President Obama's Weekly Radio Address, May 9, 2009 (Video and Transcript)

President Obama Calls on Congress to Pass Credit Card Reform Bill



download .mp3 or .mp4 (50.3 Mb) | also available here on youtube | read transcript

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Lawrence O'Donnell, EATS THEM UP and SPITS THEM OUT (Video)

Again, there are few of these so called "analysts" on TV who will even try to challenge Lawrence O'Donnell. If you don't have your "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed, don't even try it with him. He is that good. The man slams them on "torture". O'Donnell sits in for Ed Schultz on "The Ed Show".

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Rachel Maddow takes on that diaper lovin', prostitute chasin' Senator from Louisiana, David Vitter (Video)

David Vitter is bogus as hell. for real.

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Michelle got her burger on, too

First the President, now the First Lady.

Is there a burger competition afoot in the White House?

First Lady Michelle Obama and about 20 members of her staff slipped out of the Executive Mansion at lunch time on Friday for some burgers and fries at Good Stuff Eatery, a restaurant near Capitol Hill.

The visit came only a few days after President Obama went out for a burger with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington, Va., which prides itself on premium aged 10-ounce burgers.

No word yet on whether one visit inspired the other.

“It totally caught us by surprise,’’ said Micheline Mendelsohn, who is the sister of the chef, Spike Mendelsohn, and handles communications for the restaurant, which specializes in burgers. (They serve beef, turkey and chicken burgers, for those who are curious.)

The restaurant’s staff served the first lady and her aides several of their best burgers, including the Prez Obama burger, which comes with horseradish mayo, red onion marmalade, crumbled blue cheese and bacon. (No word on whether the first lady shares her husband’s taste for spicy or dijon mustard on her burgers.)

They also dined on fries and milk shakes.

Ms. Mendelsohn said that customers were delighted to see Mrs. Obama, who shook hands and stopped to say hello on her way out. A crowd gathered outside the restaurant to snap her photo and to cheer her on.

“They were shouting, “I love you,’’ Ms. Mendelsohn said.

Mr. Mendelsohn – of Top Chef fame — is no stranger to the White House. He was cooking it up at the Kids Kitchen – a child-friendly cooking demonstration that featured healthy foods such as turkey burgers — at the White House Easter Egg roll last month.

Oh, yeah, Top Chef is one of my favorite shows.

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3 Government Plans for Health Care Being Tossed Out There

I dont' know what is making this so difficult. The Republicans did not get this issue and lost on this issue. Health care costs are one major factor that is bankrupting millions of Americans and lack of it is driving costs up all over the place.

These politicians are being ridden hard by lobbyists, the very same ones who are tossing money in their re-election tillers so they can keep their cushy jobs. I hope they get or understand the message, the American public wants universal health care and they wanted it yesterday. These politicians either straighten up and do the right thing or get their asses primaried out of office.

Oh, by the way, here is the Republican Plan for STOPPING HEALTHCARE REFORM. Everyone better get ready for a real fight here.

Senators are considering three different designs for a new government health-insurance plan that middle-income Americans could buy into for the first time, congressional officials said Friday.

Officials familiar with the proposals said senators plan to debate them in a closed meeting next week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the controversial plans have not been released.

Creating a public plan is one of the most contentious ideas in the debate over how to overhaul the nation's health-care system to cover the uninsured and try to restrain costs.

President Barack Obama and many Democrats say a government option would serve as a check to keep the private insurance industry honest.

Insurers fear the government would use its power to drive them out of business. And Republicans call a public plan in the legislation a deal-breaker, dashing hopes for bipartisan legislation for overhauling the health insurance system. Employer groups are also opposed.

The three approaches being discussed are:

_Create a plan that resembles Medicare, administered by the Health and Human Services department.

_Adopt a Medicare-like plan, but pick an outside party to run it. That way government officials would not directly control the day-to-day operations.

_Leave it up to individual states to set up a public insurance plan for their residents. read more here....

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Obama traveling to Egypt next month to deliver major speech to the Middle East

This is needed after the Bush Administration destoyed our image in the Middle East. The speech will be delivered on June 4, 2009.

U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver a much anticipated speech to the Muslim world in Egypt next month, seeking to repair ties that were severely damaged under his predecessor George W. Bush.

Many Arab and Muslim nations were angered by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo, abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Bush's initial reluctance to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Obama's Egypt trip fulfills a promise he made during his presidential campaign to give a major address to Muslims from a Muslim capital during the first few months in office.

The Muslim world will be watching to see his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most Muslims believed Bush's policies toward the region were biased in favor of Israel.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday the speech would be delivered in Egypt on June 4 but did not say whether it would be in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Source

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Obama remarks on unemployment rate and help for jobless (Video)

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Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar announces that the Statue of Liberty reopens on the 4th of July (video)

Statue of Liberty Reopens on the 4th of July

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Job Loss Still Suck

That is the reality. I am watching Obama on television now talking about going back to school to upgrade your skills for other job opportunities, which is great, but in the meantime it is grim out there.

The pace of layoffs slowed in April when employers cut 539,000 jobs, the fewest in six months. But the unemployment rate climbed to 8.9 percent, the highest since late 1983, as many businesses remain wary of hiring given all the economic uncertainties.

The Labor Department tally released Friday wasn't nearly as deep as the 620,000 job cuts that economists were expecting, and was helped by a burst of federal government hiring of temporary workers to prepare for the 2010 Census. The rise in the unemployment rate from 8.5 percent in March matched economists' forecasts.

The new report underscored the toll the longest recession since World War II has taken on America's workers and companies. However, the slowdown in layoffs may bolster expectations that the worst of the downturn's hefty job losses are past.

"There are glimmers of hope. We are moving in the right direction in terms of layoffs. They are measurably less bad than what we've been through," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

On Wall Street, the employment news gave stocks a lift. The Dow Jones industrials gained more than 90 points in morning trading.

Still, companies will remain cautious in hiring, making it harder for laid-off workers to find new jobs.

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 15.8 percent in April, the highest on records dating back to 1994. The total number of unemployed now stands at 13.7 million, up from 13.2 million in March. more here.....

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Obama, Schwarzenegger going at it?

You decide.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been one of the prominent Republican defenders of President Obama's stimulus plan. He's called the California governor "one of the great innovators of state government" and "an outstanding partner with our administration." But their relationship has hit a rough patch.

The L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration is threatening to rescind stimulus billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds if wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers are not restored.

Schwarzenegger's office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.

The Service Employees International Union, which represents the workers, requested the opinion from Obama's Department of Health and Human Services.

"The Obama Administration has made it clear that the State cannot cut the homecare workers' wages. Now we need our counties to follow suit and take all the cuts off the table," said SEIU Executive Vice President and SEIU UHW Trustee, Eliseo Medina.

more here....

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Today I watched a woman truly miserable....Elizabeth Edwards....

Again, I don't know why she wrote the book or went on Oprah, but it was heart wrenching to see a woman fighting the inevitability.....the loss of her marriage.

Her blaming of Rielle Hunter, only, for her husband's infidelity was unbelievable, but then the calling of Hunter's child, "it" was even more strange.

Adultery takes people in different places, I know, I have witnessed the hurt of it, but folks I knew never lost sight on the reality of what had happened. I think Elizabeth Edwards has.

Elizabeth Edwards is fighting some mighty demons right now and it is out in the open to see. I hope she finds whatever peace she is seeking, but I don't think she will.

Lastly, her husband, John Edwards is a scumbag of the tallest order, nothing new here and my opinion has not changed, but he is a lucky bastard that Elizabeth still wants to be bothered with the likes of him.

Mrs. Edwards tells Oprah Winfrey that she has essentially walled herself off from the possibility that her husband may have fathered a child with the woman with whom he had an affair.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” Mrs. Edwards says. She also implies that Mr. Edwards is not certain either whether the baby girl is his.

No difference to her, but it is a difference and if you saw the Oprah interview, you would agree.

But Ms. Winfrey presses Mrs. Edwards about whether Mr. Edwards is the father of the baby born to Rielle Hunter, though Ms. Winfrey does not use Ms. Hunter’s name because that was a condition of the interview.

“If it were discovered at some point that it was — which is not something we know — if they discovered that it was, then, you know, that would be part of John’s life, but it’s not part of mine,” Mrs. Edwards says of the baby. “And I can’t really see any upside to my making it part of my life, honestly.”

Ms. Winfrey asks Mrs. Edwards if she has asked her husband if the baby is his. Mrs. Edwards responds: “He has — he’s told me, you know — he’s talked to me about, you know, questions people ask and things like that. And he doesn’t know any more than I know about this.”

No clear cut answer, she knows it is his child.

Ms. Winfrey asks whether Mrs. Edwards, who went on to campaign for her husband, “and saying what a great husband, and father, and man, he was, were you being honest?”

Mrs. Edwards says yes because “I changed the way I talked a lot,” though at first she canceled several appearances she had scheduled.

Ms. Winfrey points out that Mrs. Edwards could have used her recurrence of her breast cancer as an excuse to end the campaign. “That was a way out,” Ms. Winfrey says. Mrs. Edwards agrees but says no more.

She admits that she was curious about Ms. Hunter and wanted details of the relationship. Her self-confidence suffered, she says, and the hardest part about her marriage now is rebuilding the trust.

She decided to work on the marriage rather than split up because she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life fighting; her doctor has told her she could live anywhere between one year and 10 years. Death is not as frightening as it might be, Mrs. Edwards says, because the couple had already lost their son, Wade, when he was 16.

Also, Mrs. Edwards says, she doesn’t want her life or her marriage to be defined by her husband’s affair. And she questions whether it is fair to judge him by this one “terrible” thing when he has done so many other good things.

She does not want her life or marriage to be defined by her husband's affair. Going on Oprah just defined it.

Source

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Stars came out for TIME 100 (video)

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Former Governor Tom Ridge (R) will not run for the senate seat in Pennsylvania, from Hardball (Video)

This is a break for Senator Arlen Specter, as Ridge a pro-choice Republican and well liked, respected in the state would have given him a run for his money. This leaves the Democratic Primary and Congressman Joe Sestak is ready to go.

Ridge: "We Have To Be Less Judgmental"

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Specter gets a subcommittee chairmanship, BIG WHOOP....

Lucky he got that, imo. And my senator, Dick Durbin is gracious, as always.

Senate Democrats gave party switcher Arlen Specter a plum Judiciary subcommittee chairmanship on Thursday as a potential primary challenger to the veteran Pennsylvania lawmaker stepped forward.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said he would give up his chairmanship of the Crime and Drugs subcommittee in exchange for becoming chairman of a panel on human rights. The move, he said, would "best utilize Senator Specter's talents and experience in our caucus."

Senate Democrats gave party switcher Arlen Specter a plum Judiciary subcommittee chairmanship on Thursday as a potential primary challenger to the veteran Pennsylvania lawmaker stepped forward.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said he would give up his chairmanship of the Crime and Drugs subcommittee in exchange for becoming chairman of a panel on human rights. The move, he said, would "best utilize Senator Specter's talents and experience in our caucus."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., indicated later that the deal was not final and had to be worked out.

The move came as Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a former Navy vice admiral, said he's seriously considering a challenge to Specter in next year's Pennsylvania primary.

"The Democratic political establishment reached into the GOP establishment to give us the Democratic candidate for the future. I don't think we want to re-establish the establishment," Sestak said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"It's not theirs to make, it's ours to make. That's really what moved me. It's the ideal. It's not what we came to Washington to do is tell Pennsylvanians what they are to do in their Democratic choices."

Yes, Joe Sestak is looking more likely to challenge Specter for the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania. As, Sestak has indicated, "We Don't Need The GOP's Benedict Arnolds." Indeed, the fight is on.

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BREAKING NEWS!!! OMG!!! JOE THE PLUMBER QUITTING THE REPUBLICANS!!!

Yes, even good ol', election tactic, Joe the Plumber is quitting the GOP, at least for now.

Is Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher really quitting the Republican Party? That's what a new Time article on the current sad state of the GOP says.

"Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he's so outraged by GOP overspending, he's quitting the party -- and he's the bull's-eye of its target audience," the article says.

Oh, just thought you should know. And read that Time article, worth the read.

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Obama kills 121 programs to trim the budget (Video and List of Programs)

List of budget cuts from Obama Administration

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