WASHINGTON – President Obama, drawing immediate condemnation from congressional Republicans, unveiled a new deficit reduction plan Monday anchored by $1.5 trillion in new taxes, including an end to Bush-era rates for upper income earners making $250,000 or more and additional taxes on millionaires.

Keying in on a populist message that millionaires and billionaires should pay more in taxes than their secretaries, the president announced a plan in the Rose Garden that includes more than $2 trillion total in entitlement cuts and tax increases over the next decade.

Together with spending cuts enacted last month and projected savings from interest payments, the savings in the president’s plan total more than $3 trillion. The Obama administration is also adding on another $1 trillion in savings over 10 years from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though that kind of accounting has been dismissed in past debates as a gimmick.

The $4 trillion effort is tied to his American Jobs Act, aimed at putting nearly 14 million unemployed back to work. Critics have stated that targeting job creators — the top 1 percent pays 38 percent of the tax burden, according to 2008 estimates — won’t help the jobless find employment.

House Speaker John Boehner last week warned that tax hikes should be off the table as a newly formed bipartisan committee meets to extract long-term deficit savings.

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President Obama and his closest advisers are pushing back at the notion Obama is a one-term president doomed for defeat in 2012.

Obama’s top political adviser on Friday issued a memo to the Sunday news show producers and other reporters that concludes Obama is in strong shape for another four years in the Oval Office.

The memo from Obama guru David Axelrod noted that the president has strong support from Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the population, and that GOP approval numbers are in the dumps.

Obama himself took aim at the doubts while speaking at a Democratic fundraiser on Thursday night. He insisted his odds of winning reelection are better than what his chances were for winning the White House in 2008.

“Now, I know that, over the last couple of months, there have been Democrats who voiced concerns and nervousness about, well, in this kind of economy, isn’t this just — aren’t these just huge headwinds in terms of your reelection?” Obama said.

Read More at The Hill By Sam Youngman, The Hill

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They kicked her around, victimized her, tried to destroy her. But all of a sudden, the lamestream media is coming to Sarah Palin’s defense.

Faced with a barrage of negative portrayals — a much-hyped investigative book, a Levi Johnston memoir and a new movie — Palin is finding support in the unlikeliest of places.

Film reviewers have slammed the British documentary “Sarah Palin: You Betcha!” Newspapers have refused to run comic-strip excerpts of Joe McGinniss’s rumor-mongering tome “The Rogue.” Johnston’s accusations have been consigned to the gossip pages. And none other than The New York Times has angrily taken Palin’s side in a brutal takedown of the McGinniss book.

Reviewer Janet Maslin called “The Rogue” a work of “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip,” accusing its author, who rented a house next door to the Palins for a time, of sloppiness, attention seeking and a lack of neighborliness.

“‘The Rogue’ is too busy being nasty to be lucid,” Maslin concludes, describing its many accusations as “indefensibly reckless.”

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Read More at Politico  By Molly Ball, Politico

In 2008, reporters gushed about the Obama campaign’s brilliant use of the Internet and social media. In the run-up to 2012, a high-profile effort by the re-election campaign to counter critics has become an online bulletin board for jokes at President Obama’s expense.

Obama for America, the official campaign organization, recently rolled out AttackWatch.com. The website allows visitors to file reports when someone criticizes the president or his policies and purports to provide “the facts” to counter such “smears.” The site’s Twitter feed is attracting plenty of reports, but not necessarily the kind that campaign staff was expecting.

A user identified as Jon G. announced: “There’s a new Twitter account making President Obama look like a creepy, authoritarian nutjob: @AttackWatch.” Another user identifying himself as Matt Cover tweeted, “Someone told me the stimulus didn’t keep unemployment below 8%. That’s not true, is it?”

Another concerned citizen reported, “I saw 6 ATM’s in an alley, killing a job. It looked like a hate crime!” The site’s Twitter page recently featured so many zingers aimed at the president that it was hard to find actual Obama supporters whining about his critics. One tweeter noted that “the GOP won seats in NY and NV . . . I suspect interference by sane people . . . check that out please.” Another said, “Hey kids, are mommy and daddy talking bad about Obama? Be sure to report them at #attackwatch.”

One movie buff referenced the current Obama scandal over a bankrupt solar energy company that received federal loans: “Solyndra Green is people!”

Read More at sroblog.com By James Freeman, The WSJ Political Diary

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It is time for Democrats across the United States to panic, as a Congressional district that has not elected a Republican in almost 90 years handed an easy victory to the GOP candidate. The victor Bob Turner cast his effort as a referendum on President Obama, a chance to send a message to Washington. As the Washington Post put it, “President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke Tuesday when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic district that has not been in GOP hands since the 1920.

In 2010, Anthony Weiner won the district by almost 20 points, while Turner’s margin is 8 points, so a 27% reduction in the Democrat’s vote share has happened. Every Democrat in the House of Representatives and Senate (not mention at the state and local level) has to be doing the mental math, and wondering if they will looking for work as a lobbyist in 2013.

Richard Baehr notes: “Dems outspent the GOP in New York 9 by almost 10 to 1. Not much to show for it. The Republican Jewish Committee spent some money, but the GOP House committee did not. SEIU was out in force yesterday as well as teacher union people. All to no avail. It looks like Turner won the Jewish vote.”

Of course, Democrats are lamely attempting to spin. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chair of the DNC: It’s a very difficult district for Democrats,” said Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, noting its Democratic margins there tend to be the second lowest of all the districts in New York City.

It’s so difficult for Democrats that in a bad year for Democrats (2010), the Democrat only won by 20 points. I would love to hear what DWS hears from her House colleagues who won by less than 20 points in 2010.

Read More at American Thinker By Thomas Lifson, American Thinker

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