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Saturday, April 9, 2011
The Morning Scoop - How Obama Won the Budget War
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While Speaker John Boehner and the Democrats squabbled over relatively meaningless cuts, the president sat back and played referee. The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz on how the White House escaped most of the blame. Once the spotlight shifted from the political gamesmanship to the human impact of a shutdown—soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan not getting checks, passport offices closed, national parks off limits—everyone knew an angry public would start pointing fingers. But blame-shifting is a high art in Washington; now both sides can argue about who brought the country back from the brink.
Congressional leaders and President Obama took budget negotiations down to the wire, coming to an agreement on cuts barely an hour before the government was to shut down at midnight Friday night. The deal—still tentative at this point—cuts about $38 billion from federal spending this year. It's more than the Democrats wanted to cut, but without the Planned Parenthood and environmental regulation riders the GOP had been pushing for. "Programs people rely on will be cut back," said Obama. "Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed." House Speaker John Boehner was more upbeat about the deal, saying Republicans "fought to keep government spending down because it really will in fact help create a better environment for job creators in our country." The deal is still tentative, and Congress passed a one-week stopgap budget to give them time to put it into legislative form.
Two men died Friday from bullet wounds after Egypt's military attempted to drive protesters from Tahrir Square, medical sources say. The military denies using live ammunition, saying they fired blanks. They also beat hundreds of protesters with clubs in the 3 a.m. crackdown and dragged several protesters away. After several hours of gunfire, the army used teargas to disperse the crowd, which had gathered to call for the prosecution of Hosni Mubarak by the interim military government. Protesters also criticized the current government, which they increasingly see as corrupt and protective of Mubarak's regime. Several army officers joined in the demonstration, and at one point people shouted, "The people want the fall of the field marshal." Despite attempts to drive out the protesters, several hundred remained in the morning. "Thank God, we resisted them (the army), and we are still here," said one protester.
Libya isn't the only place France is intervening. French helicopters fired rockets at the Ivory Coast's incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, witnesses say, after Gbagbo's forces reportedly fired on the French ambassador's residence. Meanwhile, the United Nations peacekeeping head Alain Le Roy said Gbagbo used the calm of Tuesday's peace talks as a "trick" to regain ground and strengthen their positions in their fight against U.N.-recognized President Alassane Ouattara. As fighting continues in the capital, the U.N. says it has found more than 100 bodies in the west of the country, apparently victims of further ethnic violence by both sides. A week ago, several hundred bodies were found in the town of Duekoue.
Toshiba, the maker of Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, says it can decommission the station in 10 years. Toshiba says it would remove the fuel rods from the reactor and storage pools and demolish the plant. Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power continues to dump 11,500 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean in order to make room to store more radioactive water currently flooding the plant and preventing the resumption of cooling. They hope to finish dumping by this weekend. Tepco also took further measures in plugging a leak that's been plaguing the plant, attaching steel sheets in the ocean nearby to block a seawater intake pipe and deploying a "silt fence" barrier around the pipe to minimize contamination.
With President Ali Abdullah Saleh in a corner, protesters now demand his family members abdicate their government posts, too. Tom Finn reports from Sana'a.
Harvey Weinstein on Why He Re-Released The King's Speech PG-13 by Harvey Weinstein Harvey Weinstein decided to put out a family-friendly version of the Best Picture Oscar winner not as head of The Weinstein Company but as a dad, he writes—to inspire kids struggling just as King George VI once did.
April 9: The Week in Viral Videos by The Daily Beast Video From Pia Toscano's shocking American Idol elimination to Britney Spears' apocalyptic new "Till the World Ends" clip and Kirstie Alley's DWTS tumble, watch the buzziest viral videos of the week.
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