tuesday

got your back, mr president

President Barack Obama returns to the Oval Office through the Rose Garden after surprising students from Altona Middle School in Longmont, Colo., April 11. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Night everyone

‘working tirelessly for change’

Terry Donnelly (retired school teacher and author): News flash – Americans won’t tolerate sweeping change. Our national thinking doesn’t match our national bird. Our beloved bald eagle soars, but as a nation we prefer to creep along a la the endangered desert tortoise.

…President Barack Obama would love to soar higher, but his constituency has him tethered. The most unwarranted charge against our president is dubbing health care reform “Obamacare”. This law is nothing close to what President Obama campaigned for. This is a prime example of Americans not wanting to soar. The law sports some great changes. Insurance companies can’t just take premiums from healthy people and deny the sick. They can no longer pay for one or two procedures and then cancel. Young adults just getting started can now receive help from their parents by staying insured while they embark on a career. Children are better covered.

…but if President Obama had gotten his way “Obamacare” would be a single payer system that imitates what Congress has for their health care. What we got was a compromised example of Americans creeping….

Another feather in the president’s cap is his handling of the economic recovery. Are we recovered? No. Did President Obama’s plan avert disaster? Yes.

Big companies employing millions of workers are thriving – making record profits due to getting government money to stay afloat through the darkest days. Historically, bailout money is returned. This seems to be the case with this stimulus as well. In the end, the bailout will cost taxpayers nothing.

….consider more of his body of work. He eliminated pay discrimination with the Lilly Leadbetter law. There are now strict limits on credit card interest rates. The Food and Drug Administration reduced nicotine levels and enhanced warning labels on tobacco products. Student loans are administered by the Department of Education, cutting out middleman profits making the loans more affordable. The national service program that places volunteers in poverty stricken areas and schools, Americorps, has been extended. The New Start treaty has been ratified with Russia so we can keep track of their nuclear activity and continue to reduce the number of such arms.

More landmark change was the elimination of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulations in the armed services. DADT began dealing with this human rights issue, but its time expired and new thinking was needed. President Obama saw to it that changes were made. Now, there are stricter punishments for hate crimes perpetrated due to sexual orientation. Women have greater access to the Veterans’ Administration.

This president has worked tirelessly for change and has accomplished more in just over two years than many administrations accomplish in four or even eight years. He would like to soar, and is doing as much as his voter activated tether will allow.

Full article here

thanks mitt!

CBS: … Mitt Romney jumped into the 2012 presidential race today with a video that reminds voters of one of his greatest strengths as a candidate: his economic credentials. Democrats, meanwhile, are busy reminding voters of one of his biggest weaknesses as a candidate in the Republican presidential primary: his association with health care reform.

Democratic officials in key primary states are holding “celebrations” this week to mark the fifth-year anniversary of the health care plan Romney implemented in Massachusetts.

The White House has said the nation has Romney to thank for inspiring the president’s health care overhaul…so it was clearly tongue-in-cheek when the New Hampshire Democratic Party announced that tomorrow, politicians and health care advocates will hold an event to “thank Romney for providing the critical momentum necessary to get President Obama’s vision of health reform through Congress and signed into law”.

“Mitt Romney is nothing short of a founding father of modern health reform,” reads a press release from the state party, “a person who has left an indelible mark on Massachusetts’ health care reform as well as the national health reform law and its major elements, including the individual responsibility provision which is critical to making the law work and lowering costs for all who enter the system.”

…The Tuesday event in Concord will feature over-sized thank you card as well a birthday cake to mark the anniversary of Romney’s plan… Democrats in Iowa are holding a similar event at a children’s furniture and accessories shop called Simply for Giggles….

…The DNC says on its blog that other states are holding their own events to mark the anniversary of Romney’s plan. It says the Massachusetts reforms “helped blaze a trail for progressive reform” and points out that Romney stood by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, a liberal icon, as he signed the state reforms into law.

The DNC is encouraging its supporters to tweet, “Thanks @mittromney, founding father of health care reform, on its 5th bday! B/c of you, nat’l health care reform is a reality! #fitn #TYMitt.”

sigh…..

MSNBC: The Hawaiian state health official who personally reviewed Barack Obama’s original birth certificate has affirmed again that the document is “real” and denounced “conspiracy theorists” in the so-called “birther” movement for continuing to spread bogus claims about the issue.

“It’s kind of ludicrous at this point,” Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, said in a rare telephone interview with NBC.

Fukino, sounding both exasperated and amused, spoke to a reporter in the aftermath of Donald Trump … questioning whether Obama has a legitimate birth certificate.

…No matter what state officials release on the issue, the “birthers” are going to question it, said Fukino. “They’re going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated. The whole thing is silly.”

As the top Hawaiian official in charge of state health records in 2008, when the issue of Obama’s birth first arose, Fukino said she thought she had put the matter to rest … she made two key points when asked about Trump’s recent comments.

The first is that the original so-called “long form” birth certificate – described by Hawaiian officials as a “record of live birth” – absolutely exists, located in a bound volume in a file cabinet on the first floor of the state Department of Health. Fukimo said she has personally inspected it – twice. The first time was in late October 2008, during the closing days of the presidential campaign, when the communications director for the state’s then Republican governor, Linda Lingle (who appointed Fukino) asked if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya.

Before she would do so, Fukino said, she wanted to inspect the files – and did so, taking with her the state official in charge of vital records. She found the original birth record, properly numbered, half typed and half handwritten, and signed by the doctor who delivered Obama, located in the files. She then put out a public statement asserting to the document’s validity…..

“It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that,” Fukino said. Moreover, she added, her boss at the time, Lingle – who was backing John McCain for president – would presumably have to be in on any cover up since Fukino made her public comment at the governor’s office’s request. “Why would a Republican governor – who was stumping for the other guy – hold out on a big secret?” she asked.

….get over it

Her second point … is that the shorter, computer generated “certification of live birth” that was obtained by the Obama campaign in 2007, and has since been publicly released, is the standard document that anybody requesting their birth certificate from the state of Hawaii would receive from the health department.

The document was distributed to the Obama campaign in 2007 after Obama, at the request of a campaign official, personally signed a Hawaii birth certificate request form downloaded on the Internet….

The certification that the campaign received back – which shows that Obama was born in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961 – was based on the content of the original document in state files, Fukino said.

“What he got, everybody got. He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate.”

Hawaiian officials say that the certification is, in fact, only one piece of abundant evidence of Obama’s birth in Hawaii. Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general’s office, noted that a public index of vital records, available for inspection in a bound volume at the Health Department’s Office of Health Status Monitoring, lists a male child named “Obama II, Barack Hussein” as having been born in the state.

In addition, as Factcheck.org and other media organizations have repeatedly pointed out, both of Honolulu’s newspapers, the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961, and the Honolulu Star Bulletin, on Aug. 14, 1961, both ran birth announcements listing Obama’s birth on Aug. 4 of that year.

Even Fukino accepts that her comments are not likely to end the matter for the die-hard birthers. Trump and other skeptics have questioned why the original birth certificate has not been released.

But Wisch, the spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said state law does not in fact permit the release of “vital records,” including an original “record of live birth” – even to the individual whose birth it records.

“It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody,” he said. Nor do state laws have any provision that authorizes such records to be photocopied, Wisch said. If Obama wanted to personally visit the state health department, he would be permitted to inspect his birth record, Wisch said.

But if he or anybody else wanted a copy of their birth records, they would be told to fill out the appropriate state form and receive back the same computer generated “certification of live birth” form that everybody else gets – which is exactly what Obama did four years ago.

****

EffieBlack: Trump is claiming that Ann Dunham Obama had a baby in Kenya, then got on a plane a few days after giving birth, flew halfway across the world, smuggled herself and her little brown baby into the United States, then conspired with her parents to plant a birth announcement, fake a birth certificate and then pretend for years that her son had been born in the United States.

He suggests that this happened because it was advantageous for little Barack to be an American citizen.

But, even under Trump’s ridiculous scenario, Barack would have been an American citizen, without all of the subterfuge. The fact that he was born to an American mother would have automatically made him a citizen of the United States, regardless where the birth actually occurred. And even if it didn’t, he could easily have become a citizen through naturalization. As a naturalized citizen, he would have all of the rights, privileges and immunities of a natural-born citizen – he could vote, he could buy property, he could run for public office, he could become a mayor or congressman or senator. The only thing he couldn’t do is become President.

But does anyone really believe that a white teenager whose marriage to an African man was not even legal in several states, back in 1961, just seven years after the Brown decision, six years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, two years before the March on Washington, three years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, four years before the Voting Rights Act, when there were no black governors, no black mayors of any major city, no black senators and only four black Congressman, masterminded several federal crimes in order to make sure that her black son was eligible to run for president one day?

Sure….

….

Washington Post Fact Checker

nice

Thank you Me4Obama 😉

ThinkProgress: In July 2008, a researcher “looking to dig up dirt on Obama” instead came across a birth announcement from 1961 in the Honolulu Advertiser documenting the birth of then presidential candidate Barack Obama in the state. For many, the announcement, together with Obama’s birth certificate, conclusively proved that Obama was born in the United States and is eligible to run for president.

Rumored presidential hopeful Donald Trump isn’t convinced. On CNN’s State of the Union he claimed that Obama’s grandparents planted the announcement to obtain welfare benefits:

TRUMP: The grandparents put that [birth announcement] in [the newspaper] because obviously they want him to be a United States citizen because in those days, people were much more proud than they are today unfortunately for being a United States citizen…. So they wanted him to be a citizen of the United States, for that purpose, and also for hospitalization, for welfare….

…the birth information printed in the Honolulu Advertiser always came directly from the state health department (via the local hospital), not Obama’s grandparents or relatives.

It’s also worth noting that since Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen, he was automatically conferred citizenship and all of its “assets” no matter where he was born, thus making him eligible anyway for the benefits Trump claims his family committed fraud to obtain. Unless his grandparents somehow knew that baby Obama would one day want to run for president, there wouldn’t really be a reason for his family to fabricate a convoluted lie regarding his birthplace.

open for business (video added)

YouTube link here

President Obama meets students from Altona Middle School in Longmont, Colorado at the White House, April 11. The President received a letter from Shalini Schane, second from left, who was worried worried that her son Adam, right, would have his trip canceled if there were to be a government shutdown last Friday.

President Barack Obama walks back to the Oval Office

run christie run!! oh, wait….

CBS (March 2): New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says he is confident he could win the 2012 presidential election if he wanted to … “I have people calling me and saying to me, ‘Let me explain to you how you could win.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree. I already know I could win,’” he said. “That’s not the issue. The issue is not me sitting here and saying, ‘Geez, it might be too hard. I don’t think I can win.’ I see the opportunity both at the primary level and at the general election level. I see the opportunity.”

the space race

….A light moment in the room as the briefing ends: A Russian reporter asks Jay Carney for any comment on his country’s celebration of the 50-year anniversary of space flight.

Carney laughs and congratulates Russia. And he adds: “But we got to the moon first.”

opinions….

TPM: Nearly six in ten Americans approve of the eleventh hour budget deal struck between Congress and the White House to avert a government shutdown, according to a CNN poll  released on Monday. And what’s more, a plurality give Democrats the most credit for making it happen.

….While majorities of both Democrats and independents support the compromise, a plurality of Republicans dislike it, with fully half of them saying that their party gave up too much ground on the deal.

Democrats supported the compromise by a 66%-28% split, while independents backed it 56%-39%. But among Republicans, 47% saw the deal as a good thing, while 49% gave it a thumbs down because they felt the party had gotten the short end of the stick. Exactly 50% of Republicans said the party’s leaders had given up too much in the final deal.

More here

About the next figures ….. most of the Professional Left must have had their phones switched off when Gallup called – I mean, they are the base, aren’t they?

CNN Poll