David Drake

Millions of Americans already have been infected with swine flu. Forty-six states have widespread flu, and the president has declared a national emergency.

But only recently have U.S. health officials discovered why manufacturers can't deliver as much swine flue vaccine as expected.

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The [Centers for Disease Control] didn't realize the combined effect of these problems until mid-October. That's when it revised its projected swine flu vaccine delivery dates downward.

For the first time since he took over in the White House, Americans don't see eye to eye with President Barack Obama on the important issues, according to a new national poll. But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey does indicate that a majority approve of how Obama's handling his duties as president.

According to the poll, which was released Tuesday, 48 percent of people questioned say that they agree with Obama on the issues that matter most to them, with 51 percent saying no. That's a switch from April, when 57 percent said they agreed with the president on important issues, with 41 percent disagreeing.

"Obama is facing crunch time on a number of controversial issues, from health care to financial regulation to cap and trade to Afghanistan," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The fact that most Americans no longer agree with him on important issues makes his task harder."

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"Obama continues to do poorly among senior citizens," says Holland. "Most Americans over the age of 65 disapprove of how he is handling his job as president."

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Most Americans, 56 percent, don't approve of the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, and only a third believe that Obama has done enough to deserve the prize.

Governor Tim Pawlenty has ordered a sex offender treatment facility in Moose Lake to sell its plasma television sets. The facility has 25, 50 inch sets that cost $1576 a piece. Each one is held in place by a $706 mounting bracket.

"We don't micromanage our agencies at the level of every little item that they purchase or use, but in this case we are going to micromanage," Pawlenty told reporters after a legislative meeting this morning.

"Every once in a while somebody makes a mistake in judgment. This was clearly a bonehead decision, it needs to get reversed," he added.

The Moose Lake Treatment Facility currently houses 250 people who have served time for sex offenses and then been committed indefinitely. It is run by the state's Department of Human Services.

In an emailed statement, a department spokesperson wrote "televisions are part of a typical clinical environment." When asked what their purpose is, the spokesperson responded: "Watching television is one of many group activities that M.S.O.P. patients do as part of the treatment process."

"I'm asking my administration today to remove the televisions and to sell them and if they need to have televisions in common areas, they can have smaller, simpler, fewer, and cheaper ones," Pawlenty remarked.

The Department of Human Services will remove the televisions this week, and using the state's Department of Administration surplus program, they'll sell the plasma sets.

One legislator on the tour, Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, is a key player in whether the new building will get funded. She said she found the explanation of why the TVs were necessary to be "fascinating."

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

Top political strategists question the decision by the Obama administration to escalate its offensive against Fox News. And as of Monday, the four other major television networks had not given any indication that they intend to sever their ties with Fox News.

But several top White House officials have taken aim at Fox News since communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news" in an interview last Sunday.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Friday that White House criticism of commentators on his Fox News television channel had served to "tremendously" increase their ratings.

"There were some strong remarks coming out of the White House about one or two of the commentators on Fox News," Murdoch told the annual meeting of News Corp. shareholders here.

"And all I can tell you is that it's tremendously increased their ratings," he said.

President Obama's presidential campaign focused on "making" the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was "controlled," White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference.

"Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," said Dunn.

"One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters," said Dunn, referring to Plouffe, who was Obama's chief campaign manager.

"We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it," Dunn said.

...Obama has failed to bring anyone to the table for peace talks in the Middle East; European leaders have turned a cold shoulder to his quest for more troops in Afghanistan; and he still hasn't found foreign governments willing to take all the foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

IN Afghanistan they would call it a shura, the traditional tribal way of listening to elders’ views before reaching a consensus. In Washington, where President Barack Obama has now held five war councils, they are starting to call it dithering.

With another council on the Afghan war scheduled for this week, US officials admit it could be November before a decision is finally taken on whether to agree to General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops. One participant revealed that the protagonists have not yet discussed troop numbers.

Latest polls show a majority of Americans now disapprove of Obama’s handling of a war which may come to define his presidency. Many senior members of his own party are in open revolt.

Senator Robert Byrd, at 91 a Democratic institution, was so incensed that he dragged himself from his hospital bed last week to make a 13-minute speech. “Does it really take 100,000 troops to find Osama Bin Laden?” he wondered. “And how much will this cost? How much in terms of more dollars? How much in terms of American blood?”

Obama has kept his own views to himself, although he is thought to be leaning towards acceptance that more forces will have to be added to the 68,000 US troops already committed. But his professorial style of asking for position papers and hearing all views is leading to accusations of drift.

“It has been 76 days since General McChrystal submitted his review to the administration requesting additional forces, and the clock continues to tick,” complained Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the senior Republican on the House foreign affairs committee.

Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, "in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year," said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance "a disgrace."

"The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines," he said in a statement.

President Barack Obama spent a couple of hours Thursday telling the hurricane-stricken people of New Orleans how the government is helping them.

Afterwards, he flew to San Francisco where he spent Thursday evening telling the high-tech glitterati the same thing–but they paid big bucks to listen.

Obama’s steady criticism of how former President George W. Bush’s administration treated the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina helped propel him into the White House. So he was roundly criticized Thursday for making his first visit to New Orleans as president a quickie school visit and town hall meeting that lasted four hours, total.

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After four hours on Air Force One, he arrived at the Democratic fund-raiser in San Francisco, where he praised the perseverance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Day in and day out, she faces down some of the toughest problems,” the president told 160 people at an intimate $34,000 per couple dinner at the Westin. “She doesn’t break a sweat…I love Nancy Pelosi.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

Scholars of the life of Gertrude Stein were recently startled to learn that in 1938 the prominent Jewish-American writer had spearheaded a campaign urging the Nobel committee to award its Peace Prize to Adolf Hitler. This was disclosed by Gustav Hendrikksen, a former member of the Nobel committee and now professor emeritus of Bible studies at Sweden's Uppsala University, in Nativ, a political magazine published in Israel. (Reports about this appeared in the New York Jewish community weekly Forward, Feb. 2, June 14, and Oct. 25, 1996.)

Congratulations to Antonio Fins for having the courage to reveal that the "emperor" has no clothes. A member of an editorial staff that recommended Obama for president in the last election, he must have faced considerable criticism from his colleagues.

He had the audacity to criticize the Norwegian presentation of the Nobel Prize to President Obama. Mr. Fins has revealed how little this "prize," already dimmed by past presentations to Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter, is worth.

The prize is meant to go to the nominee who "shall have done great deeds for peace." As all English students know, "shall have done" is the future perfect tense. Obama took office on Jan. 20, and nominations for the prize were closed on February 1. A review of Obama's schedule in those 12 days reveals very little in the way of any accomplishment at all. As a proclaimed Christian, he did skip church on the two Sundays between his inauguration and the Feb. 1 deadline.

So what did he do during those 12 days?

What he has done since his inauguration is roam the world and the airwaves apologizing for this great country that saved the Western world from the Nazis, fascists and communists. That includes Norway, which would still be ruled by Quislings and Nazis were it not for Americans. He is slowly, but surely, subordinating our great Constitution to international law, undermining the sovereignty of the United States and trying to turn Americans into citizens of the universe. He has quadrupled our national debt, and the hypocrites who vilified George Bush for his role in increasing it say nothing. He has alienated our staunchest ally in the Middle East by playing up to the Muslim world.

The Washington Post reports that, in a bow (kow-tow?) to China, Obama will not meet with the Dalai Lama when the Tibetan holy leader visits Washington this week. Instead, that meeting has been put off until Obama meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao next month. In one fell swoop, the signal is sent: "Talking about human rights is all well and good, but, well, when your banker says that he wants first dibs on your attention -- what are ya gonna do!?!?"

WASHINGTON: The loud sucking noise you hear? That's President Barack Obama kissing up to the Chinese.

At least that's what supporters of Dalai Lama would have you believe after the U.S President passed up a meeting with the Tibetan leader in Washington DC this week – ostensibly to not offend Beijing ahead of his (Obama’s) visit to China next month.

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Republicans are pillorying Obama for being a pussycat before the Chinese, and there have been murmurs of disapproval from the Democrats too..

"We regret that despite escalating human rights violations in Tibet, the White House has chosen not to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama...preferring a time that will be less irritating to the Chinese government and after the president’s own trip to China. We are concerned that this time may never come," says Katrina Lantos Swett, whose late father Tom Lantos [Lantos a Democrat. - Drake] led the move to present the Tibetan leader with a Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, awarded by then President Bush at a bipartisan ceremony.

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Obama['s] critics [say], "The Chinese are beginning to dictate what the Obama administration is doing," one Republican lawmaker was quoted as saying. "Do you think the Chinese will respect this? It’s a sign of weakness."

Pretty former "Late Show" staffer Stephanie Birkitt revealed in her diary that she continued having sex with boss David Letterman even after moving in with her CBS-producer boyfriend, who later allegedly tried to extort him over the affair, sources told The Post yesterday.

Letterman and Birkitt enjoyed romantic hikes last fall at his sprawling ranch in eastern Montana -- where he was married in March -- while her boyfriend, "48 Hours Mystery" producer Robert "Joe" Halderman, stayed home in Connecticut, the sources said.

At the time, Birkitt, 34, insisted to Halderman that she and the 62-year-old Letterman had just "a platonic relationship," a source said.

Holly Hester, a woman who interned for David Letterman, has come forward and admitted that she had a secret affair with the popular CBS talk show host. Holly Hester interned under David Letterman in the early 1990s.

As the commander in Afghanistan tries to get President Obama's attention on troops, it's political players like Vice President Biden who have his ear. Yet the military has a record of success. Biden has only blunders.

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...Biden recommended fighting only al-Qaida and not the Taliban.

This might be an acceptable strategy if the battlefield were some place like Copenhagen. But Afghanistan is a failed state where terrorists don't wear badges and nobody calls the cops.

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A warlord can be a Taliban, an al-Qaida member, an opium trafficker or all of the above. Biden's idea, as McChrystal put it bluntly, "won't work."

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Both McChrystal and Petraeus have long records of military success. Biden, by contrast, has been wrong on every war he's had a hand in.

He opposed the surge in Iraq, insisting instead on dividing Iraq into three warring fiefdoms with unequal distributions of oil.

He also opposed the Vietnam War, an opposition that led to defeat, a bloodbath of our Vietnamese friends and diminished U.S. global influence.

In addition, Biden played a role in the flawed 1999 design of Plan Colombia, which at first tried to separate a few of failed-state Colombia's multiple enemies — in this case, drug dealers. But the strategy enabled FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, to grow strong in narcotrafficking as other players dropped off.

Iraq, Vietnam and Colombia all have implications for the war in Afghanistan. McChrystal's record speaks for itself, while Biden has been wrong time and again. Yet it's McChrystal who gets criticized for taking his recommendations public.

In a sign of the growing insurgent threat, hundreds of militants launched fierce attacks Saturday against two isolated outposts in Nuristan province, killing eight American soldiers in the biggest loss of U.S. life in a single battle since 2001. About 20 Afghan security troopers were captured in the attacks about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the border with Pakistan.

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At least 16 U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month — matching the American death toll for all of October 2008.

Respected circuit judge Herman Thomas, who was once the Democratic Party’s choice to be the first black federal judge in south Alabama, is accused of bringing inmates to his office and spanking them with a paddle.

His trial for charges of sodomy, kidnapping, sex abuse, extortion, assault and ethics violations is set to begin today.

The 48-year-old insists he is innocent and claims he was trying to mentor the inmates.

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‘There is no doubt that people assisted these inmates in telling these lies on me,’ Thomas said in April.

In an echo of sex allegations made against black Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, Thomas's lawyer called the indictment ‘a high-tech lynching’.

‘They don't like uppity black folks, and that's what they consider Herman,’ [said Thomas's lawyer Robert ‘Cowboy Bob’ Clark.]

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Some inmates in those cases described being checked out of the jail for meetings with Thomas in his car or in his private office in the county courthouse.

First, there were reports of inmates having to pull down their underwear for spankings with a wooden paddle. Then came allegations of oral and anal sex, according to court records.

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Noting that each of the alleged victims is black, Patterson says jail checkout records back up inmates' claims about trips to Thomas' private office, and other inmates spotted marks after paddlings.

There also is other evidence, according to court records, including one inmate's seminal fluid on the office carpet.

The inmates also were able to describe in detail Thomas' unmarked windowless office.

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The first public claim against Thomas surfaced in lawsuits filed by an inmate in 2001 in Mobile circuit court and in federal court that claimed the judge offered to help him with his case in return for sex.

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Prosecutors say they have 15 current and former male inmates lined up to testify in a trial that could take several weeks.