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.”

Time for the Thursday OTB Caption Contest^TM

REUTERS/Eliana Aponte (MEXICO SOCIETY)

Winners will be announced Monday PM

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.

Time for the Monday OTB Caption Contest^TM

(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Winners will be announced Thursday PM

Last Thursday Contest winners will be announced Tuesday PM

In my early morning Teddy Kennedy Dead at 77 media roundup post, I observed, “That the Chappaquiddick scandal didn’t make the first several paragraphs — or even first page — of several of these obits is quite remarkable. It would be like writing an obit for Richard Nixon that didn’t mention Watergate or one for Michael Jackson that glossed over repeated allegations of pedophilia.”

Hanna Rosin expands on that point quite a bit, including implicitly pointing out that it was a rather large elephant in the room:

Google Trends this morning is a perfect window into our tabloid culture and the recesses of our depraved minds. While the papers are full of words like “dynasty” and “legacy,” Mary Jo Kopechne, according to Google Hot Trends, is uppermost in our thoughts. Her name comes up as number one in the ranking, and several more places on the list, misspelled. Chappaquiddick shows up high and often, too; once correctly, and then in several illiterate incarnations.

Partly, I blame this discrepancy on the American papers, which are still bent on hagiography. I prefer British obituaries, which tell it like it is. And partly, of course, this is the fault of our vapid tabloid culture. The only surprise today is that Kate Gosselin has been knocked back all the way to number 30. “Michael Jackson alive” is a popular trend. Yeah. Jamming with Elvis.

Finally, there is the issue of the obvious narrative the papers are not stringing together. In my mind, I’ve always equated Ted Kennedy with Chuck Colson, the disgraced Nixon aide who went on to found an admirable Christian organization called “Prison Fellowship.” Public officials who do terrible things and then say they’re sorry (often in a press conference or book) are a dime a dozen. But the ones who do something terrible and then repent indirectly in the form of a lifetime of dedicated public service are rare. Colson and Kennedy are just about the only two I can think of.

Mary Jo Kopechne is on our minds because this narrative about Ted Kennedy makes sense, in some intuitive, appealing way. Kennedy killed a girl. That’s his rosebud. He made up for it partly by declining the ultimate glory of running for president, and choosing the more humble path—helping the underclass using the slow, steady machinery of the Senate.

Other than the fact that Kennedy actually did run for president — in a bitter primary battle with President Jimmy Carter in 1980 — that all strikes me as right. And, indeed, the Guardian obit covers this neatly in a single paragraph:

Kennedy’s career was significantly blighted by the Chappaquiddick incident of 1969 in which the car he was driving ran off a bridge and plunged into the water, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. While he never reached the pinnacle of power, Kennedy eventually shed his playboy image to become a serious political presence in the Senate. His death marks the twilight of a political dynasty and deals a blow to Democrats as they seek an overhaul of the healthcare system, one of Kennedy’s personal goals.

Teddy Kennedy lived an extraordinary life of tremendous accomplishment interspersed with some horrible scandals and family tragedy.  It’s why he was such a fascinating figure. But his story simply can’t be told without the word Chappaquiddick.

UPDATE:  E&P’s Sam Chamberlain tallied how far into the obits the first mention of the incident appeared:

NY Daily News- 13^th graf

Associated Press- 7^th graf

Boston Herald-  10^th graf

Boston Globe-  5^th graf

NY Times- 14^th graf

NY Post- 14^th graf

Washington Post-  9^th graf

Wall Street Journal-  6^th graf

LA Times-  12^th graf

Chicago Tribune-  12^th graf (same obit as LA Times)

Miami Herald-  10^th graf

Reuters- 18^th graf

USA Today- 19th graf

Politico- 24th graf

The Hill-NO MENTION

Roll Call-25th graf

National Journal-11th graf

Times of London- 8^th graf

In fairness, for a variety of reasons having to do with the printing and editing process from bygone days, a newspaper “graf” is often much shorter than a proper paragraph.  Still, the most notable single fact about Kennedy’s life was mentioned well after the average reader would have lost interest.

I gave Google’s Chrome browser a go the first few days after its debut but found it rather annoying and went back to Firefox.  The latter has gotten so balky of late, however, that I’ve followed Alex Knapp’s suggestion and given Chrome another chance.

For the most part, it’s fine.  I’m not having the crashing issues that I was with Firefox and the minor annoyance of menu commants being nonexistent or not where I’m used to them are somethng I can live with.

But I’ve having some issues with the WordPress and Drupal interfaces of the various blogs I run.

In WordPress, embedded photos don’t show up in the WYSIWYG editor, which I use interchangably with the HTML editor.  Also, especially on my home computer, it quite frequently saves published posts back in draft mode and eats various edits, especially tagging.

In Drupal, it works well enough but doesn’t render pages on the backend very cleanly.  Annoying but livable.

Anyone else experiencing these problems?  Any suggestions aside from “Buy a Mac!” or “Use Linux!” that might alleviate them?  I’m running Windows XP on rather robust machines with dual monitor setups in all cases, if that matters.

Norm Geras (who just celebrated his 6th blogging anniversary) points us to this hilariously annoying SPIEGEL interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let’s talk about the future of journalism.

Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don’t use the word journalism.

SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.

Anderson: Sorry, I don’t use the word media. I don’t use the word news. I don’t think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.

SPIEGEL: Which other words would you use?

Anderson: There are no other words. We’re in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don’t have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.

Anderson compounds his obnoxiousness, as Norm points out, by going on “to use all of the words ‘media’, ‘news’, ‘newspapers’ and ‘journalists.’”  Naturally.

Slightly apropos of the above, it occurred to me recently that the thesis of Anderson’s new book, Free, was stated more than thirty years ago by Ted Nugent:

Well I don’t know where they come from
But they sure do come
I hope they comin’ for me
And I don’t know how they do it
But they sure do it good
I hope they doin’ it for free

I’m guessing Nugent isn’t getting any royalties, however.

Word cloud via Alfred Hermida

“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

LiberalOasis reports that CNN’s Lou Dobbs ran the graphic at right, which was “sourced to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group deemed to have a ‘white supremacy’ ideology according to the Anti-Defamation League.” Further, “During a piece about illegal immigrants in Utah, reporter Casey Wian said, ‘Utah is also part of the territory some militant Latino activists refer to as Aztlan, the portion of the southwest United States they claim rightfully belongs to Mexico.’”

Digby has more on the CCC and posits, “The fact that they are touting the ridiculous Aztlan ‘threat’ puts the lie to any claims that this immigration debate isn’t being fueled by racism.”

The fact that a neo-Confederate group is touting a policy, however, is hardly evidence that others on their side are racists. Further, while the Reconquista and Aztlán memes are wildly overhyped by those advocating a crackdown on illegal immigration, that does not mean the underlying movements do not exist.

Wikipedia notes that,

Due to the association of Aztlan with Mexican national identity and an indeterminate northern location, the name Aztlán was taken up by Chicano activists of the 1960s and 1970s to refer to the area of the Southwestern United States ceded to the United States after the Mexican-American War. This is reflected in the title of the 1968 manifesto issued by the Chicano youth movement, the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, as well as the names of several organizations, such as MEChA.

Indeed, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center has published Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies since 1970.

I agree with Digby that Dobbs should have used a more legitimate source than the CCC for his chart, if he was going to use it at all. My guess, though, is that Dobbs doesn’t do his own research and some intern found it on the Web. Given the ability of most college students to differentiate the quality of various sources on the Internet, it would hardly surprise me that they didn’t do some pick and shovel work to figure out whose map they were using.

After initial skepticism, U.S. officials have endorsed an Israeli ultimatum that would unilaterally draw borders between it and the Palestinian Authority if a negotiated settlement is not reached by 2010.

AP’s Amy Teibel:

Before Olmert arrived Sunday, the Bush administration had urged him to negotiate with the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and bypass the new Hamas leadership. Hamas, branded a terrorist group by the U.S., rejects Israel’s right to exist and has refused to renounce violence. A negotiated solution is the preferred route both for Bush and Olmert, though the president found merit to the prime minister’s alternative approach. “These ideas could lead to a two-state solution if a pathway to progress on the road map is not opened in the period ahead,” Bush said.

[...]

Olmert, making his first visit to the U.S. since winning election in March, said he intended to “exhaust every possibility to promote peace with the Palestinians according to the road map.” “I extend my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas, the elected president of the Palestinian Authority. I hope he will take the necessary steps which he committed to in order to move forward,” Olmert said. But, he warned, “We cannot wait indefinitely for the Palestinians to change. … If we come to the conclusion that no progress is possible, we will be compelled to try a different route.”

In Jerusalem, a senior Cabinet member close to Olmert said if Hamas does not recognize Israel and renounce violence within six months Israel will move ahead with plans to unilaterally draw its final borders by 2010. “If these things don’t happen, we won’t wait for years, but rather we will wait until the end of this year,” Haim Ramon told Israel Radio. “This will be a year of diplomacy.” “First negotiations, and after the negotiations, if it doesn’t succeed and it becomes clear that there is no (Palestinian) partner, we will move ahead with the consolidation plan,” Ramon said.

[…]

On Capitol Hill, the House voted Tuesday to ban U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority and to bar diplomatic contacts with Hamas. The Senate is considering a less restrictive bill. Bush opposes the legislation on the ground that it goes too far.

This move adds pressure to the Palestinians to grow up and govern as responsible international actors. A distinct border and quasi-state status is likely a necessary precursor to honest negotiations, since the borderless Palestinian Authority can always blame rogue actors.

The Senate Intelligence Committee easily approved Gen. Michael Hayden’s nomination for CIA Director, despite controversy over his involvement in the NSA eavesdropping/datamining operations. CNN reports the vote at 12-3.

Update: Reuters has details.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden’s nomination as CIA director won the endorsement of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday in a vote that sets the stage for formal confirmation by the full Senate later this week. The 15-member committee, which Republicans control by a single vote, approved Hayden’s nomination 12-3 after an hour-long closed-door discussion, said Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the panel’s Republican chairman.

While filibuster is of course still possible, it appears that Hayden will make it. Quite interesting given that it looked like there was strong, bipartisan opposition at the outset. Score one for Bush. And the Senate, too. Hayden has too distinguished a career to be the victim of political opportunism.

________

Related:

Hayden Pick Latest Bush Misstep?
CIA Nominee: “Probable Cause” not in 4th Amendment
Congressmen Question Military Officer as CIA Head
Hayden to Replace Goss at CIA?
National Intelligence Office Not Doing Much
Administration Defends NSA Spying, Further Confuses Issue
Congress Likely to Authorize Electronic Eavesdropping
Democrats Playing Fast and Loose with National Security?
Can NYT Be Prosecuted for Publishing Classified Info?
NSA Spying Scandal: What If?
Risen’s State of War Preview
Leaks, Whistleblowers, and Media Shield Laws
NSA Initiated Expanded Spying Effort
Farber on FISA: It’s Not Wiretapping
Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis
Deputy AG Had Doubts About Spy Program
Justice Department Investigating NSA Leaks
Daschle: Congress Denied Bush War Powers in U.S.
What is a Wartime President?
NSA Accidentally Listened to Domestic Calls

Longtime Texas Senator and Clinton Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen has died.

Lloyd Bentsen, a courtly Texan who represented the state in Congress for 28 years and served as President Clinton’s first treasury secretary, died Tuesday morning, his family said. He was 85.

Bentsen, also the Democratic 1988 vice presidential nominee, died at his home in Houston. It was during that campaign that he told rival Dan Quayle in a debate, “You’re no Jack Kennedy.”

His distinguished political career took him from the humble beginnings of a county office in the Rio Grande Valley in the 1940s to six years in the U.S. House, 22 in the U.S. Senate and two in the Clinton Cabinet, where he was instrumental in directing the administration’s economic policy.

The Quayle zinger, almost certainly Bentsen’s least honorable public moment, will likely be the thing for which he is most remembered. That’s a shame, as he was by all accounts a decent man and a solid public servant.

Update: Suspicion confirmed. The following Breaking News banner is running at ABC News: