President Barack Obama's Op-Ed in the New York Times

The fight is on, POTUS has awaken...health care fight is on....

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

There are four main ways the reform we’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American.

First, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family — coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job.

Second, reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government. We’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits. read more here....

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Sarah Palin threatening lawsuits

One thing that many can say is this, she is one Drama Queen!!! Truly she is!! Here is the money paragraph:

To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as "fact" that Governor Palin resigned because she is "under federal investigation" for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those "responsible for the abuse of that right." Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. http://ltgov.state.ak.us/... These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable.

Thomas Van Flein, for
Governor Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin is a public figure. Period. In accepting the VP slot with McCain in 2008, vetting her was appropriate because no one heard of her. Palin put her kids, family front and center, she did that and in doing so families are vetted, too. Don't believe me? Ask the Obamas. Now I don't know why she is leaving her office after only 2-1/2 years, but if there is any indication from that bizarre press conference yesterday, the only thing I can conclude is that she is not one who does well when the heat is up or a fire in the kitchen. In other words, she just bailed because it got too hard. I expect her to make mega bucks, that is the direction she is going and she will get it, but as far as politics she is done.

Politics is a hard ball sport and if you can't take the knocks and know how to fight, then you don't need to be in the game. As we see, she does not.

Read it all here and CBS

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LADIES A MUST READ ON CHEATING HUSBANDS

From Maureen Dowd, I am only highlighting a few:

1. Skip the press conference, especially when your husband is copping to call girls, gay pickups in airport bathrooms or “tragic” and “forbidden” telenovela-style love stories. Stoicism at the skunk’s side is overrated and, as Larry Craig’s wife learned, sunglasses don’t help.

2. When there’s an Associated Press bulletin quoting your husband saying that he has found his soul mate but he’s going to try to fall back in love with you, change the locks. (At your second home, too.)

[snip]

8. Even if you’re a clever, competent woman, you risk sounding like a stereotypical harridan if you use the kids as a bludgeon and tell the press, as Jenny did: “You would think that a father who didn’t have contact with his children, if he wanted those children, he would toe the line a little bit.” When kids are involved, it’s best to chill when dishing out revenge.

9. Don’t slam his girlfriend for lying when you know she’s telling the truth. Don’t refer to the baby your rival had with your husband as “it.” Don’t trash a mistress, as Hillary and Elizabeth did, as a wacky stalker. No one — except the wife — blames the girlfriend as much as they blame the husband. Besides, you invite The Other Woman’s retaliation, as when Rielle decided — after watching Elizabeth spill to Oprah — that she might want that DNA test after all.

If you did not read this click on the link above and read it ALL. Most importantly, don't put your dirty married affairs in the news, a.k.a. the A.P. as the Sanfords did. Sadly, both Jenny and Mark Sanford are jokes now and to the point that South Carolina just want them to go away.

Tip Jenny, really, if your husband comes out and says he "has to fall back in love with you", girlfriend it is time to take your millions, your check book and BOUNCE. What woman want to hear that noise from a husband that is confessing he found the love of his life, his soulmate and he ain't talking about YOU.. He has done nothing but embarrass and humiliate you. GIRL MOVE THE FUCK ON......

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Obama takes a hit in the polls, but the public wants PUBLIC OPTION in the health care bill (UPDATE)

With the continuous noise from the right, it is to be expected, but the Republicans have not gained any ground despite the question of the blowing deficit and the money being spent by Obama. And the public does not blame Obama for what he inherited, it is still being blamed on Bush, by the public.

As far as public option:

On health care, the public remains open to persuasion. Without being told anything specific about the Obama plan in the survey, about a third of people said it's a good idea, about a third said it's a bad idea and the rest had no opinion. When given several details of his approach, 55% said they favored it, versus 35% who were opposed.

There was also support for the Democratic push to let people sign up for a public health-care plan that would compete with private companies, one of the toughest issues in the health-care debate. Three in four people said a public plan is extremely or quite important.

Finally, for the Republicans? They have no message.

[UPDATE]

CBS/NYT poll has Obama at 63%. But like the WSJ/NBC poll, the public has disdain for the Republican Party.

The Democratic Party is currently far enjoys far more popularity than its Republican opposition. Fifty-seven percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, while just 28 percent have a favorable view of the Republican Party. And while Democrats are united - 90 percent approve of their party - just 64 percent of Republicans approve of the Republican Party. Independents have a far more favorable view of the Democratic Party (51 percent approve) than the Republican Party (28 percent approve.)

Read it all, here.

Source

Obama riding high in CBS/NYT Poll

When you have nothing good to say, and if you said all the negative, eventually you have nothing to say. That is the D.C. Republicans. No matter how they attempt to spin it, the European trip of Obama and ending in the Muslim country of Turkey is or was a hit. For people who understand why this trip was important, let's start with the hatred that Europe and the Muslim world had of former President George W. Bush. This trip was a reintroduction of the United States of America to these regions. Obama had to do it, the distrust that the international community had of Bush can not be understated. The Bush Administration destroyed our international standing, period. Obama has started to clean it up. Simple as that. And this country approves of how Obama is doing, just that.

As President Obama concludes his well-publicized trip to Europe, Americans are more positive about the respect accorded to a U.S. president than they have been in years, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

Sixty-seven percent say world leaders respect Mr. Obama, while 18 percent say they do not respect the president. That's a sharp contrast to the response when this question was asked about Mr. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, in July 2006: Just 30 percent then said the president is respected by the leaders of other countries.

Mr. Obama's overall approval rating, meanwhile, has hit a new high of 66 percent, up from 64 percent last month. His disapproval rating stands at 24 percent. Nearly all Democrats and most independents approve of the way the president is handling his job, while only 31 percent of Republicans approve.

While some in the media have tried to spin that Obama is polarizing, don't listen to the psycho talk. If you look at the polling data, many are not identifying themselves as Republicans, which throws many more in the pile of the independents. Remember, this is the same group that abandoned the Republican Party in November and we saw what happened.

Most Americans - 60 percent - agree with the argument articulated by the president at the G20 summit last week that the United States needs to work with other countries to fix the problems facing the global economy in order to fix the economic problems back home.

Thirty-seven percent disagree with the argument that the United States should be working with other countries to fix its economy. (Click here for poll data on Americans' views on trade with other countries.)

Americans remain concerned that the United States may lose its position as the world’s economic leader. Nearly eight in 10 are at least somewhat concerned, including 40 percent who are very concerned.

Still, the percentage of Americans who are very concerned is down 10 points from last July.

Again, Obama has not even hit the 100 day mark, but for all those haters out there, this is just the beginning.

Read more, here and full poll metric, here.

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Obama's Interview with NY Times (Transcript and Audio)

This interview was Friday on board Air Force One. Photo above is on Air Force One.

Q. You said it’s going to take a long time to get out of this economic crisis. Can you assure the American people that the economy will be growing by the summer, the fall or the end of the year?

A. I don’t think that anybody has that kind of crystal ball. We are going through a wrenching process of de-leveraging in the financial sectors – not just here in the United States, but all around the world – that have profound consequences for Main Street. What started off as problems with the banks, led to a contraction of lending, which led in turn to both declining demand on the part of consumers, but also declining demand on the part of business. So it is going to take some time to work itself through.

Our job is to do a couple of key things. Number one, to put in place key investments that will cushion the blow. Our recovery plan had provisions for unemployment insurance, for food stamps, what we just saw today, grants and assistance to states so layoffs aren’t compounded. The second thing we’ve got to do is we’re going to have to strengthen the financial system. We’ve taken some significant steps already to do that – just for example this week, opening up a trillion-dollar credit line. But there’s going to be more work to be done there because there are some banks that are still limping along and we’ve got to strengthen their capital bases and get them lending again.

We’ve got to be able to distinguish in the marketplace between those banks that have real problems and those banks that are actually on pretty solid footing. We’ve still got the auto situation that we’re going to have to address. And finally, we’ve got to make the investments for long-term economic growth around energy, education and health care. I’m not trying to filibuster, it was a big question.

Our belief and expectation is that we will get all the pillars in place for recovery this year. Those are the things we have control over and we have confidence that working with Congress we can get the pillars of recovery in place. How long it will take before recovery actually translates into stronger job markets and so forth is going to depend on a whole range of factors, including our ability to get other countries to coordinate and take similar actions because part of what you’re seeing now is weaknesses in Europe that are actually greater than some of the weaknesses here, bouncing back and having an impact on our markets.

Q. Can you envision allowing a major institution to fail? Can you say with certainty that you won’t need to ask Congress for any more money beyond the $250 billion placeholder in your budget.

A. I am absolutely committed to making sure that our financial system is stable. And so I think people can be assured that we’ll do whatever is required to keep that from happening. For example, that would mean preventing institutions that could cause systemic risks to the system being just left on their own. We’re going to make sure that the financial system is stabilized and in terms of the resources that are involved. We think the $250 billion placeholder is a pretty good estimate. We have no reason to revise that estimate that’s in the budget. One of the benefits I think of this budget was we tried to surface as honestly and as forthrightly as possible, all the costs of this crisis, all the costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the potential costs of things like fixing the AMT, which historically have been left off the budget. Something that I don’t think people recognize is that had we used the same gimmicks that had been used previously, we could have driven down our budget projections over the next 10 years, down to point where debt was only 1.3 or 1.5 percent of G.D.P. We could have made ourselves look really good, but I felt very strongly that part of what got us in trouble in the first place, both in the private sector and the public sector, was a failure to do honest accounting about what risks are out there, about what costs are out there and factoring those in, and that’s something that we’ve tried to change. read the rest here, along with audio

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They Sure Showed That Obama

If you have not read Frank Rich's column, please do. It is worth the read.

nuff said.

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Tribune Company, New York Times all in financial trouble

Well, the reality of the internet has hit the newspapers.

It really was only a matter of time. In fact, the only time I really craved a newspaper was after Obama won the presidency. All the newspapers here in Chicago, was flying off the racks. I had to end up ordering the Tribune and Sun-Times on line because I could not find a paper anywhere.

Tribune Co. _ owner of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and other dailies _ filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday, the first major newspaper publisher to take such a step since the Internet plunged the industry into a desperate struggle for survival.

The media conglomerate was smothered by a drop-off in advertising and a crushing $13 billion in debt from the company's takeover a year ago by Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell.

Chapter 11 would buy the Tribune Co. time to put its finances in order. Analysts said the company will almost certainly have to sell off some of its major holdings _ and that could prove extremely difficult because of the bad economy and the poor outlook for newspapers.

"When you look at the near term, prospects for the company and the industry are certainly not very bright," said Dave Novosel, an analyst with the Gimme Credit research firm.

New York Times had been rumored for months to have financial difficulties, well it was put it out there today.

The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.

The company has retained Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm, to act as its agent to secure financing, either in the form of a mortgage or a sale-leaseback arrangement, said James M. Follo, the Times Company’s chief financial officer.

The Times Company owns 58 percent of the 52-story, 1.5 million-square-foot tower on Eighth Avenue, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano, and completed last year. The developer Forest City Ratner owns the rest of the building. The Times Company’s portion of the building is not currently mortgaged, and some investors have complained that the company has too much of its capital tied up in that real estate.

The company has two revolving lines of credit, each with a ceiling of $400 million, roughly the amount outstanding on the two combined. One of those lines is set to expire in May, and finding a replacement would be difficult given the economic climate and the company’s worsening finances. Analysts have said for months that selling or borrowing against assets would be the company’s best option for averting a cash flow problem next year.

Standard & Poor’s recently lowered its credit rating on the Times Company below investment grade, and Moody’s Investors Service has said it was considering a similar move. Times Company stock, which has lost more than half its value this year, closed on Friday at $7.64, down 30 cents.

Other stuff, here.

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Obama back on top of New York Times Best Seller List

Barack Obama is looking to push Oprah and her Book Club to the side. Both books penned by Obama are number one and two, respectively on the New York Times Best Seller List. The books are Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. Also note, anything with "Obama" is currently flying off the book shelf.

Dreams from My Father are number 12 on Amazon, while The Audacity of Hope is number 9. Not too shabby for books that have remained on the charts for over two years. Also, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is moving back up on the book charts. Due to the fact of Obama repeatedly stating this is the book that he has read and one that is constantly being talked about in the media as Obama puts his cabinet together, which is being called the "Team of Rivals."

Oh, the book "Michelle" is number 13.

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New York Times Endorses Barack Obama For President

and destroys McCain

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.

As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.

•

Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.

In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.

Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain’s campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates offer. The differences are profound.

Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall Street and in Americans’ bank accounts. Mr. Obama has another vision of government’s role and responsibilities.

In his convention speech in Denver, Mr. Obama said, “Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.”

Since the financial crisis, he has correctly identified the abject failure of government regulation that has brought the markets to the brink of collapse. continue

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