“President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are increasing the pressure on each other to bend in their deadlock over the federal debt limit and the partial government shutdown. Even as they do, there are hints they might consider a brief truce,” AP writes.
“Senate Democrats and President Obama have split over important strategic decisions in the battle to raise the debt ceiling,” The Hill writes. “Senate Democrats want to increase the nation’s borrowing authority for more than a year, taking Congress through the mid-term election. Obama seemed to undercut them Tuesday afternoon when he said he could support a short-term legislation to fund government and raise the debt limit. He also embraced attaching a mandated, bipartisan budget process to legislation that would increase the debt ceiling and open the government.”
And yet… “Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday rejected President Obama’s offer to negotiate a long-term fiscal deal in exchange for temporary measures to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling,” The Hill also notes. Said Boehner, “What the president said today was, if there’s unconditional surrender by Republicans, he’ll sit down and talk to us. That’s not the way America works.”
AP: “Capping a lengthy and politically charged search, President Barack Obama will nominate Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair, to be chairman of the nation’s powerful central bank, succeeding Ben Bernanke at a pivotal time for the economy and the Fed’s monetary policies. If confirmed by the Senate, Yellen would be the first woman to head a major central bank anywhere in the world. She also would be the first Democrat chosen to lead the Fed since Paul Volcker was picked by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.”
Obama will announce Yellen this afternoon.
“The Obama administration's detention of a high-profile terrorist suspect aboard a Navy vessel drew sharp opposition Tuesday among Republicans in Congress, who said Abu Anas al-Libi should be sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay for indefinite interrogation,” AP reports. “Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and Saxby Chambliss said intelligence officials need far more than a couple of months at sea to sufficiently question al-Libi over the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and any other al-Qaida terrorist plots he participated in. They also called a potential civilian trial in New York for al-Libi misguided.”
The Hill headline: “Officials scramble to stop salmonella outbreak amid shutdown.”
You can see Russia from the ocean… “Warmer temperatures are thawing the surface layer of land that covers most of Alaska and is known as permafrost (frozen below for at least two years in a row),” USA Today reports. “This thawing not only damages roads, buildings and airport runways, but also releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases that further warm the atmosphere … The nation's last frontier is — in many ways — its ground zero for climate change. Alaska's temperatures are rising twice as fast as those in the lower 48, prompting more sea ice to disappear in summer. While this may eventually open the Northwest Passage to sought-after tourism, oil exploration and trade, it also spells trouble as wildfires increase, roads buckle and tribal villages sink into the sea.”