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(Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited much of the country's problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign. Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser, Obama also defended his economic record and noted that problems in Europe were affecting the United States.

UPDATE: Dow down 460 at 2:00 est. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is taking a beating as President Obama continues to speak. Towards the beginning of his speech, the index was down 375 points. As I write now it is down 450. Obama's blaming of everyone else and trotting out the same old "solutions" are not helping. The S&P average is down a total of 5% on the day. The NASDAQ is also down 5% on the day. This is becoming a run. We need leadership now. In addition, between the time he announced the speech and gave it, the...

President Barack Obama called on lawmakers Wednesday to overcome the "selfish" norms of politics and "do their job" in order to strike a deal on raising the federal government's current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by the start of August. People shouldn't get "spooked," but "the yellow light (is) flashing," he warned. "This is urgent." Top economic analysts have warned of potentially catastrophic repercussions if the ceiling is not raised by August 2, including skyrocketing interest rates and a plummeting U.S. dollar. The president blasted congressional Republicans for refusing to consider raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans as part of any...

An uncritical one line report in Mike Allen's 'Playbook' column at Politico this morning says:"PRESIDENT OBAMA is taping his NCAA picks today, and they’ll be revealed tomorrow on ESPN."With our top Asian ally Japan facing an economic meltdown on top of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant crises--an economic meltdown that is already affecting the U.S. and global economies; with the Middle East in flames; with the U.S. government on the verge of bankruptcy; with the U.S. still involved in two wars, Barack Obama is focused on being the cool guy with the jocks in school by being filmed picking...

Hundreds if not thousands of people are dead due to a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. But at least it gave Barack Obama an avenue to remind everyone he was born in Hawaii. That's the silver lining for MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "Was this sort of a good opportunity for the president to remind everybody that he grew up in the United States and Hawaii?" That's a question that Chris Matthews posed to MSNBC host and White House corresondent Chuck Todd about President Obama taking a question from a Japanese reporter during a news conference earlier today at the White...

According to a story in Sunday’s Washington Post, as President Obama and his advisers measured their response to the mass killing in Libya, they were mindful of the fact that diplomats in Tripoli had told them, in the words of one official, that “certain kinds of messaging from the American government could endanger the security of American citizens.” “Overruling that kind of advice would be a very difficult and dangerous thing to do,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “That was the debate, and frankly we erred on the side of caution, for certain, and...

Something momentous is happening in the United States right now and Barack Obama doesn’t get it. In Madison, Wisconsin last week, up to 40,000 public employees, organised by their unions, the Democratic party and the grassroots Organizing for America group that elected the president in 2008, gathered at the state capitol. Teachers left their classrooms, forcing schools to close. Their objective? To rail against an attempt to balance the budget and curtail union power by newly-elected Governor Scott Walker, a Republican. The Democratic party’s response? Its state senators have fled Wisconsin to Illinois, dodging state troopers as they went, in...

President Barack Obama Tuesday ordered a government-wide review of regulations with the goal of eliminating those that hurt job creation and make the U.S. economy less competitive. Photo by : Pete Souza President Barack Obama -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obama took action after unveiling his plan in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he said some rules have placed "unreasonable burdens on business — burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs." The executive order marked Obama's latest move to repair relations with U.S. business, which were frayed amid bitter debate over...

I propose that they pass a bill to remove funding and then DEEM repeal to have passed. People seem to forget that the House NEVER voted on Obamacare. Pelosi DEEMed it to have passed when the House passed a set of changes to their original bill that was NEVER voted on.

And Remember How The Lib's Proclaimed Obama As So Brilliant! So Intelligent!, Oh really? Then why can't he answer questions from the press on a regular basis?,it seems he will only take "Pre-Selected Questions" from a "Selected Press" AT HIS TIME & CONVENIENCE! After seeing Hillary take questions today,why don't we just put her in office and make Obama the "Secretary Of Teleprompters"?

Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy used by some central banks to increase the supply of money by increasing the excess reserves of the banking system, generally through buying of the central government's own bonds to stabilize or raise their prices and thereby lower long-term interest rates. This policy is usually invoked when the normal methods to control the money supply have failed, i.e the bank interest rate, discount rate and/or interbank interest rate are either at, or close to, zero. It has been termed the electronic equivalent of simply printing legal tender ...

The student in question obviously got shoved around, and technically, he could say he was assaulted, but I didn't see any actual beat down. I'm not saying he wasn't beaten up, but I sure didn't see it. That said, the coarse language and rough treatment of someone who doesn't worship their Obamessiah isn't surprising, nor is it acceptable political conduct. Then again, the student was obviously looking for a confrontation. Is this sort of thing helpful? Wouldn't we be better off recruiting and educating Americans, rather than this sort of confrontational sensationalism? Personally, I don't see the benefit, although it...

This story was originally about how people at the pentagon were banned from going to the wikileaks site

The new CBS News Poll has some sobering numbers for the White House on the issue that matters most in the fall elections - the economy. Now, 40 percent of Americans polled approve of President Obama's handling of the economy; 54 percent disapprove. That's down from 45 percent approval last month. Seventy-one percent of those polled say that their local job market is bad and 70 percent say it's going to stay the same or get worse. Only 28 percent of respondents think the job market will improve.

PHOENIX - Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is calling a new border security initiative an outrage. In a campaign video posted on YouTube Friday, Brewer stood in front of what she called newly posted signs by President Obama's administration about the Arizona desert being an active drug and human smuggling area. "Washington says our border is as safe as it has ever been," Brewer said. "Does this look safe to you? What is our country coming to…we need to stand up and demand action. Washington is broken, Mr. President. Do your job. Secure our borders." In a separate letter released the...

When an accident on an oil rig results in an environmental catastrophe, it surely takes a particular genius to turn the oil company involved into the victim. Yet, remarkably, that is precisely what ... Barack Obama appears to have achieved. When, after many weeks, BP still hadn’t managed to prevent its damaged well from spewing tens of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama turned upon it savagely, saying he would like to sack its chief executive and threatening the company with unlimited financial punishments. More than that, he appeared to be using the disaster to...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20

That 46 million people figure is usually used by liberals and the lame-stream-media as their argument for more government control of our lives.But the figure is completely exaggerated. When we breakdown their figure into different groups, this is what we got: *10 million of the uninsured are illegal immigrants. *18 million people have a household income of over $50000 per year. *More than half of them have a household income of over $75000 per year. *14 million of the uninsured qualify for some kind of government insurance, they just haven’t applied yet. This brings the liberals’ figure down dramatically, doesn’t...

A White House official said the incident was an attempted act of terrorism. The FBI is investigating and President Obama, celebrating Christmas in Hawaii, was told of the incident about three hours after the plane landed, officials said. Obama has told White House officials that all appropriate measures be taken to increase security for air travel, a spokesman said. Nevertheless, officials said, they are not prepared to raise the terrorism alert level, currently at orange -- or the second-highest of five levels -- for domestic and international air travel.

Liberals Vow to 'Spank' Obama for Sending More Troops to Afghanistan President Obama is days away from announcing a new Afghan strategy, but his immediate battle could come from liberals within his own party who are vowing to "spank" the president for committing tens of thousands of more troops to the eight-year conflict. President Obama is days away from announcing a new Afghan strategy, but his immediate battle could come from liberals within his own party who are vowing to "spank" the president for committing tens of thousands of more troops to the eight-year conflict. In a prime-time speech Tuesday...