Lynn Sweet

Obama State of the Union address fact checked at FactCheck.org

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WASHINGTON--The Senate voted to confirm Ben S. Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on a 70-30 vote.

Ten Democrats broke from the Obama administration and voted against Bernanke, making it a true bi-partisan vote--rare these days. Illinois Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Roland Burris voted for confirmation.

Hi all......

And click on the eVoter widget on the right of my blog to get a list of candidates--customized to your Illinois address--running in the Democratic, Republican and Green party primaries.

BY MARY WISNIEWSKI AND LYNN SWEET Staff Reporters

Illinois will get $1.1 billion to make track improvements to enable 110 mph passenger trains between Chicago and St. Louis, under a new federal stimulus plan to be announced Thursday by President Obama.

President Obama devoted the biggest portion of his first State of the Union address on Wednesday night to various aspects of job creation. While I appreciate Obama's aspirational and inspirational speeches -- in Cairo on Islamic relations and in Oslo on waging war, to name two standouts -- I welcome some nitty-gritty coming from the president.

The White House is rolling out its IPhone app--you can watch and hear the State of the Union Wednesday on your IPhone, at www.whitehouse.govor on cable, network tv or radio. The speech starts at 8 p.m. Chicago time and 9 p.m. eastern time. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is the pitchman in this slick spot promoting the new application. Not all White House videos comes with music in the background--this one does.

WASHINGTON--The Obama team is sending out text messages on Tuesday urging people to attend State of the Union watch parties on Wednesday night. The text message list, accumulated during the Obama for American presidential campaign, was transferred to the Democratic National Committee, which runs a grass-roots/net-roots operation called Organizing for America.

(AP photo)

Madame Tussauds' in New York adds First Lady Michelle Obama to the wax museum lineup.

By Abdon Pallasch
Sun-Times Political Writer
CHICAGO--In his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, President Obama will acknowledge his party's loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts and attribute the loss to distrust of Washington in general -- not Democrats, Obama senior advisor Dave Axelrod said Monday.

WASHINGTON--President Obama finally admitted on Monday that he broke his pledge to open up negotiations over health care--even have them televised on C-SPAN. This comes after administration spokesmen and top advisors for months now have been pretending that Obama was not breaking an oft repeated campaign promise.

The admission came during an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer in advance of Wednesday's State of the Union address. Obama said he would "own up" to what he called a "legitimate mistake" during his speech before a joint session of Congress. Obama's promise of opening up the backroom deals--using C-SPAN--was a standard line on the 2008 campaign trail, a crowd pleaser that always, always won him applause.

WASHINGTON--The Obama White House will propose in its fiscal 2011 budget--unveiled next Monday--a freeze in non-security discretionary spending in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The White House calculates that "the savings from the three year freeze will amount to $250 billion over the next decade," a senior administration official said on Monday.