President Barack Obama walks with daughter Malia on the first family's return from vacationing in Hawaii, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Barack Obama walks with daughter Malia on the first family's return from vacationing in Hawaii, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
FILE - This Dec, 18, 2008 file photo shows then-Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel in Omaha, Neb. President Barack Obama will nominate Hagel as his next defense secretary, a senior administration official said Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. The selection of the decorated Vietnam combat veteran sets up a potentially contentious confirmation hearing because Hagel has come under scrutiny from his former colleagues over his positions on Israel and Iran. Some Republicans already have declared their public opposition to Hagel replacing Pentagon chief Leon Panetta in Obama's second-term Cabinet. (AP Photo/Dave Weaver, File)
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., left, walks with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, to the Senate floor for a vote on the fiscal cliff, on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013 in Washington. The Senate passed legislation early New Year's Day to neutralize a fiscal cliff combination of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that kicked in at midnight. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Barack Obama is heading toward bruising fights on Capitol Hill on multiple fronts even before second-term Inauguration Day festivities fade.
Battle lines are forming in the Senate over his latest national-security team selections and in both chambers over his proposal to raise the government's borrowing limit. And an expected major White House push on gun-control is already encountering heavy, mostly GOP pushback ? even though nothing specific is yet on the table.
On Monday, Obama brushed aside intensifying Republican objections to his choice of former Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel as defense secretary. The president also was naming counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to head the CIA. Both choices are controversial but Hagel has drawn the most fire.
Republicans have questioned their former colleague's support for Israel and suggest he's soft on Iran. Some Democrats also have raised questions about Hagel. And Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran, had been dogged by his links to harsh interrogation techniques.
On economic issues, ultimatums have been leveled on both sides.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky put further tax increases off the table in coming debt negotiations. "The tax issue is finished, over, completed," he declared Sunday.
Congress and Obama hiked income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans as part of last week's "fiscal-cliff" negotiations ? but Obama has made it clear he'd like to do more.
Meanwhile, Obama has warned he won't negotiate over raising the nation's debt limit, saying "one thing I will not compromise over is whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they've already racked up." The government technically hit its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit on Dec. 31 and the Treasury says it can ward off a government default only until February or March.
Former President George W. Bush proclaimed his 2004 re-election victory gave him "political capital" to spend on pushing his agenda. But it only amounted to loose change that got him little.
Now Obama is about to find out how much political goodwill he has in the bank.
___
Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum
At least 1 in 6 stars has an Earth-sized planetPublic release date: 7-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Christine Pulliam cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu 617-495-7463 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are beginning to find Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there.
Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the analysis today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif. A paper detailing the research has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
Kepler detects planetary candidates using the transit method, watching for a planet to cross its star and create a mini-eclipse that dims the star slightly. The first 16 months of the survey identified about 2,400 candidates. Astronomers then asked, how many of those signals are real, and how many planets did Kepler miss?
By simulating the Kepler survey, Fressin and his colleagues were able to correct both the impurity and the incompleteness of this list of candidates to recover the true occurrence of planets orbiting other stars, down to the size of Earth.
"There is a list of astrophysical configurations that can mimic planet signals, but altogether, they can only account for one-tenth of the huge number of Kepler candidates. All the other signals are bona-fide planets," says Fressin.
Altogether, the researchers found that 50 percent of stars have a planet of Earth-size or larger in a close orbit. By adding larger planets, which have been detected in wider orbits up to the orbital distance of the Earth, this number reaches 70 percent.
Extrapolating from Kepler's currently ongoing observations and results from other detection techniques, it looks like practically all Sun-like stars have planets.
The team then grouped planets into five different sizes. They found that 17 percent of stars have a planet 0.8 - 1.25 times the size of Earth in an orbit of 85 days or less. About one-fourth of stars have a super-Earth (1.25 - 2 times the size of Earth) in an orbit of 150 days or less. (Larger planets can be detected at greater distances more easily.) The same fraction of stars has a mini-Neptune (2 - 4 times Earth) in orbits up to 250 days long.
Larger planets are much less common. Only about 3 percent of stars have a large Neptune (4 - 6 times Earth), and only 5 percent of stars have a gas giant (6 - 22 times Earth) in an orbit of 400 days or less.
The researchers also asked whether certain sizes of planets are more or less common around certain types of stars. They found that for every planet size except gas giants, the type of star doesn't matter. Neptunes are found just as frequently around red dwarfs as they are around sun-like stars. The same is true for smaller worlds. This contradicts previous findings.
"Earths and super-Earths aren't picky. We're finding them in all kinds of neighborhoods," says co-author Guillermo Torres of the CfA.
Planets closer to their stars are easier to find because they transit more frequently. As more data are gathered, planets in larger orbits will come to light. In particular, Kepler's extended mission should allow it to spot Earth-sized planets at greater distances, including Earth-like orbits in the habitable zone.
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At least 1 in 6 stars has an Earth-sized planetPublic release date: 7-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Christine Pulliam cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu 617-495-7463 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are beginning to find Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there.
Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the analysis today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif. A paper detailing the research has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
Kepler detects planetary candidates using the transit method, watching for a planet to cross its star and create a mini-eclipse that dims the star slightly. The first 16 months of the survey identified about 2,400 candidates. Astronomers then asked, how many of those signals are real, and how many planets did Kepler miss?
By simulating the Kepler survey, Fressin and his colleagues were able to correct both the impurity and the incompleteness of this list of candidates to recover the true occurrence of planets orbiting other stars, down to the size of Earth.
"There is a list of astrophysical configurations that can mimic planet signals, but altogether, they can only account for one-tenth of the huge number of Kepler candidates. All the other signals are bona-fide planets," says Fressin.
Altogether, the researchers found that 50 percent of stars have a planet of Earth-size or larger in a close orbit. By adding larger planets, which have been detected in wider orbits up to the orbital distance of the Earth, this number reaches 70 percent.
Extrapolating from Kepler's currently ongoing observations and results from other detection techniques, it looks like practically all Sun-like stars have planets.
The team then grouped planets into five different sizes. They found that 17 percent of stars have a planet 0.8 - 1.25 times the size of Earth in an orbit of 85 days or less. About one-fourth of stars have a super-Earth (1.25 - 2 times the size of Earth) in an orbit of 150 days or less. (Larger planets can be detected at greater distances more easily.) The same fraction of stars has a mini-Neptune (2 - 4 times Earth) in orbits up to 250 days long.
Larger planets are much less common. Only about 3 percent of stars have a large Neptune (4 - 6 times Earth), and only 5 percent of stars have a gas giant (6 - 22 times Earth) in an orbit of 400 days or less.
The researchers also asked whether certain sizes of planets are more or less common around certain types of stars. They found that for every planet size except gas giants, the type of star doesn't matter. Neptunes are found just as frequently around red dwarfs as they are around sun-like stars. The same is true for smaller worlds. This contradicts previous findings.
"Earths and super-Earths aren't picky. We're finding them in all kinds of neighborhoods," says co-author Guillermo Torres of the CfA.
Planets closer to their stars are easier to find because they transit more frequently. As more data are gathered, planets in larger orbits will come to light. In particular, Kepler's extended mission should allow it to spot Earth-sized planets at greater distances, including Earth-like orbits in the habitable zone.
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON -- There will be no more increases in tax revenues as part of any debt or deficit-reduction deal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared in several interviews on Sunday.
?[T]he tax issue is finished, over, completed,? said the Kentucky Republican, during an appearance on ABC?s "This Week." "That's behind us. Now the question is, what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future? And that's our spending addiction. It's time to confront it. The president surely knows that. I mean, he has mentioned it both publicly and privately. The time to confront it is now."
The comments represent a deep line in the sand as Congress and the White House approach the debates over replacing the $1 trillion in sequester-related cuts, the raising of the debt ceiling, and the passage of a continuing resolution to fund the government. And they foreshadow another major showdown between congressional Republicans and the administration.
The president has said that he will not make major entitlement reforms or spending cuts during those negotiations unless it is part of a balanced approach. On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi echoed that view.
?No, no, it is not,? she said, when asked by CBS? Bob Schieffer if the revenue side was now taken care of. ?I mean, the president had said originally he wanted $1.6 trillion in revenue, he took it down to 1.2 as a compromise in this legislation. We get $620 billion dollars, very significant, high-end tax, changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent, but that is not enough on the revenue side.?
The hope, among Democrats, is that another $600 billion in revenue may be raised through comprehensive tax reform. The stage for that was set when lawmakers extended tax breaks for several wealth industries during the just-completed fiscal cliff deal. Eliminating those breaks in two months' time could be another revenue booster.
But in a separate appearance on "Meet The Press," McConnell ruled out even that.
?I'm in favor of doing tax reform,? he said, ?but I think tax reform ought to be revenue-neutral as it was back during the Reagan years. We've resolved this issue. Look, we don't have this problem because we tax too little. We have it because we spend way, way too much.?
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell's job is to recast the coming debt-limit vote as a new normal that the country needs
Photograph by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images.
Around 10 years ago, before the Iraq War and the second round of Bush tax cuts, a New York Times reporter parachuted into the Hoover Institution to tap the wisdom of conservative economists. The last deficit had come in at $159 billion?unimaginably low today, but a stumble from the recent era of surpluses. And the economists reached by the Times, veterans from the pre-Clinton era, applauded Bush for erasing those surpluses.
?It is wrong to allow surpluses because these surpluses invariably lead to higher spending,? said John F. Cogan, a former OMB economist for Reagan and Bush I. ?Governments simply cannot hang onto money.?
Well, we dodged that particular bullet. And this week and this weekend, spinning away the outcome of the Great Fiscal Cliff Showdown, we got the latest Republican catechism on how spending would finally be cut. The party will once again use the debt limit as leverage to demand entitlement cuts?the steepest anyone has discussed in 30 years.
Republicans spent the Sunday shows describing this as reasonable, natural, the next step from the tax deal. ?We have resolved the revenue issue,? said Sen. Mitch McConnell on Meet the Press, ?and the question is, ?what are we going to do about spending?? ? McConnell used that word, ?resolved,? four times to describe the effects of a law that will raise maybe $620 billion while protecting loopholes for electric scooters and Puerto Rican rum. In a weekend Wall Street Journal interview so sympathetic it came with a complementary neck pillow, John Boehner called himself ?the guy who put revenues on the table the day after the election,? ignoring how he quickly ruled out higher tax rates as part of any deal, and was only talking about a theoretical reform that nuked loopholes while lowering rates.
McConnell and Boehner were packing a lot into those deep sighs. They argued that the tax deal did not, actually, represent a tax hike, because the rates were going up anyway; that the vote was nonetheless so painful that Republicans deserved points for not blocking it; and that the reward for these Republicans should be a final reckoning on spending. Their job, for now, is recasting the coming debt-limit vote as the best way to do that?not a fluke, not a ?hostage negotiation,? but a new normal that the country needs.
That sounds ridiculous, but it?s not. Yes, Republicans have approached every fiscal crisis, real or imagined, as the opening act of an entitlement-cutting negotiation. That was the reason why they eventually broke on taxes. A fundamental rationale for Republicans? tax fundamentalism was the belief that higher taxes would always be applied to higher spending. ?The basic purpose of any tax cut program in today?s environment,? said future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in 1978, ?is to reduce the momentum of expenditure growth by restraining the amount of revenues available and trust that there is a political limit to deficit spending.? Lower taxes, in addition to being stimulative, might eventually ?starve the beast.? (Bruce Bartlett has thumbed through all the right history books for a definitive study of ?beast-starving? theory.)
You could look at the last 30 years of Republican tax policy as a long anticipation for the big starve. In previous crises, they simply couldn?t convince voters that the possible threats were big enough to spur entitlement cuts. In 2005, the last time a Republican president and Congress campaigned for entitlement cuts, George W. Bush warned that Social Security was ?headed toward bankruptcy? and that ?by the year 2042, the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt.? In a Florida speech, he?d clarify that ?all ideas are on the table except running up the payroll tax,? which didn?t make it sound like a mounting crisis.
The debt limit needing to be hiked at the end of February?now, that?s a crisis. Republicans believe that the public is currently on their side. On Friday, John Boehner showed House Republicans a poll from the Winston Group, testing their messaging and positioning on the debt limit. The pollster had asked voters whether ?any increase in the nation?s debt limit must be accompanied by spending cuts and reforms of a greater amount,? basically describing the ?Boehner rule? that had governed 2011?s debt talks. Seventy-two percent of voters agreed with the ?rule.? Now that it was decoupled from popular policies, like higher taxes on the rich and more funding for entitlements, it was winnable.
If you dug into the poll, the results were much more ominous for Republicans. The Winston Group asked its subjects about a few programs that could theoretically be slashed. There were seven possibilities: Reducing government programs ?for people like you,? cutting defense spending, means-testing Social Security, raising the Medicare retirement age, raising taxes, ending charitable tax deductions, and ending the mortgage deduction. Only one of these?means-testing Social Security?won more support (61 percent) than opposition (35 percent). The tax ideas were loathed by an overall 2-1 margin; the entitlement ideas were opposed by a narrower margin.
When you talk to House Republicans, the people with the most leverage in the coming faux crisis, they?re not sure what to do with this. They worry about the ?message.? In the ?fiscal cliff? talks, they felt like they were made to look unreasonable. Whenever they propose a specific entitlement cut, they?re pilloried. This was one reason why the Republican leaders? Dec. 3 response to ?cliff? negotiations, a three-page open letter, suggested ?more than $900 billion in mandatory spending [cuts]? without specifying what might be cut.
On Sunday, Republicans made great strides in Operation Vagueness. They stressed that the debt limit was naturally going to be a moment to force spending cuts, but that it wasn?t their fault, and that the cuts had to be suggested by the president. ?None of us like using situations like the sequester or the debt ceiling or the operation of government to try to engage the president to deal with this,? said McConnell on Meet the Press. ?It's a shame that we have to use whatever leverage we have in Congress to get the president to deal with the biggest problem confronting our future.? On Fox News Sunday, new Sen. Ted Cruz?a champion college debater who?s already being pushed to the front of press conferences?insisted that the debt limit would only turn into a crisis if Barack Obama made it so. ?I do not support default on the debt,? he said, ?and we should never default on the debt and the only players who are threatening to default are President Obama and Harry Reid.?
For 30 years, Republicans have struggled to find a crisis that could build support for real entitlement cuts. Now, the polls tell them that they?ve found it. That?s why it took so little time to rebound from the ?cliff? loss.??
President Barack Obama walks with daughter Malia on the first family's return from vacationing in Hawaii, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Barack Obama walks with daughter Malia on the first family's return from vacationing in Hawaii, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Barack Obama waves to the media as he walks with daughter Malia on the first family's return from vacationing in Hawaii, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama has returned to Washington after a winter vacation in Hawaii that was interrupted by the "fiscal cliff" crisis.
Obama arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Sunday morning after an overnight flight.
The president's annual end-of-year visit to his native state was disrupted just after Christmas when he was forced to return to the capital to help broker a solution on a plan to avert a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that could have sent the economy back into recession.
He returned to Hawaii on New Year's Day.
Obama faces a full agenda in Washington, including possible appointments of a new defense secretary and CIA director and a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai (HAH'-mihd KAHR'-zeye).
Good morning from the Palms, people! We're here on the ground at the 2013 AT&T Developer Summit. What's in store? Dunno. Faster LTE? More devices? Only one way to find out. Hit the liveblog after the break!
>>>this morning of the "today" show. all week he will show you how we get the show on the air every day. good morning to you.
>>i'm outside the wardrobe room, which in my opinion is the most important room at the "today" show, making sure the buttons are sewn on properly, the outfits don't clash, and matt and al's suits look nice and pressed. we know the show starts at
7:00 am
, but these guys are working hard. they get here at 4:30 every morning. there she is, she is working hard, that's
donna richards
out there.
>>hi.
>>we have a sewing machine. you were doing the steaming back there.
>>that's correct.
>>you know everything about matt, al, savannah, natalie's outfits. you can just tell me, give me
al roker
's hat size.
>>he has a big head, like a 22 3/4," you know.
>>that's a good size?
>>that's pretty big if you're talking heads. hat sizes it converts to like a 7 3/8.
>>that's why he's so smart, all that thinking.
>>yeah. that's pretty big. look, compared to you.
>>absolutely. now tell me about halloween. you had the privilege of transforming matt into
jennifer lopez
a few years ago. how did that work out?
>>that was a few years ago. that took a lot of work, prosthetic makeup, teaching him how to walk.
>>who taught him how to walk in
high heels
?
>>actually, my brother did.
>>did it go smoothly?
>>i think he mastered it. he makes a good woman.
>>we love word robe malfunctions, on e news specifically. what was your bigge esgest
wardrobe malfunction
?
>>someone spilled wine on hoda on a white -- on a cream dress. and i had to get the
white wine
out.
>>and it's
live tv
. you have to recover quickly.
>>exactly.
>>a lot of viewers look forward to what the anchors are wearing on a daily basis. what out fit got the most buzz?
>>matt wore something out of the box for him, like a plaid suit.
>>oh, yeah, i remember the plaid suit.
>>because he's a fabulous dresser. and al certainly can get away with wearing plaid all the time and a little more loud and splashy.
>>>speaking of coverings, why don't you give me something? i have to go out on the plaza soon. i'm a florida boy. i didn't bring anything.
>>how about animal print?
>>perfect. what do you think? is it my color, matt?
>>leopard is all you, jason.
>>thank you.
>>we see savannah walking around.
>>oh, yeah, yeah. you're like ready for the
playboy mansion
in that getup.
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John Boehner and Mitch McConnell's job is to recast the coming debt-limit vote as a new normal that the country needs
