O circo do Tea Party devidamente tratado nos «late night shows» americanos

John Murtha, congressista democrata da Pensilvânia durante quase quatro décadas, morreu aos 77 anos

«Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania powerhouse for 36 years in Congress and an early ally for Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her rise to the top of the House, died Monday afternoon due to complications from recent surgery.


An announcement from his office said Murtha died at 1:18 p.m. at the Virginia Hospital Center, where he had been admitted last week after having his gallbladder removed at Bethesda Naval Hospital.


A Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, the 77-year-old Democrat won national fame for standing up against U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But in Congress itself, he also symbolized an old school generation going back to Tip O’Neill and the Democratic heyday of the '70s, when the House was less divided by partisan ideology than by often regional interests.


With his military credentials and conservative western Pennsylvania district, Murtha moved easily in this world. It was his house within the House, and he was forever “Captain Jack” and the mayor of “Murtha’s Corner.” But behind the rough talk, vote-swapping and pork barrel politics was a restless intellect, a shrewd man who read history and went home early to monitor BBC broadcasts when he wanted a different slant on American wars overseas.


He loved birdhouses, fretted about his roses and bet early on Pelosi to become the first woman speaker in the history of the House. And when the time came, he stepped out of the back room as no one else could to forcefully challenge the war on Iraq in 2005 and become a folk hero to anti-war liberals who had previously dismissed him as déclassé. ?


In going public, Murtha paid a heavy political price. Republicans, who had all but ignored his district before, poured millions into campaigns to unseat him after he came out against the war. Internet sites were devoted to attacks on Murtha. Direct mail specialists with ties to Karl Rove at the Bush White House targeted the Democrat. ??


Murtha was unprepared for the exposure. He had rarely been on television, and his blunt backroom style invited ridicule. Reporters began looking for scandal behind the millions of dollars in home-state projects in his annual defense bill.


Rather than lie low, Murtha made himself a target further with public comments in the spring of 2006 pressuring the Marine command to investigate allegations of civilian casualties at Haditha. This infuriated many Marines, and critics argued that the congressman had become more partisan himself out of loyalty to Pelosi.


In fact, Murtha, a regular visitor to the wounded at Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals, personally feared the strain on the military. He had been deeply affected in 2004 by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which involved units from western Pennsylvania. And his relations with the younger President Bush were in stark contrast with what he experienced with Bush’s father during the first Persian Gulf War, when Murtha worked closely with the White House and then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.


Over time, he and Cheney became more alienated, and one of the most telling stories of this period was Murtha’s 2005 behind-the-scenes role in saving an anti-torture amendment, bitterly opposed by the vice president and sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

McCain had publicly proclaimed that the amendment, attached to the annual defense appropriations bill, would be killed by House-Senate negotiators because of their anger against him, a frequent critic of pork barrel spending. In fact, just the opposite happened, and Murtha — together with Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) — kept the language intact over the objections of Republican House members and Cheney.


Staff would laugh that each time the subject came up in the closed-door meetings in late 2005, Murtha and others would have to vent first on how irritating they found McCain. But his bottom line was that he believed in the amendment and that it was staying.


Elected in a special election in February 1974, Murtha was the first of the "Watergate babies" of that year — but a very different breed than the younger reformers. ??He established himself early on the House Appropriations Committee, befriending old bulls like the late Chairman Jamie Whitten (D-Miss.).


But Murtha paid a heavy price when he was drawn into the 1980 Abscam FBI sting operation — for which he was never prosecuted but severely embarrassed when a videotape surfaced of his exchange with a purported sheik. ??


He could be immensely useful to O’Neill but also a rambunctious irritant. “Mr. Murtha is very good at solving problems, some of his own making,” an O’Neill aide once commented. And presidents took notice. Murtha worked closely with Ronald Reagan and later with the first President Bush. He was a golfing partner for Bill Clinton, who came back to his district last year to help save him with a major rally in Johnstown.


He was very respectful of President Barack Obama but never had the same relationship with this White House as with the Clintons. He had supported Hillary Rodham Clinton in the highly contested Pennsylvania Democratic primary in 2008, and though personally close to the president’s National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones, Murtha and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief-of-staff, viewed one another warily.


One relationship that spanned much of this was with now Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who first knew Murtha while in the CIA in the '80ss.


“I've known Jack and worked with him for more than two decades,” Gates said in a statement from Paris, where he was traveling Monday. “In our dealings over the years, Jack and I did not always agree, but I always respected his candor.”


Murtha was strict about decorum. Military officers coming from the Pentagon were expected to be in dress uniforms; a long-time aide remembers wearing a tie the first time they met on the way to playing golf. At the same time, he preferred to meet with Gates alone, one on one. And he saw all the humor in the pretensions of Congress such as when a science coalition, grateful for his funding, put his picture on a faux box of Wheaties.


He was very much a soldier’s soldier, checking boots when he visited base camps. And his biggest legacy on the Appropriations Committee may be the huge investments he oversaw in military health programs and the attention he demanded for brain and post traumatic stress injuries.


Murtha kept in his office a dark-blue wool Union Army cap worn by his mother’s grandfather Abraham, who lost an arm in the Civil War. But the greater influence was Abraham’s widow, Mary, who lived into her 90s next door and famously told the future congressman, “You are on this earth to make a difference.”

McCain had publicly proclaimed that the amendment, attached to the annual defense appropriations bill, would be killed by House-Senate negotiators because of their anger against him, a frequent critic of pork barrel spending. In fact, just the opposite happened, and Murtha — together with Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) — kept the language intact over the objections of Republican House members and Cheney.


Staff would laugh that each time the subject came up in the closed-door meetings in late 2005, Murtha and others would have to vent first on how irritating they found McCain. But his bottom line was that he believed in the amendment and that it was staying.


Elected in a special election in February 1974, Murtha was the first of the "Watergate babies" of that year — but a very different breed than the younger reformers. ??He established himself early on the House Appropriations Committee, befriending old bulls like the late Chairman Jamie Whitten (D-Miss.).


But Murtha paid a heavy price when he was drawn into the 1980 Abscam FBI sting operation — for which he was never prosecuted but severely embarrassed when a videotape surfaced of his exchange with a purported sheik. ??


He could be immensely useful to O’Neill but also a rambunctious irritant. “Mr. Murtha is very good at solving problems, some of his own making,” an O’Neill aide once commented. And presidents took notice. Murtha worked closely with Ronald Reagan and later with the first President Bush. He was a golfing partner for Bill Clinton, who came back to his district last year to help save him with a major rally in Johnstown.


He was very respectful of President Barack Obama but never had the same relationship with this White House as with the Clintons. He had supported Hillary Rodham Clinton in the highly contested Pennsylvania Democratic primary in 2008, and though personally close to the president’s National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones, Murtha and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief-of-staff, viewed one another warily.


One relationship that spanned much of this was with now Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who first knew Murtha while in the CIA in the '80ss.


“I've known Jack and worked with him for more than two decades,” Gates said in a statement from Paris, where he was traveling Monday. “In our dealings over the years, Jack and I did not always agree, but I always respected his candor.”


Murtha was strict about decorum. Military officers coming from the Pentagon were expected to be in dress uniforms; a long-time aide remembers wearing a tie the first time they met on the way to playing golf. At the same time, he preferred to meet with Gates alone, one on one. And he saw all the humor in the pretensions of Congress such as when a science coalition, grateful for his funding, put his picture on a faux box of Wheaties.


He was very much a soldier’s soldier, checking boots when he visited base camps. And his biggest legacy on the Appropriations Committee may be the huge investments he oversaw in military health programs and the attention he demanded for brain and post traumatic stress injuries.


Murtha kept in his office a dark-blue wool Union Army cap worn by his mother’s grandfather Abraham, who lost an arm in the Civil War. But the greater influence was Abraham’s widow, Mary, who lived into her 90s next door and famously told the future congressman, “You are on this earth to make a difference.”»

in POLITICO.com

Hillary Clinton: «A Al Qaeda é a maior ameaça aos EUA»

Mensagem semanal: criar emprego incentivando o 'small business'

Barómetro: ligeira recuperação de Obama

Depois da queda livre do último mês, Barack Obama voltou, pelo menos, a respirar um pouco à superfície, atingindo os 50 por cento de aprovação nas sondagens da IPSOS/McClatchy, NBC/Wall Street Journal e CBS.

Na CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, está no limiar desse valor mínimo, ao obter 49% de aprovação.

A queda livre parece ter parado, mas são números ainda muito insuficientes para quem tem que começar a pensar no caminho da reeleição.

Estejamos, então, atentos a próximos indicadores...

Insistir no 'jobs, jobs, jobs' no New Hampshire

Michelle no 'TodayShow': «A minha missão é ajudar»

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Em entrevista a Matt Lauer, a Primeira Dama dos EUA reforçou a imagem que deixou no primeiro ano de administração: ser discreta, mas presente. «O que as pessoas viram de mim neste primeiro ano é exactamente o que eu sou. É a verdadeira Michelle».

A próxima batalha com o Congresso

Christina Romer, chefe da equipa de assessores económicos do Presidente; Tim Geithner, secretário do Tesouro; Peter Orszag, director do Orçamento e Larry Summers, conselheiro económico nacional, ladeiam Barack Obama: a aprovação de um orçamento que agrava o monstruoso défice externo americano é a batalha que se segue para a Administração Obama

A mensagem de Obama sobre o seu orçamento

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/budget/03_Presidents_Message.pdf

Obama apresenta orçamento de 3,8 biliões de dólares

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tempo de refazer pontes: Obama respondeu aos congressistas republicanos

John Edwards e Elizabeth Anania separam-se

Fonte próxima do ex-candidato presidencial em 2004 e 2008 já confirmou a informação aos 'media' americanos: John e Elizabeth vão separar-se, na sequência do caso extraconjugal mantido por John com a realizadora Rielle Hunter, que trabalhou na sua campanha, e do qual resultou um filho cuja paternidade John desmentiu, durante um longo período de tempo.

É mais um capítulo da história da queda em desgraça de John Edwards -- que em 2004 muitos acreditaram poder vir a ser o novo JFK. Na política americana, John é 'finito'.

Tempestade perfeita

Texto publicado na rubrica «Histórias da Casa Branca», do site de A Bola, secção Outros Mundos:


«E, subitamente, parece ter-se gerado uma «tempestade perfeita» na Administração Obama. A perda da supermaioria no Senado, depois da incrível derrota de Martha Coakley no Massachussets, transformou os últimos dias numa espécie de pesadelo para o Presidente.

O que se passou no Massachussets foi mais uma prova de que, na política americana, nunca se deve festejar antes do tempo. Vicky Kennedy, viúva de Ted, tinha avisado, a poucos dias da votação: «Este não é o lugar dos Kennedy: é o lugar do povo. Teremos que o merecer.» A campanha eficaz do republicano Scott Brown fez o resto.

É certo que os democratas ainda têm uma enorme maioria na câmara de elite. Como lembrou Paul Begala, estratega democrata e antigo conselheiro de Bill Clinton, «convém não esquecer que o Partido Democrata passou da melhor situação de sempre para a segunda melhor situação de sempre no Senado».

O problema é que, na política americana, o lado simbólico tem muita importância. Sem a capacidade de travar um 'filibuster' (minoria de bloqueio) republicano, a bola deixou de estar do lado dos democratas – e temas mais fracturantes, como a Reforma da Saúde, correm o risco de ficar na gaveta.

Nancy Pelosi, ‘speaker’ do Congresso, passou os últimos dias a tentar refazer as condições políticas para que uma versão mais modesta da Reforma da Saúde ainda possa ser aprovada – mas há quem garanta que a derrota do Massachussets transformou esse sonho dos liberais num caminho sem saída.

Jobs, jobs, jobs
O tom e o conteúdo do primeiro discurso sobre o Estado da União foram um reflexo de que Obama procura encontrar uma nova estratégia para a sua Presidência.

A insistência na tecla da criação de emprego ('jobs, jobs, jobs') é reveladora: será essa a prioridade no segundo ano de mandato.

Barack acenou aos independentes, que depois de o terem apoiado na eleição presidencial estão a abandoná-lo mais rapidamente do que se esperava. O «spending freeze» é um piscar de olho aos centristas que se preocupam com os gastos excessivos, mas, ao mesmo tempo, Obama tenta recuperar o entusiasmo de sectores progressitas, ao falar da «melhoria das condições da classe média».

Horas antes do seu discurso no Capitólio, Obama reforçava, em entrevista à ABC, a sua visão crítica sobre a rapidez com que os estados de espírito mudam em Washington: «Quando estás em queda nas sondagens, és um idiota. Quando estás em alta, és um génio. É assim que os ‘media’ e os ‘pundits’ funcionam na América. Há uma tendência em Washington para achar que a função de um Presidente a cumprir um primeiro mandato é trabalhar para a reeleição. Mas eu não fui eleito para procurar a reeleição. Fui eleito para melhorar a vida dos americanos».

A Administração Obama passa, indiscutivelmente, por um mau bocado. Mas o percurso político do Presidente desaconselharia a que se fizessem já apostas sobre o seu falhanço.»

Estado da União (V): 78 por cento de opiniões positivas ao discurso de Obama

MUITO POSITIVAS: 48%

LIGEIRAMENTE POSITIVAS: 30%

LIGEIRAMENTE NEGATIVAS: 15%

MUITO NEGATIVAS: 6%

(sondagem CNN/Opinion Research Corporation)

Estado da União (IV): recuperar apoios dos segmentos descontentes

Um artigo de John Harris, no Politico.com:

«President Barack Obama on Wednesday night tacked to the right with appeals for tax cuts for small business and new investments in off-shore oil drilling and nuclear power. He tacked to the left with renewed vows to let gays serve in the military and to get U.S. troops out of Iraq.


He sounded at times like a Bill Clinton-style centrist, at others like a bank-bashing populist. He taunted Republicans, and also presented himself as a lonely tribune of cooperation and bipartisan civility in Washington.


In a favorable light, his State of the Union speech may have revealed the mind of a leader who has never cared much about traditional ideological categories and is determined to create his own results-oriented composite of ideas from across the spectrum.


Less charitably, the address could be interpreted as the work of a president who is desperately improvising by touching every political erogenous zone he and his advisers can think of.


Under either judgment, however, it was inescapable that his 69-minute speech — for all the rush of words and policy ideas — was a document of downsized ambitions for a downsized moment in his presidency.


It was presented to the Congress and a national audience with all of Obama’s usual fluency and brio. There were flashes of wit, as when he noted ruefully that “by now, it should be fairly obvious that I didn't take on health care because it was good politics.”


And there were flashes of defiance, with Obama delivering what the White House clearly intended to be the headline quote: “We don’t quit; I don’t quit.”


But there was no mistaking throughout this box-checking, loosely bundled speech how different the political context in the winter of 2010 is from the winter of 2009.


Obama came into office promising to shatter expectations of what was possible in Washington. The talk then was of a presidential “big bang” — health care, global warming, and financial reform legislation all in one year — and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel boasted that his motto was to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.”


With the big-bang strategy officially a failure, Obama’s speech revealed in real-time a president groping for a new and more effective one. The speech was woven with frequent acknowledgements that the laws of political gravity applied to him after all.


The first and most pressing legislative goals he identified were a comparatively small jobs bill that has passed the House but is languishing in the Senate, and a Bill Clinton-style menu of tax incentives for business.


Health care, the consuming issue of 2009 and the one on which Obama aides insisted they should be judged, did not show up until more than halfway through.


Even then, it was on a notably defensive note. He acknowledged of his signature domestic proposal that “the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became,” adding that, “I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.” Despite a year of presidential speeches and legislative maneuvering, he said, many people are asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?”


Legislators should pass what he called good policy even if it is bad politics, he asserted. But Obama offered no clarity at all on exactly when or how this would happen after the stalemate caused by the Republican capture of Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts.


His tepid rallying cry: “As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we've proposed.”


That line fit the theme of the night. This president was in a political jam when the evening started. And it was hard to see how he was in any less of a jam when the evening ended.


In many ways his tone belittled the speech’s substance. There were only a few of the rhetorical acrobatics and lyrical flights that mark Obama’s most cultivated speeches. Instead, the language was more straightforward, more informal, more accessible — the words of a realist rather than a romantic.


But if the speech reflected his cramped circumstances, it probably did nothing to alter those circumstances.


The president and his aides have been awash in advice for the past few weeks, and the speech sounded as though they had decided to serve up a buffet of all of it.


For those who thought he needed to take a step to the right and show more outreach to Republicans, there were calls for the parties to transcend “pettiness” and “work through our differences.” He bragged about how he had cut taxes for most families and talked up a spending freeze.


For those who thought he needed to show he was listening to the liberals who were most excited about the original promise of his presidency, there was his vow to act on his campaign promise of ending discrimination against gays in the military. He promised that he would move ahead with energy legislation, which includes the politically volatile “cap and trade” provisions to limit carbon emissions, though he did not try to rebut the widespread analysis that there is virtually no chance these will pass the Senate this year.


For those who thought he needed to stand up to special interests and tell big bankers where to get off, he did just that. He promoted a proposed new fee on banks and crowed, “I know Wall Street isn't keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.”



For those who thought Obama needed to be more modest and contrite, he delivered just that — saying he “deserved” some of his “political setbacks.” He did the same for those who thought he should be less detached and project a more human connection to the lives of real people. There were references to the letters from average Americans he reads nightly and to the struggles of Allentown, Pa., and Elyria, Ohio, and Galesburg, Ill.

It was overwhelmingly a domestic policy address. Though the president was absorbed for months in 2009 with his review of policy in Afghanistan, where 100,000 U.S. troops now serve, the war there was dealt with in two paragraphs.


Iraq also came at the end, with a reference that was brief but resounding about his long-term goal: “But make no mistake: This war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.”


A speech with parts to satisfy so many different constituencies and perspectives could not fully satisfy very many people. This was reflected in the early reaction.


Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) criticized the president for continuing to express willingness to work with Republicans, arguing that Obama should have been more forceful about calling the Republicans out for obstruction.


"The fact is, we have an opposition determined to bring him down," McDermott said. "I don't know when he's going to get the message. ... They're not going to help him at all. Watch. I've been doing this a long time."


On the other hand, Rep. Joe Wilson — the South Carolina Republican who gained notoriety last year by shouting “You lie!” during an earlier Obama speech to Congress — was staying positive.


“On the issue of national security, I was pleased that the president reiterated the value of sending 30,000 more reinforcements to Afghanistan," Wilson said. "I very much respect the president’s decision to listen to our commanders on the ground. ...”


Another conservative was much less complimentary. On POLITICO’s Arena feature, the Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper complained that the speech “seemed to have dozens of authors as it contradicted itself and his policies often and emphatically.


“He said he didn't want to relitigate the past, when the primary focus of the address was exactly that,” Cooper said. “He said he didn't want to penalize bankers, right after he gloriously announced his punitive tax on bankers who have paid back the U.S. Treasury in full with interest. He said he wanted to control spending, and then rattled off a laundry list of liberal investments.”


Also on the Arena, Obama got an assist from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the 2004 Democratic nominee, who said his work with Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut shows that progress on energy legislation is realistic this year.


“The inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom that this issue has stalled is dead wrong,” Kerry said.


Obama knows his challenge is to get other Democrats to share Kerry’s optimism, not just on energy legislation but on the larger promise of the administration. “To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills,” Obama said.»