Barack Obama has been president for just under 10 months but he’s added two trillion to the national debt and will double it by the end of the decade.  CBS’ Mark Knoller:

This latest milestone in the ever-rising journey of the National Debt comes less than eight months after it hit $11 trillion for the first time. The latest high-point is not unexpected, considering the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an all-time high at $1.42-trillion – more than triple the previous year’s record high.

Much of the increase in the deficit and debt is attributed to government spending outpacing revenue – both exacerbated by the recession and the government response to it – including hundreds of billions in bailouts and stimulus spending and tax cuts along with decreased tax revenues due to rising unemployment.

[...]

The National Debt has increased about $1.6 trillion on Mr. Obama’s watch, though less than $4.9 trillion run up during the presidency of George W. Bush.

But the White House budget review issued in August projects that by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept 30th, the National Debt could top $14 trillion.  It gets worse. The same document projects that by the end of the decade, the National Debt will hit $24.5 trillion — exceeding the Gross Domestic Product projected for 2019 of $22.8 trillion.

According to the Treasury Department, the debt stood at $5.727 trillion on January 19, 2001, Bill Clinton’s last day in office, and $10.627 trillion when Bush left office eight years later.  That’s $612.5 billion (or $0.6125 trillion) a year, during which we fought two major wars, had the 9/11 attacks, and at least two major bailouts to deal with a global financial crisis.

We’re thus far averaging $1.92 trillion a year under Obama, or a factor of 3.146 more.   And the government is projecting that we’ll continue spending at this crisis rate for the next decade, more than doubling the current record level?

That ain’t good.

Presumably, we’d have had another major bailout had Bush stayed in office for a third term (were that Constitutionally or politically possible) or had John McCain been elected.  So spending and thus the debt would have escalated substantially regardless.  But we likely wouldn’t be talking about adding a massive health care payment on top of the pile.

The Supreme Court hears oral argument today in Pottawattamie County v McGee, wherein they will have to decide if prosecutors have immunity from lawsuits even if they frame someone for murder.

On one side of the case being argued are Iowa prosecutors who contend “there is no freestanding right not to be framed.” They are backed by the Obama administration, 28 states and every major prosecutors organization in the country.

On the other side are two black men — Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee — men who served 25 years in prison before evidence long hidden in police files resulted in them being freed.

[...]

The Supreme Court has indeed said that prosecutors are immune from suit for anything they do at trial. But in this case, Harrington and McGhee maintain that before anyone being charged, prosecutors gathered evidence alongside police, interviewed witnesses and knew the testimony they were assembling was false.

Hard though it might be to believe, this is actually a difficult decision. The balance between protecting diligent prosecutors from suit and protecting defendants from the bad apples is not a simple thing. The good news is that a case like this is amenable to a bright-line rule against intentional misconduct. The bad news is, the Supreme Court has shown a consistent disdain for bright-line rules for some time.

Heretical Ideas previewed this case last month.

My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, “Europe’s Obama Fatigue,” is online.

Despite George W. Bush’s defiant “you’re with us or you’re against us” public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe.

[...]

It would be ironic, indeed, if the Europeans started longing for the good old days of the Bush administration. But that nostalgia is closer than you might think.

Supporting arguments at the link.

UPDATE: As one might expect, this piece is generating some strong rebuttals.

Daniel Larison argues:

You cannot gauge the importance or unimportance of Europe to the United States on the largely cosmetic, superficial and procedural clashes Washington has had with various European states in the last nine months. Under the previous administration, Europe continued to be “important” to the U.S. even when major EU powers opposed administration policy in very public, dramatic ways. To the extent that Obama is losing ground with Europeans, he had far more goodwill and support to lose; in almost every European country, he continues to rate higher after the drop-off from unrealistic expectations than Bush did at almost any point. Obviously relations were and remained far more strained under the last administration than they have been so far under this one. We notice the minor clashes that have taken place because there was a widely-shared, unreasonable expectation that amity and concord with Europe would prevail under Obama.

[...]

European and especially German interests were flatly ignored by Bush when it came to handling Russia. Promises to Ukraine and Georgia of eventual membership in NATO were given over strenuous German opposition. Were European interests and opinions being heeded then? No. The missile defense ploy prompted Moscow to threaten abandoning its commitments under the European conventional forces treaty and elicited a great deal of bluster from Medvedev about targeting Russian missiles on European soil. Was European security strengthened by any of this? No. What matter then if Bush went through the motions and observed the right formalities when he was getting the major decisions wrong?

Most western European allies were not seriously consulted, nor were their objections given much weight, when the Bush administration decided to push ahead with the missile defense plan. In all of the new commentary claiming that Europe has soured on Obama, this seems not to count at all.

Judah Grunstein adds:

[I]f George W. Bush learned to listen to Europe, and in particular NATO, it was largely after he’d been chastened by the failure of the Iraq war and the 2006 mid-term elections. Up until his final NATO summit, Bush continued to talk loudly about the largely unpopular measures of NATO expansion and missile defense. He listened in the sense that he allowed the alliance — led by France and Germany — to turn him back, but it was out of weakness, not out of strength. There was no movement at all when it came to climate change, which is a major driver of public opinion here.

As for Obama’s handling of Europe, I’d agree with the characterization of his aloofness, especially with regard to the current Afghanistan strategic review. But while my sympathies would normally be with Europe on this sort of thing, I do think that Obama invited the NATO allies last April to assume greater ownership of the Afghanistan war. Given their refusal to do so, I don’t blame him for the freeze-out now. That said, Obama’s brush-off of the U.S.-EU summit is inexcusable and reflects a myopic view of the EU’s potential, especially with the advent of the Lisbon Treaty.

I actually don’t disagree with either Dan or Judah on most of these points and think some of the disagreement comes from the provocative  title the FP folks chose.  My argument is neither that the Europeans have tired of Obama or even that Bush was particularly adept at transatlantic diplomacy.  Rather, it is that Bush cared more about Europe — and particularly the UK and New Europe — than Obama and therefore invested more of himself in the relationship.

It’s true that Obama’s stance on, for example, missile defense and NATO expansion is more popular in some quarters than Bush’s.  Indeed, I prefer his approach on the latter and quibble with him on the former mostly on how the rollout was done vice the policy itself.  But the policy differences are  a reflection of Obama’s prioritizing Russia’s views over that of Europe, especially East and Central Europe.   I think Bush was ultimately wrong in his zeal to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO but it was a policy preference motivated by the stated ideals of the Alliance of “a Europe whole and free.”

CNN is reporting that Chicago has, along with Tokyo, been eliminated from consideration for the 2016 Olympics.   Apparently, Oprah and Obama weren’t enough.

Chicago was eliminated in the first ballot of voting for the 2016 Olympics on Friday, a stunning defeat for the city that was expected to be one of the two finalists. Not even the presence of President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama — nor a long list of celebrities — was enough to help the United States’ third-largest city.

Chicago had seemed to pick up momentum in the last few days, with many International Olympic Committee members seemingly charmed by Mrs. Obama. But when IOC president Jacques Rogge announced the results of the first vote, Chicago’s name was announced.

That’s a breaking news update to this story from earlier:

Looking out at the International Olympic Committee members, President Barack Obama grinned.

“This could be a meeting in Chicago,” he said, “because we look like the world.”

Hoping to persuade the IOC to award Chicago the 2016 Olympics, Obama and his wife led a heartfelt and, at times, very personal plea Friday. Instead of stodgy technical details, discussions of finances or computer-generated graphics, Chicago took members inside the city to show why it should win the games.

Obama spoke of finally finding a home in Chicago after a nomadic childhood. Michelle Obama recounted how, growing up on the city’s South Side, her disabled father taught her how to throw a ball and a “mean right hook.”

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley invoked the memory of Jesse Owens. “Like so many young people, I was inspired” by the Olympics, the first lady said. “I found myself dreaming that maybe, just maybe, if I worked hard enough, I, too, could achieve something great. But I never dreamed the Olympic flame might light up lives in my neighborhood.  But today I can.”

Well, not anymore.  It’ll be interesting to see the postmortem on this.  The U.S. has hosted a summer Olympics rather recently, Atlanta 1996, and it was viewed as a disaster by many overseas.  Maybe, despite Obama’s pleas, it just wasn’t our turn yet.  Or, maybe, having the president throw his weight behind it so enthusiastically backfired?

UPDATE:  Blame it on Rio.

Finally, South America gets an Olympics. The 2016 Games are going to Rio de Janeiro. In a vote of high drama, the bustling Brazilian carnival city of beaches, mountains and samba beat surprise finalist Madrid, which got a big helping hand from a very influential friend.

Chicago was knocked out in the first round — in one of the most shocking defeats ever in International Olympic Committee voting. Even Tokyo, which had trailed throughout the race, did better — eliminated after Chicago in the second round.

Rio spoke to IOC members’ consciences: the city argued that it was simply unfair that South America has never hosted the games, while Europe, Asia and North America have done so repeatedly. “It is a time to address this imbalance,” Brazil’s charismatic president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told the IOC’s members before they voted. “It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a tropical country.”

Clearly, having presidents address the committee isn’t a disqualifier.

John Cole comments on Michelle Obama’s pledge to “take no prisoners” as she helps her husband fight to get the Olympics for Chicago:

You know who else hosted an Olympics?

Hitler.

Just saying…

QED.

Some “60,000 people have canceled their AARP memberships since July 1, angered over the group’s position on health care,” CBS News reports.

Many are switching to the American Seniors Association, a group that calls itself the conservative alternative as CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports. Last week alone, they added more than 5,000 new members. Our camera was there Friday when the mail came. Letters were filled with cut-up AARP cards.

“I think that probably the seniors are most upset with cuts in Medicare,” said ASA President Stuart Barton. The American Seniors Association is flat-out against President Obama’s plan, which calls for $313 billion dollars in Medicare cuts over ten years. The AARP is widely viewed as supporting the President.

Last week, Obama told a town meeting in Portsmouth, NH, “We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.” The AARP called the President’s statements “inaccurate,” saying it hasn’t endorsed any plan or bill. Some were left with the feeling that AARP was waffling. “I feel they’re supporting it through the backdoor, and telling members that they’re not through the front door,” said Guardiani.

[...]

AARP says for a group with 40 million members that adds hundreds of thousands each month, losing 60 thousand is just a drop in the bucket. But to the much smaller American Seniors Association it’s a flood.

Right . . . .

So, the AARP has lost 1.5 percent of its membership?  And replaced them with multiples of that over the same period?  I’m not sure that’s really noteworthy.  How many people quit the organization in a typical month, anyway?  CBS doesn’t say.

The AARP has a huge amount of clout because it can claim to represent a huge number of people.  The dirty little secret — oft told but seldom mentioned when such controversies arise — is that 99 percent* of the AARP’s membership join for the various discounts that the ridiculously cheap membership fee brings, completely oblivious to the political stances of the leadership.

As an aside, I’m amused that a so-called “conservative” AARP alternative is bitching about cuts in Medicare, a program conservatives naturally opposed for the same reasons they’re opposing ObamaCare.  A massive entitlement program for a fast-growing demographic which is fiscally unsustainable is many things; conservative is not among them.

AP Photo

______
*Note: I totally made this number up.  But it’s probably close to accurate.

Via Megan McArdle, I see that President Obama told a woman whose now-105-year-old mother got a pacemaker five years ago that, under Obamacare, we might just give old ladies a pill:

Megan observes, “I don’t know that this is going to hurt the image of healthcare reform.  But it probably isn’t going to help.”  That was my reaction, too, until I realized that the exchange took place in the ABC News town hall special on June 25 and this was the first I’d heard of it.

Of course, the fact that Michael Jackson died the same day might have something to do with that.

Isn’t true if you engage in a lifestyle that most people find icky. You know that pledge that if you make less than $250,000/year you won’t see an increase in your taxes? Yeah, well not if you smoke.

One of President Barack Obama’s campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.

The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama’s promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.

This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.

To be sure, Obama’s tax promises in last year’s campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.

“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” He repeatedly vowed “you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.”[emphasis added]

Ho hum, another politician another lie.

The extra money will be used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children.

It’s for the children? Well okay then.

That represents a step toward achieving another promise, to make sure all kids are covered.

What? He isn’t going to try and claim that such a program will provide an economic stimulus therefore we should spend the money absent any tax increases? And I thought he could do all this without increasing taxes. Didn’t he said, he’d cut waste, fraud and abuse? Oh, wait they always say that. The Obamassiah…just like any other lying politician.

His detailed campaign plan stated that his proposed improvement in health insurance and health technology “is more than covered” by raising taxes on the wealthy alone. It was not based on raising the tobacco tax.

Somebody is not drinking the kool-aid.

“Listen now,” he said in his widely watched nomination acceptance speech, “I will cut taxes—cut taxes—for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”

Yeah, well that was a lie too, or at least it was a statement with enough weasel words in it so that it doesn’t mean what one’s first impression would be. According to the Tax Policy Center, only about 75.5% of households will get a tax cut under Obama’s plan. And factoring in the new tax on cigarettes that number is likely to be smaller.

Via Tyler Cowen we get this news story.

The Obama administration will play a key role in reshaping General Motors’ board of directors over the next six months, potentially giving it even greater control in the management of the storied American manufacturer.

The president’s auto task force plans to consult with the company as it replaces a majority of its board, a White House official said. The board today largely consists of the current and former chiefs of major U.S. corporations such as Coca-Cola, Ernst & Young, Pfizer and Eastman Kodak. It is not known which of the 12 board members will leave.

The president said Monday that “the United States government has no interest in running GM.” But in practice it is already exerting tremendous influence over it, a situation that has triggered fierce debate over how much power the government should wield over the companies that it aids.

Well so much for that comment from President Obama. I guess being President of the United States wasn’t enough, he wants to be President of General Motors too.

President Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan has won the backhanded praise of Hamid Karzai, who termed it “better than we were expecting.”  Gordon Brown has lauded the plan as well and called for NATO to do more.  Even the neocons are happy with Max Boot pronouncing it “pretty much all that supporters of the war effort could have asked for, and probably pretty similar to what a President McCain would have decided on.”

Yet, it remains unclear what precisely is “new” about the new plan.

In my New Atlanticist piece fleshing out this question, “Obama’s Afghanstan Plan: What’s So New About It?” I examine the things that seems to have people enthusiastic about the announcement and find very little to distinguish it from the policies of the Bush administration.

Hell, we still don’t have an exit strategy.

I suppose I should say something about last night’s Obama press conference.  Like Andrew Sullivan, I did not watch it live.  Unlike Sully, I did not DVR it and do not intend to watch it at some future point in time.  (I did, however, watch the previous night’s “Heroes.”)

My reasons are these:

1.  The man’s on TV constantly.  Didn’t we just have one of these?! He’s overexposed.  It’s simply not a big deal that he’s on TV.  Now that I watch entertainment programming entirely via DVR, it’s not even a nuisance that he’s interrupting the regular programming.

2.  I forecast, correctly it seems, that I would learn nothing new from watching and that, if actual news were to break, teh Internets would catch me up.

Sully has a good roundup of various blogger reactions at the link.  From what I’ve gathered, the assembled press asked him the wrong questions, he gave fairly sober, unremarkable answers, and there were “no big announcements, no new positions, no surprises of any kind.”

Looks like watching “Heroes” was the right call.

Photo: Reuters

Jeff Pope begins an article titled “Does Voting Matter Anymore?” with “Since President Obama’s inauguration” and then proceeds to give a litany of various awful things have happened as a consequence of the change in administrations.

Asked and answered.

via Glenn Reynolds

“There’s a lot of interesting data in the NBC/WSJ poll, although much of it is good news for the Dems and sobering news for the GOP (there’s been so much sobering news the last four years I feel like drinking). ” – Glen Bolger

Glen’s a founding partner of Public Opinion Strategies, which employs my wife as its Chief Operating Officer and conducts said poll in conjunction with Peter Hart Research.   The comments come on POS’ new blog, TQIA (Turning Questions into Answers).   The closest the poll comes to good news for the GOP is the number of people who think Obama’s stimulus package is a bad idea has jumped from 27 percent to 36 percent since January.

Elsewhere on the blog, Alex Bratty points out, as others have, that Obama’s high approval ratings actually are pretty average at this stage of the game.  She’s even got a handy dandy graphic:

Finally, Neil Newhouse jokes that the improvement in the “right direction/wrong track” numbers since January despite horrible economic news can only be explained by the resurgence of his alma mater’s basketball team.

The Old Gray Lady has another of the epic scoops that made them the Newspaper of Record. Ace correspondent Helene Cooper breaks the news in a piece of journalism titled “For Young President, Flecks of Gray.”

Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray.

It happens to all of them, of course — Bill Clinton still had about half a head of brown hair when he took office but was a silver fox two years later, and George W. Bush went from salt and pepper to just salt in what seemed like a blink of an eye.

But so soon? “I started noticing it toward the end of the campaign and leading up to inauguration,” says Deborah Willis, who, as co-author of “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs,” pored through 5,000 photographs of the first head over the last year.

Mr. Obama’s graying is still of the flecked variety, and appears to wax and wane depending on when he gets his hair cut, which he does about every two weeks. His barber, who goes by only one name, Zariff, takes umbrage with bloggers who alternately claim Mr. Obama, 47, is dyeing his hair gray (to appear more distinguished) or dyeing it black (to appear younger). “I can tell you that his hair is 100 percent natural,” Zariff said. “He wouldn’t get it colored.”

And for all of his 16 years giving Mr. Obama his “quo vadis” haircut — black parlance from the 1960s for close-cut locks — Zariff said he is not about to start ribbing Mr. Obama. “We do not tease about the gray at all,” he said.

Now, I have no doubt that running for president, let alone serving as president, is ridiculously stressful.  Anecdotally at least, the job does seem to “age” its occupants.

But, let me meet anecdote with anecdote which — there is some controversy about this — may or may not constitute data.   At 43, I’m younger than Obama.  While I work long hours under the pressure of Internet Time deadlines, I have never run for president nor had to make decisions on multi-trillion dollar budgets.  And yet, alas, my hair has flecks of gray.  Some (my wife, for example) would say “flecks” understates the situation.

So far as I’m aware, there is no Latin name for my haircut.  When I was a small boy, my dad would take me to the barber and order up “A regular man’s haircut.”  Aside from a few instances, such as Airborne school, where I wore it much shorter, I’ve had some variant of it since 1984.    Shockingly, my hair appears less gray when it’s freshly trimmed (usually every other Thursday).

What I’m getting at is this:  Obama probably had a bit gray hair when he started running for president.  He’s older now and probably has a bit more.  While young for a president, he is, after all,  well into middle age.  Further, as is typical of those who sport the quo vadis, his hair is dark, so the gray stands out more.   Depending on how the light — including camera flashes and television kliegs — it’ll sometimes appear more gray than at other times.   None of this should be taken as an indication that he’s cracking under the pressure.

via memeorandum

Stephen Green (who I learned at CPAC is, despite the Vodkapundit moniker, an ecumenical drinker who will gladly coif a Sam Adams or a Bombay Sapphire martini with a twist — especially if someone else is paying) has an amusing commentary on Obama’s foreign policy to date:

“I wanna talk!” said the President of the United States to the President of Iran. “Yeah, I’m just not that into you,” replied that President of Iran.

And so our President looked weak, ineffectual and unimportant.

“I wanna talk!” said the President of the United States to the President of the Russian Federation. “Yeah, I’m just not that into you,” replied the Russian President.

His conclusions are harsher than mine, although we both agree that there’s a certain hubris and naivete in thinking that being willing to talk will necessarily result in a grand change in a major power’s foreign policy positions.

Photo by Flickr user skye820, used under Creative Commons license.