\RIVERWOODS, Ill., Sept. 15, 2011 /CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM/ — Taxpayers still struggling with the economic downturn will get at least some relief in 2012, thanks to the mandatory annual inflation-adjustments called for under the U.S. Tax Code according to CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business and the leading global provider of tax, accounting and audit information, software and services (CCHGroup.com).

Today, CCH released estimated ranges for each 2012 tax bracket as well as projections for a growing number of inflation-sensitive tax figures, such as the personal exemption and the standard deduction.

“Indexing for inflation has become an established part of our tax system, and it’s likely to be a part of the tax law for the foreseeable future – even as Congress debates changes to the tax rates themselves,” said George Jones, JD, CCH Senior Federal Tax Analyst.  ”Most taxpayers benefit from inflation adjustments since they tend to preserve the value of most, but not all, of the dollar-based benefits under the Tax Code year after year.”

The uncertainty facing projections at this time last year does not apply this year, thanks to last December’s 2010 Tax Relief Act that extended the then-expiring Bush era tax cuts temporarily through 2012. For 2011 and again in 2012, the basic income tax rate structure and framework upon which inflation-sensitive tax benefits are computed remain in place.

When there is inflation, indexing of brackets lowers tax bills by including more of people’s incomes in lower brackets – in the existing 15-percent bracket, for example, rather than the existing 25-percent bracket. The formula used in indexing showed a relatively higher amount of inflation this year over last, just over 3.8 percent. This increase is well above the 1.4 percent amount used last year, and far greater in comparison to the 0.18 percent inflation factor used to set 2010 tax amounts. Although so-called “rounding conventions” keep some tax amounts for 2012 the same as they are for 2011, such as the $13,000 gift tax annual exclusion, most 2012 figures will move higher.

The examples, below, show the modest savings generated by indexing of the 2012 individual income tax rate brackets for taxpayers in three typical situations.

Add to those savings the additional tax savings realized by slightly higher standard deduction and personal exemption amounts for 2012 in most cases, as well amounts that might be claimed from an increase in the income ceilings imposed on tax benefits such as education credits, individual retirement account (IRA) contributions and more. Combined, inflation-based tax savings for 2012 can become substantial.

• Because of inflation adjustments, a married couple filing jointly with a total taxable income of $100,000 should pay $190 less income taxes in 2012 than they will on the same income for 2011 because of indexing of their tax bracket for 2012.
• A single filer with taxable income of $50,000 should owe $95 less next year due to the adjustments to the income tax rate brackets between 2011 and 2012.
• For taxpayers with taxable income over the start of the top 35-percent bracket, the maximum dollar savings from indexing the tax brackets for 2012 will be more dramatic. Not only is the top 35-percent rate bracket projected to rise from $379,150 to $388,350, but as is the case for all individual taxpayers, the rise in the bracket amounts below the individual’s top marginal rate (that is, the incremental value of the 10-, 15-, 25-, 28-, and 33-percent brackets for someone in the 35-percent marginal rate bracket) also benefits the individual taxpayer.  As a result of the inflation adjustment in each of the brackets – someone filing a joint return with taxable income of $450,000 in 2012, for example, will pay $732 less in income taxes in 2012 than in 2011.

Inflation Adjustments

Since the late 1980s, the U.S. Tax Code has required that federal income tax brackets be adjusted for inflation annually, and inflation adjustments have been inserted into the Internal Revenue Code in recent years with increasing frequency.

For example, the Code now requires over 50 other inflation-driven computations to determine deduction, exemption and exclusion amounts in addition to the 40 separate computations needed to inflation-adjust the tax bracket tables each year. In fact, the health care reform legislation passed in 2010 adds an even greater number of inflation-adjustments to the Tax Code, although health-related indexing won’t start until 2013.

Notable as one of the new-for-2012 inflation-adjusted tax figures is the estate tax exemption. Set at a $5 million level for 2011 and 2012 under a temporary compromise struck at the end of 2010 between keeping and repealing the estate tax, the $5 million amount as applied in 2012 is required to be adjusted for inflation.  For 2012, up to $5,120,000 of an estate will be exempt from the current 35-percent estate tax.

Most adjustments are based on Consumer Price Index figures for September through August immediately prior to the adjusted year. However, some inflation-adjusted figures are computed earlier and some later. For example, amounts such as the 2012 vehicle depreciation limits won’t be available until later in 2011, while the standard business mileage rate (that is currently set at 55.5 cents for the second half of 2011 due to a special mid-year adjustment) isn’t expected to be computed for 2012 and released until December 2011.

CCH’s projections for other indexed amounts are based on the relevant inflation data released September 15, 2011, by the U.S. Department of Labor. The IRS usually releases official numbers by December each year.

CCH tax bracket projections are provided for illustrative purposes only, and should not be used for income tax returns or other federal income tax related purposes until confirmed by the IRS later this year.

Some Items Not Indexed

Jones observed that some items in the Code are not indexed for inflation and stay the same, while others rise by dollar amounts already written into the tax law.

“The exemption amounts for the alternative minimum tax are not indexed, which means that Congress must regularly either increase the amounts by statute or expose additional households to the AMT,” Jones said.

Congress has relied on one- or two-year AMT patches to account for inflation from the initially set amounts of $33,750 and $45,000, respectively. However, there is no technical requirement under the Tax Code to increase those amounts for inflation.  For 2011, the AMT exemption amounts as provided most recently by Congress under the 2010 Tax Relief Act are $48,450 for single individuals and $74,450 for married couples filing jointly. No amounts have been set yet for 2012. While they are scheduled to revert to the default amounts of $33,750 / $45,000 without action, the expectation is that, once again, Congress will raise the AMT exemption amount until it finds a permanent solution.

Standard Deduction, Personal Exemption Rise

The standard deduction and personal exemption amounts are also subject to indexing. After very little movement in the 2010 amounts, 2011 saw a jump in all standard deduction levels. Projections for 2012 indicate that the trend will continue, with increases across the board. The standard deduction for single taxpayers, heads of households and married couples filing jointly will all show increases for 2012, by $150, $200 and $300, respectively.

The standard deduction for joint filers, for example, would rise from $11,600 to $11,900. Any increase in the standard deduction, of course, can produce lower taxes by decreasing the taxpayer’s taxable income.

The additional standard deduction for those age 65 or older or who are blind will stay at its present $1,150 level in 2012 for married individuals and surviving spouses and at $1,450 for single filers, because of “rounding down.” The personal exemption amount, however, gets bumped up by inflation by $100, to $3,800 in 2012 after having increased only $50 between 2010 and 2011.

Taxpayers for many years have had to lose a good portion of the value of personal exemptions and itemized deductions when their incomes rise above certain levels, which have also been adjusted for inflation. Starting in 2010, these “phase-outs” disappeared from the Tax Code, but are only scheduled to do so temporarily and return in full force in 2013 if Congress does not act. If they had been effective for 2012, the inflation-adjusted personal exemption phase-out range would have started at $260,500 for joint filers and $173,650 for single filers and a phase-out range for itemized deductions would have started at $173,650 for all filers except married couples filing separately, who would have been subject to a $86,825 cutoff.

“The removal of limitations on itemized deductions and personal exemptions, rather than indexing of brackets, will provide major tax savings in 2012 for many well-off taxpayers,” Jones added. “The return of these limitations in 2013 would pose an equally important change in the reverse direction.”

For a complete look at how income ranges for each tax bracket are projected to shift next, see the CCH chart below.

“Kiddie” Deduction, Gift Tax Exemption

In general, inflation adjustments are rounded to the next-lower multiple of $50, so if the adjustment produces an increase of less than $50, no increase is made. The “kiddie” deduction, used on the returns of children claimed as dependents on their parents’ returns, increased only five times in the years 2001 through 2011. It last rose for the 2009 tax year. For 2012 the deduction will remain at that $950 level.

The Code only allows the gift tax exemption to rise when the inflation adjustment would produce an increase of $1,000 or more. The last increase occurred in 2009, when it rose to $13,000. It remains there for 2012.

About CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business

CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business (CCHGroup.com) is the leading global provider of tax, accounting and audit information, software and services. It has served tax, accounting and business professionals since 1913. Among its market-leading solutions are The ProSystem fx® Suite, CorpSystem®, CCH® IntelliConnect®, Accounting Research Manager® and the U.S. Master Tax Guide®. CCH is based in Riverwoods, Ill. Follow us now on Twitter @CCHMediaHelp.

Wolters Kluwer (www.wolterskluwer.com) is a market-leading global information services company. Wolters Kluwer is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. Its shares are quoted on Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices.

CCH 2012 TAX PROJECTIONS*

Married Filing Jointly (& Surviving Spouse)

Unmarried Individuals (other than surviving spouses and heads of households)

Head of Household

Married Individuals Filing Separate Returns

Standard Deduction Amounts

Standard Deduction for Dependents (“Kiddie” Standard Deduction)

Personal Exemption Amounts

Gift Tax Exemption

* These numbers are projected for the 2012 tax year and have not been confirmed by the Internal Revenue Service.

SOURCE CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business

http://www.CCHGroup.com

Taxpayers Will See Relief By Way of Inflation-Adjusted Indexing for 2012, CCH Says | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

“This is going to be the last time I am in town while Mayor Daley is still mayor,” President Obama said. “Thank you. You have done an extraordinary job and this city has been transformed because of your leadership.”

Daley was in the front row during the taping and was joined by his children, Patrick, Elizabeth, and Nora, as well as his brother Bill, who serves as Obama’s chief of staff.

Obama presented Daley with a note that read, “Mayor Richard Daley, Thank you for making a great American city a great world city.” The president also gave him a framed surveyor’s map of Chicago from 1834.

Daley had welcomed the Obamas at O’Hare International and rode on their private helicopter into the city. The president said that Daley was still brimming with new ideas for the city, even though his term was coming to a close.

“On the helicopter ride over here, he was still generating about 30 ideas for everything from how to get rid of rats, to how to start beehives, to making sure that we have bikes for every kid in the schools,” said Obama. The president doubts Daley will be taking much time off.

Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, will be sworn in as the city’s new mayor on May 16.

“Make sure if Rahm starts messing up, you give him some tips,” Obama said to Daley.

Obama commends Daley’s years as mayor | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

In the racket over Rahm Emanuel’s residency, a key issue has been ignored. Emanuel claims he’s been a Chicago resident for the last year, as required of mayoral candidates, because he owns a house on the north side, in Lakeview. Some of his opponents say he shouldn’t be allowed to run because he rented out the house while he lived in Washington, where he was serving as President Obama’s chief of staff.

But Emanuel’s problem is not that he hasn’t really been living on the north side. His problem is that he hasn’t been living on the south side.

Originally reported by Huffington Post Chicago. Read the original story here.

Will Chicagoans Elect A Mayor From The North Side? | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Thomas Blackshear’s Ebony Visions™ Michelle Obama Figurine Has Everyone Seeing Red

Now available for pre-order at Collector Hub, Blackshear’s First Lady Figurine Is a Red Hot Collectible

Ripon, CA, Nov. 23, 2010 — Blackshear has done it again. Famous for his unique depictions of African-Americans, he has managed to capture the essence of America’s First Lady Michelle Obama.

Her memorable red dress and engaging smile sets this Ebony Visions collectible apart from the rest.

Learn more about the Michelle Obama figurine here.

Collectors of Thomas Blackshear’s fine art and collectibles and home décor, collectors of African-American art, Presidential collectibles and history buffs will all be clamoring to get a chance to own this timeless treasure, now available at CollectorHub.com.

Eye-catching and an ideal complement to the President Barack Obama figurine, the First Lady collectible will fit perfectly with any décor.

An unforgettable piece of history that can be handed down for generations, from mother to daughter, sister to sister, grandmother to granddaughter. This remarkable rendition is limited to only 3000 figurines worldwide.

Imagine the thrill of owning this historic investment.

It’s no secret that certain collectibles, especially those in Thomas Blackshear’s Ebony Visions™ collection, have significantly increased in value. While no one can predict the market trends, the First Lady Michelle Obama figurine possesses the traits that attract the attentions of collectors throughout the world.

Internationally renowned artist, Thomas Blackshear believes his Ebony Visions™ collection is his greatest artistic acclaim to date. A blend of Art Nouveau and African culture, Thomas refers to it as Afro Nouveau.

A collection of dignified and uniquely powerful depictions of African-Americans, the President Obama and First Lady figurines are the perfect complements to this endearing collection.

Formerly known as Blackshear Online, Collector Hub, established in 2001 is the Internet’s preeminent gathering place for collectors of internationally acclaimed African-American artist, Thomas Blackshear.

Our goal is to continue to be the most comprehensive Thomas Blackshear community by providing the essential link collectors need to interact and share ideas and information, and conveniently and confidently purchase Thomas Blackshear products online.

Visit our web site at www.CollectorHub.com or call us at (209) 599-8599. And don’t forget to bookmark our new web site.

All trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT:

Larraine Covington
Web: www.CollectorHub.com
Email: info@CollectorHub.com
Address: POB 1140, Ripon, CA 95366, USA
Telephone: 209-599-8599
Fax: 209-599-1799

Michelle Obama First Lady Figurine Is a Red Hot Collectible | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

CHICAGO — When President Barack Obama, along with a large contingent of U.S. politicians and corporate leaders, arrives in India this weekend the local stock market will greet the group with an impressive track record of 431% total investment returns for the last 10 years – arguably the best such returns in the world among major economies.

Keeping a close eye on the Obama visit to India is Chicago Nonprofit Director Rao Tuthika, who served as a financial advisor for a Fortune 500 Company spin-off from American Express and now runs U.S. Charities, a 501(c)(3) based in Oak Brook. The organization focuses in part on helping companies expand into prospering world markets and serving America’s unemployed and underemployed who have been impacted by the recession.

“Over the last10 years, America’s S&P 500 and NASDAQ gave negative returns; the CAC 40 French index was down 39%, while Japan’s NIKKEI 225 gave -37% returns,” said Tuthika. “Contrast those results to India’s Stock Market BSE Sensex, which gave investors returns that were up 431%, and you readily see how U.S. businesses can learn and benefit from India’s success.”

At the same time, according to Tuthika, more than 95 million American investors, including 401(k), and IRA account holders, have experienced negative or zero returns in the last 10 years.

“India’s past investment performance combined with the significance of Obama’s visit should serve as a wake-up call for those 95 million investors,” said Tuthika.

In the next 10 years, in industries ranging from agriculture and infrastructure to transportation and defense systems, the world is expected to consume $123 Trillion imports. Tuthika estimates that by partnering with India and exporting to global markets, American businesses can create more than 11 million U.S. jobs.

Backing this up, the Goldman Sachs report, “Ten Things for India to Achieve its 2050 Potential,” points out that India’s economy might surpass that of the U.S. within the next 40 years.

Like his predecessors before him, Obama has expressed a vision of India as a major world power for years to come. The administration considers the U.S.-India relationship a “defining partnership of the 21st century,” said Bill Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, during a background briefing on the trip.

“I would simply say that a key part of the message is going to be that we want to make sure (there are) opportunities for U.S. jobs, U.S. exports,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications remarking on the Obama trip to Asia and India. “So India is a cornerstone of our broader Asia approach, which is focused on, again, expanding exports for U.S. goods, deepening partnerships in important part of the world (and) partnering together in the (Group of 20) and other forums.”

Tuthika explains that with a trade deficit in excess of $2.2 trillion, China displaced 22 million American jobs since 1985.

“In the next 10 years, without India’s partnership, America can lose another 22 million jobs to China” says Tuthika. “We cannot afford to miss out on what India has to offer the United States, specifically, creating 11 million jobs for Americans from exports to global markets and preventing another 22 million jobs from going to China.”

“The mission of uscharities.org is to advance the prosperity of the United States by job creation and retention for all Americans,” said Tuthika. “Right now I see no better opportunity to do so than to have a strong partnership with India for the remainder of the 21st century to take advantage of a $123 trillion global import market for securing American Jobs. President Obama and his team need to stress the same during this trip.”

Editor’s Note: Rao Tuthika is available for interviews and expert commentary during the Obama visit on the economic advantages of U.S. (and specifically Chicago) businesses partnering with India for the purpose of job creation and investment.

To arrange an interview, please contact Lisa Gunggoll at lgunggoll@lg-pr.com or at 708.829.8669.

About uscharities.org

The mission of uscharities.org is to advance the prosperity of the United States by job creation and retention for all Americans.

To advance its nonprofit mission, U.S. Charities offers JOB Placement Services for the unemployed, export promotion services for America’s Fortune 1000 companies, and investment services for mid-sized companies.

Other programs include services for nonprofits training the unemployed, information consulting services for broadcast and publishing outlets, and policy consulting for American lawmakers.

For more information visit www.uscharities.org.

About Rao Tuthika

Rao Tuthika holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration and was a former financial advisor for a $491 billion dollar Fortune 500 company spin-off from American Express. He is also a director for uscharities.org, a Chicago-area nonprofit that serves unemployed and underemployed Americans throughout the United States as well as raises funds for relief efforts in times of disaster.

Indian Stock Markets Greet President Obama with 431% Investment Returns | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

President Obama chats with "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama apparently thinks politics is no laughing matter, even when he’s staring down a comedian.

Obama barely cracked any jokes during an appearance Wednesday on “The Daily Show” despite host Jon Stewart’s attempts to draw out the president’s humorous side with a few of his own snarky wisecracks.

Less than a week before the critical Nov. 2 congressional elections, Obama said he hopes Democratic lawmakers who made tough votes will be rewarded with another term in office.

He promised more accomplishments in the two years left on his own term in the Oval Office and urged people to vote — early if they can.

Stewart asked how the political environment got to the point that Democrats “seem to be running on ‘Please, baby, one more chance’” just two years after Obama ran a successful presidential campaign built around “very high rhetoric, hope and change.”

“Are you disappointed in how it’s gone?” asked the Comedy Central satirist.

Obama seemed to suggest that he wasn’t disappointed. He said his advisers had told him during the euphoria of his 2008 election to “enjoy this now because two years from now folks are going to be frustrated. That is, in fact, what’s happening.”

He listed as reasons a 9.6 percent unemployment rate, sinking housing values and an economy that is growing but not fast enough. But Obama said his administration has also stabilized the economy, noting it has grown for nine months in a row. He also signed major health care and financial legislation. Obama suggested that his administration did so much that “we have done things that some folks don’t even know about.”

The comment seemed to catch Stewart by surprise.

“What have you done that we don’t know about?” he asked. “Are you planning a surprise party for us, filled with jobs and health care?”

Obama cited legislation extending health care to more children and broadening a national service program as examples.

“Over and over again, we have moved forward an agenda that is making a difference in people’s lives each and every day,” Obama replied. “Is it enough? No. And so I expect, and I think most Democrats out there expect, that people want to see more progress.”

The interview, which allowed Obama to take his campaign message to the type of audience that gets political news from programs like Stewart’s, seemed more wonkish than slapstick.

Stewart pressed Obama on the changed political climate in the country and questioned him about the new health care law. The president defended his record as well as Democrats, who are expected to suffer a drubbing at the polls Tuesday. Obama was the guest for the entire show. Stewart is taping the show in Washington this week ahead of a rally he’s holding Saturday on the National Mall.

At one point, though, when Obama asked to say something about members of Congress, Stewart prompted laughter by asking, “Are you going to curse?”

Stewart poked at Obama for saying during the presidential campaign that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

“So here you are, you’re two years into your administration and the question that arises in my mind: Are we the people we were waiting for or does it turn out those people are still out there and we don’t have their number?” the comedian intoned, suggesting that someone in the White House needs to call them up.

There was even more laughter when Obama used a now-notorious Washington phrase to defend Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser who is leaving the administration at the end of the year. Stewart reminded Obama that he’d once said that different results won’t come from the same people. Then Obama hired Summers, who had served in the Clinton administration.

Obama said Summers “did a heck of a job,” to which Stewart said, “You don’t want to use that phrase, dude.”

That’s because in 2005, then-President George W. Bush used the phrase to describe the job his emergency management director, Michael Brown, was doing after Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters had devastated New Orleans.

On the “Daily Show,” Obama said he hopes voters will reward some Democrats from largely conservative districts who took votes they knew would be bad politically but did so anyway because they thought it was the right thing to do. He named freshman Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia, who voted for Obama’s health care overhaul and is in a tight race re-election race. Obama plans to campaign with Perriello on Friday.

“My hope is that those people are rewarded for taking those tough votes,” Obama said. “If they are, then I think Democrats will do fine on Election Day.”

President not joking around on “Daily Show” appearance | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has filled out an absentee ballot to vote in his home state of Illinois.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the president completed the ballot in the West Wing on Tuesday. Gibbs says Obama voted for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat who is running for re-election, and Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, who is locked in a close race for Obama’s former Senate seat.

Obama will travel to Illinois on Saturday to headline a rally in Chicago as he makes a final push for Democrats ahead of Election Day.

Know something we don’t? E-mail us at chicago@huffingtonpost.com

Originally reported by Huffington Post. Read the original story here.

Obama’s Illinois Ballot: President Votes For Pat Quinn, Alexi Giannoulias | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

WASHINGTON – One week before US elections, a new poll on Monday showed President Barack Obama’s Republican foes fired up and eyeing big gains in congress as Democrats turned to First Lady Michelle Obama for help.

The survey by the respected Gallup organization, published in USA Today, found Republicans enjoyed their widest edge in mid-term vote enthusiasm since 1994, when they swept to control of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Sixty-three percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting, against just 37 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, according to a USA Today.

In 1994, Republicans held a nine-point advantage and went on to swamp Democrats in a historic rout — something they hope to do again in the November 2 election that will shape the fate of the president’s agenda.

The survey, which had an error margin of plus or minus four percentage points, seemed to buttress repeated US media reports that Democrats suffer from a potentially devastating “enthusiasm gap” ahead of the election.

Democrats have countered that results from early voting in several key states show they are in good shape, and said that their get-out-the-vote efforts will make the difference in hotly contested toss-up races.

Looking to collect more early ballots, Democrats released a personal video appeal from Michelle Obama pleading with supporters not to wait until election day but cast their votes now.

“Our president needs your help, we need your votes, so get out there get it done early,” she said in the video, which was available online. “Don’t wait until election day, make it happen, we can do this and we need your help!”

All 435 House of Representatives seats, 37 of 100 Senate seats, and 37 governorships are up for grabs in the election, which comes halfway between Obama’s November 2008 victory and the 2012 presidential ballot.

The president has criss-crossed the country in a bid to energize Democrats and revive the coalition that carried him to the White House, telling supporters in Rhode Island on Monday to “run scared.”

“I’ve got to have you come out in droves and vote in this election. You’ve got to come out and vote. And, look, if everybody who voted in 2008 votes in 2010, we are confident we will win this election,” he said.

Analysts predicted that Republicans stood a solid chance of netting the 39 seats they needed to retake the House and would seize key governorships but fall just short of the 10 new seats needed to recapture the Senate.

Taking control of even one chamber of the US Congress would give Republicans broad control over the legislative agenda in Washington and give them new power to investigate the Obama administration and probe government programs.

Whatever happens on Tuesday, Republicans must make it their top goal to defeat Obama in 2012, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the National Journal, which focuses on US politics and policy.

In an interview published Monday, McConnell underlined that Republicans must be “smarter” than they were after retaking the Congress in 1994 — only to see then-president Bill Clinton coast to reelection in 1996.

“Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful,” McConnell told the magazine.

McConnell also warned the archconservative “Tea Party” movement not to expect sweeping changes in Washington as long as Obama “holds the veto pen.”

Another poll held a hopeful message for Obama, finding that 47 percent of respondents said they hoped to see him run for reelection, 11 points higher than for Republican icon Ronald Reagan at this point in his term in 1982.

Two years later, Reagan romped to a landslide win over Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, carrying 49 states and 59 percent of the popular vote.

The Society for Human Resource Management/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, conducted with the Pew Research Center, had an error margin for plus or minus four percentage points.

One week from US vote, Republicans fired up | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Biden’s appearance is meant to give a boost to Quinn, who’s in a tough race with Republican State Sen. Bill Brady.

But the head of the Illinois GOP, Pat Brady, says Democratic heavies like Biden and Rahm Emanuel, who’s running for Chicago mayor, are actually helping Republicans.

BRADY: It really motivates our base because I think those two, in particular, represent the policies that are very unpopular with a lot of Republicans and independents.

Radio ads featuring President Barack Obama praising Quinn will begin airing Monday.

But is this all a sign of Democratic desperation?

QUINN: Absolutely not.

Here’s Governor Quinn.

QUINN: Having his support means a great deal to me. I wanna be his friend forever.

Meanwhile, First Lady Michelle Obama comes to Chicago later this week for more fundraising.

Originally reported by Chicago Public Radio. Read the original article here.

GOP Says White House Visits Provide a Boost | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

With just a few weeks until Nov. 2, the White House is throwing its weight into some of Illinois’ toughest races. On Thursday evening Mr. Obama will be the main attraction at a fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias.

Giannoulias and Republican Mark Kirk are fighting for the President’s former senate seat.

First Lady Michelle Obama comes to Chicago late next week for another Giannoulias fundraiser. And on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden will appear alongside Gov. Pat Quinn at union rally.

The one likely candidate who seems to be avoiding all things White House – so far – is former presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who’s widely expected to run for Chicago mayor.

His spokeswoman says he will not meet with Mr. Obama during his three-hour visit Thursday in order to “give some space” to the other candidates.

Originally reported by Chicago Public Radio. Read the original article here.

White House Swoops In for Illinois Races | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

The day after raising cash for Democrats in New Jersey, Obama is headed Thursday to a rally for Gov. Martin O’Malley in Maryland and a pair of fundraisers in Chicago for Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, who’s trying to keep the president’s old seat out of GOP hands.

It’s a seat Democrats need as they try to avoid losing their grip on Congress — and with it, control of Obama’s agenda.

In Maryland, the afternoon rally on the campus of Bowie State University aimed to boost O’Malley in his rematch with Bob Ehrlich, the Republican he ousted in 2006. A series of recent polls have shown O’Malley in the lead.

But in Illinois, the Senate contest is considered neck-and-neck. Giannoulias, the state treasurer and a longtime Obama friend, is battling Republican Rep. Mark Kirk.

Also scheduled to appear with Obama in Chicago is Gov. Pat Quinn, who took over when Rod Blagojevich was impeached over corruption charges and trails Republican state Sen. Bill Brady in the polls.

The White House said Obama had no plans to see Rahm Emanuel, who quit as White House chief of staff last week to launch a bid to succeed Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Emanuel has been touring Chicago neighborhoods ahead of a formal announcement.

The two-state day trip comes as Obama ramps up his campaign travel in hopes of limiting Democratic losses in midterm elections now less than four weeks away.

A key goal is closing the wide gap in surveys of how excited party loyalists are.

“Right now all the reports out there are that the main challenge we have is closing an enthusiasm gap,” Obama told a Democratic National Committee dinner Wednesday night in Cresskill, N.J. “We’re not finished unless we lose sight of that long game and start sulking and sitting back and not doing everything we need to do in terms of making sure our folks turn out.”

The small dinner at the home of public relations executive Michael Kempner was expected to raise roughly $1 million, Democratic officials said.

Obama warned donors that gridlock would strike if Democrats can’t keep their majorities in both the House and the Senate.

“We’re going to be stalled for two years or four years, and we’re going to start going backwards,” he said.

Obama said Democrats are “in a very tough election season because the country is going through a very difficult time.” But he added that if their candidates make their case “robustly” they’ll do well.

Obama to campaign in Maryland, Illinois | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

AUSTIN, Texas – Lance Armstrong just keeps rolling along.

While prosecutors examine his past as part of a federal investigation into drug use in pro cycling, Armstrong is sticking to a relentless public schedule of charity bike rides, speeches, endorsements and meetings with policy groups.

He’s doing anything but hiding.

And that, public relations experts say, is the way to stay popular — or at least, limit the damage to his reputation — even as prosecutors present evidence to a grand jury.

“It’s all the right moves. Other athletes could learn from him” said Gene Grabowski, who guides high-profile figures through public relations crises as a senior vice president with Washington-based Levick Strategic Communications.

Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times after fighting back from testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. Since returning from this year’s race, which he says will be his last, he has kept his fight against the disease at the forefront of his public appearances.

Armstrong was scheduled to be in San Francisco on Monday to visit a hospital with Mayor Gavin Newsome. When a federal grand jury considering the investigation meets in Los Angeles on Wednesday, he’ll be in New York City for the Clinton Global Initiative where he’s headlining a panel on cancer in the developing world. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are scheduled to be at the Clinton event later in the week.

Meantime, Armstrong is constantly updating his 2.65 million followers on Twitter with his musings on life, racing and music.

“We call it ‘brazening it out.’ You act as if there’s nothing wrong,” said George Merlis, founder of Experience Media Consulting Group. “All of these are laudable if he’s doing it for the right reason, such as fighting cancer.”

Armstrong insists there is, indeed, nothing wrong. He has always denied doping allegations that have dogged him for years. Spokesman Mark Fabiani said there’s no reason for him to back off now.

“This tax-money-wasting fishing expedition — which continues to drag up nothing but old news — was started on the word of the disgraced Floyd Landis, so there is no reason why it would distract Lance Armstrong from the vigorous work he has always done on behalf of his foundation, his sport, and his wide range of business partners,” Fabiani said.

In fact, Armstrong’s highly public schedule is nothing new.

When he first retired from cycling in 2005, he made regular appearances around the country for charity and cancer-awareness programs.

He also entered the political world. In 2007, Armstrong successfully lobbied state lawmakers to pass a $3 billion cancer research initiative. He also co-hosted televised cancer forums with several candidates for president.

Today, Armstrong still has a dedicated following, the so-called Livestrong Army enchanted by his work fighting cancer and his success on the bike. Just this weekend, a 6-year-old boy in Corpus Christi made local news by raising $150 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation selling lemonade.

And a “Support for Lance” website is appealing to the “millions of Lance Armstrong fans all over the world — it’s time that this international hero gets some support when he needs it most!” (The Armstrong camp says the cyclist is not behind the website and has not been contacted by the site’s operators.)

Armstrong’s corporate sponsors — including Nike, RadioShack Corp., 24-hour fitness and Trek bikes — have stuck with him. He recently shot a new commercial for Michelob Ultra.

Yet analysts are divided over whether Armstrong’s image is taking a hit because of the doping investigation.

Armstrong ranked about average in popularity among sports figures, according to a survey conducted by the Q Scores Co. in August and September.

“There’s no indication that his negative recognition has grown at an alarming rate, unlike other athletes like Tiger Woods, where the negatives went through the roof. He’s nowhere near that kind of disaster,” Schafer said.

But Zeta Interactive, a marketing firm that tracks looks online to see how people are being viewed, found Armstrong has fallen far from his perch as one of the most popular athletes the agency has ever tracked.

Zeta measured Armstrong at 92 percent popularity in 2008, and he was at 86 percent in July before the start of his final Tour de France. That number dropped to 51 percent in August when the federal investigation ramped up and has bumped only slightly to 55 percent in recent weeks.

“He’s flirting with 50-50,” said Zeta Interactive CEO Al DiGuido. “For someone trying to build themself as a brand, that’s not a good place to be.”

Grabowski thinks the decision to pursue Armstrong in court may depend, at least to some degree, on how well he’s able to maintain his public persona as a legitimate Tour champion and cancer fighter.

“There’s an old saying in Washington: You never kick a man when he’s up. When someone’s popular and you take him on, you’re going to lose,” Grabowski said.

Merlis isn’t so sure.

“Urine samples from France will determine that,” Merlis said, referring to the French doping agency’s offer last week to send urine samples from the 1999 tour to U.S. investigators. French sports daily L’Equipe reported in 2005 that Armstrong’s backup samples from 1999 contained EPO — a banned blood-boosting hormone. Armstrong was cleared by an independent panel.

As public as Armstrong has been, there are limits.

Because of the investigation, Armstrong’s reps said he would not be available for comment. Armstrong leaves it to Fabiani, an attorney and public relations specialist, to immediately and aggressively respond to any allegations of drug use reported in the investigation.

That’s in sharp contrast to baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, who held a long and combative news conference with reporters to deny allegations of steroid use.

“He has stayed above it all,” Grabowski said of Armstrong. “Image does count … Lance Armstrong understands that.”

Under investigation, Armstrong stays in public (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

AUSTIN, Texas – Lance Armstrong just keeps rolling along.

While prosecutors examine his past as part of a federal investigation into drug use in pro cycling, Armstrong is sticking to a relentless public schedule of charity bike rides, speeches, endorsements and meetings with policy groups.

He’s doing anything but hiding.

And that, public relations experts say, is the way to stay popular — or at least, limit the damage to his reputation — even as prosecutors present evidence to a grand jury.

“It’s all the right moves. Other athletes could learn from him” said Gene Grabowski, who guides high-profile figures through public relations crises as a senior vice president with Washington-based Levick Strategic Communications.

Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times after fighting back from testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. Since returning from this year’s race, which he says will be his last, he has kept his fight against the disease at the forefront of his public appearances.

Armstrong was scheduled to be in San Francisco on Monday to visit a hospital with Mayor Gavin Newsome. When a federal grand jury considering the investigation meets in Los Angeles on Wednesday, he’ll be in New York City for the Clinton Global Initiative where he’s headlining a panel on cancer in the developing world. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are scheduled to be at the Clinton event later in the week.

Meantime, Armstrong is constantly updating his 2.65 million followers on Twitter with his musings on life, racing and music.

“We call it ‘brazening it out.’ You act as if there’s nothing wrong,” said George Merlis, founder of Experience Media Consulting Group. “All of these are laudable if he’s doing it for the right reason, such as fighting cancer.”

Armstrong insists there is, indeed, nothing wrong. He has always denied doping allegations that have dogged him for years. Spokesman Mark Fabiani said there’s no reason for him to back off now.

“This tax-money-wasting fishing expedition — which continues to drag up nothing but old news — was started on the word of the disgraced Floyd Landis, so there is no reason why it would distract Lance Armstrong from the vigorous work he has always done on behalf of his foundation, his sport, and his wide range of business partners,” Fabiani said.

In fact, Armstrong’s highly public schedule is nothing new.

When he first retired from cycling in 2005, he made regular appearances around the country for charity and cancer-awareness programs.

He also entered the political world. In 2007, Armstrong successfully lobbied state lawmakers to pass a $3 billion cancer research initiative. He also co-hosted televised cancer forums with several candidates for president.

Today, Armstrong still has a dedicated following, the so-called Livestrong Army enchanted by his work fighting cancer and his success on the bike. Just this weekend, a 6-year-old boy in Corpus Christi made local news by raising $150 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation selling lemonade.

And a “Support for Lance” website is appealing to the “millions of Lance Armstrong fans all over the world — it’s time that this international hero gets some support when he needs it most!” (The Armstrong camp says the cyclist is not behind the website and has not been contacted by the site’s operators.)

Armstrong’s corporate sponsors — including Nike, RadioShack Corp., 24-hour fitness and Trek bikes — have stuck with him. He recently shot a new commercial for Michelob Ultra.

Yet analysts are divided over whether Armstrong’s image is taking a hit because of the doping investigation.

Armstrong ranked about average in popularity among sports figures, according to a survey conducted by the Q Scores Co. in August and September.

“There’s no indication that his negative recognition has grown at an alarming rate, unlike other athletes like Tiger Woods, where the negatives went through the roof. He’s nowhere near that kind of disaster,” Schafer said.

But Zeta Interactive, a marketing firm that tracks looks online to see how people are being viewed, found Armstrong has fallen far from his perch as one of the most popular athletes the agency has ever tracked.

Zeta measured Armstrong at 92 percent popularity in 2008, and he was at 86 percent in July before the start of his final Tour de France. That number dropped to 51 percent in August when the federal investigation ramped up and has bumped only slightly to 55 percent in recent weeks.

“He’s flirting with 50-50,” said Zeta Interactive CEO Al DiGuido. “For someone trying to build themself as a brand, that’s not a good place to be.”

Grabowski thinks the decision to pursue Armstrong in court may depend, at least to some degree, on how well he’s able to maintain his public persona as a legitimate Tour champion and cancer fighter.

“There’s an old saying in Washington: You never kick a man when he’s up. When someone’s popular and you take him on, you’re going to lose,” Grabowski said.

Merlis isn’t so sure.

“Urine samples from France will determine that,” Merlis said, referring to the French doping agency’s offer last week to send urine samples from the 1999 tour to U.S. investigators. French sports daily L’Equipe reported in 2005 that Armstrong’s backup samples from 1999 contained EPO — a banned blood-boosting hormone. Armstrong was cleared by an independent panel.

As public as Armstrong has been, there are limits.

Because of the investigation, Armstrong’s reps said he would not be available for comment. Armstrong leaves it to Fabiani, an attorney and public relations specialist, to immediately and aggressively respond to any allegations of drug use reported in the investigation.

That’s in sharp contrast to baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, who held a long and combative news conference with reporters to deny allegations of steroid use.

“He has stayed above it all,” Grabowski said of Armstrong. “Image does count … Lance Armstrong understands that.”

Under investigation, Armstrong stays in public eye (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

The ad shows Obama calling Alexi Giannoulias (jeh-NOO’-lee-us) his friend, someone voters can trust.

The president praises Giannoulias for running a campaign that doesn’t take money from federal lobbyists.

Some candidates have kept their distance as Obama’s approval ratings fall, but Obama remains relatively popular in his home state of Illinois. Giannoulias is in a tight race against Republican Mark Kirk for Obama’s former seat.

Giannoulias’ campaign says the ad will begin airing statewide Thursday. People familiar with the campaign’s plans say it will spend about $500,000 on the ad.

Ill. Senate candidate embraces Obama in new ad | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

What did Tony Blair think of the 2008 US presidential election? Chris Brooke, who is valiantly live-tweeting his reading of Tony Blair’s memoir, A Journey, highlights Blair’s take, which comes on pages 512-513:

It’s one of the oddest things about modern politics. The paradigm imposed, usually by a particular media view, completely disorients the proper analysis. I used to smile at the way the Obama/McCain election of 2008 was framed: Barack was the man of vision, John the old political hack. One seemed to call America to a new future, the other seemed a stale relic of the past. This was a paradigm that determined the mood and defined the election.

Actually, it was John who was articulating a foreign policy that could be called wildly idealistic for the cause of freedom. Barack was the supreme master of communicating a brilliant vision, but he was a practitioner of realism, advocating a cautious approach based on reaching out, arriving at compromises and striking deals to reduce tension. For these purposes, leave alone who is right. It’s just a really interesting feature of modern politics that the mood trumps the policy every time.

Originally reported by the Guardian. Read the original article here.

Tony Blair on Obama and McCain | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Today that view of Obama is harder to find in Indiana. A couple of weeks back and a dozen miles west of Elkhart, hundreds gathered in another school gym – except this time it was for a job fair. With the local unemployment rate above 12% and rising again this summer, about a third of the employer display tables stood empty.

Julie Griffin, who voted for Obama in ’08, sat down at the room’s edge, well dressed and discouraged. After 23 years as a payroll administrator at a local RV plant, she got laid off 18 months ago. “Really, what has he been doing?” she said when I asked about Obama’s efforts to help people like her. “I guess I don’t know what he is doing.”

Across the gym floor, Joe Donnelly, Elkhart’s pro-life, pro-gun Democratic Congressman, worked the crowd. He was part of the moderate wave that won Congress for Nancy Pelosi in ’06, and he was re-elected with 67% of the vote while campaigning for Obama in ’08. The President has since returned to the region three times, but Donnelly is nonetheless fighting for his political life. In a recent television ad, an unflattering photo of Obama and Pelosi flashes while Donnelly condemns “the Washington crowd.” This is basically a Democratic campaign slogan now: Don’t blame me for Obama and Pelosi. “I’m not one of them,” Donnelly told me when I caught up with him. “I’m one of us.”

This shift in perception – from Obama as political savior to Obama as creature of Washington – can be seen elsewhere. When Obama arrived in office in January ’09, his Gallup approval rating stood at 68%, a high for a newly elected leader not seen since John Kennedy in 1961. Today Obama’s job approval has been hovering in the mid-40s, which means that at least 1 in 4 Americans has changed his or her mind.

The plunge has been particularly dramatic among independents, whites and those under age 30. With midterm elections just nine weeks off, instead of the generational transformation some Democrats predicted after 2008, the President’s party teeters on the brink of a broad setback in November, including the possible loss of both houses of Congress.

By a 10-point margin, people say they will vote for Republicans over Democrats in Congress, the largest such gap ever recorded by Gallup.

White House aides explain this change as a largely inevitable reflection of the cycles of history. Midterms are almost always bad for first-term Presidents, and worse in hard times.

“The public is rightly frustrated and angry with the economy,” says Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s communications director, explaining the White House line. “There is no small tactical shift we could have made at any point that would have solved that problem.” In more confiding moments, aides admit that the peak of Obama’s popularity may have been inflated, a fleeting result of elation at the prospect of change and national pride in electing the first African-American President. As one White House aide puts it, “It was sort of fake.”

But while these explanations may be valid, they are also incomplete. A sense of disappointment, bordering on betrayal, has been growing across the country, especially in moderate states like Indiana, where people now openly say they didn’t quite understand the President they voted for in 2008. The fear most often expressed is that Obama is taking the country somewhere they don’t want to go.

“We bought what he said. He offered a lot of hope,” says Fred Ferlic, an Obama voter and orthopedic surgeon in South Bend who has since soured on his choice. Ferlic talks about the messy compromises in health care reform, his sense of an inhospitable business climate and the growth of government spending under Obama. “He’s trying to Europeanize us, and the Europeans are going the other way,” continues Ferlic, a former Democratic campaign donor who plans to vote Republican this year. “The entire American spirit is being broken.”

One explanation for Obama’s steep decline is that his presidency rests on what Gallup’s Frank Newport calls a “paradox” between Obama and the electorate. In 2008, Newport notes, trust in the federal government was at a historic low, dropping to around 25%, where it still remains.

Yet Obama has offered government as the primary solution to most of the nation’s woes, calling for big new investments in health care, education, infrastructure and energy. Some voters bucked at the incongruity, repeatedly telling pollsters that even programs that have clearly helped the economy, like the $787 billion stimulus, did no such thing. Meanwhile, the resulting spike in deficits, which has been greatly magnified by tax revenue lost to the economic downturn, has spooked a broad sweep of the country, which simply does not trust Washington to responsibly handle such a massive liability.

The Overreach

Rather than address these concerns as the economic crisis grew, Obama made a conscious choice to go big with government reforms of health care and energy. The bailouts of the auto companies, the rescue of Wall Street and the new regulation of banks and the financial industry only deepened the public’s skepticism, especially among independent voters. Rather than dwell on the political problems, the President pushed his team forward, believing, in the words of top adviser David Axelrod, that “ultimately the best politics was to do that which he thought was right.”

It wasn’t long before deep cracks in Obama’s coalition began to appear. This past June, Peter Brodnitz of the Benenson Strategy Group, a firm that also polls for the White House, asked voters which they preferred: “new government investments” or “cutting taxes for business” as the better approach to jump-start job creation.

Even among those who voted for Obama, nearly 38% preferred tax cuts. When Brodnitz offered a choice between tax cuts to reduce the deficit and investments in “research, innovation and new technologies,” one-third of Obama voters chose the cuts. The evidence throughout the poll, commissioned by the think tank Third Way, was unmistakable: roughly 1 in 3 of the President’s 2008 supporters had serious questions about government spending solutions for the economy.

In Nevada, a state Obama won with 55% of the vote, only 29% of likely voters this year think the President’s actions have helped the economy, according to a recent poll by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. “A lot of this was really inevitable, or at least pretty predictable,” says Indiana Senator and former governor Evan Bayh, a Democratic expert at getting elected in the Rust Belt. “We have a lot of government activism at a time when skepticism of government efficiency is at an all-time high.” (See picutres of Obama’s first year in the White House.)

It’s not as if the White House didn’t see this coming. After a meeting in December 2008 about the severity of the economic crisis, Axelrod pulled Obama aside. He recalls saying, “Enjoy these great poll numbers you have, because two years from now, they are not going to look anything like this.” But even as Obama aides were aware of a growing disconnect, it didn’t seem to worry their boss. Instead, the ambitious legislative goals usually trumped other priorities.

Both in the original stimulus package and then in the health care and energy measures, the White House ceded most of its clout to the liberal lions who controlled the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. That maneuver helped assure passage of reforms, but it also confirmed some of the worst fears about how Washington works. “I’d rather be a one-term President and do big things than a two-term President and just do small things,” he told his team after Republican Scott Brown was elected Senator in liberal Massachusetts and some in the Administration suggested pulling back on health reform.

For Democrats in conservative districts, like Representative Jason Altmire in western Pennsylvania, the President’s approach always spelled trouble. “Even though the leaders in Congress understood that a lot of these things are not going to be popular, they were at a point in their careers where they realized that this is what they have been waiting for,” says Altmire, who is favored to win this year, in part because he voted against most of the President’s agenda, including health reform. “It was true overreach.”

For someone who so carefully read the political mood as a candidate, Obama has been unexpectedly passive at moments as President. Whereas other Democrats had hoped to spend the late summer talking about two things – jobs and the unpopularity of many Republican policies – the White House has been distracted by a string of unrelated issues, from immigration reform to a mishandled dismissal of a longtime USDA official to the furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero.

On Aug. 31, Obama gave a prime-time speech about the partial troop pullout from Iraq, touching on jobs only tangentially, before spending the following day in an intensive effort to restart the Middle East peace process. “It is inconceivable that a team so disciplined during the presidential campaign can’t carry a message with the bully pulpit of the White House,” says one Democratic strategist working on the midterm elections. “It’s politically irresponsible, and Americans have little patience for it.”

As his poll numbers fell, Obama responded with his perpetual cool. His appeals to the grass-roots army that he started, through online videos for Organizing for America, took on a formal, emotionless tone. He acted less like an action-oriented President than a Prime Minister overseeing some vast but balky legislative machinery. When challenged about his declining popularity, the President tended to deflect the blame – to the state of the economy, the ferocity of the news cycle and right-wing misinformation campaigns.

Aides treated the problem as a communications concern more than a policy matter. They increased his travel schedule to key states and limited his prime-time addresses. They struggled to explain large, unpopular legislative packages to the American people, who opposed the measures despite supporting many of the component parts, like extending health insurance to patients with pre-existing conditions or preventing teacher layoffs. “When you package it all together, it can be too big to succeed as a public-relations matter,” says Axelrod.

Instead of shifting course, Obama spoke dismissively about Republican efforts to play “short-term politics.” He continued the near weekly visits to new green energy manufacturing plants, repeating promises of an economic rebirth that remains, for many, months or years away. And he missed opportunities to strengthen his connections with his supporters: local political capos complained privately that Obama had a tendency to touch down in their backyards, give a speech and scoot after less than an hour. By the end of the summer, the disconnect had grown so severe that only 1 in 3 Americans in a Pew poll accurately identified him as a Christian, down from 51% in October 2008.

At the same time, the base voters Obama had energized so well in ’08 went back into hibernation. They were nowhere to be found in the ’09 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, tracking instead with pre-Obama historical patterns. While liberals attacked him from the left on cable television, many of his core supporters weren’t paying attention. In a rich irony, many of the same groups Obama turned out for the first time in record numbers had suffered the most from the recession and were the most likely to tune politics out. “One of the challenges on the Democratic side is, it’s been very hard for voters to make connections between what is happening in Washington and what is happening in their lives,” says Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. (See a video about the Unemployment Olympics.)

Can He Rebalance?

At the White House, advisers take comfort in the fact that at this point in their presidencies, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton scored slightly lower approval ratings than Obama. And the dominant analogy for the past few months has focused not on 1994, when Clinton lost a Democratic Congress in a huge Republican wave, but on ’82, when Reagan lost just 26 seats in the House. Like Obama, Reagan was facing rising discontent at the midterm, driven by huge unemployment numbers that peaked at 10.8% at year’s end. But as the economy rebounded, Reagan’s governing philosophy, “Stay the course,” was vindicated. He won re-election by an enormous margin.

Outside the White House, only a few of the President’s Democratic allies take much solace in this history, in part because the current economic slump appears far more lasting than the one Reagan faced. Most experts from both parties say Obama will have to rebalance his politics in 2011 to be re-elected in ’12. That’s partly because of the growing belief that the Republicans will win the House in November and, if their stars align, have a good shot at taking the Senate as well.

Elsewhere, in state houses and in governors’ races, Republicans are poised for a broad comeback. Regardless of the exact outcome, it is clear that Obama’s brief window of one-party rule has closed. That outcome alone may vindicate Obama’s decision to make the massive reforms while he still had the votes. It will never be known for certain just how much a more centrist legislative strategy would have improved the Democrats’ midterm outlook.

But two years is the equivalent of multiple lifetimes in politics, and there are signs that Obama is already pivoting away from plans to engineer massive reforms in energy policy, global-warming response and immigration law to less-stirring, more-popular challenges like reducing the deficit and reforming taxation and entitlements.

What little margins Obama does have to push major reforms through are sure to shrink away in the coming months. “I think the next couple of years, we’ve got to focus on debt and deficits,” Obama told NBC News after his summer vacation. “We’ve got to focus on making sure that we make the recovery stronger. And a lot of that is attracting private investment.”

Back in Indiana, the evidence of Obama’s political failure is particularly glaring. During his early, heady days in office, the President decided to make Elkhart a personal cause. A once thriving manufacturing center of 50,000 on the Michigan-Indiana border, famous for its musical instruments and recreational vehicles, the Elkhart region saw the steepest jump in unemployment of any metropolitan area in the nation during the economic crisis.

That helped Obama win Donnelly’s district by 9 points, nearly George W. Bush’s margin in 2004, and Obama returned to Elkhart just weeks after taking office. “I promised you back then that if elected President, I would do everything I could to help this community recover,” he announced. “And that’s why I’ve come back today.”

Since then, he has been back twice more, once to speak at Notre Dame and once to herald a new electric-vehicle plant that would be built with federal support. In the southern end of the district, thousands of jobs at parts plants were saved when Obama decided to bail out the auto companies.

Yet all of Obama’s personal and financial appeals have been swamped by the depth of the recession and have had little visible effect. Donnelly, who flies home every weekend to work in his district, felt obliged to run against Obama to save his job. And his Republican opponent, Jackie Walorski, says she is often approached by Obama voters who want to vent. “This has burned people,” she says. “Their words, not mine: ‘Betrayed by the health care vote.’ ‘What are they thinking when it comes to spending?’ ‘Broken promises when it comes to jobs.’”

At one recent Walorski house party, held at dusk beside a cornfield, two attendees, Matthew and Frances Napieralski, identified themselves as former supporters of the President. “He’s not what I voted for,” said Matthew, who runs a plastic-injection-molding shop in town. “It’s a shame that they led us to believe one thing,” said Frances, “and then everything changes.”

For now, Obama’s aides hope that the controversial reforms in health care and financial rules will produce benefits felt by voters, if not by November 2010, then two years later. That would vindicate the President’s vision of government as a solution and not just a problem.

Even in Indiana, the disappointment is matched by a real yearning for a leader who can make a difference. “I think he’s trying,” says Griffin, the laid-off payroll administrator who said she didn’t know what Obama had done for her. “Nobody can turn it around overnight.”

How Barack Obama became Mr. unpopular | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

During a stop for lunch at Nancy’s Restaurant in the Oak Bluffs section of the Massachusetts island, ABC’s Jake Tapper reports that members of the press yelled out several questions for the president, including one about the war in Iraq.

The president’s response?

“We’re buying shrimp, guys,” the president said, smiling. “Come on.”

The president is scheduled to deliver an Oval Office address on the war Tuesday, the eve of the administration’s scheduled Sept. 1 deadline for a U.S. troop drawdown in Iraq.

(Photo: AP/Carolyn Kaster)

Obama to press: ‘We’re buying shrimp, guys’ | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

In order to help qualify for the funds, dozens of states adopted  standards in line with the Obama administration’s priorities: lifting caps on charter schools, pushing for teacher evaluations linked to test scores, and/or adopting common curriculum standards.

States that moved to adopt reforms but were passed over in the competition are crying foul, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Jilted states and other observers questioned the validity of a scoring system that left out states such as Colorado and Louisiana — which many had considered shoo-ins based on their reform efforts — while awarding money to Hawaii, which made few changes to strengthen its application.

Some observers noted that seven of the 10 winners have governors who are Democrats.

Critics also said that Eastern states as well as states that had local unions’ support in their applications were rewarded unfairly over states that made the most education reforms.

Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio  and Rhode Island were the competition’s winners.

New Jersey fell just shy of Ohio (the last state to win funding) because of a simple mistake in the application, reports the New Jersey Star-Ledger: Applicants were asked for information comparing the 2008 and 2009 budgets, but Democratic Gov. Chris Christie’s administration instead submitted information comparing this year’s with 2011.

The state’s largest teachers union is jumping on the governor for the mistake, telling the paper that the funding loss is “a direct result of Gov. Christie’s misguided decision to hijack the grant application process for his own political purposes.” The Democratic state Assembly leader called it a “stunning $400 million mistake.”

But even winners make mistakes. An elated New York Gov. David Paterson announced to a roomful of reporters Tuesday that he’s really happy his state won the “race to the cock.”

(Photo of Christie: AP)

Jilted states cry foul on Race to the Top funds | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Move over Martha Washington. Martha Stewart and Michelle Obama are getting space in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington for the first time.

A new exhibit, “Americans Now,” opened Friday, featuring famous names from science, business, government and the arts.

President Barack Obama and the first lady are among those portrayed. It’s the first time Michelle Obama’s individual portrait has been shown at the gallery.

Familiar names in the collection also include Tom Hanks, Willie Nelson and LL Cool J. Video portraits in the exhibit feature late night comedians Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and David Letterman, as well as George Clooney and LeBron James.

Museum Director Martin Sullivan says the portraits show the national impact of these individuals. They are on view through July 2011.

Michelle Obama portrait debuts at Smithsonian | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

And that Muslims pray inside the Pentagon, too, less than 80 feet from where terrorists attacked.

And that the imam who’s being branded an extremist has been valued by both Republican and Democratic administrations as a moderate face of the faith.

Even so, the project stirs complicated emotions, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a complex figure who defies easy categorization in the American Muslim world.

He’s devoted much of his career to working closely with Christians, Jews and secular leaders to advance interfaith understanding. He’s scolded his own religion for being in some ways in the “Dark Ages.” Yet he’s also accused the U.S. of spilling more innocent blood than al-Qaida, the terrorist network that turned the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon and four hijacked airplanes to apocalyptic rubble.

Many Republicans and some Democrats say the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque should be built elsewhere, where there is no possible association with New York’s ground zero. Far more than a local zoning issue, the matter has seized congressional campaigns, put President Barack Obama and his party on the spot — he says Muslims have the right to build the mosque — divided families of the Sept. 11, 2001, victims, caught the attention of Muslims abroad and threatened to blur distinctions between mainstream Islam in the U.S. and its radical elements.

A look at some of the claims and how they compare with the known facts:

“The folks who want to build this mosque — who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists — those folks don’t have any interest in reaching out to the community. They’re trying to make a case about supremacy.” — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate.

Some of the Muslim leaders associated with the mosque “are clearly terrorist sympathizers.” — Kevin Calvey, a Republican running for Congress in Oklahoma.

“This radical is a terrible choice to be one of the faces of our country overseas.” — Statement by GOP Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter King of New York.

THE FACTS:

No one has established a link between the cleric and radicals. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said, “We’ve identified no law enforcement issues related to the proposed mosque.”

Ros-Lehtinen and King were referring to the State Department’s plan, predating the mosque debate, to send Rauf on another religious outreach trip to the Middle East as part of his “long-term relationship” with U.S. officials in the Bush and Obama administrations. The State Department said Wednesday it will pay him $3,000 for a trip costing the government $16,000.

Rauf counts former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from the Clinton administration as a friend and appeared at events overseas or meetings in Washington with former President George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush adviser Karen Hughes.

He has denounced the terrorist attacks and suicide bombing as anti-Islamic and has criticized Muslim nationalism. But he’s made provocative statements about America, too, calling it an “accessory” to the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the invasion.

In a July 2005 speech at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center in Adelaide, Australia, Rauf said, according to the center’s transcript:

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”

While calling terrorism unjustified, he said the U.S. has supported authoritarian regimes with heinous human rights records and, faced with that, “how else do people get attention?”

In the same address, he spoke of prospects for peace between Palestinians and the Israelis — who he said “have moved beyond Zionism” — and of a love-your-neighbor ethic uniting all religions.

“Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque.” — Rick Scott, Republican candidate for Florida governor.

“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.” — Gingrich.

“Just a block or two away from 9/11.” — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, another 2012 GOP presidential prospect.

THE FACTS:

No mosque is going up at ground zero. The center would be established at 45-51 Park Place, just over two blocks from the northern edge of the sprawling, 16-acre World Trade Center site. Its location is roughly half a dozen normal lower Manhattan blocks from the site of the North Tower, the nearer of the two destroyed in the attacks.

The center’s location, in a former Burlington Coat Factory store, is already used by the cleric for worship, drawing a spillover from the imam’s former main place for prayers, the al-Farah mosque. That mosque, at 245 West Broadway, is about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center grounds.

Another, the Manhattan Mosque, stands five blocks from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site.

To be sure, the center’s association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence. The building was damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks and the center’s planners say they want the center to stand as a statement against terrorism.

“There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. … America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” — Gingrich.

“This religion’s plan is to destroy our way of life. … If we have to let them build it, make them build it nine stories underground, so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians.” — Ron McNeil, a House GOP candidate in the Florida Panhandle, in an exchange reported by The News Herald in Panama City.

THE FACTS:

Such opinions are shared by some Americans, while others are more reluctant to paint the religion with a broad brush and more welcoming of the faith in this country. Bush, himself, while criticized at the time for stirring suspicions about American Muslims, traveled to a Washington mosque less than a week after the attacks to declare that terrorism is “not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.”

In any event, the U.S. armed forces field Muslim troops and make accommodations for them. The Pentagon opened an interfaith chapel in November 2002 close to the area where hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, killing 184 people.

Muslims gather there for a daily prayer service Monday through Thursday and hold a weekly worship service on Fridays, drawing no complaints. Similar but separate services are provided for other faiths.

CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM writers Tom Hays in New York and Anne Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report.

FACT CHECK: Islam already lives near ground zero | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.