http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19835.html

Democratic leaders in Congress did not expect much Republican support as they pressed President Obama's ambitious legislative agenda. But the pushback they are receiving from some of their own has come as an unwelcome surprise.

[T]he internal revolt has served as a warning to party leaders pursuing Obama's far-reaching plans for health-care, energy and education reform.

 

“There are a lot of items in the budget that would normally get a lot more attention, if we were in a normal year," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who heads the House Democrats' fundraising arm. "They've been eclipsed by the tidal wave of the economy." But Van Hollen added: "They are waiting in the wings."

 

[M]ost costly was [the] defection [...] of Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), a member of the Democratic leadership, in protest of a little-noticed Cuba provision that would ease U.S. rules on travel and imports to the communist-led island.

The Menendez rebellion was a jolt of political reality for Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama, signaling that the solidarity of the stimulus debate is fading as Democratic lawmakers are starting to read the fine print of the bills they will wrestle with in the coming weeks and months, and not always liking what they see.

Reid had been focused on fending off a bloc of conservative Republicans who were seeking to eliminate more than 8,500 pet projects in the bill, many of them inserted by GOP lawmakers. Democratic leaders were hearing some internal grumblings, but those concerns focused largely on the bill's hefty overall price tag.

AJH

President Obama: "You know, let’s take a look at the budget – the answer would be no."

President Obama: "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question."

President Obama: "I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -– the prescription drug plan -- without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word 'socialist' around can’t say the same."

New York Times reporter: "So whose watch are we talking about here?"

President Obama: "Well, I just think it’s clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis."

New York Times reporter: "Is there anything wrong with saying, 'Yes'?"

AJH

“I’d like to pay tribute to the talented men who have done so much to make the great movies even greater and the not-so-great movies bearable.”

He has narrowed his personal favorites down to 25, leaving out several notables including John Williams, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Dimitri Tiomkin, Nino Rota, William Walton, Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa, Victor Young, and Alex North.

In alphabetical order, then, they are: “A Place in the Sun,” “Cinema Paradiso,” “Citizen Kane,” “East of Eden,” “Force of Evil,” “Forever Amber,” “Jezebel,” “Of Mice and Men,” “On the Waterfront,” “Our Town,” “Raintree County,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” “The Bad and the Beautiful,” “The Best Years of Our Lives,” “The Big Country,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Man With the Golden Arm,” “The Natural,” “The Third Man,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The Untouchables,” “Things to Come,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” and “Witness.” If I added three more for good measure, they would probably be Allan Gray’s haunting “Stairway to Heaven,” John Barry’s “Somewhere in Time” and Richard Addinsell’s “Suicide Squadron,” which gave the world “The Warsaw Concerto.”

Sixteen composers turned out those 25 scores. Franz Waxman, Leonard Rosenman, Jerome Moross, Bernard Herrmann, John Green, Hugo Friedhofer, Randy Newman, Maurice Jarre, Arthur Bliss, Anton Karas, and Leonard Bernstein, each scored one of them. Aaron Copland, Ennio Morricone, and Max Steiner each scored two. David Raksin scored three, and the remarkable Elmer Bernstein scored five!

When it is done really well, a dramatic score can evoke a specific moment in a movie in much the same way that a certain scent can evoke a time, a place or a person.

So, the next time you go to the movies, and quickly discover that the critics have conned you once again, you could try shutting your eyes and listening to the music. You just might discover what you’ve been missing.

AJH

The bright, shining point of the Obama White House is in foreign affairs.

I am a big fan of diplomacy, just talking and even chit-chat — friend and foe. So I am therefore glad to hear about all of these people hitting the road and roaming the world on our behalf.

AJH