and went over to the Chief of Staff's office to be a senior adviser to Rahm Emanuel. Nabors now he attends the 7:30 a.m. senior staff meeting and insiders say his stock never dropped, but only gained in value.

"How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.

Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.

"I would bet he will go after the midterms," said a leading Democratic consultant in Washington. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."

The White House kicked off a "recovery summer" public relations blitz yesterday to promote the alleged benefits of stimulus spending. The mood of self-congratulation was interrupted by a Labor Department report that found initial jobless claims for the week climbed by 12,000. A Conference Board survey showed the average wait in unemployment lines increased from 30 weeks at the start of the year to 34.4 weeks in May. It won't be a summer of love in those households.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was enthusiastic, declaring the stimulus "an absolute success" on Wednesday. Before he and the president begin their victory lap, however, they should take a closer look at the numbers. The current recovery has been one of the worst for job creation on record. Private sector hiring has virtually ground to a halt, and the administration was embarrassed last month when it was reported that 90 percent of the jobs created in May turned out to be short-term Census Bureau hires - and even those numbers appear to be exaggerated.

Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration, which labored for months to impose tough new United Nations sanctions against Iran, now is pushing in the opposite direction against Congress as it crafts U.S. sanctions that the White House fears may go too far.

Administration officials have begun negotiations with congressional leaders, who are working on versions of House and Senate bills that would punish companies that sell refined petroleum products to Iran or help the country's oil industry.

Unlike the U.N. measures, congressional action would pertain only to U.S. policies and agencies and would not be binding on other countries. Other countries and groups of nations also are considering adopting measures to augment the U.N. action.

The Obama administration dangled the possibility of a government job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forgo a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, officials said Wednesday, just days after the White House admitted orchestrating a job offer in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

These officials declined to specify the job that was floated or the name of the administration official who approached Romanoff, and said no formal offer was ever made. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not cleared to discuss private conversations.

"Mr. Romanoff was recommended to the White House from Democrats in Colorado for a position in the administration," White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said. "There were some initial conversations with him but no job was ever offered."

A leaked partial document produced by the Bureau of Land Management and obtained by Fox News suggests the Obama administration is considering a plan to lock up 13 million acres of land -- and the Department of Interior is refusing to answer questions.

First, a little background: The federal government owns about one-third of the land in the United States -- most of it in western states. For example, 84 percent of Nevada is owned by Uncle Sam.

The Obama administration in a brief to the Supreme Court has backed the Vatican's claim of immunity from lawsuits arising from cases of sexual abuse by priests in the United States.
The Supreme Court is considering an appeal by the Vatican of an appellate court ruling that lifted its immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest from Oregon.

In a filing on Friday, the solicitor general's office argued that the Ninth Circuit court of appeals erred in allowing the lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was sexually abused in the 1960s by the Oregon priest.

President Barack Obama's plan to send as many as 1,200 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border appears to be a scaled-down version of the border security approach championed by his predecessor.

The 6,000 troops who were sent by President George W. Bush to the border from June 2006 to July 2008 were generally credited within law enforcement circles as having helped improve border security, but restrictions placed on the soldiers were denounced by advocates for tougher enforcement who are now leveling similar objections at Obama's plan.

Some law enforcement officials along the border said they worry that Obama will repeat Bush's mistake by limiting the troops to support roles, such as conducting surveillance and installing lighting, rather than letting them make arrests and confront smugglers. They also believe the scale of the force - one-fifth of the size of the one sent by Bush - is too small to make a difference along the length of the 2,000-mile border.

America's National Debt tops $13,000,000,000,000 - Debt Per Taxpayer $117,975 - US Debt to GDP Ratio - 90.3%

Under intense pressure from the Obama administration, the chief executive of BP Plc (BP.L) said he expects to decide later on Wednesday whether to proceed with a tricky "top kill" procedure to try to contain leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The massive oil leak is threatening an ecological and economic disaster along the U.S. Gulf coast.

"Later this morning I will review that with the team, and I will take a final decision as to whether or not we should proceed," BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward told the NBC "Today" show on Wednesday.

Staff members at an agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography, according to an Interior Department report alleging a culture of cronyism between regulators and the industry.

In at least one case, an inspector for the Minerals Management Service admitted using crystal methamphetamine and said he might have been under the influence of the drug the next day at work, according to the report by the acting inspector general of the Interior Department.

Did a series of tweets may have put Chicago chef Rick Bayless in hot water with the White House?

Bayless is in Washington, D.C. to prepare Wednesday night's State Dinner to honor Mexican President Felipe Calderon. The top chef was so excited about the trip he started tweeting about it Monday.

But the chef's tweets abruptly stopped Tuesday after the White House reportedly put the kibosh on the news blasts, according to the Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet. Sweet has since updated her story to reflect comments made by Bayless, saying he didn't tweet from inside the White House.

There was some rich irony at the White House today -- President Obama signed the Press Freedom Act, and then promptly refused to take any questions.

The new law expands the State Department's annual human rights reports to include a description of press freedoms in each country. It seemed a good opportunity to showcase press freedom in this country.

Recall that last Friday the president refused to take any questions after delivering his angry statement on the oil spill in the Rose Garden. And he has not held a prime-time White House news conference in many months, despite much pleading from pundits and members of the media.

It was more than twice the $40-billion deficit that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast and was striking since April marks the filing deadline for individual income taxes that are the main source of government revenue.

Department officials said that in prior years, there was a surplus during April in 43 out of the past 56 years.

The government has now posted 19 consecutive monthly budget deficits, the longest string of shortfalls on record.

For the first seven months of fiscal 2010, which ends September 30, the cumulative budget deficit totals $799.68 billion, down slightly from $802.3 billion in the comparable period of fiscal 2009.

Outlays during April rose to $327.96 billion from $218.75 billion in March and were up from $287.11 billion in April 2009. It was a record level of outlays for an April.

The failed car bombing in Times Square increasingly appears to have been coordinated by more than one person in a plot with international links, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.

The disclosure, while tentative, came as the White House intensified its focus on the Saturday incident in New York City, in which explosives inside a Nissan Pathfinder were set ablaze but failed to detonate at the tourist-crowded corner of Broadway and 45th Street.

Emerging from a series of briefings, several officials said it was premature to rule out any motive but said the sweeping, multi-state investigation was turning up new clues.

Separately, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also characterized the incident for the first time as an attempted act of terrorism. "I would say that was intended to terrorize, and I would say that whomever did that would be categorized as a terrorist," Gibbs said, sharpening the administration's tone.

What does "everything" mean when President Obama's debt commission tackles the nation's $14 trillion debt?

It could mean Obama's prized health care law.

The commission's co-chairs, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, told Fox after at a meeting today at the White House that Obama's newly minted health care law is not a sacred cow and must be scrutinized for future cost savings.

"When you talk about the health care problem in this country and you talk about trying to solve that over a six-month period," Bowles said, referring to the commission's Dec. 1 deadline. "You watched these guys (the White House) struggle for two years. We've gotta bend that cost curve if we're really gonna be able to ever get the fiscal situation fixed in this country."

Asked if he agreed, Simpson said: "America's new health care plan will be on the table."

The Obama administration said Tuesday it would provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents.

After days of negotiations, the Pentagon and Justice Department informed a Senate committee that they would not comply with congressional subpoenas to share investigative records from the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., which killed 13 people. The agencies said that divulging the material could jeopardize their prosecution of Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the accused gunman.

The Pentagon did budge in other areas, however, saying it had agreed to give the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs access to Hasan's personnel file, as well as part of an Army report that scrutinized why superiors failed to intervene in Hasan's career as an Army psychiatrist, despite signs of his religious radicalization and shortcomings as a soldier.

Two top senators served the Obama administration Monday with subpoenas for information on the mass shooting at Fort Hood last November, claiming the administration's stonewalling left them with no other choice.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine -- respectively, the chairman and the ranking Republican on the Senate homeland security committee -- notified Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates of the decision in a letter Monday.

They said the committee had sent four formal requests for information to the Pentagon and two to the Justice Department, and received little response.

"Our efforts have been met with delay, the production of little that was not already publicly available, and shifting reasons why the departments are withholding the documents and witnesses that we have requested," they wrote. "Unfortunately, it is impossible for us to avoid reaching the conclusion that the departments simply do not want to cooperate with our investigation."

The President of the United States tomorrow will inform the Congress on the State of our Union, as he is constitutionally mandated to do. The past 12 months have seen our country head down a dangerous course, and The Heritage Foundation can only hope that the President will use this time of reflection, coming on the heels of a stunning electoral loss, to change direction.

You must recognize, Mr. President, that the State of the Union is not good. You need a new approach and fresh domestic and foreign policies. The caps on spending which reports last night said you were considering are but an exceedingly modest first step, and the devil is in the details. The caps will do virtually nothing to improve the nation's fiscal health unless you tackle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Shifting tactics and stoking populism will be both cynical and condescending to the voters, who will see through this strategy. Mr. President, it's the policies you need to change, not the spin.

The economy is projected to add jobs this year at a pace too sluggish to make much of a dent in unemployment, according to a new White House forecast that suggests President Obama's advisers expect the jobless problem to be a fact of life throughout his term.

With the release of the annual Economic Report of the President, the Obama administration laid out a sweeping economic agenda that includes overhauling health care, restructuring financial regulation and dealing with long-term budget deficits. But the backdrop for all those initiatives is an economy that, if the administration's forecast is correct, will be functioning well below its potential for years to come.

The nation will add an average of 95,000 jobs a month this year, according to the forecast, a bit below the number that economists think needs to be generated just to keep up with population growth. The unemployment rate is projected to come down quite slowly after that, averaging 8.2 percent in 2012, when Obama will be up for reelection.

In February, the number of unemployed persons, at 14.9 million, was essen-
tially unchanged, and the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent. (See
table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.0 per-
cent), adult women (8.0 percent), whites (8.8 percent), blacks (15.8 percent),
Hispanics (12.4 percent), and teenagers (25.0 percent) showed little to no
change in February. The jobless rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not season-
ally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was
6.1 million in February and has been about that level since December. About 4
in 10 unemployed persons have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. (See
table A-12.)

The nascent US recovery could falter because businesses are still reluctant to invest in new equipment and technology, the head of global delivery and logistics company FedEx has warned.

"Business investment went up somewhat in the fourth quarter but is far below what it ought to be in a cyclical recovery like this," Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive of FedEx, told the Financial Times.

EDITOR'S CHOICE
FedEx exceeds profit expectations - Dec-08FedEx bullish on delivery demand - Sep-17Stable fuel prices strengthen FedEx results - Sep-17FedEx swings to fourth-quarter loss - Jun-17FedEx hits at UPS on union bill - Jun-08Lex: UPS versus FedEx - Mar-25He added that companies were being held back by continuing "uncertainty" over the outlook.

During the downturn many companies, including FedEx, cut their capital expenditures in response to falling demand, moves that in turn intensified the drop-off in economic activity. The levels have yet to recover.

The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year's record for the full year.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year.

The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago.

The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year's $1.4 trillion total. The administration is forecasting that the deficit will remain above $1 trillion in 2011, giving the country thrree straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits.

The administration says the huge deficits are necessary to get the country out of the deepest recession since the 1930s. But Republicans have attacked the stimulus spending as wasteful and a failure at the primary objective of lowering unemployment.

Although the overall health care reform bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate are unpopular, many of the provisions in the existing bills are extremely popular, even among Republicans, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday also indicates that only a quarter of the public want Congress to stop all work on health care, with nearly three quarters saying lawmakers should pass some kind of reform.

Full results [PDF]

Twenty-five percent of people questioned in the poll say Congress should pass legislation similar to the bills passed by both chambers, with 48 percent saying lawmakers should work on an entirely new bill and a quarter saying Congress should stop all work on health care reform.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Tuesday the U.S. economic recovery was "extremely unbalanced," driven largely by high earners benefiting from recovering stock markets and large corporations.

Small businesses and the jobless are still suffering from the aftermath of a credit crunch that was "by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever" -- including the 1930s Great Depression, said Greenspan in an address to a Credit Union National Association conference.

"It's really an extraordinarily unbalanced system because we're dealing with small businesses who are doing badly, small banks in trouble, and of course there is an extraordinarily large proportion of the unemployed in this country who have been out of work for more than six months and many more than a year," said Greenspan, who headed the Fed from 1987 to 2006.

With both housing starts and auto sales "dead in the water," he said he thought it would be difficult to make the case that the economy is poised for a strong rebound.

Democratic governors said Sunday they worry about President Barack Obama's track record on fighting Republican political attacks and urged him to better connect with anxious voters. Some allies pleaded for a new election-year strategy focused on the economy.

"It's got to be better thought out," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said. "It's got to be more proactive." And, he said, Democrats must hit back just as hard as they are hit by Republicans.

Eight months before the first midterm elections of Obama's presidency, most Americans are frustrated with - even angered by - persistent unemployment and gridlock in Washington. Democrats fear voters will punish the party in power.

The titular head of his party, Obama has watched his own popularity drop over the past year. He will bear at least some responsibility for the outcome in November, and Democrats are looking to him for political fixes.

Yes, that is a quote from President Obama's Chief of Staff. Apparently Mr. Emanuel was expressing his frustration during a closed-door strategy session last summer. As Mrs. Palin said in her Facebook post, "Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session".

I think the American public demands more from our elected officials and their appointments. I know I do.

In a Facebook post, Sarah Palin calls on President Obama to fire Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for reportedly describing the strategy of Senate liberals as "@!$%#ing retarded."

"Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm's recent sick and offensive tactic."

A spurned mistress took spectacular revenge on her ex-lover by plastering three cities with compromising billboard posters.
YaVaughnie Wilkins, 41, selected images of herself with high-flying businessman Charles E. Phillips, who is an adviser to Barack Obama, after he returned to his wife, Karen.

She paid around £30,000 for each of the posters - three in New York, one in Atlanta and one in San Francisco - where Wilkins lives and his technology company Oracle is based.

A YOUNG mum died after a series of blunders by doctors who failed to spot a six-inch long TOILET BRUSH HANDLE embedded in her buttock, an inquest was told today.
Cindy Corton, 35, was left with the bizarre injury after a drunken fall in a friend's bathroom in 2005 but "serious errors" by doctors then led to her death.

It was two years before Cindy, who was in constant pain, was able to convince doctors that the thin serrated plastic handle was stuck in the flesh of her bottom.

By then what should have been a routine procedure to remove it had become much more dangerous because the handle had become embedded in her pelvis.

Larry Summers - Top Economic Adviser says "'Of Course' Recession Isn't Over"

During my "This Week" interview, Summers said that "everybody agrees that the recession is over," but he did not say when the unemployment rate could be expected to drop further.

The unemployment rate dipped last month to 10 percent from a peak of 10.2 percent. Many private economists, like Moody's Mark Zandi, predict unemployment will climb through the third quarter of next year to 10.6 percent.

President Barack Obama will meet with Senate Democrats at the White House Tuesday to press for action at a make-or-break moment for his health care overhaul.

All 60 members of the Democratic caucus have been invited, according to three Democratic officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not yet public

When Edmunds.com released its report on the Cash-for-Clunkers program on Wednesday, saying it cost $24,000 for each vehicle that wouldn't otherwise have been sold, it must have expected pushback.

It may not have anticipated, however, a sharp retort from the highest office in the land: the White House. But that's what it got yesterday, via a pithy entry on the White House blog calling the Edmunds analysis "implausible" and "faulty".

It not only refuted Edmunds' contentions by citing a report from the Council of Economic Advisors, but accused Edmunds of releasing sensational Clunkers analyses solely to draw media attention.

The White House made two points: First, Clunkers credits drew additional shoppers to showrooms, some of whom bought cars even without rebates and, second, that the U.S. economy will benefit in the fourth quarter as automakers increase spending to rebuild depleted inventories.

Democrats are still struggling to find a strategy that will let them push a health care overhaul through the Senate and fulfill President Barack Obama's goal of signing a bill this year.

A day after Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Democratic bill would include the option of a government insurance plan, moderates in his own party lost no time Tuesday in voicing their displeasure. Reid, D-Nev., needs every Democrat to break the filibusters Republicans are vowing to mount. But some of the moderates refuse to say whether they'll stick with their leader on procedural votes, let alone those on the merits of the bill.

"We are a long way from reaching conclusion," said Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he'd back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.

"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. "To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don't think we need it now."

GMAC, the financial lifeline for General Motors Co., Chrysler Group LLC and their dealer networks, is asking the U.S. Treasury for more federal aid beyond the $12.5 billion it's already received, because it remains billions of dollars short of a capital reserve requirement all bank holding companies must meet.

The request, which is subject to ongoing negotiations, comes as GMAC is caught in a financial game of chicken with Chrysler Financial that could drive some large Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge dealers out of business or force them to sell their operations.

Valerie Jarrett tells CNN's Campbell Brown that Fox News is biased but ducks the MSNBC question.

During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents obtained by The Washington Times.

Republicans called for an investigation into allegations that President Barack Obama gave top donors special access to the White House on Wednesday.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) demanded an investigation into a report published in The Washington Times that top donors to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had been rewarded with access to privileged White House tours, behind-the-scenes briefings and other perks.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele said that the White House had effectively become a "full-service resort" during Obama's tenure, likening the alleged access to the benefits former President Bill Clinton had offered to some friends and top donors during his time in office.

"The seriousness of this issue requires an immediate investigation looking into the degree and details of fundraising efforts between the White House and DNC, whether there was any quid pro quo offered to donors, and the names of White House officials who were involved in such activities," Steele said Wednesday in a statement.

Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) spoke against net neutrality regulations today at an event put on by the Safe Internet Alliance. Representing the songwriters, singers, actors, producers and other entertainers in Memphis and Nashville, she said the creative community does not want the federal government to interfere with how they are able to get content to consumers via the Internet.

"Net neutrality, as I see it, is the fairness doctrine for the Internet," she said. The creators "fully understand what the fairness doctrine would be when it applies to TV or radio. What they do not want is the federal government policing how they deploy their content over the Internet and they want the ISPs to manage their networks and deploy the content however they have agreed on with ISP. They do not want a czar of the Internet to determine when they can deploy their creativity over the Internet. "They do not want a czar to determine what speeds will be available....We are watching the FCC very closely as it relates to that issue."

Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

As CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports, students said what happened Wednesday is typical of what happens every day. Students from Altgeld Gardens got into a fight with students who live in the area surrounding the high school, an area known as "The Ville."

Students and other Far South Side residents were protesting Wednesday outside the mayor's office on the fifth floor of City Hall and at Altgeld gardens.

They were trying to add their voices to what Holder and Duncan called a national conversation on student violence.

Altgeld Gardens resident Tommie McCoy said Holder and Duncan should have visited Fenger and Altgeld Gardens, not just met with Mayor Richard M. Daley and other local officials in downtown Chicago.

"I think they should have come out this way instead of downtown because this is where it's happening at out here," McCoy said.

WASHINGTON — The government handed out stimulus money far more slowly this summer than it had in the first weeks after the massive economic recovery plan started, even though President Obama and other members of his administration had vowed to hasten that aid.

Facing criticism from some economists that the stimulus was not moving quickly enough, Obama told his Cabinet in June that he was "not satisfied" with the speed with the government distributing more than $500 billion, and that his administration was "in a position to really accelerate."

But in the months that followed, even though more construction projects began, the pace of new spending dropped.

In the 101 days after Obama signed the stimulus package in mid-February, the government allocated an average of more than $1.3 billion a day to new grants and projects. Since then, that pace has fallen to an average of about $1 billion a day, a drop of about 25%, according to federal agencies' financial reports, current through Sept. 4.

"My only caution would be that before we report things like this, checking would be good," Gibbs said.

Later, Gibbs and CNN's Elaine Quijano had a heated exchanged during a gaggle with reporters, where the press secretary said it was "a little hard to divorce the media coverage" from her questions. Gibbs said his criticism wasn't of her, "just writ large at CNN."

Just who does Gibbs think he is?