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Russia would be willing to discuss a new missile defense structure with the United States but sees Iran's nuclear program as a separate issue, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday.
Asked about a report in the New York Times that U.S. President Barack Obama had written to him offering to back off deploying a new missile system in Eastern Europe in return for help with the Iranians, Medvedev said signals from Washington were positive but the two issues were separate."If we are talking about any "swaps" (Iran for missile defense), this is not how the question is being put. This would not be productive," Medvedev told a news conference in Madrid, where he was on a state visit.But he added: "If the new (U.S.) administration shows common sense and offers a new (missile defense) structure which would satisfy European (needs) ... and would be acceptable for us, we are ready to discuss it.""I count on positive signals we are now receiving from Washington translating into agreements," Medvedev said.
I didn't appreciate the common sense crack.
The New York Times put it a little less harshly:
On Tuesday, President Dmitri A. Medvedev offered a measured response, saying that the Kremlin was “working very closely with our U.S. colleagues on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program,” but not in the context of the American missile defense plan.
“No one links these issues to any exchange, especially on the Iran issue,” Interfax reported that Mr. Medvedev said at a news conference in Madrid, where he was visiting to boost economic and political ties.
Uhh...we just did.
Listen, we've put it as plainly as we can put it. I am no fan of the Missile Shield, because in the end any WMD that's sent our way is going to be an Al-Queda suitcase bomb, something a missile shield can't stop. At the same time, I would like to remind our Russian (cough) friends, that the Missile Shield isn't targeting them, it's for Iran, more than likely in the event they try to strike Israel. We're just saying help us make sure Iran doesn't get the bomb, and we don't need a dang missile shield.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has placed a "hold" that blocks votes on confirming Harvard University physicist John Holdren, who is in line to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, Obama's nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to sources who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, Menendez is using the holds as leverage to get Senate leaders' attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees' credentials.
Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said of Menendez's objections, "We will work to try to address any concerns that he may have."
Our new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added an interesting litle kicker. "Gee, of course, if we had help with the Iran-going-nuclear-problem, it'd make this whole missile shield thing go away even faster."I figured this was a big Valentine's Day card to the Russians.
President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.
Moscow has not responded to the letter that was hand-delivered to President Dmitri A. Medvedev, above, three weeks ago.
The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
"So I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary. Because we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession. And to ensure that a crisis of this magnitude never happens again, I ask Congress to move quickly on legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system. It is time to put in place tough, new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation, and punishes short-cuts and abuse."
I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:
So am I.
Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.
The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished.
Many will ask whether Mr. Obama can actually pull off the deficit reduction he promises. Can he actually reduce the red ink from $1.75 trillion this year to less than a third as much in 2013? Yes, he can.
Right now the deficit is huge thanks to temporary factors (at least we hope they’re temporary): a severe economic slump is depressing revenues and large sums have to be allocated both to fiscal stimulus and to financial rescues.
But if and when the crisis passes, the budget picture should improve dramatically. Bear in mind that from 2005 to 2007, that is, in the three years before the crisis, the federal deficit averaged only $243 billion a year. Now, during those years, revenues were inflated, to some degree, by the housing bubble. But it’s also true that we were spending more than $100 billion a year in Iraq.
So if Mr. Obama gets us out of Iraq (without bogging us down in an equally expensive Afghan quagmire) and manages to engineer a solid economic recovery — two big ifs, to be sure — getting the deficit down to around $500 billion by 2013 shouldn’t be at all difficult.
"I'm happy to listen to the secretary of defense and the president, but when they talk about 50,000, that's a little higher number than I had anticipated," Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) said.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the pullout "has to be done responsibly, we all agree. But 50,000 is more than I would have thought, and we await the justification."
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) echoed his worries, saying: "I do think we have to look carefully at the numbers that are there and do it as quickly as we can." Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) issued a statement saying he is "concerned" about the level of troops that would remain in Iraq.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.So, what did everyone miss?
In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.
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"Now, my view is that Krugman as an economist is not wrong. But in the art of the possible, of the deal, he is wrong. He couldn't get his legislation."
If Obama had asked for a $1.2 trillion or greater stimulus package, it's just as possible that he would have scared off some of the more conservative Democratic senators and made passing his bill even tougher. Who better to make that calculation that Rahm Emanuel, a veteran of both the White House and Congress?
Federal authorities questioned Sen. Roland Burris on Saturday — a long-awaited interview involving his Senate seat appointment — the Chicago Sun-Times-NBC/5 team has learned.
Burris is not accused of wrongdoing, but he was questioned in the case that centers on ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his alleged attempts to sell President Obama’s former seat.
Authorities interviewed Burris at his lawyer’s office, ostensibly to keep the exchange out of the limelight Burris has recently found himself in.
The questioning, first reported online Saturday by the Sun-Times and NBC/5, went on for several hours. It likely dealt in part with conversations between Burris and Robert Blagojevich. At least one of those conversations was caught on tape.
Burris admitted last week that his lawyers were in contact with the FBI about sitting for an interview, but denied that the contact was his motivation for controversially amending sworn testimony before a House impeachment panel.
And after the interview, Burris’ lawyer, Timothy Wright, said, “I know for a fact that he’s not a target of any investigation.’’