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Senate blocks Obama's tax plan

Stephen Dinan-The Washington Times

Updated: 1:37 p.m. on Saturday, December 4, 2010

Republican Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., arrives for a rare Saturday lame duck session of the U.S. Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010. The Senate agenda features a pair of votes: one on a proposal to extend all expiring tax cuts on individuals with incomes of less than $200,000 a year and married couples making less than $250,000; the other to renew them for all tax filers with incomes of less than $1 million. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

The Senate blocked President Obama's and Democratic leaders' tax cut plans Saturday in a foreordained symbolic vote that now sends both sides back to the negotiating table to work out a viable deal.

A bipartisan filibuster, led by unified Republicans and joined by four Democrats and one independent, proved there isn't enough support to back Mr. Obama's preferred option to extend income tax cuts for couples making less than $250,000 and tax increases for those making more than that.

With that vote out of the way, attention turns back to the high-level working group Mr. Obama and congressional leaders set up this week to try to work out a solution. That group met three times already, but Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and one of the negotiators, said it was clear to him that Democrats weren't going to negotiate until they had gone through the votes to prove to their political base that raising taxes on the wealthy wasn't viable.

"It's been very clear that we're not going to be negotiating anything until all of this political process is over, until the partisan votes have been cast," he said an hour before the votes in a rare weekend Senate session.

The negotiators seem to be headed toward an agreement that would extend all the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts temporarily. Still to be decided was what sweeteners Democrats would secure to make swallowing the tax cuts more palatable. Possible options included extended unemployment benefits.

But emotions on both sides are running high, which is complicating matters.

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, lashed out at Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, on the Senate floor, saying she didn't know how Democrats were supposed to negotiate with him after the Kentucky Republican said before the elections that his top priority is to see Mr. Obama defeated in 2012.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Mr. Obama accused Republicans of holding the middle-class "hostage" in their push to extend all tax breaks.

"I am very disappointed that the Senate is not going to pass legislation that has already passed the House of Representatives that would make the middle class tax cuts permanent," he said. "Those provisions should have passed."

Tax cuts are just one of a host of issues still unresolved by Congress even after two weeks of a lame-duck session.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said the Senate must act on tax cuts and the outstanding spending bills, and said he wants to see it take up a nuclear arms reduction treaty, a massive immigration bill, the defense policy bill that would overturn the ban on gay and lesbian troops, and several other measures sought by his party's liberal base.

In January, Republicans take control of the House and increase their clout in the Senate, likely cutting off chances for Democrats to secure many of those priorities.

The Senate on Saturday first rejected an option that would have extended the Bush tax cuts for individuals making less than $200,000 and couples making less than $250,000, but let the rates rise back to pre-2001 levels for everyone else. The vote was 53-46, leaving Democrats seven votes shy of the 60 needed to end the filibuster.

Next, senators blocked an option that would have raised the threshold for extended tax cuts to $1 million. That also fell seven votes shy of the threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.

"Republicans are willing to hold hostage the middle class tax cut so they can get a tax cut for the very wealthy," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, who offered the higher income threshold.

With Republicans unified for months, the votes' outcome was not in doubt. But Democrats held the votes anyway in response to liberal lawmakers who said they wanted to show the country exactly where lawmakers stoof.

On Thursday, House Democratic leaders used their tight control of the rules and their soon-to-expire overwhelming majority to force through the president's position.

National Geographic ChannelAbout 70 elephants went on a wild spree near the border states of West Bengal and Orissa.

A herd of about 70 elephants got drunk on a fermented rice-based drink and then went on a four-day rampage in India, killing three people and smashing dozens of homes.

Local officials said Thursday that the herd left a path of destruction near the border states of West Bengal and Orissa. In the wake of the drinking binge, several of the elephants were found sleeping it off, according to The Guardian newspaper.

Villagers had stockpiled the drink in preparation for a festival.

Experts say encounters between humans and elephants are becoming more common in India - often with deadly results. About 100 elephants are killed by villagers each year.

"These herds are effectively semi-urbanized," Amirtharaj Williams of the World Wildlife Fund told The Guardian. "There are elephants who are getting a taste for food that humans prepare because it is tastier, stronger-smelling and often more nutritious, and that includes rice- or molasses-based drinks. Some go looking for it."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/04/2010-12-04_boozedup_elephants_go_on_deadly_rampage.html#ixzz179v0kfmE

Obama pardons 9 convicted of drug, other offenses

 

AP – President Barack Obama talks briefly about taxes and his meeting yesterday with Republican and Democratic …

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has granted the first pardons of his presidency, to nine people convicted of crimes including possessing drugs, counterfeiting and even mutilating coins.

No one well-known was on the list, and some of the crimes dated back decades or had drawn little more than a slap on the wrist in the first place — such as the Pennsylvania man sentenced in 1963 to probation and a $20 fine for mutilating coins. The White House didn't explain the charge, but tampering with federal currency is a crime.

The White House declined to give details on the cases or comment on why these particular people were selected by a president who previously had only pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys.

Presidential pardons often come in the holiday season toward year's-end, but they can sometimes be extremely controversial, such as when Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich at the end of his presidency.

President George W. Bush drew heat for commuting the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, in the case of the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. But Bush rejected Cheney's vigorous urging that he later pardon Libby as well.

"The president was moved by the strength of the applicants' post-conviction efforts at atonement, as well as their superior citizenship and individual achievements in the years since their convictions," said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin. The White House announced the pardons Friday as Obama was in the air on the way home from a surprise visit to Afghanistan.

Obama has received 551 pardon petitions in the course of his presidency, of which he's denied 131, according to the Justice Department. Another 265 petitions were closed without presidential action.

The people pardoned were:

_James Bernard Banks, of Liberty, Utah, sentenced to two years of probation in 1972 for illegal possession of government property.

_Russell James Dixon, of Clayton, Ga., sentenced to two years of probation in 1960 for a liquor law violation.

_Laurens Dorsey, of Syracuse, N.Y., sentenced in 1998 to five years of probation and $71,000 in restitution for conspiracy to defraud by making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration.

_Ronald Lee Foster, of Beaver Falls, Pa., sentenced in 1963 to a year of probation and a $20 fine for mutilating coins.

_Timothy James Gallagher, of Navasota, Texas, sentenced in 1982 to three years of probation for cocaine possesion and conspiracy to distribute.

_Roxane Kay Hettinger, Powder Springs, Ga., sentenced in 1986 to 30 days in jail and three years of probation for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

_Edgar Leopold Kranz Jr., of Minot, N.D., who received 24 months of confinement and a pay reduction for cocaine use, adultery and bouncing checks.

_Floretta Leavy, of Rockford, Ill., sentenced in 1984 to 366 days in prison and three years of parole for drug offenses.

_Scoey Lathaniel Morris, of Crosby, Texas, sentenced in 1991 to three years of probation and $1,200 restitution for counterfeiting offenses.

___

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

  December 3, 2010 12:44 PM

Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State is "My Last Public Position"

Mary Dooe 

At a town hall meeting appearance in Manama, Bahrain on Friday, Clinton denied intentions to run for either president or vice president on the ticket with President Obama, who defeated her in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Some experts have also speculated that she could replace Robert Gates next year when he retires as secretary of defense.

"I think I will serve as secretary of state as my last public position," she said. Clinton's career has included not only her current position as secretary of state, but also eight years in the Senate representing New York.

Clinton has repeatedly laughed off rumors that she may seek the highest office in the country, and she was notably out of the country during the midterm elections when Democrats lost control of the House.

When her current position is over, Clinton "would like to continue working to improve lives for others," she said, adding that she will "probably go back to advocacy work, particularly on women and children and probably around the world." This marks the first time Clinton has publicly discussed alternatives to political office in her future.

In returning to advocacy work, she could follow in the footsteps of her husband and former President Bill Clinton, who has largely turned to humanitarian work through his Clinton Foundation since leaving the White House.

Mrs. Clinton has formerly worked extensively for the rights of women and children. She went on to note that while she has had a "fascinating and rewarding public career," she particularly enjoyed her time as a lawyer for the Children's Defense Fund, which advocates for abused and neglected children, as well as her women's rights work, according to Reuters.

"I feel very lucky because of my parents and then my education, the opportunities that I've had, so I would like to continue working to improve lives for others," she added.

In addition to personal passions, Clinton also noted the strain of the job of president as a deterrent towards seeking further election.

"Every president, if you watch what they look like when they come into office, you can see their hair turn white because it's such a hard job," she said.

Sierra/APMexican army soldiers escort a 14-year-old suspected of working as a killer for a drug cartel in the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico.

The suspect is nicknamed "El Ponchis," or "the cloaked one."

This hit man is a mere boy: "El Ponchis," a 14-year-old killer who claims he was involved in four decapitations while working for a Mexican drug cartel.

The teen assassin, whose existence was considered more rumor than reality by many, was busted late Thursday at a Mexican airport as he tried to flee the country, officials said.

The alleged young killer is known as "El Ponchis" or "the cloaked one." He confessed to his role in the gruesome killings to reporters at the Mexican Attorney General's office in Cuernavaca.

"I participated in four executions, but I did it drugged and under threat that if I didn't, they would kill me," the teen said Friday, speaking calmly and without remorse.

He was arrested with his 16-year-old sister, who reportedly disposed of her brother's victims by dumping the bodies on streets and freeways, officials said.

The boy also said that he was employed by the cartel since he was 11 years old.

He and his sister are suspected of working with the South Pacific Cartel headed by Hector Beltran Leyva, whose drug lord brother Arturo was killed last year by Mexican Marines.

Hector's war for control of the drug cartel is blamed for an upsurge in violence in the region south of Mexico City.

"El Ponchis" and his sibling already had plane tickets when they were taken into custody. The sister told reporters that they were heading to join their mother in San Diego.

The boy and his sister were living in a working class suburb outside Cuernavaca.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/03/2010-12-03_14yearold_hit_man_el_ponchis_says_he_was_drugged_before_killing_4_in_mexico_drug.html#ixzz175ZYRAYk

Funeral director tried to hide ashes mix-up

Families got wrong remains; 30 days in jail, $10,000 fine

A suburban funeral director concocted an elaborate plan to illegally hide an error that sent two sets of cremated human remains to the wrong families, even going so far as to secretly dig up a buried urn of ashes.

Marcee Dane, 32, also tried to cover the mix-up by obtaining the cremated remains of a third person, then telling a grieving family the ashes actually were from their deceased relative, Lake County prosecutors said Thursday.

Dane was sentenced to 30 days in jail Thursday after pleading guilty to felony charges of desecrating human remains. She also was ordered to serve 150 days of home confinement, spend 30 months on probation and was fined $10,000.

As part of her plea deal, Dane also is barred from ever working again in the funeral industry, authorities said.

The mix-up began in May 2010 when Burnett-Dane Funeral Home in Libertyville inadvertently switched the cremated remains of two unrelated people. Dane took unlawful steps to hide the error, authorities said.

When one family became suspicious that the ashes they were given weren't from their deceased relative, Dane obtained the cremated remains of an unidentified person from a suburban crematory, prosecutors said. Dane later mailed those ashes to the grieving family, assuring them they were the remains from their deceased family member, authorities said.

When Dane learned investigators were probing the mix-up, she traveled to a Des Plaines cemetery and under the guise of planting flowers at a gravesite, secretly dug up the urn belonging one of the relatives of the families involved, prosecutor Christen Bishop said.

She then removed an identification tag on the urn in an attempt to obscure whose remains were buried at the site, Bishop said.

LINK TO VIDEO AND PICTURE

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2010/12/02/funeral-director-going-to-jail-for-cremation-cover-up/

Tongue-in-cheek Boehner refers to Dems' tax cut vote as 'chicken crap'

Costanza for NewsMelissa Petro, who admitted in an article that she was a sex worker before becoming a teacher, has been charged with conduct 'unbecoming a teacher' by the Education Department.

Sex worker-turned-teacher Melissa Petro was charged Wednesday with conduct "unbecoming a teacher," a city Education Department spokeswoman said.

The mayor chose to remove Petro from her classroom in September after she published an article admitting she'd been paid for "sexual services."

Education Department officials declined to explain what grounds they have to fire the tenured art teacher from the Bronx's Public School 70 on the basis of an article she wrote.

Her sex worker career ended before she started teaching, Petro's article says.

Officials also declined to release the investigative documents that might explain the specific charges and refused even to explain why the documents are not public.

Spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said, "On advice of counsel, I am declining to release the report.".

That's an apparent switch in policy.

Less than two weeks ago, when officials announced they wanted to can Brooklyn principal Jonathan Straughn, the agency released a full explanation.

Petro did not return a request for comment.

In her Huffington Post article, Petro defended Craigslist's right to post sex-worker ads, but that's not the only public evidence that she views sex workers as unfairly vilified.

"I wouldn't encourage my daughter to be a sex worker. I wouldn't discourage her either. Ultimately, every woman is free to choose. ..." she wrote in a blog post.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/12/02/2010-12-02_education_dept_charges_bronx_teacher_exsex_worker_melissa_petro_with_conduct_unb.html#ixzz16x6aDurm

WH 2012: The professional left better learn to live with disappointment

 

White House officials do not expect liberal commentators who view President Obama as the compromiser-in-chief to lessen their criticism of the administration in the coming two years.

In fact, they expect it to get worse.

That’s because Obama has shown every indication that he is reading from former President Clinton’s playbook and moving toward the right in the name of bipartisan compromise. And nobody at the White House is pushing back on that description. 

In the days following the Democrats’ November shellacking, Obama has given every indication that he is serious about joining Republicans in their at-least-rhetorical push to cut spending. 

That continued Tuesday as Obama, after meeting with Democratic and GOP leaders at the White House, said that he is looking for “common ground” with Republicans.

Obama made it clear: He favors results to ideological purity, and he expects the same from Republicans.

“[Americans] did not vote for unyielding partisanship,” Obama said. “They’re demanding cooperation.”

The president even told the GOP that he didn’t do a good enough job of reaching out to it over the past two years. The Republicans did not reciprocate. 

So is the president “bending” while Republicans show no signs of moving in Obama’s direction?

“I’m not sure I call that bending,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “I call that trying to work together.”

While that sounds like the basis for Triangulation 101 and a feel-good Washington story of sacrifice for the common good, all liberals hear is more of Obama giving while Republicans take. 

And labor unions, the most fundamental and well-organized constituency within the left, were nothing short of furious at Obama’s call for a two-year pay freeze for federal workers this week.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Obama’s move risks “reinforcing the myth, pushed by some for politically convenient but cynical reasons, that America suffers from a federal government comprised of unproductive and overpaid civil servants.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Trumka said.

If the White House is worried about further angering its base, aides certainly aren’t showing it.

White House officials do not take seriously any talk, no matter how preliminary, of a credible primary challenge to the president, and the larger view is that the more Obama is seen as a centrist, the better off he’ll be. 

Liberals, they think, can shut up and get on board to help Obama paint the portrait of moderation the White House is hoping to have framed before November 2012.

After Tuesday’s meeting at the White House, it was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who used Clinton as a model, noting the bipartisan efforts of that era in words that undoubtedly caused nausea within the ranks of the professional left.

“I think of the second Clinton administration, with welfare reform, with balanced budgets, with trade agreements,” McConnell said. “I think we all agree there’s no particular reason why we can’t find areas of agreement and do some important things for the American people over the next two years.”

While it turned out well for Clinton, liberals say Obama is missing the point.

Democrats didn’t lose because moderates broke for Republicans, lefties say. Democrats lost because liberal independents, the same ones who were chanting, “Yes we can!” in 2008, stayed home in 2010.

The kind of energy that swept Obama into the White House will not be replicated during the president’s reelection campaign if liberals feel abandoned by Obama, says the professional left.

In other words, the enthusiasm gap that Obama repeatedly dismissed in 2010 could cause him serious heartburn in 2012 even if he doesn’t have to fight another Democrat for the nomination.

Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, warned of just that on Tuesday, saying that the midterms should be a “wake-up call” for Obama.

“President Obama shouldn’t be worried about criticism from ‘the professional left,’ ” Taylor said. “He should be worried about criticism from millions of former Obama voters who are severely disappointed in him right now. The fact is that many former Obama voters stayed home in 2010, and unless he starts enacting the popular progressive change he campaigned on, they may stay home again in 2012.”

If members of the left are holding out hope that Obama will come around to their reading of the midterms, they had better learn to live with disappointment. And Obama had better hope disappointment doesn’t lead to disengagement.

GOP says it'll block bills until tax cuts extended

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

Associated Press

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/12/01/national/w001045S54.DTL#ixzz16tgd0dOo

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/12/01/2010-12-01_oklahoma_women_ailene_brown_shmeco_thomas_accused_of_smuggling_stolen_goods_in_b.html

Love is blind: The man who lost his sight every time he had sex

Sara Nelson
Last updated at 1:58 PM on 29th November 2010

A man was forced to seek medical help after going temporarily blind every time he had sex.

The unnamed patient would lose his sight every time he climaxed during intercourse.

Bafflingly, the blindness would never occur while performing any other strenuous exercise, the NCBI ROFL blog claimed.

The original report, published by the Department of Ophthalmology at Glostrup Hospital, University of Copenhagen, revealed the cause of the condition to be vasoconstriction, where the muscle walls contract around a blood vessel, restricting the flow of blood.

Vasoconstriction is the same condition that causes erectile dysfunction.

Doctors had earlier speculated that an embolism was causing the man’s blindness.

The report said: ‘Hypothetical mechanisms of transient monocular visual loss in our patient include vasoconstriction or embolism in the arterial blood supply of the eye.

‘The repeated and completely transient nature of our patient's symptoms supports the fact that embolism was not involved.’

The patient was eventually treated using drugs to widen his blood vessels.

NCBI ROFL is a blog written by two PhD students in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley.

It features scientific articles with humourous subjects from the PubMed medical database. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334060/Man-lost-sight-time-sex.html#ixzz16rlxweZm

Why Does Barack Obama Want to Cut the Salaries of Federal Employees?

President Obama is often blamed for not reaching out to Republicans. In truth, as Monday morning's announcement that Obama wants to cut the pay of all federal employees illustrates, he has the opposite problem. Obama frequently proposes essentially Republican policies, which makes it impossible for him to use those ideas to buy Republican votes for bipartisan legislation.

When legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions was being negotiated in the Senate Obama undermined the bargaining process by simply unilaterally opening up new areas for offshore oil drilling. Increased drilling was supposed to be one of the things Democrats gave to Republicans in a comprehensive energy reform bill as an inducement to vote for it. Republicans hardly applauded Obama for the move, and the average swing voter seems not to have given the Democrats any credit for it in the recent election. In fact, the BP oil spill turned the drilling decision into a potential liability for Democrats.

This was be a textbook lose-lose, and so is the federal employee pay cut. Just a few months ago Republicans were proposing the same thing, and Democrats, including even moderate deficit hawks like Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), were criticizing it. Democrats opposed to the idea of a two year pay freeze for federal employees, which is really a pay cut if there is any inflation, because it would be counter-productive to the economic recovery. If there is one thing that any economist from across the political spectrum will tell you it is that the government should currently be pumping money into the economy, rather than removing it. You can do that through a mix of immediate tax breaks for working families and infusions of investment in economically productive programs such as education and transportation infrastructure, as Democrats tend to favor, or you can do it less effectively through tax breaks for the wealthy as Republicans advocate. But the one thing you ought not to do is take money out of the economy. But that is precisely what this proposal would do, in the name of deficit reduction. How much deficit reduction? Not much, just an estimated $60 billion over 10 years, which is less than one-tenth of what the government will save if it allows the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire.

The other reason many liberals are opposed to cutting pay for federal employees is that the argument for such a cut is based on the suspect premise that federal civil servants are highly paid. Many federal employees do indeed make more than the average American, but that's because of the type of work they do and their qualifications. Cabinet departments and law enforcement agencies are filled with lawyers, holders of advanced degrees, and other experts. Compared to the economy as a whole there are relatively few high school drop outs doing low-paid menial work for the federal government. So, in fact, it turns out that federal employees actually make less than private sector employees with comparable jobs. A report by the U.S. Office of Personnel Office for Fiscal Year 2011 found that federal employees' average 22.13 percent less (the disparity is bigger or smaller depending on where in the country). "In the context of the overall deficit problem Obama will get chump change from this policy and will only enlarge the degree to which Federal pay lags behind that of the private sector," says Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

Even liberal economists who think some federal workers are overpaid say this approach -- punishing the underpaid and the overpaid, the effective and the ineffective, alike -- is bad policy. "There are undoubtedly federal workers who are overpaid. Why doesn't [Obama] find them and cut their pay?" says Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research. 

Nonetheless, if you are a liberal who is committed to deficit reduction then you would probably be wise to accept this relatively small sacrifice as part of a bipartisan deal to reduce the long term deficit and debt. Any such deal will require sacrfices from all quarters. But that makes it all the more confounding that Obama chose to hand Republicans this potential bargaining chip in exchange for nothing just two days before the President's Fiscal Commission makes its next announcement. It seems Obama is undermining the work of his commissioners and his allies in Congress by taking a chip that could be coupled with a similar measure that Republicans would only reluctantly support, such as eliminating a tax deduction or a reduction in military spending. "Why he would offer to do such a thing without getting something from the Republicans in return is mindboggling," says Mishel.

Other liberal economic wonks reacted with similar disgust, dismissing it as motivated by political triangulation rather than legitimate policy considerations. "It's a cheap stunt," James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas says, "It's depressing that this is being offered as policy, when it's nothing but a gesture -- and a dishonorable one."

Meanwhile the Republicans who Obama seeks to curry favor with were notably silent on the President's announcement. House Republican leaders John Boehner of Ohio and Eric Cantor of Virginia, who have been advocating this policy, did not issue the kind of statement that Obama did in support of the congressional Republicans' proposed earmark ban. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did not a return a request for comment from NEWSWEEK.

Conservative fiscal responsibility groups have not issued statements applauding Obama either but they readily praise his move when asked. Phil Kerpen, vice-president for policy at Americans for Prosperity calls it "a very small step in the right direction," and Adam Brandon, spokesman for Freedom Works agrees that it's "a great start."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on their motivations or strategic rationale. Ezra Klein suggests one possible policy justification: it's "a smart way to protect the federal workforce." Congressional Republicans have been signaling that they will go after the federal workforce as a place to find budget cuts. By heading them off preemptively and grabbing a share of the budgetary high-ground Obama may diminish the momentum for a more drastic move, such as cutting the federal workforce, which Boehner has advocated.

Politically, Brandon suggests that Obama may have been motivated by a recent widely circulated USA Today article which reported that the average federal employee's compensation package is twice that of the average American worker. Even though that is an apples to oranges comparison, it fed a growing public perception that civil servants have been lavished with unaffordable generosity. "Federal workers earning double their private counterparts," is, as Brandon notes, "a pretty <snip>ing headline if you’ve got the American people hurting and 10 percent unemployment." Unfortunately, this reaction won't do anything to solve those problems.

Vucci/AP;Kourkounis/GettySecretary of State Hillary Clinton (left) has a fan in Christine O'Donnell.

If one-time witch Christine O'Donnell could cast a spell, she'd make President Obama disappear and Hillary Clinton would be the Democrats' presidential candidate in 2012 against Sarah Palin.

The Tea Party darling and failed GOP Senate candidate told ABC's "Good Morning America” Tuesday that a possible Clinton run would tempt her to change her party registration for the primary to help oust the President.

"Right now anybody is better than Obama," O'Donnell said.

Of course, O'Donnell's allegiance remains with Republicans.

"I love everybody in the Republican side who's even considering throwing their hat in the ring, so I'd be happy with any candidate who gets the Republican nomination," she said.

Neither Hillary Clinton, the current Secretary of State, or Sarah Palin has officially announced plans to run for President in 2012.

O'Donnell made a splash this summer with her upset win in Delaware's GOP Senate primary. Her campaign, however, was dogged by TV clips of her from the 90s talking about her dabbling with witchcraft and belief that masturbation is a form of adultery.

O'Donnell suffered a double-digit thrashing on Election Day, losing to Democrat Chris Coons.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/11/30/2010-11-30_sarah_palin_versus_hillary_clinton_for_president_in_2012_christine_odonnells_dre.html#ixzz16o4dEwQq