Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Monday, April 05, 2010
Aww...Well he IS a girl, how else would you expect him to throw?
What I like is that he puts on a "Sox" cap in an effort to "represent his home town team" and proceeds to throw like a sissy. Awesome!
:D
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Obama puts crowd to sleep.
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post staff writer
Saturday, April 3, 2010
CHARLOTTE -- Even by President Obama's loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.
Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a "wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care" package.
"We are overtaxed as it is," Doris said bluntly.
Obama started out feisty. "Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have," the president said.
He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer -- more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, "F-Map"). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as "FICA").
Always fond of lists, Obama ticked off his approach to health care -- twice. "Number one is that we are the only -- we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance," he said.
ad_icon
A few minutes later he got to the next point, which seemed awfully similar to the first. "Number two, you don't know who might end up being in that situation," he said, then carried on explaining further still.
"Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you've got health insurance, you don't always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you're not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what's happening is, is you're going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you're covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it," Obama continued, winding on with the answer.
Halfway through, an audience member on the riser yawned.
But Obama wasn't finished. He had a "final point," before starting again with another list -- of three points.
"What we said is, number one, we'll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage," he said, before launching into the next two points, for a grand total of seven.
His wandering approach might not matter if Obama weren't being billed as the chief salesman of the health-care overhaul. Public opinion on the bill remains divided, and Democratic officials are planning to send Obama into the country to convince wary citizens that it will work for them in the long run.
It was not evident that he changed any minds at Friday's event. The audience sat politely, but people in the back of the room began to wander off.
Even Obama seemed to recognize that he had gone on too long. He apologized -- in keeping with the spirit of the moment, not once, but twice. "Boy, that was a long answer. I'm sorry," he said, drawing nervous laughter that sounded somewhat like relief as he wrapped up.
But, he said: "I hope I answered your question."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/02/AR2010040203980.html?wprss=rss_nation&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wp-dyn%2Frss%2Fnation%2Findex_xml+%28washingtonpost.com+-+Nation%29
Friday, April 02, 2010
Obama's Approval Rating Hits New Low
CBS News
April 2. 2010.
Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law -- but his legislative success doesn't seem to have helped his image with the American public.
The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama's handling of health care - and still worried about the state of the economy.
President Obama's overall job approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 44 percent, down five points from late March, just before the health bill's passage in the House of Representatives. It's down 24 points since his all-time high last April. Forty-one percent of those polled said they disapproved of the president's performance.
More results from this CBS News Poll will be released in Friday's broadcast of the Evening News with Katie Couric, which airs at 6:30 p.m. Eastern.
When it comes to health care, the President's approval rating is even lower -- and is also a new all-time low. Only 34 percent approved, while 55 percent said they disapproved.
Americans are still worried about the economy, with 84 percent telling CBS they thought it was still in bad condition. However, even that high number represents an improvement: nine in ten thought the economy was bad during the last half of 2008 and at the beginning of 2009, when Mr. Obama assumed the Presidency.
Concern about job loss remains high; slightly more Americans now (35 percent) than in February (31 percent) were "very concerned" that someone in their household would lose a job. Nearly six in ten Americans said they were at least "somewhat concerned" about a job loss.
As has often been the case, lower-income Americans tend to be the most concerned about job loss.
This concern is reflected in yet another low approval rating -- this time for the President's handling of the economy. Just 42 percent said they approved of how President Obama is handling the economy, only one point above January's all-time low. Half of the public disapproves.
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 858 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone March 29-April 1, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
