Olympics Times – Sports Daily

Alexandre Bilodeau won Canada’s first gold medal on home soil, lifting the host nation’s spirits on the third day of the Winter Olympics that have been marred by rain, race cancellations and the death of an athlete.
“The party is just starting for Canada,” said Bilodeau, 22, who ended the country’s home medal drought with a first- place finish in the moguls event last night at Cypress resort near Vancouver. “It’s too good to be true.”
Hundreds of people whooped and cheered near the Olympic flame along the Vancouver waterfront as word spread of Bilodeau’s victory last night. Crowds spilled onto Robson Street in downtown Vancouver, singing the national anthem and waving the nation’s red and white flag.
“We’ve always been winners” in the Olympics, said Ken Ng, 50, of Richmond, British Columbia as he joined the celebrations near the flame. “Now we’re winners at home. That makes all the difference.”
Bilodeau said this won’t be the last gold medal for Canadians in the 21st Winter Olympics, with 14 more days of competition. Canada failed to win a gold medal at the Winter Games in Calgary in 1988 and the Montreal Summer Games in 1976, making it the only host nation to never win gold. Bilodeau ended that on the second day of medal competition.
“There are many more golds to come,” Bilodeau said. “This team is strong.”
Bilodeau’s moguls win last night gives the host nation reason to celebrate during an Olympics in which as much has gone wrong as right.

Luger Death

Even before the Games began, Canada’s Olympic organizers were forced to deal with the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, a luger from Georgia who crashed during a training run in Whistler, British Columbia.
The crash, just seven hours before the opening ceremony, cast a shadow over the Games for a country that had been working seven years to showcase its third-biggest city to the world.
“This has been just about the most challenging day we could ever imagine,” Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee Chief Executive Officer John Furlong said Feb. 12. “Never in a thousand years would we have dreamed with having to deal with the things we’ve had.”
The weather also failed to cooperate, with record-high temperatures in January and steady rain and fog on the opening weekend forcing cancellations of skiing events and training runs. Organizers were forced to close the standing-room section at Cypress for the snowboard cross events today and tomorrow because of heavy rains. The closing affects about 4,000 spectators at each event. They will be given refunds.

Opening Ceremony
Even the opening ceremony had a glitch, as the fourth pillar supporting one of the Olympic torches failed to spring up from the floor of the B.C. Place stadium, leaving one of the torch bearers with nothing to light.
Bilodeau’s victory may help the host nation change course, and end questions about whether Canada will ever win a gold at home after gold-medal favorites such as freestyle skier Jennifer Heil and speedskater Charles Hamelin failed to win on the first day of competition.
“It takes a bit of the monkey off the back of the other athletes,” said Dave Cobb, co-CEO of the Vancouver Olympics committee.
The win pushes Canada to a third-place tie in the medals standings, with a gold, a silver and a bronze. The U.S. leads with six medals.
Canada spent a record C$116 million ($109 million) to prepare its skiers, skaters, sliders and the rest of its winter athletes for Vancouver.

Better Results
“They’ve been getting some great results at many of the World Cup ski events in recent years so I think some of the money they are putting into the sport is paying off,” said Kris Hutton, 40, a software product manager from West Vancouver who was watching medal ceremonies in Whistler with his wife and four children.
The investment, and the so-called home-field advantage, prompted Daniel Johnson, a Colorado College professor with a 94 percent accuracy rate for predicting Olympic medals, to forecast Canada will win the most medals in Vancouver. He says Canada will win 27 medals, one more than the U.S. and Germany.

Own the Podium
Canada set up the “Own the Podium” program in 2004 to ensure its winter athletes fared better in Vancouver. The program paid dividends at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, when Canada placed third with 24 medals, a national record.
“We have a single goal, to be No. 1,” said Roger Jackson, the CEO of Own the Podium, which is funded by the federal government and the organizing committee of the Vancouver Winter Games.
“This is inspiring,” said Canadian luger Sam Edney, commenting on Bilodeau’s gold. “It’s going to light a fire under Canadians.”

source: www.bloomberg.com

Olympic fever is taking hold in Metro Vancouver’s sex industry, with businesses and workers preparing to welcome a deluge of visitors.
Vancouver’s most prominent strip club is planning Olympic-themed decorations, but keeping them secret for fear of a clampdown by Olympics authorities. And one Metro Vancouver escort service is hiring dozens of women from across the country for the Games – and is already catering to Olympics-related demand.
In Vancouver, hotel doormen, bell captains and concierges who refer guests to entertainment venues have been warning Brandy Sarionder to expect hordes of clients at her high-end strip club Brandi’s and her massage parlour The Swedish Touch, she says.
“We’ve been told that however busy we think we’re going to be, we’re going to be a thousand times busier than that,” Sarionder says.
Sarionder has hired an additional 10 porters, security guards and bartenders, while dancers from the pool of 70 will work extended hours.
“They’re very excited,” Sarionder says. “I keep trying to make them understand that it’s a marathon and not a sprint. I’m a little worried about my staff burning out.”
To give the strip lounge an Olympic feeling, Sarionder has left up the snowflakes from the Christmas decor, and plans to put up some Games-specific items she wouldn’t reveal.
“I’m afraid to talk about it in case the Olympic police come and say, `Take those decorations down,”’ Sarionder says.
Canada’s largest escort agency, Carman Fox and Friends, has been receiving about a hundred applications a week from women hoping to work during the Games, says owner Carman Fox.
“These are a lot of women who want to be `foxes’ just for the Olympics,” Fox says. “We’ve got a lot of girls coming in from Calgary, from Toronto, Edmonton, from all over Canada. Even girls from Victoria want to come in here and work with us for a week, or just for a few days. There’s so many now that I’m doing group interviews – four at a time.”

Fox expects to hire about 30 women for the Olympics, adding to the company’s existing escort pool of 100. Clients will be paying $300 to $400 an hour for most escorts, with four “VIP foxes” coming in for the Games costing $10,000 an hour and up, Fox says.

Already, men who have arrived early for the Olympics are swamping Fox’s agency, she says.

A Vancouver escort who goes by the name Classy Angel says she’s sticking with her established clients, and is turning down four or five requests a day from Olympics visitors hoping to pay $500 an hour for four to six hours of her company. Many of the men are from Germany, with some contacting her from the U. S. and Eastern Canada, she says.

Vancouver-area dominatrix Miss Jasmine – whose work includes “pony play” in which she wears spurs and rides the man, who wears a saddle and a bit between his teeth – says she’s looking forward to providing her $300-an-hour abuse to police working at and visiting the Games.

“There’s a certain kind of person who’s in that position of power who needs . . . it taken away from them,” Miss Jasmine says.

She expects she’ll be seeing Europeans, from two countries in particular.

“British and Germans are usually really kinky,” she says.

On the streets, Vancouver’s hundred or so local sex-trade workers have seen about 50 additional women arrive in recent months, says Susie Davis, a sex worker heading an effort to open the city’s first legal brothel.

“They think that there’s going to be a huge earning potential off of all of the visitors to the Olympic Games,” Davis says.

Vancouver police aren’t planning any crackdown on prostitution during the Games, says Const. Lindsey Houghton.

“Street-related prostitution existed before the Games, it will exist during the Games and it will exist after,” Houghton says. “Our enforcement around that will not be any different. We have a dedicated vice unit that works very closely with the girls and the guys . . . to ensure that they are safe.”

source: www.montrealgazette.com

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The Ricketts family’s $900 million purchase of the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co could close soon, despite disagreements on the value of broadcast contracts, two sources familiar with the talks said.

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Beautiful, charitable and talented, Ana Ivanovic has battled the pretty tennis player stereotype and proved her critics wrong.
But as this 21-year-old is finding out, staying at the top can be harder than getting there.

It is in a karaoke booth that Ana Ivanovic proves she is flawed. Wearing tracksuit pants and a blue singlet top, coloured lights spinning, she twirls and waves one hand goofily in the air as she dances to a Diana Ross tune.
“Upside down you’re turning me,” Ivanovic sings out of key. “You’re giving love instinctively”.

She moves awkwardly, theatrically pulling the microphone back, as she points her finger at the camera.

She descends into giggles and resorts to miming parts of the song. Singing is something Ivanovic can’t do well. But what does it matter? This is the woman who calls up UNICEF to volunteer her services, studies economics and takes exams between grand slams. The woman who says the roguish Andrew Symonds is her favourite Australian sportsman and often decorates magazine pages like a supermodel.

She’s a sports beauty devoid of pretension, and one who has won a grand slam title. But when asked about her imperfections she insists there are many things she can’t do. “I mean I can’t sing,” Ivanovic admits through a torrent of giggles. That’s an understatement; she couldn’t hold a note in a bucket. The incriminating YouTube footage is proof.

Ana Ivanovic

“But obviously I appreciate what I have and I feel very fortunate to have what I have at a young age,” Ivanovic, 21, says. “I think it’s normal as human beings that we want more and more and more. You think: ‘Have I got everything? Can I have more?’ There’s always something. But you’ve got to appreciate, realise: ‘Hey, I’ve got so many things in my life so I should just appreciate it’. Obviously I have goals, and something more that I want to achieve, but I have to take life as it comes. I don’t need to have everything right here, right now.”

Ivanovic has graced the pages of US Vogue and models expensive watches. She has the most visited website of any sportswoman in the world, which is unsurprising as she is often voted “sexiest”, “most beautiful” and as having the “most beautiful body in sport” by various polls.
“She has everything,” her long-time manager, Dan Holzmann, says. “And she is natural. Some people are made. But with Ana we didn’t have to do anything. She is smart, has a good heart – a pretty girl who’s very competitive and fights for every ball.”

Oh yes, let’s not forget she can play. Ivanovic has won eight WTA singles titles but, of course, the highlight is her French Open win last year. During that perfect French spring Ivanovic also collected the No.1 world ranking.
She had everything. But since she cried tears of joy on clay nearly a year ago, Ivanovic has wobbled under the weight of having it all, with her ranking dropping to seven. She injured her thumb between the French Open and Wimbledon and was bundled out in the third round at the All England Club. Following that, Ivanovic failed to win back-to-back matches in her next five events including an early second round exit at the US Open. During this time she admitted being No.1 was a cross to bear. After her 12-week reign at the top she wondered how Roger Federer had survived as No.1 in the men’s game for so long.

When she bowed out of the Australian Open this year in the third round, the critics again questioned her heart and talent. Would she just be a one-slam wonder?

Ivanovic says she knew the magnitude of her French Open success last year. Her Roland Garros win relieved the burden that comes with being a beautiful and talented sportswoman. The parallels once drawn between her and Anna Kournikova were quickly dismissed.

“Yes, before definitely people were [distracted by my looks],” Ivanovic says. “I’d played disappointingly before that French Open win. People were saying: ‘Can she do it?’ It was great to make that happen. It’s one thing getting into the final, it’s another altogether winning it. That gave me a lot of confidence.” However, since winning her first grand slam title she admits she has struggled to maintain that confidence. But if anything, Ivanovic has proved that adversity is a fuel for her.

She grew up scheduling her training sessions according to when the bombs would be most likely to drop on Belgrade. She remembers as a 12-year-old she had to practise between seven and nine in the morning because from midday the bombing would start. Those dark days during NATO’s 78-day bombardment of the city amid the Kosovo crisis of 1999 were harrowing times for Ivanovic. The grief of that period aside, the tennis facilities were unconventional. In the winter Ivanovic crafted her game in an abandoned Olympic-sized swimming pool that had been drained of water, carpeted and converted into an indoor court. In trying financial circumstances her parents, Dragana, a lawyer, and Miroslav, a businessman, still managed to support her tennis dream. “My family was in a very tough situation, my country was in a very bad place,” Ivanovic says. “They were some very hard years [but] my parents always supported me.
I was just this kid who wanted to play and people were finding it hard to survive.”

During the spring of 1999, Ivanovic spent four months sheltering from the air raids. She remembers her crippling fear as she heard the bombs and felt the building shake. Despite the bombardment her family refused to tuck themselves away in the cellar. They filled the house with “positive” people and made an effort to remain emotionally resilient. Ivanovic now wears her positivity like an armour.

While many sports stars may sour with success, Ivanovic has not changed. She’s a walking Disneyland. Ivanovic bubbles through press conferences and even the most inane questions don’t trouble her cheery demeanour. “Yeah, I always have been like this,” Ivanovic says. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve always thought it very important to be happy inside. There’s a lot of bad things happening in the world, but it’s important to try to stay happy and appreciate what you’ve got and don’t look externally for the happiness.”

Her parents have been the key to her attitude and success, says Holzmann. “If you met her parents you’d know she’s their daughter,” he says. “I have met many tennis parents on the tour and some of them are so crazy and manipulative.”

Everything changed for Ivanovic when, as a 14-year-old, she met Holzmann, a Swiss businessman with a passion for tennis. His tennis coach told him about Ivanovic, whose sponsor was facing bankruptcy, so the teenager and her mother flew to Switzerland for a visit.

In their first meeting, Holzmann remembers Ivanovic having “warm eyes” but a steely determination. “She knew what she wanted,” Holzmann says. “She said to me: ‘I want to be No.1.’ And I believed her.
I believed this 14-year-old girl.”

Holzmann, who had made his riches from the vitamin drink Juice Plus, decided to finance and manage Ivanovic’s career. However, her first match with Holzmann on her side was a disaster. She lost. This led to tears and a locker room lock in. He had travelled to Milan to watch Ivanovic and she was devastated that she had failed. She sobbed for hours. “She wanted to prove she was great,” Holzmann says. “She thought I was going to cancel her contract.”

During the next few years Holzmann spent $500,000 on Ivanovic’s career. Within two years of becoming a pro, she had repaid his investment. Today, the pair have a sturdy friendship. He is kept busy helping manage her multi-million-dollar empire, seeking the right endorsement opportunities. Selling Ivanovic requires little effort. Her image is faultless and she has remained an unchanged “modest girl” since he met her seven years ago. “She’s not Little Miss Perfect but the nice thing about Ana is she is very natural. She is very different to, say, Jelena Jankovic, the Williams sisters. You look at Maria Sharapova, these people, they are thinking: ‘What can I do to be loved, to be more respected by my fans today?’
“Ana has a life outside tennis. If she didn’t play tennis she would be a doctor.”

The attention lately has also been on Ivanovic’s love life. In the past she has dated Spanish player Fernando Verdasco and she was recently linked to Australian golfer Adam Scott. The pair are both brand ambassadors for Rolex and are said to have “hooked up” in the last Australian summer. Her management states the pair are “friends”. For now there is no significant other. The only man Ivanovic has recently brought into her life is American coach Craig Kardon. It’s the first time in two years she has employed a full-time coach. In her first tournament in February under Kardon’s tuition she defeated Alisa Kleybanova, the Russian who had rubbed her out of the 2009 Australian Open. “We have a firm view of how my game should develop,” she says.

Holzmann says Kardon could be just the man she needs, reflecting on her slump after the French Open. “It was tough,” Holzmann says. “A lot happened to her; she became No.1, won a grand slam tournament. Once you get there it is even more difficult to stay at the top.” And she has 10 million people in Serbia watching her. Ivanovic is feted in her home country. The President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, attended her 20th birthday party.

She admits it can be hard constantly having people approach her in the street, but, Ivanovic finds good in this, saying it’s nice to be a role model. “Wherever I go many people come up to talk to me and give me advice on my shots, on my game – on everything,” Ivanovic says and then descends into another heap of giggles.

“I understand it’s how it is,” she says. “If I make a change to a young kid to play any sport, not only tennis, instead of spending time in front of the TV or computer, that is good. I want to give them a good example: ‘Hey, go out and play and see the world’.”

Although the tennis road may have been bumpy, Ivanovic says, in her optimistic way, that things will get better. “I want to win more grand slams. I think I’ve got the ability to achieve that, I know that I’ve got to work very hard for it. Yes, I think I’ve the game and talent to do that.”

source: www.watoday.com.au

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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) – Louisiana Derby winner Friesan Fire was the new on-track favorite for Saturday’s $2.2 million Kentucky Derby, supplanting morning line front-runner I Want Revenge.

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RALEIGH (Reuters) – The Carolina Panthers underlined their faith in Jake Delhomme on Thursday by signing the quarterback to a five-year contract extension that local media said was worth $42.5 million.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Derek Jeter snapped a 5-5 tie with a homer in the eighth inning to lift the New York Yankees to a 6-5 victory over the Cleveland Indians on Friday, the team’s first win at their new $1.5 billion stadium.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former catcher Yogi Berra tossed the ceremonial first pitch and Babe Ruth’s bat was laid across home plate to mark the opening of the new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium on Thursday.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Yankees players were elated on Thursday at the first workout in their new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium home.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – All-Star baseball player Miguel Tejada apologized to his fans on Thursday and received a sentence of one year of probation and a $5,000 fine for lying to Congress about his knowledge of other players using steroids.

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Pressure on the United States Olympic Committee to renegotiate its existing revenue-sharing agreement with the International Olympic Committee rose to another level when an angry group of Olympic leaders voted to terminate the contract and renegotiate a new one.
The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations passed a non-binding resolution on Tuesday to end the U.S.O.C.’s current open-ended contract that agreement gives the United States 20 percent of the I.O.C.’s global sponsorship revenue — the same amount as all the other Olympic committees, combined — and 12.75 percent of the television revenue.
“The greed of this organization is unlimited. Totally unlimited,” Hein Verbruggen, the former chief of the International Cycling Union and an honorary I.O.C. member, said to The Associated Press. “It infuriates everybody and especially me.”
The international federations are meeting this week in Denver at a gathering called Sportaccord. Verbruggen is its chairman.
“The way they treat us, there’s no respect, no respect at all,” Verbruggen said. “It’s infuriating. I have no other words.”
The U.S.O.C., however, has emphasized that the United States generates a big chunk of the I.O.C. revenues and that U.S.-based companies provide most of the sponsorship money. The United States television contract is also far more lucrative than in any other country. To televise last year’s Beijing Games, NBC paid about $894 million. The European Broadcasting Union paid about $443.5 million. Chinese television networks paid about $7 million.
“We’re looking for a long-term solution, and it’s probably not best to do it in an emotional or pressure environment,” Bob Ctvrtlik, the U.S.O.C.’s vice chairman for international relations, told The Associated Press. “It’s not easy. It is complicated. I think we need to do that in a nice, calm manner.”
The impassioned debate comes at a delicate time for the U.S.O.C., with the bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago in 2016 ramping up. The vote on which city will host those Games is scheduled for October.
An I.O.C. evaluation commission will visit Chicago in early April. It will also visit the other three cities vying for the Games, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
Both sides in the revenue-sharing tiff deny that the Chicago bid would be affected by the revenue disagreement, which is not expected to be resolved this week.
Chicago 2016 chairman Pat Ryan said that the disagreement has nothing to do with the bid.
Even so, Verbruggen said: “I like the guys in Chicago. I really like Pat Ryan. I’d think they might be embarrassed with this whole thing.”

Female Ski Jumpers Ask to Meet With I.O.C. President
A group of international female ski jumpers have asked the I.O.C. president, Jacques Rogge, to meet with their representatives in Denver this week, in hopes of convincing the committee to allow female ski jumpers into the 2010 Games. In a 2006 decision, the I.O.C. barred women from participating in the sport at the Vancouver Olympics.
The athletes said that participation in their sport was growing quickly, outpacing several other Winter Games sports.
“We’re ready,” Lindsey Van, a world champion and American national team member, said in a statement. “Our sport has developed incredibly in the three years since that decision, and we would really appreciate the opportunity to tell our story to him personally.”
Fifteen female ski jumpers, including Van, have brought a lawsuit against the Vancouver Olympics organizing committee, citing gender discrimination. A hearing is scheduled for April 20 in British Columbia Supreme Court.

source: nytimes.com

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court upheld on Tuesday a jury award of $260,000 against four-time NBA scoring champion Allen Iverson and his bodyguard to a man injured in a 2005 brawl at a Washington, D.C., nightclub.

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PHOENIX (Reuters) – Pitcher Gavin Floyd has agreed to a four-year, $15.5-million contract with the Chicago White Sox, the club said on Sunday.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former Edmonton Oilers hockey team owner Peter Pocklington, who has been charged in California with bankruptcy fraud, was granted release on a $1 million bond on Friday and will be freed later in the evening, prosecutors said.

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Brawn GP will replace Honda Racing in the 2009 Formula One world championship after Japan’s No. 2 carmaker sold the team to its former manager Ross Brawn.
Brawn, Honda’s team principal last year after working with seven-time champion Michael Schumacher at Ferrari and Benetton, bought all the shares in the Brackley, England-based team, Honda Motor Co. said in a statement today. Honda spokeswoman Yasuko Matsuura declined to give financial terms.
“The past few months have been extremely challenging for the team, but today’s announcement is the very pleasing conclusion to the strenuous efforts that have been made to secure its future,” Brawn, a 54-year-old Briton, said in an e- mailed statement.
The sale means 10 teams will start the March 29 season- opening Australian Grand Prix at a time when Formula One costs are coming under closer scrutiny by automakers experiencing the worst global sales slump in decades. Honda quit the most-watched motor sport in December and put the team up for sale to save more than 20 billion yen ($203 million) a year.

Ross Brawn

Following Honda’s departure, teams agreed to slash costs by 30 percent by banning testing during the season and sharing data on tires and fuel — previously areas of fierce competition. Yesterday they announced further plans to halve overall budgets in 2010 compared with last year’s level.
Brawn GP will use engines supplied by Mercedes-Benz in this year’s championship. The new team retained Honda’s driving lineup of Britain’s Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, who held off the challenge of fellow Brazilian Bruno Senna, the nephew of three-time world champion Ayrton Senna.

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The top U.S. military official said Sunday that Iran has sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon, declaring it would be a “very, very bad outcome” should Tehran move forward with a bomb.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered the assessment when questioned in a broadcast interview about a recent report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog on the state of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which can create nuclear fuel and may be sufficiently advanced to produce the core of warheads.
Mullen was asked if Iran now had enough fissile material to make a bomb. He responded, “We think they do, quite frankly. And Iran having a nuclear weapon I’ve believed for a long time is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world.”
State Department spokesman Robert A. Wood said Sunday that it was not possible say how much fissile material Iran has accumulated.
“There are differing view not only outside government but also inside the government” on how far Iran has gone, Wood said. He added that while he was not suggesting Mullen was incorrect, “We just don’t know” exactly how much fissile material Iran now holds.
“We are concerned they are getting close” to having enough to build a nuclear weapon, he added. Wood spoke to reporters traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Egypt.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran has processed 2,222 pounds (1,010 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium. But the report left unclear whether Iran is now capable, even if it wanted, of further processing that material into a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium to arm one weapon.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who like Mullen appeared on the Sunday talk shows, did not go as far as Mullen. The Iranians, Gates said, are “not close to a weapon at this point and so there is some time” for continued diplomatic efforts.

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President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama charted a dramatic new course for the nation Thursday with a bold but contentious budget proposing higher taxes for the wealthy and the first steps toward guaranteed health care for all — accompanied by an astonishing $1.75 trillion federal deficit that would be nearly four times the highest in history.
Denouncing what he called the “dishonest accounting” of recent federal budgets, Obama unveiled his own $3.6 trillion blueprint for next year, a bold proposal that would transfer wealth from rich taxpayers to the middle class and the poor.
Congressional approval without major change is anything but sure. The plan is filled with political land mines including an initiative to combat global warming that would hit consumers with considerably higher utility bills. Other proposals would take on entrenched interests such as big farming, insurance companies and drug makers.
Obama blamed the expected federal deficit explosion on a “deep and destructive” recession and recent efforts to battle it including the Wall Street bailout and the just-passed $787 billion stimulus plan. The $1.75 trillion deficit estimate for this year is $250 billion more than projected just days ago because of proposed new spending for a fresh bailout for banks and other financial institutions.
As the nation digs out of the most serious economic crisis in decades, Obama said, “We will, each and every one of us, have to compromise on certain things we care about but which we simply cannot afford right now.”
Signaling budget battles to come, Republicans were skeptical Obama was doing without much at all.
“We can’t tax and spend our way to prosperity,” said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. “The era of big government is back, and Democrats are asking you to pay for it.”
Obama plans to move aggressively toward rebalancing the tax system, extending a $400 tax credit for most workers — $800 for couples — while letting expire President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for couples making more than $250,000 a year. That would raise the top income tax bracket from 35 percent to 39.6 percent for those taxpayers and raise their capital gains rate from 15 to 20 percent as well.
Thursday’s 134-page budget submission, a nonbinding recommendation to Congress, says the plan would close the deficit to a a more reasonable — but still eye-popping — $533 billion after five years. That would still be higher than last year’s record $455 billion deficit.
And the national debt would more than double by the end of the upcoming decade, raising worries that so much federal borrowing could drive up interest rates and erode the value of the dollar.
Also, to narrow the budget gap, Obama relies on rosier predictions of economic growth — including a 3.2 percent boost in the economy next year — than most private sector economists foresee.

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A promoter has flip-flopped on plans to bring U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps to events in Calgary and Vancouver in light of a photograph that surfaced of the Olympic gold medalist using a bong associated with smoking marijuana.
Power Within Inc., a Toronto-based company that organizes motivational speaking events and initially stood by the superstar’s involvement in next week’s engagements in Western Canada, has suddenly pulled the plug.
“Due to widely publicized alleged use of marijuana by Michael Phelps, the decision has been made to present the program without Mr. Phelps’ participation,” the company said in statement released to a local newspaper.
Both nonrefundable events were well on their way to selling out. Tickets for next Tuesday’s event in Calgary cost $229 and will now feature actor Martin Sheen as its keynote speaker.
Next Friday’s engagement in Vancouver, which costs $169, will still feature Mehmet Oz, a regular on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
The image appeared in a British tabloid earlier this month, but it was allegedly taken while Mr. Phelps attended a party last November while visiting the University of South Carolina. Last week, a state sheriff said he did not have enough physical evidence to charge Mr. Phelps.
Mr. Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics in August, has apologized for his actions, but stopped short of admitting to using pot.
Days after the controversy surfaced, Power Within said it was standing behind the scheduled Canadian appearances by the swimmer.
“We’re not changing our position on it,” company founder Salim Khoja told a local newspaper. “His message and his accomplishments speak for themselves.”
Officials did not respond to requests yesterday to explain their change of heart.

source: theglobeandmail.com