The Obama Diary

ABC

Excerpts of the interview will air tonight (Dec 15) on “World News with Diane Sawyer.” The full interview can be seen during a “20/20″ holiday special on Friday, Dec. 23, 10 p.m. ET on ABC stations.

Thanks UT

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Pew: Public discontent with Congress has reached record levels, and the implications for incumbents in next year’s elections could be stark, according to the the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 7-11. Two-in-three voters say most members of Congress should be voted out of office in 2012 - the highest on record. And the number who say their own member should be replaced matches the all-time high recorded in 2010, when fully 58 members of Congress lost reelection bids - the most in any election since 1948.

The Republican Party is taking more of the blame than the Democrats for a do-nothing Congress. A record-high 50% say that the current Congress has accomplished less than other recent Congresses, and by nearly two-to-one (40% to 23%) more blame Republican leaders than Democratic leaders for this.

More here

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Andrew Sullivan: The Telegraph has looked into Romney’s claims that he subsisted as a missionary in France, taking dumps in holes and using showers from hoses. His fellow missionaries remember a different experience:

The Republican presidential hopeful spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion … It was staffed by two servants – a Spanish chef and a houseboy … for most of 1968, Mr Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. “It was a house built by and for rich people,” said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Mr Romney’s stay. “I would describe it as a palace”.

…. Why would Romney go out on a limb like that - when it could easily be disproven by an enterprising reporter? Maybe this has something to do with it:

Tearful as he described the house, Mr Anderson, 70, of Kaysville, Utah, said Romney aides had asked him not to speak publicly about their time together there.

More here

Thanks anotherslyfox