President Barack Obama has returned to the Washington area after a weeklong vacation on Martha's Vineyard.

The presidential aircraft returned to the capital Sunday evening from the first family's vacation spot off the Massachusetts coast.

While on the island, Obama played golf, took first lady Michelle Obama to dinner and went for a bike ride with his daughters. He also grabbed a deep-fried seafood lunch with pal and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

The vacation wasn't just all play. Obama on Tuesday announced he wanted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to serve another four-year term. On Saturday he delivered a eulogy for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in Boston.

The first family plans another attempt at a vacation over the Labor Day weekend. This time, they'll head to Camp David, Md.

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US President Barack Obama still hopes to pass his embattled health care overhaul in 2009 in the face of growing public doubts about his approach, the White House said Friday.

Obama met with former Senate Democratic majority leader Tom Daschle, once his choice to head the US Department of Health and Human Services and the reform effort, to discuss the way forward on the plan.

"The two agreed that substantive reform that lowers costs, reforms the insurance industry, and expands coverage is too important to wait another year or another administration," spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

"They agreed to stay in touch over the coming weeks and months as this critical effort moves forward," said Gibbs.

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President Barack Obama will make his first official visit to China in November, seeking to foster collaboration on the environment, renewable energy and regional security, the new U.S. ambassador to China said.

“If we can tackle all of these, we will be able to take U.S.-China relations to new heights,” Jon Huntsman said today in Beijing at his first press meeting since arriving in the Chinese capital yesterday.

Obama accepted an invitation from Chinese President Hu Jintao in April when the two met in London at a Group of 20 summit called to deal with the global financial crisis. He is also scheduled to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore in November.

The appointment of Huntsman, 49, a fluent Mandarin speaker, as Obama’s envoy underscores the importance of trade and political relations between the world’s biggest market and the largest global manufacturer. The U.S. and China have a twice- yearly strategic and economic dialogue for resolving problems and also conduct a dialogue on human-rights issues.

“The human-rights dialogue has to be regularized so that it’s not just a regular meeting, but a meaningful meeting that reflects ourselves as a country,” Huntsman said today. “It has to be comprehensive, thoughtful and include issues like climate change and the economy.”

The U.S. and China must also collaborate on security issues, including disarmament in North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, said Huntsman, who was Republican governor of Utah when tapped to head the president’s diplomatic overtures to Beijing.

‘Goodwill and Work’

“These will require the U.S. and China to work diligently, a lot of collaboration, goodwill and work,” he said.

Huntsman learned Mandarin when he was a Mormon missionary in Taiwan. He has served as a deputy U.S. Trade Representative and as American ambassador to Singapore.

As Utah governor, Huntsman focused on improving public education, the state’s economic competitiveness and the environment. He promoted the study of Mandarin in schools, and said about 5,000 students in the state are now learning the language spoken by some 70 percent of Chinese people.

Huntsman began his remarks today with an adage in Mandarin: “When the family is happy, all is well under heaven.”

He’s joined in Beijing by his wife Mary Kaye and three daughters Mary Anne, Gracie Mae and Usha. Gracie Mae was adopted from eastern China’s Yangzhou city.

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The chairman of the House tax-writing committee says he thinks President Barack Obama can keep his promise not to raise taxes on most people and still overhaul health care.

Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York says that dealing with waste, medical errors and other problems that he says "hemorrhage" money would provide some immediate relief.

As a candidate Obama promised not to raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000 a year. Critics of the health care overhaul say it will result in huge tax increases.

Rangel says he doesn't know whether a House proposal to charge a surtax on the insurance benefits of wealthy Americans can survive in the Senate.

Rangel spoke Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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President Barack Obama has invoked his distress at the death of his grandmother to combat suggestions that his health care reforms would create "death panels" for the elderly.

The president's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died on election day last year after a long battle with cancer. Mr Obama discussed his anguish at her death and rejected allegations that his plans would deny care to elderly patients.

"I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it's like to watch somebody you love who's ageing deteriorate, and have to struggle with that," Mr Obama said. "So the notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma? I mean, when you start making arguments like that, that's simply dishonest."

The American airwaves have been inundated with claim and counter claim about the health care plans. Supporters of Mr Obama's reforms have outspent their opponents $24 million (£14.5 million) to $9 million, with the overall total being largest sum spent on a single issue campaign.

Public reservations are deep-rooted even though 47 million Americans have no health insurance.

The president's stepmother, Kezia Obama, has entered the fray by claiming that the NHS saved her life when she suffered chronic kidney failure. US media gave prominent coverage to reports that Mrs Obama fell seriously ill with kidney failure and pancreatic problems during a summer visit to Britain seven years ago. The 66-year-old, who now lives in Bracknell, Berkshire, said she could not have afforded treatment in America.

"It's very simple: I owe my life to the NHS," she said. "If it wasn't for the NHS I wouldn't have been alive to see our family's greatest moment - when Barack became president and was sworn into the White House."

Her intervention came after Republicans branded the NHS "evil" and "Orwellian".

At his town hall meetings Mr Obama introduced members of the audience who had been denied health care by insurance companies, a practice which will be banned under his reforms. "If you think that can't happen to you or your family, think again," he said.

In an article in the New York Times, he said he was confident that his drive to overhaul the US health care system would succeed. Reform was closer to reality "than we have ever been", he said, citing support from the American Nurses Association, the American Medical Association and the American Association of Retired People.

He also said there was "about 80 per cent" agreement in Congress on the shape of the reform plan that he expected to emerge as legislation.

A vigorous debate about health care was, he said, "what America's all about". But he gave warning that "in the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain.

"What's truly scary, truly risky is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people."

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President Barack Obama’s administration is considering raising fees on larger financial firms to help cover costs of new regulation by an agency set up to safeguard consumer financial products.

The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency “will be funded by fees, appropriations, and other transfers,” Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said yesterday. Firms with assets of more than $10 billion “will pay more for prudential and consumer supervision, while community banks will not pay any more for supervision than they do today. Non-banks will be assessed for the first time.”

The plan marks a further burden on banks such as Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. that may be subjected to more government fees, aimed at shielding consumers and buffering taxpayers from excessive risk taking. The proposal follows Obama’s plan to ensure systemically important financial institutions pay for costs of additional supervision.

The administration wants firms deemed too big to fail to be liable for costs of any government assistance. Collecting larger fees on major banks to fund the proposed consumer products agency isn’t part of the administration’s 600-plus page proposal to overhaul financial regulation, Williams said.

Led by chairman Sheila Bair, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has proposed slapping fees on the biggest bank holding companies to the extent that they carry on activities, such as proprietary trading, outside of traditional lending. That idea goes beyond the Obama administration’s regulation-overhaul plan, which would have the Fed adjust capital and liquidity standards for the biggest firms, without any pre-set fees.

Two-Tiered Structure

A two-tiered fee structure for consumer protection would levy higher fees on firms with more than $10 billion in assets, while fees for smaller institutions would be lower, an administration official said yesterday on the condition of anonymity because the proposals have not been announced.

Michael Barr, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, said the Obama administration is pleased with the debate on Capitol Hill over the proposals, even though they have yet to be embraced wholesale by lawmakers.

“It is not surprising that it’s generating debate,” Barr said in an interview this week. “It would have been crazy to think that we’d send it up and people would sing ‘Kumbaya’ and hold hands and pass it in five minutes. The entire conversation on the Hill right now, on regulatory reform, all revolves around people fighting about our plan.”

While the Treasury already has proposed some kind of assessment on financial institutions to cover its costs, the legislation does not specify exactly who would be assessed or how.

Fees Assessed

“The agency shall recover the amount of funds expended by the agency under this title, through the collection of annual fees or assessments on covered persons,” said the proposed legislation, released on June 30.

Regulators have each opposed some aspect of the Obama plan. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has sought to retain authority for protecting consumers of financial products after the administration sought to create a new agency for the task.

Bair and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman MarySchapiro have favored a council of agencies -- rather than the Fed -- to have powers to rein in risk-taking at financial firms so large or interconnected their failure would threaten the system.

Geithner, in a July 31 meeting aimed at cracking down on dissent, used strong language with the regulatory heads, reflecting concern at the fate of the administration’s proposals, a person briefed on the matter said on condition of anonymity.

Banks and other financial institutions have reported about $1.6 trillion in credit losses and writedowns worldwide since the global credit crisis began in 2007.

Consumer Oversight

As proposed, the Obama administration’s consumer regulator wouldn’t have the power to make major changes to the financial landscape, said William Black, a University of Missouri law and economics professor in Kansas City and a former U.S. bank regulator. That’s because the Obama administration plan calls for keeping broad-based, consumer-oriented oversight separate from bank examination and regulatory enforcement, he said.

“If it had been in place, it wouldn’t have stopped the last crisis,” Black said yesterday in a telephone interview. “This is another example of creating an ivory tower divorced from the day-to-day examination findings.”

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Perhaps no region of the country better illustrates Barack Obama's political vulnerabilities than the mountain West, a region traditionally wary of the federal government.

He's hoping to ease some of those concerns in a Western swing blending town hall appearances and visits to national parks beginning Friday.

Democrats have made recent election inroads in the region by successfully courting independents, Republican crossovers and conservative-to-moderate loyalists in their own party. But it's these very voters — gun owners, civil libertarians, private property advocates — who seem to be turning away from the president across the country because of deep-seated concerns about expanding government and soaring budget deficits.

They are people who bristle at big business bailouts and decry government's reach into their own lives. They don't see Obama's stimulus plan jump-starting the economy or boosting employment. They fret about the enormous price tags of his sweeping proposals to overhaul health care and revamp energy policy.

"People are ready to see him move beyond the rhetoric. People want to see jobs come back. We want to see the economy recover. So we're still, I think, waiting to see that," says Chris Lawson, 30, who voted for Obama last fall and says he doesn't regret it. The Littleton, Colo., resident expressed worries about health care in particular, saying: "We are clearly moving toward more government in more people's lives. ... That's not a good thing, more government."

Another Obama voter, Eric Schreiber, 44, of Denver argued it's too early to judge the president. But, he added, Obama definitely hasn't sold him on the health care overhaul. "It's a good idea to do health reform, but I think everybody wants to know more about how it will work," Schreiber said.

Obama is hoping he can allay such worries as he promotes his plan at town hall-style events in reliably Republican areas: Friday in Bozeman, Mont., and Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., near the Utah state line. The first family also plans to visit Yellowstone and Grand Canyon to highlight the country's national parks.

Just eight months ago, the president took office with sky-high job approval ratings, the first Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson to win the White House with more than 50 percent of the popular vote. He did it by cobbling together support that spanned the ideological spectrum. He pulled new voters — particularly left-leaning young people and minorities — into the process and turned out his Democratic base in droves. And independents, disaffected Republicans and middle-of-the-road Democrats put him over the top.

That coalition — coupled with a national desire for change after years of Republican George W. Bush — made it possible for Obama to win a slew of states that hadn't voted for a Democrat in years, Colorado and Nevada, among them. He also won New Mexico, a perennial swing state, came very close to winning Montana, and lost by just 9 percentage points in Republican John McCain's home state of Arizona. Still, Obama lost badly in ultraconservative Republican bastions, including Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

Since his inauguration, Obama has watched his support slide nationally. It hovered at 55 percent in a recent AP-GfK poll, though other surveys show him under 50 percent.

Out-of-power Republicans have tagged Obama as a classic big-spending, big-government liberal, and those gripes may have resonated with independents and centrists who polls show have turned away from Obama or whose support is soft. The GOP's message may be particularly well-received in the mountain West, a region traditionally wary of the federal government.

"Democrats had some success last year. Since then, I think the president has slipped not just a little but a great deal," said Dave Hansen, head of the Utah GOP who once held the same position in Montana. "He's a charming, charismatic guy, but all of a sudden the issues are taking over, and it's not going over well."

Tracking polls by Gallup from January through June show that of the 10 states where Obama's approval rating was the lowest, five are in the mountain West. They include the two states Obama is visiting this weekend as well as Wyoming, Idaho and Utah.

Those findings raise the question: Will the recent Democratic successes in the region last?

"I don't think we can say that yet," said Bob Loevy, a political scientist at Colorado College.

Certainly Obama's successful nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court will help with the region's rapidly growing Hispanic communities, a pivotal Democratic-leaning constituency. And future trips to the West are certain between now and midterm elections next fall.

For its part, the GOP in the mountain West has its work cut out for it.

The party can't seem to even field strong candidates to challenge incumbent Democrats. Most recently, Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., decided against challenging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid next year in Nevada, even though the Democrat's job performance numbers are dismal.

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With mounting criticism of the Democrats' push for health care overhaul, President Barack Obama is trying to regain the momentum.

Yet, regaining the momentum may become increasingly difficult in light of the soaring federal deficit, which increased by $180 billion in July alone. At a record $1.27 trillion, the deficit is heading toward $2 trillion by the end of the fiscal year. Citizens at town hall meetings are expressing concern over the government's ability to pay for health care reform without adding to the deficit.

"The initial cost is over a trillion dollars for a down payment. Who is going to pay for this bill?" a woman shouted at Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., at a town hall meeting in Lebanon, Pa., yesterday. "My children and my grandchildren are going to pay for this bill."

Supporters of the president's health care reform push point out that spiraling health care costs in Medicare and Medicaid are a huge part of the deficit problem, and reform is necessary to tackle the issue.

"Health care reform that brings down the growth rate of health care costs will help our children and grandchildren in affording health care and having less debt," said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., at a town hall in Hagerstown, Md., today.

"I happen to agree very strongly with frustration related to the deficits," Cardin said. "I believe very strongly that we have to balance the federal budget. I voted to balance the federal budget, and that's why I have said -- and I'll repeat now for the fourth time; you wanna keep asking the question, fine -- I won't vote for a bill that will increase the deficit."

But skeptics say Congress so far has avoided making tough decisions over how to foot the bill.

"From what we're seeing so far, it doesn't look like they're tackling the real cost drivers of health care. And that means if they don't do it, it will make the deficit situation worse," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition.

"One of the things I worry about is whether Congress is up to making hard choices that would bring health care costs under control. It's not going to be easy to do, and Congress likes to take the path of least resistance," added Bixby.

The president has attempted to address citizens' concerns over a growing deficit.

"First of all, I said I won't sign a bill that adds to the deficit or the national debt. OK? So this will have to be paid for," he said Wednesday during a health care forum in Portsmouth, N.H.

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President Barack Obama awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor to 16 "agents of change" Wednesday, highlighting their accomplishments as examples of the heights a person can reach and the difference one can make in the lives of others.

Among the honorees was Nancy Brinker, who created Susan G. Komen for the Cure after her sister died of breast cancer in 1980 and raises money for research and other services through events like the Race for the Cure.

"What unites them is a belief . . . that our lives are what we make of them, that no barriers of race, gender or physical infirmity can restrain the human spirit, and that the truest test of a person’s life is what we do for one another," Obama said at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, overflowing with guests as well as White House aides who went to glimpse the celebrities in their midst.

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who is a member of Fort Worth’s Cowgirl Hall of Fame, film star Sidney Poitier, retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, civil rights icon the Rev. Joseph Lowery and tennis legend Billie Jean King were also among the recipients of the Medal of Freedom.

Another recipient, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was at home with brain cancer and mourning the death Tuesday of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and did not attend the ceremony. His daughter, Kara, accepted the award for him.

Obama gave posthumous honors to former Republican Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, the quarterback-turned-politician who died in May, and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978.

The other recipients were:

Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr., assistant dean of academic affairs for the Florida International University School of Medicine and founder of the Camillus Health Concern, which treats thousands of homeless patients annually.

Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and mathematician known for his work on black holes. He has been almost com- pletely paralyzed for years and communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer.

Joe Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief, who fought in World War II wearing war paint beneath his uniform.

Chita Rivera, actor, singer and dancer.

Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first female president and one-time U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate for his global pioneering work extending "micro loans" to poor people who don’t have collateral.

President Harry S. Truman established the Medal of Freedom in 1945 to recognize civilians for their efforts during World War II. President John F. Kennedy reinstated the medal in 1963 to honor distinguished service.

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President Barack Obama wraps up his two-day visit to Mexico and then returns home to Washington.

First, Obama attends a trilateral meeting with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada in Guadalajara. Trade, swine flu prevention and efforts to combat the violent drug trade between the United States and Mexico are high on the agenda for Monday's meeting.

After the meeting, the three men will hold a news conference.

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The news was positive, but the response cautious.

President Barack Obama, after weeks of defending his economic policies in the face of falling public opinion polls, welcomed a report on Friday that unemployment dipped in July to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent in June, but declined to declare victory.

The bad news may not be over yet, he said, after Labor Department data showed the U.S. unemployment rate fell for the first time in 15 months.

"Today we're pointed in the right direction," Obama said. "We have a lot further to go. As far as I'm concerned, we will not have a true recovery as long as we're losing jobs."

Analysts said the president was right to be circumspect.

"He doesn't want a 'Mission Accomplished' moment like Bush did on the war," said Michael Ettlinger, vice president for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, referring to an infamous photo of former President George W. Bush in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner during the Iraq war.

"These numbers are a sign that we might be past the freefall period of this recession but we're still losing lots of jobs," Ettlinger said. "There still could be worse months than this ahead. It's going to be a long haul back."

Obama has defended vigorously the effectiveness of his $787 billion economic stimulus package in recent weeks, and the unemployment figures -- fresh after a report showing that GDP contracted only a modest 1 percent in the second quarter -- strengthened his argument.

The White House had played down expectations ahead of the jobs report, saying it would likely show a rise in unemployment and hundreds of thousands of further job losses.

After the data's release, Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, stuck to predictions that unemployment would hit 10 percent this year.

RISKS AWAIT

Analysts said Obama was wise to keep his reaction in check so opposition Republicans could not pounce if the next round of economic indicators is less rosy.

"The economy has stabilized, the markets have risen and we now have improved unemployment figures, but his best bet is to let voters connect the dots themselves," said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University history professor.

"If he and the administration boast too much, claiming credit for the good times, the danger is that bad numbers can appear in the coming months and he will hand Republicans the very argument they are looking for."

Republicans charge that the president's stimulus package was too expensive and did not do enough to spur economic growth, but the president made clear he saw vindication -- even if more work remained to be done.

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President Barack Obama on Friday signed a bill that funnels $2 billion to the so-called "cash for clunkers" automobile trade-in program, the White House said. The money, approved by the Senate Thursday night, will allow the program to continue through Labor Day. It offers consumers up to $4,500 to trade in older, less fuel-efficient vehicles and buy new, more fuel-efficient ones.

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President Barack Obama has decided to personally lead a meeting of heads of state at the U.N. Security Council. The subject: nuclear weapons.

This week, the U.S. Ambassador the the United Nations, Susan Rice, announced the unusual move:

"The Security Council has an essential role in preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons and is also the world's principal multilateral instrument for global security cooperation. The session will be focused on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly and not on any specific countries."

And there lies the rub.

I welcome President Obama's leadership on the nuclear weapons issue. But I worry about the mixed signals he sends. He supports both the elimination of nuclear weapons and their use as a deterrent. For even a nimble politician like Obama, that is quite a balancing act. This Security Council meeting sounds like it could be more of the same.

The September 24th meeting will focus on both nonproliferation and disarmament. Though these goals are often lumped together, they are separate concepts.

Disarmament clearly implies the elimination of all nuclear weapons from the planet. Most experts believe that this would be achieved in stages under an internationally-agreed plan. The president himself has espoused the concept, most notably in Prague this April, promising "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

Nonproliferation deals with stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. It is often interpreted to mean that the nuclear-armed nations of the world get to keep their WMD but other nations can't develop new weapons. In other words, some nations are more equal than others. Even the Non-Proliferation Treaty separates signatories as "nuclear-weapon " or "non-nuclear-weapon " states.

These non-nuclear-weapon states sometimes decide that they need to develop nuclear weapons to gain power, respect, influence or because they want to have a deterrent of their own -- Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are just some examples. In this way, "nonproliferation" as we have practiced it so far, has only increased the number of nuclear weapons and the number of countries that possess them.

So how can nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation be linked? This is a key question for Obama's mini-Summit.

On July 30, Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security and former Congresswoman from San Francisco, had this to say:

"I believe the New START Treaty [the new arms control treaty being negotiated now between Russia and the United States] is the beginning of a new narrative for the post-Cold War generation that need not be paralyzed by the threat of nuclear war and it is a down payment for deeper reductions in the future."

This sounds promising. But in the same speech, Tauscher made this statement:

"We need to ensure that there is a safe and effective deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist without nuclear testing. I strongly support the critical role that extended deterrence has played in our national security policy. It must remain a central element of our national security policy. We must be able to tell our allies, 'We've got your back.'"

The Obama administration has proven at ease with apparent contradictions in policy. Here, we are asked to believe that though the U.S. is "committed" to a world without nuclear weapons, it will keep the policy of deterrence "as long as nuclear weapons exist."

If the world is expected to find that strategy credible, President Obama needs to first state that nuclear disarmament is the top priority and that deterrence will be de-emphasized as the world's nations agree to dismantle their nuclear weapons. He must also show how nonproliferation will be re-defined so it is not an excuse for the status quo and instead points to greater nuclear security on the way to the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Perhaps he will present a roadmap for disarmament at the September Security Council meeting.

Meanwhile, Dr. David Krieger, President of the non partisan nonprofit Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, has four suggestions for the president :

-- First, visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just as he visited concentration camps in Europe. Be the first U.S. president to take this step. Make the threat of nuclear war, nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation vivid to people everywhere.


-- Second, direct our negotiators to be bold in agreeing to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russian arsenals, to de-alert these arsenals and to declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons.

-- Third, assure that the new U.S. Nuclear Posture Review gives an accurate assessment of the risks of continuing to rely upon nuclear deterrence and the benefits of moving rapidly to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

-- Fourth, convene the leaders of the world to negotiate a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

This week marks the 64th anniversaries of the nuclear attacks by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. More than 140,000 people died in those attacks. The hibakusha are the people who witnessed the horror in Japan and managed to survive. They have made their views plain on the subject:

Nuclear weapons should never be used again. So we must eliminate nuclear weapons -- before they eliminate us.

President Obama has done more than anyone to change the dialogue over nuclear weapons. Now he needs to change the policy baggage we carry from Cold War days.

On the contrary, we should focus on the hundreds of thousands lives that can be safeguarded with the dismantling of each and every nuclear weapon. We should focus on building public support for a phased, verifiable and internationally-agreed plan to eliminate the weapons.

Best of luck in September at the Security Council, Mr. President. Thanks for having the courage to address this diffcult issue. The children of the world and many future generations are relying on your work for nuclear disarmament to be successful. Please remember them.

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As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry's chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.

Since the election, Tauzin has morphed into the president's partner. He has been invited to the White House half a dozen times in recent months. There, he says, he eventually secured an agreement that the administration wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail.

"The White House blessed it," Tauzin said.

At the same time, Tauzin said the industry he represents was offering political and financial support for the president's healthcare initiative, a remarkable shift considering that drug companies vigorously opposed a national overhaul the last time it was proposed, when Bill Clinton was president.

If a package passes Congress, the pharmaceutical industry has pledged $80 billion in cost savings over 10 years to help pay for it. For his part, Tauzin said he had not only received the White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining, but also a separate promise not to pursue another proposal Obama supported during the campaign: importing cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe. Both proposals could cost the industry billions, undermine its ability to develop new cures and, in the case of imports, possibly compromise safety, industry officials contend.

Much of the bargaining took place in July at a meeting in the Roosevelt Room, just off the Oval Office, a person familiar with the discussions said. In attendance were Tauzin, several industry chief executives -- including those from Abbott Laboratories, Merck and Pfizer -- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and White House aides.

White House officials acknowledge discussing the importation question with Tauzin but had no comment on whether there was an agreement to block future Medicare price negotiations.

Yet everyone agrees that drug companies -- Washington's leading source of lobbyist money -- now have "a seat at the table" at the White House and on Capitol Hill as healthcare legislation works its way through Congress. If nothing else, a popular president who six months ago criticized drug companies for greed now praises their work on behalf of the public good.

"I think the pharmaceutical industry has been quite constructive in this debate," Obama told a small group of regional reporters last week. "And the savings that they've put on the table are real and significant and are appreciated."

The pharmaceutical industry's political transformation provides an example of Obama's approach to achieving his healthcare goals, which includes negotiation and compromise, even with those he and his allies have painted as a source of the problem.

The benefits to the White House go beyond budget savings. Tauzin's trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, is helping to underwrite a multimillion-dollar TV advertising campaign touting comprehensive healthcare legislation.

One ad resurrects Harry and Louise, the fictional couple whose caustic kitchen-table comments in ads sponsored by the health insurance industry helped sink Clinton's plan in 1994. This time, with the drug companies paying the bill, Harry and Louise have changed their view.

"A little more cooperation, a little less politics, and we can get the job done this time," Louise says in the commercial, a joint project of PhRMA and Families USA, a health reform advocacy group with which the drug industry used to be at odds.

In an interview, Tauzin said he carefully negotiated his agreements with the White House, offering the $80-billion discount program in return for assurances that there would be no government price-setting in Medicare Part D, the drug program for seniors.

It was important, he said, to block the threat of Medicare price negotiations, which he called tantamount to price-setting and a threat to the industry. In addition, Tauzin said the industry asked the administration not to allow the import of cheaper drugs because of safety concerns.

Linda Douglass, a White House spokeswoman, said that when drug company executives brought up the import plan, they were told that the administration believed that health reform would reduce drug prices so significantly that the legislation once backed by Obama would "not be necessary."

It's far too early to tell whether the pharmaceutical industry's decision to back Obama's health initiative will pay off.

"Since Obama came into office, the drug industry has received everything it wants, domestic and foreign," said James Love, who leads an international nonprofit promoting low-cost distribution of drugs to fight the world's most devastating diseases.

"Yes, the drug companies are getting tremendous sweetheart deals" from Obama, said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist who studies the history of health reform and other major social and economic changes. "But these bargains are the price of admission for achieving substantial reform."

Tauzin, a Democrat who helped found the conservative Blue Dog coalition in the House before switching to the Republican Party in 1995, was chairman of the House committee that helped shepherd Medicare drug legislation through Congress, including the provision that the government not interfere with price negotiations.

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During the 2008 US presidential election, unfounded rumours began to circulate on the internet that Barack Obama had not been born in the United States, and was therefore not eligible for the presidency.

Mr Obama's campaign provided plenty of evidence to refute the claims, including the candidate's birth certificate, but the chatter has not died down, and some people have even launched lawsuits to question Mr Obama's eligibility.

With Mr Obama now installed in the White House, the a number of Americans who believe - despite all evidence to the contrary - that he is not eligible to be president, and that his birth certificate is a forgery appears to be growing.

And "birthers" - as those who doubt Mr Obama's eligibility for the presidency are pejoratively known - have started making their presence felt within the conservative movement.

What allegations are being made about Mr Obama?

The principal allegation is that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and that he is therefore ineligible to be president, according to the US constitution, which states that "no person except a natural born citizen... shall be eligible to the office of President".

It is further alleged that any documents purporting to prove Mr Obama's eligibility are either insufficient or fraudulent.

Some of those challenging Mr Obama's eligibility allege that he was actually born in Kenya, or that he adopted Indonesian citizenship as an infant.

What documents have been presented proving Mr Obama's eligibility?

In June 2008, the Obama campaign - in an attempt to disprove another set of internet rumours that Mr Obama's middle name was Muhammad - made public his birth certificate.

The document - a Certification of Live Birth - indicated that Mr Obama had been born at 7.24pm on 4 August in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Researchers have also dug up birth notices for Mr Obama printed in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1961.

The newspapers received information about births from Hawaii's Department of Health.

Did the documents stop the rumours?

No. When Mr Obama's Certification of Live Birth was published, as a scanned document on the Obama campaign's website, some people began to question its authenticity.

It was alleged in blog posts, chain emails and internet forums that the document did not have an official stamp or seal and that it lacked an official signature. Some even suggested that the document had been faked using picture-altering software.

Was there any substance to these allegations?

No. Representatives from the Annenberg Public Policy Center's Political Fact Check project examined the hard copy of the document and verified that it did in fact bear an official seal, and had been signed by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T Onaka (using a signature stamp). Both the seal and the signature were on the (unscanned) reverse of the document.

Did that put the rumours to bed?

No. Although most people accepted the authenticity of the birth certificate, a new allegation emerged.

The document released by the Obama camp was a Certification of Live Birth, freshly created in 2007 by Hawaiian officials at the request of the Obama campaign, based on Hawaii's computerised records, not the original hand-written long-form "Certificate of Live Birth", created by the hospital at the time of Mr Obama's birth.

A Certificate of Live Birth contains more information, including the hospital name, and the name of the attending physician.

Campaigners alleged that Hawaiian law permits the issuance of Certifications of Live Births to people born abroad, and began calling on the Obama campaign to release the long-form Certificate of Live Birth, which they said would answer all of their questions.

WorldNetDaily, a website that has been at the forefront of the campaign to probe Mr Obama's presidential eligibility, has drawn up a petition calling on Mr Obama to release the document.

Has the Certificate of Live Birth been released?

It has not. But Dr Chiyome Fukino, Director of the Hawaii Department of Health, has released a statement confirming that she has "seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai¡i State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai¡i and is a natural-born American citizen".

And, as Janice Okubo, director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health, explains, no-one who was born abroad could get a certificate saying they were born in Hawaii.

"If you were born in Bali, for example," Ms Okubo told the Washington Independent, "you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate."

Have campaigners attempted to air their concerns in the courts?

A number of lawsuits have been filed by people who question Mr Obama's eligibility, but all of them have been dismissed at the earliest stages.

In July, Stefan Cook, a major in the US Army Reserve who was due to be deployed to Afghanistan, filed a lawsuit seeking to block his deployment, on the grounds that his orders were invalid, because President Obama was ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief. His case was dismissed.

Have any mainstream politicians endorsed the campaigners' views?

Most Republicans have rejected the claims, but Alan Keyes, a former Republican presidential candidate, has filed a lawsuit questioning Mr Obama's eligibility, and Republican Senator James Inhofe has said he does not "discourage" the movement.

Source

The false allegation that President Barack Obama was born in another country is more than a fact-free smear.

Marked by accusations and backstabbing, it's the story of how a small but intense movement called "birthers" rose from a handful of people prone to seeing conspiracies, aided by the Internet, magnified without evidence by eager radio and cable TV hosts, and eventually ratified by a small group of Republican politicians working to keep the story alive on the floors of Congress and the campaign trails of the Midwest.

It's a powerful story about what experts call political paranoia over a new face in a time of anxiety and rapid change - the sort of viral message that can take hold among a sliver of the populace that's ready to believe that their new president is a fraud, and just as ready to angrily dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as part of the conspiracy.

"He is NOT an American citizen," yelled a woman at a town hall meeting in Delaware, angrily confronting a congressman. "I don't want this flag to change. I want my country back."

When Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., responded that Obama is a citizen, she and others in the room jeered him.

"It's a fascinating phenomenon," said Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs and author of the recent book "Political Paranoia."

"They are not searching for the truth. They are searching for anything that confirms their fixed idea, their malevolent idea. ... It doesn't soothe people to tell them it's not legitimate. That makes them angry."

THE TALE

Birthers charge that Obama hasn't proved that he was born a U.S. citizen, and therefore isn't eligible to be president under the constitutional requirement that the president be 35 years old, be a resident of the country for at least 14 years, and be a natural-born citizen.

They also say that a birth certificate posted on the Internet by Obama during his campaign isn't the original, and a forgery anyway.

THE FACTS

First, the 2007 document isn't a forgery. Independent experts from such groups as FactCheck.org at the University of Pennsylvania have examined it and said it's real.

Second, it's true that the 2007 document issued by the state of Hawaii, called a Certification of Live Birth, isn't a copy of the original 1961 document. The longer, original form would show more details, including the name of the doctor, according to copies of other 1961 birth certificates.

White House aides say only that Obama has produced his birth certificate. That's true. It is A birth certificate, issued by the state Health Department and acceptable to prove citizenship to the federal government for purposes of obtaining a passport.

It's also true that it isn't THE original birth certificate.

Regardless, Hawaii state officials said again last week that they've examined the original and affirmed that it shows that Obama was born there.

Also, the two Honolulu newspapers report that they carried brief announcements of the birth of a boy to the Obamas in 1961. Said the Aug. 13 birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser: "Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy, son, Aug. 4."

The Hawaii state Health Department says it supplied the lists of births for those announcements. Announcements supplied by families were longer, more personal and normally included the child's name.

THE TAPE

Many birthers, such as Pennsylvania attorney Phil Berg, allege that Obama was born in Kenya and that his Kenyan grandmother is on tape saying that she was present at his birth there.

Yet the tape circulated on the Internet doesn't actually say that - and the full tape actually contradicts it.

On the tape, the woman thought to be Sarah Obama is prodded by a Berg ally who's a self-described bishop from the U.S. to affirm that Obama was born in Kenya.

"Was she present when he was born in Kenya?" Bishop Ron McRae asks in the taped phone call.

"She says yes she was. She was present when Obama was born," says the voice of translator.

The tape ends abruptly.

Despite Berg's assertions, the response didn't actually confirm a birth in Kenya. Moreover, a longer version of the tape shows the elder Obama decidedly denying a Kenyan birth immediately after the first tape was cut off.

"I would like to go by the place, the hospital where he was born. Can you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?" McRae is heard asking.

"Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America," the translator says after talking to the woman.

"I thought he was born in Kenya," McRae asks again.

"He was born in America, not in Mombasa," says the response. Another response later says, "Obama in Hawaii. Hawaii. She says he was born in Hawaii."

Still, the charge has spread despite no evidence that Obama was born in Kenya and compelling evidence that he was born in Hawaii.

THE BIRTHERS

A handful of people started spreading the story. Among them:

ANTHONY MARTIN

Martin, a Chicagoan, is a legal gadfly who was among the first to file a lawsuit demanding to see Obama's birth certificate in Hawaii, which was denied last year.

"I would like to claim the role of ringmaster in this birth certificate circus," Martin said last week on his Web site. "From the first day I began writing about Barack Obama's secret life five years ago, Obama has obstructed access to the truth about himself. Obama's sycophants in the media and government have tried to protect him from the truth and the facts of his life."

A frequent and always unsuccessful candidate for office - he's running this time for U.S. Senate in Illinois - Martin was the first to charge that Obama was a Muslim.

In an e-mail, he distanced himself from other birthers who claim that Obama was born in Kenya. "I have continually expressed doubt about the Kenya theory," he wrote. "I openly state that there is a not a shred of credible evidence Obama was born in Kenya."

Martin has a history of inflammatory and often anti-Semitic comments. He once called a Chicago judge a "crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race." When he was preparing to run for office in Connecticut, one of his campaign documents said that a purpose of the campaign was to "exterminate Jew power." A court filing in 1983 stated, "I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did."

Asked about the anti-Semitic comments, Martin said they "took place over a quarter of a century in a very vicious lawsuit in which names were called on all sides."

ORLY TAITZ

An attorney and dentist from Orange County, Calif., she's filed lawsuits challenging Obama's citizenship and has traveled the country to marshal support for her drive to prove that Obama is not a citizen and should not be president. Her Web site asks people to contribute money via a PayPal account.

She filed one lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court; it was dismissed. She filed another in Georgia on behalf of an Army Reserve officer who wanted to take back his volunteer offer to serve in Afghanistan because Obama was a foreigner and not really his commander in chief. The Army excused the officer from going to Afghanistan, saying any volunteer could back out.

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The first new GI Bill since the 9/11terror attacks tops President Barack Obama's agenda.

The president is scheduled to attend a rally Monday morning at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., to celebrate the implementation of the bill, which provides veterans with comprehensive educational benefits. The Veterans Affairs Department began distributing tuition payments to schools participating in the program over the weekend. In the next decade, $78 billion is expected to be paid out.

Later Monday, Obama welcomes the emir of Kuwait, Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, to the White House.

Source

Well, surely this will settle finally once and for all that Barack Hussein Obama was really, actually and factually born in the United States and, therefore, is fully qualified according to the U.S. Constitution to be the president that he has been since he took the oath of office on Jan. 20 and a second time shortly after, just to make sure.

Not!

In yet another quite possibly futile attempt to silence the zombie birther controversy that won't die, the director of Hawaii's State Department of Health, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, has just repeated her statement from October that she has personally and with her very own official eyes seen the "original vital records" regarding Obama's birth in Honolulu's Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital on Aug. 4, 1961.

At Monday's White House briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs also sought to dismiss the issue as "fictional nonsense," suggesting the so-called birthers would never be happy with any evidence.

Nevermind that Obama might have been born on Mars for all anyone cares. The stubborn story of the refusal of many to stop questioning his birthplace as American and....

...therefore, to challenge his presidential legitimacy has become in itself an intriguing, if legally moot, tale.

Various courts have ruled in Obama's favor on the issue or refused even to consider it. (Aha, so maybe they are all part of a Kenyan socialist conspiracy?)

Hawaii's Republican governor is reported to believe Obama is a natural-born American. No one has produced solid conflicting documents that he wasn't born in the U.S.

The Obama campaign released an official state certificate of birth, which The Ticket published here months ago. Hawaii says it's authentic. Critics point out accurately it's not an official birth certificate. They claim the type font is newer than the date. Wonder where the doctor's signature is? And the infant's footprints?

But here's the real catch: Hawaii state law happens to forbid release of original birth records to anyone without a tangible interest in those records.

Barack Obama and his mother

And, so far, the tangible interest of any of the so-called "birthers" including even Alan Keyes here or the famous singer Pat Boone over here has yet to be proven. So the original documents remain transparently secreted in Hawaii while the story strangely simmers all over.

Wait! Unless, as a certain CNN celebrity commentator stubbornly suggests (despite his boss' own suggestion that the guy drop the stupid issue as dead), those historical documents were mysteriously destroyed somehow. Perhaps during computerization of state government documents. Or perhaps as part.....

But then, what is it state health director Fukino claims she looked at? And why exactly were Obama's documents destroyed? What were they hiding?

How did the Obama kid and his late mother ever get his U.S. passport without an actual certified birth certificate like everyone else has to produce? So they could travel to and live in Indonesia all those years ago? What about the report that some African relative recalls Obama being born in Kenya?

And, by the way, where was Lou Dobbs born?

The answer, according to legend, is that the often-outraged TV talker was born in the sparsely populated north Texas county of Childress, the son of two illegal immigrants. No, just kidding about the parent part because LD has made such a big deal out of illegal immigrants from Mexico. According to the little-known story, Dobbs' father Frank was a propane dealer, his mother Lydia Mae a bookkeeper.

What is not so well-known is that the county is named for George Campbell Childress. The very one.

And do you know who GCC was? He was the author of the Republic of Texas' Declaration of Independence from Mexico. The subversive (to Gen. Santa Anna) declaration was adopted on March 2, 1836. That precise date just happens to be almost exactly 109 years, six months and roughly three weeks before the birth of the conspiracist commentator who rails against illegal Mexican immigrants.

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President Barack Obama honored the Detroit Shock on Monday for contributions on and off the basketball court.

He welcomed the Shock to the White House’s South Portico to honor its 2008 championship season, its third WNBA title since the team started in 1998.

Bill Laimbeer, who resigned as coach in June, joined the players along with current coach Rick Mahorn, Shock and Pistons owner Karen Davidson and Donna Orender, the president of the WNBA. Michigan Sen. Carl Levin and Reps. Sander Levin and Carolyn Kilpatrick also were at the ceremony.

“I want to congratulate the Finals MVP Katie Smith, team captain Cheryl Ford and all the other women that make this such an outstanding team,” the president said.

“I also want to salute this organization and this team for donating so much time and energy to lifting up the Detroit community. They’ve given free tickets to underprivileged youth, mentored abused women and children, donated backpacks filled with school supplies to foster kids, restored a rundown library into a safe, clean place for kids to play and to grow.”

He pointed out that his daughters, Sasha and Malia, have never known a time when women did not play professional basketball in the United States.

“They look at the TV and they see me watching ‘SportsCenter’ and they see young women who look like them on the screen,” said Obama, who got a jersey from the Shock. “And it makes my daughters look at themselves differently; to see that they can be champions, too. So, as a father, I want to say thank-you.”

Before the ceremony Monday, the Shock took part in a WNBA clinic at the Richard England Boys & Girls Club in Washington, D.C.

Detroit is 5-9 so far this season. The Shock next plays the Minnesota Lynx on Friday at the Palace.

Source

President Barack Obama will give a White House welcome to the defending WNBA champion Detroit Shock.

The team will be honored at a Monday ceremony hosted by Obama at the White House.

The Shock won last year's WNBA championship, their third league title in six years.

Before the presidential event, the Shock will host a fitness camp at a Washington community center.

Detroit is 5-9 so far this season. They play the Minnesota Lynx Friday at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

Source

President Barack Obama says his Republican foes have no plan for health care. In fact, they do. They just don’t want to bring it up right now.

And one can hardly blame them.

The core of the conservative idea on health care is taxing health benefits. John McCain offered a version in 2008 that included a $5,000-per-family tax credit to offset the switch.

Obama brutalized McCain for his suggestion.

It was the ugliest phase of the Obama campaign, featuring a lot of scaremongering about how McCain’s plan amounted to a “trillion-dollar” tax on the middle class based on a “radical” idea that could have a “catastrophic” effect on health care.

The worst of it was a television ad warning seniors that they would lose Medicare coverage under the McCain plan, which called for savings through eliminating fraud, using electronic health records and paying doctors for good outcomes instead of procedures.

Those Medicare reforms may sound familiar because they’re essentially the same ones the president has proposed to help offset the costs of his trillion-dollar-plus health plan.

In fact, McCain’s reform weren’t that different from the ones Obama had proposed as a candidate. Obama tried to terrify little old ladies about the McCain plan while his own Web site was suggesting pretty much the same thing.

The irony now is that Obama, who once warned that McCain would cut $882 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, is trying unsuccessfully to squeeze a comparable cost estimate out of the Congressional Budget Office.

While the president accepts the McCain position on Medicare and Medicaid, taxing benefits is another matter.

Under the Republican plan, health insurance subsidies from employers would be treated as taxable income. Instead of looking at medical services as something that comes with a job, people would return to the common practice before benefits were exempted from taxes during World War II. The old model was for families to carry policies to protect against catastrophic costs from serious illness or injury and pay for the rest out of pocket.

Instead of recipients of care, Americans would return to be being consumers of health services. Imagine what would happen to the courts if every full-time worker in the land had unlimited access to legal services after paying a small deductible. Add a Byzantine set of regulations for payments and coverage, and you see why America’s hybrid health system has problems.

The disconnection between paying for and using regular medical care causes huge inefficiencies that will result in rationing. Liberals want the government to do it. Conservatives want individuals to do it by making their own decisions about what health care they need.

Aside from any ideological objections, Obama can’t accept the idea of taxing benefits because it would fall heavily on two groups with near veto power over his plan: labor unions and insurance companies.

In the current debate, the idea of taxing benefits popped up in the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Max Baucus entertained a limited version of the plan in an effort to get some Republican support, but the White House and most of Baucus’ Democratic brethren batted it down.

The president is now coming around on the idea of taxing health benefits ... kind of.

Obama is entertaining an excise tax on insurance companies for issuing deluxe policies. If companies had to pay a 1 percent excise on each policy worth more than $40,000, it would raise an estimated $100 million to pay for some of the cost of expanding government coverage.

It’s pretty convoluted, but it recognizes that taxing benefits affects consumer behavior. Democrats argue that such a plan would help reduce overall costs by discouraging the issuance of “gold-plated” plans, which they say encourage overcharging and overspending.

The proposal is so thin that it won’t allow for a bipartisan solution, especially when coupled with a government-run insurance option.

That leaves the president little choice but to try to ram through a plan with parliamentary tricks.

But it didn’t have to be this way.

What if Obama had swallowed his pride, conceded the wisdom of McCain’s approach and asked the self-styled maverick for his help in taxing benefits? Odds are, McCain would have called for a bipartisan plan on health care and covered Obama’s back on the Hill.

In exchange for getting a market-based solution, Republicans might have accepted using the revenues to expand coverage for the uninsured.

Instead, Obama opted for the same kind of old-fashioned politics he once decried: demonize your opponent and then blame him for refusing to cooperate.

Source

President Barack Obama is set to announce on Friday a competition for $4 billion in federal grants to improve academic achievement in U.S. schools, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

Obama wants states to use funds from the competition, dubbed the "Race to the Top," to ease limits on so-called charter schools, link teacher pay to student achievement and move toward common U.S. academic standards, the Post said.

Charter schools receive public funding but generally are exempt from some state or local rules and regulations. They are operated as an alternative to traditional public schools.

"What we're saying here is, if you can't decide to change these practices, we're not going to use precious dollars that we want to see creating better results; we're not going to send those dollars there," Obama told the Post in an interview.

"And we're counting on the fact that, ultimately, this is an incentive, this is a challenge for people who do want to change," Obama said.

Obama is scheduled to speak at the Department of Education on Friday.

The Post reported that the $4 billion education grant program was created under the $787 billion economic stimulus plan passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama in February.

The United States has one of the worst high school dropout rates in the industrialized world, and its students often rank below those in other Western nations in reading and math.

Obama has portrayed the drive to improve education as part of a broader push to promote economic growth in the face of a deep recession and the worst U.S. financial crisis in decades.

Source

President Barack Obama arrived at the Cleveland Clinic without fanfare about 1 p.m. Thursday afternoon, slipping unseen into a side entrance of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Pavilion under the cover of a white tent.

Obama spent about 40 minutes at the hospital touring the heart center, learning more about the hospital's innovations in health information technology, and even getting a hands-on lesson with the Clinic's cutting-edge robotic heart surgery tools.

Obama chose the hospital because he believes that innovations like those he saw Thursday are examples of what makes the Clinic a model of low-cost and high-quality care.

About 200 Clinic employees, patients and their family members blocked a hallway in the Pavilion for an hour hoping to catch a glimpse of the president's arrival or departure. Many held up cell phones and took pictures every time a car appeared.

Even after a Clinic security employee told the crowd that Obama would not be coming through the area, only half of the group cleared out.

Terri McGlynn of North Ridgeville was among those hoping to see the president. She and her daughter Katie were at the Clinic because McGlynn's husband underwent surgery Monday.

They left Tim McGlynn on the 10th floor of the Miller Pavilion while they stood watching for Obama.

"My dad's gonna kill us," Katie said. "He's upstairs waiting to be discharged."

Outside, Cleveland and hospital police blocked off parts of Euclid Avenue near the building to foot traffic.

To ensure that no one could see Obama's entrance or exit from hospital windows that overlook East 96th Street, security removed hardware to keep people from opening the shades.

Obama said he wasn't at the hospital for an endorsement of his health-care plan. Instead, he was seeking information.

"There has been a lot of discussion in Washington about the very different model that we and the Mayo [Clinic] have, and he wanted to understand it better," explained Dr. Delos "Toby" Cosgrove, chief executive and president of the Clinic.

The Clinic's physician employee-based model -- which includes one-year contracts with annual professional reviews -- helps reduce costs, Cosgrove said.

Physicians are paid a salary instead of a fee for each service they perform, reducing the number of treatments a patient might receive.

The two also talked about lowering the cost and burden of often preventable diseases such as diabetes and obesity -- a topic Cosgrove has mentioned before on the national stage.

Dr. C. Martin Harris, the Clinic's chief information officer and the architect behind the hospital's innovative partnerships with Google and Microsoft, discussed the hospital's numerous health information advances with the president.

Harris has taken a national leadership role in the area.

In May, he was one of 23 experts named to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Information Technology Standards Committee, which makes recommendations to the federal government on the electronic exchange and use of health information.

The Clinic took a leading role in medical records management in early 2008 when it formed a partnership with Google to make patient records available online.

In November of that year, the Clinic began working with software giant Microsoft's program HealthVault, which allows patients to store their health information from multiple sources in one place and to stay connected to their physicians.

Currently, the Clinic has more than 200,000 patients managing prescriptions and appointments and receiving test results online.

Harris said Obama was interested in hearing about how the hospital used all its resources in combination with information technology programs to deliver high-quality care -- particularly preventing duplicate testing and reducing errors.

In June, Cosgrove told CNN that the hospital's health information technology efforts had not yet resulted in cost savings.

"What we've seen is our quality's gone up -- substantially," Cosgrove said.

"What we haven't seen is our costs come down. It's like the difference between an abacus and a cash register. Clearly the cash register is better, gives you a better record. But it isn't cheaper."

Harris would not address Cosgrove's comments directly, but said that he believes the Clinic's investments in this technology will result in long-term savings.

"It depends on how you define cost," said Harris.

"Directly implementing the technology does produce some cost savings, but I think that you end up at a wash from just installing the technology. Where the cost savings comes in, is how you use the technology in how you care for patients."

Electronic health records help reduce errors that result in costly hospitalizations or emergency room visits, and minimize unnecessary duplicate tests, he said.

"When you look at it from that perspective, in a well-coordinated care cycle, we believe that it will yield significant cost efficiencies."

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President Barack Obama, conceding that ordinary Americans are skeptical of his plan to overhaul the nation's health care system, sought Wednesday to convince the public that the changes would benefit them and strengthen the economy.

"Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick or lose their job or change their job," Obama said at a prime-time news conference from the East Room of the White House. "It's about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage, because it became too expensive. It's about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid."

Obama used the event, the fifth full-scale White House news conference of his 6-month-old presidency, to try to reclaim a debate that has been slipping away from him in recent days.

With Republicans and some moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill balking at both the specifics of the legislation and Obama's timetable for House and Senate passage of the bills, the White House is now trying to rally legislative support and public opinion by linking health care to the nation's economic health and offering the promise of tangible benefits to Americans.

"If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit," he said. "If we do not reform health care, your premiums and

out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket." He acknowledged that Americans were anxious, saying, "Folks are skeptical, and that is entirely legitimate."

For Obama, the stakes could not be higher. Health legislation is his highest legislative priority, and his success or failure could shape the rest of his presidency. But while he is under pressure from leading Democrats to delve more deeply into the negotiations, by taking positions on specific policy issues, he largely resisted doing so on Wednesday night.

But the president did weigh in on a controversial idea percolating in the House of Representatives to tax the wealthiest Americans to help pay to extend coverage to the nation's 47 million uninsured. At first, House Democrats were weighing a tax on Americans making more than $280,000 a year; now there is talk of imposing the tax on those households earning $1 million or more, an idea Obama said he favored because it would not put the burden of paying for the bill on the middle class.

"To me, that meets my principle, that it's not being shouldered by families who are already having a tough time," he said.

Obama also signaled that he might be open to another idea under consideration in the Senate: taxing employer-provided health benefits, as long as the tax did not fall on the middle class.

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, said Democrats remained on track to reach a deal on major health care legislation. But she acknowledged that the process had slowed in response to concerns among conservative Democrats about the cost of the bill, and that some House Democrats were reluctant to embrace the income surtax on high-earners without knowing whether the Senate would go along.

Indeed, even as Pelosi insisted that Congress was closer than ever to achieving a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's health care system, Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, a leader of the Blue Dogs, a conservative faction of Democrats, issued a statement saying that a deal was still a long way off. And a senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill said party leaders now believed it was essential for Obama to be more specific about what he wanted in a health care bill — and not just exhort Congress to pass one.

"The president needs to step in more forcefully and start making some decisions," said the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be publicly identified as criticizing Obama. "Everyone appreciates the fact that Obama has devoted so much time to health care. The bully pulpit is powerful. But in view of the deadlines Congress has missed, we would like to hear more from the president about what he wants in this bill."

Source

At the urging of President Barack Obama, the Senate agreed Tuesday to cut funding for construction of stealth F-22 fighters.

Utah Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett objected to the move, which could cost jobs at Hill Air Force Base.

The Senate voted 58-40 to cease producing the F-22 Raptors after 187 are built. Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Democratic and Republican leaders on the Senate Armed Services Committee fought to end the program, saying the money would be better used on other military technologies, including much cheaper unpiloted drones.

But they faced stiff opposition, since so many states contribute to the construction and maintenance of the nation's premier military jet, which costs $140 million each.

More than 100 people work directly on maintaining the F-22 at Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah.

Hatch argued on the Senate floor that the nation needed to continue building the F-22 to maintain its air superiority over the fighters being designed by Russia and China.

"Fast and unseen," Hatch said, "the Raptor will punch a hole in an enemy's defenses, quickly dispatching any challenger in the air and striking at the most important ground targets."

He also said moving to the cheaper, smaller F-35 Lightning fighters, won't get the job done if the nation found itself in an air war.

"The fact is that the F-35 is neither

as capable a fighter nor as stealthy as the F-22," Hatch said. "Only by utilizing the strengths of both aircraft do we ensure air dominance for the next 40 years."

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, appeared on Fox Business on Tuesday to defend the F-22 saying, "We should not skimp on the defense of this country, period."

Bishop, whose district includes Hill Air Force Base, was instrumental in passing a House amendment that would authorize funding for seven more F-22s. He has cited past military reports saying the nation needs 240 of the top fighters.

Obama slapped back at his detractors after the vote.

"I reject the notion that we have to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on outdated and unnecessary defense projects to keep this nation secure," the president said. "This would have been an inexcusable waste of money."

Backed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama said 187 Raptors are enough. Obama threatened to veto the defense bill if the F-22 money was not removed.

While Hill will feel some impact from the F-22 cut, the Air Force has named the base as one of the main maintenance facilities for the F-35 and the unpiloted drones, which are effective weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Source

US President Barack Obama will address the opening of top level strategic and economic talks between Chinese and US leaders here next week, a White House official said Tuesday.

"President Obama will address the opening session of the first US-China strategic and economic dialogue on Monday July, 27," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Gibbs added Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao "launched this dialogue during their meeting in London in April as a way of strengthening relationships between the two countries."

The new high-level discussions, set for Monday and Tuesday, are an extension of economic talks begun under the previous administration of George W. Bush, but with a broader focus.

The dialogue "will focus on addressing the challenges and opportunities that both countries face on a wide range of bilateral, regional and global areas of immediate and long-term strategic and economic interests," according to a joint statement from the US Treasury and State Departments last week.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will chair the American side of the dialogue.

Hu and Obama agreed when they met in April that Clinton and Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo will chair the "strategic track" and Geithner and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan will chair the "economic track" of the talks.

The US leader also accepted an invitation to visit China later in the year.

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President Barack Obama said on Monday that Wall Street banks had failed to show remorse for the "wild risks" that triggered a financial meltdown and helped to push the United States into recession.

Obama unveiled a sweeping regulatory overhaul in June aimed at improving government oversight of banks and markets to avert a repeat of the financial crisis.

"The problem that I've seen, at least, is you don't get a sense that folks on Wall Street feel any remorse for taking all these risks," Obama said in an interview with PBS television.

"You don't get a sense that there's been a change of culture and behavior as a consequence of what has happened. And that's why the financial regulatory reform proposals that we put forward are so important," he said.

Obama said the planned regulatory reforms would prevent Wall Street firms from taking the "wild risks" they had taken before the financial crisis. Shareholders should also have the right to weigh in on huge bonuses paid to executives, he said.

Wall Street paid more than $18 billion of bonuses in 2008, a year in which it needed trillions of dollars of taxpayer support.

Asked if he was concerned about the jump in profits reported by banks Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co, Obama said his administration had less leverage over them now that they had repaid government bailout money.

He said the measures put in his place by his government to stabilize the economy were working, despite unemployment projected to rise above 10 percent within months.

"I think we've put out the fire. The analogy I use sometimes is, we had this beautiful house. And there was a fire. We came in and we had to hose it down.

"The fire is now out, but what we've discovered is, we need some new tuckpointing, the roof's leaking, the boiler's out, oh, and by the way, we're way behind on our mortgage," he said.

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In a move already drawing fire from liberal activists, aides to President Barack Obama acknowledged the administration will miss its own Tuesday deadline to submit a report detailing its policy on detaining terror suspects.

The report is a key part of laying out the White House’s plan for shutting down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In a briefing for reporters Monday, four senior administration officials confirmed the task force dealing with detention policy has been granted a six-month extension to flesh out its plans, while a separate task force dealing with interrogation policy has been given a two-month extension to submit its own report to the president. The reports had been mandated to be completed this week by executive orders the president signed during his first week in office.

Despite the delays, the four senior officials insisted the Obama administration is making strong progress in resolving the thorny legal issues surrounding the 240 terror suspects that were detained at Guantanamo as of January of this year, and is still on track to shut the prison down next January as spelled out by executive order.

“I think we’re all comfortable with where we are in the process,” one senior administration official said of shutting the controversial prison.

A second senior administration official said it is the administration’s “goal” to still shut the prison. When pressed by reporters on whether this was a softening of the promise to actually close the prison down, this official insisted there has been no change and the administration is still planning to comply with the executive order.

This second official downplayed the delays in finishing the reports. “We wanted to get this right,” said the official. “We wanted to do this carefully.”

But officials at the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the delay in the release of the report on detainee policy in particular, noting Obama officials have also left the door open to holding some Guantanamo detainees indefinitely without charge or trial.

“The Obama administration must not slip into the same legal swamp that engulfed the Bush administration with its failed Guantanamo policies,” said Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director. “Any effort to revamp the failed Guantanamo military commissions or enact a law to give any president the power to hold individuals indefinitely and without charge or trial is sure to be challenged in court and it will take years before justice is served.”

Romero added, “The only way to make good on President Obama’s promise to shut down Guantanamo and end the military commissions is to charge and try the detainees in established federal criminal courts. Any effort to do otherwise will doom the Obama administration to lengthy litigation. A promise deferred could soon become a promise broken.”

But a third senior administration official insisted the White House is making good progress in dealing with all the terror suspects being held at Guantanamo. This third official told reporters the administration is “over halfway through reviewing the detainees at Guantanamo” by either transferring them to other countries or moving toward putting them on trial for prosecution.

This third official said that “substantially more than 50″ of the detainees are prepared for transfer, while a “significant number” are being prepared for prosecution.

A fourth senior administration official said the White House is making “great progress” in getting European countries like Italy to publicly agree to take on some detainees. The official said other European countries have privately agreed to take detainees, but will not publicly discuss it yet.

“In the weeks and months ahead we will build on that strong foundation,” said the official.

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For the first time since taking office, US President Barack Obama's job approval rating has dropped below the 60-percent threshold as Americans expressed doubts about his handling of the economy, the deficit and health care, a new opinion poll showed Monday.

The ABC News/Washington Post survey showed Obama's job approval rating fell to 59 percent, down 10 points from its springtime peak.

Slightly more than half of Americans, 52 percent, now approve of his work on the economy, down eight points from its peak, according to the poll.

Just under half, 49 percent, approve of his handling of health care, a drop of eight points. And only 43 percent approve of his handling of the budget deficit, with 49 percent disapproving, the survey indicated.

Obama has scheduled a prime-time news conference for late Wednesday to address the issues at hand.

The president's falliing numbers have offered some hope to Republicans, but the GOP's overall approval ratings remain low, the poll showed.

Approval of the way the Republicans in Congress are handling their job is up six points since spring and up 11 points from a year ago.

However, it still stands at just 36 percent, with 58 percent disapproving, according to the survey.

The poll was conducted by telephone July 15-18 among a random national sample of 1,001 and had a 3.5-point margin of error.

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President Barack Obama continues his push for revamping health care.

Obama will hold a round-table discussion Monday with health-care providers at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington. Afterward, he delivers a statement on his proposed health-care overhaul.

Later, the president welcomes the Apollo 11 crew and NASA administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden to the White House.

It's the 40th anniversary of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first men to land on the moon.

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Could it be that President Barack Obama's Midas touch is starting to dull a bit, even among members of his own party?

Conservative House Democrats are balking at the cost and direction of Obama's top priority, an overhaul of the nation's health care system. A key Senate Democrat, Max Baucus of Montana, complains that Obama's opposition to paying for it with a tax on health benefits "is not helping us."

Another Democrat, Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, tells his local newspaper that Obama is too liberal and is "very unpopular" in his district.

From his first days in office, Obama's popularity helped him pass the landmark $787 billion stimulus package and fueled his ambitious plans to overhaul the nation's health care system and tackle global warming.

Obama continues to be comparatively popular. But now recent national surveys have shown a measurable drop in his job approval rating, even among Democrats. A CBS news survey out this week had his national approval rating at 57 percent, and his standing among Democrats down 10 percentage points since last month, from 92 percent to 82 percent.

With the economy continuing to sputter and joblessness on the rise, many of Obama's staunchest Democratic supporters are anxious for his agenda to start bearing fruit.

"We are eager and impatient, so you're seeing a little bit of that," said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. "Elections have results, and those in the base are the most anxious to achieve what's promised in the election. That's why Democrats are showing some impatience in reaching our goal."

Obama won Ohio, a key swing state, by 4 percentage points in 2008 over Republican John McCain. But the one-time industrial powerhouse has been hit hard by the weak economy, and a Quinnipiac University poll released this month showed Obama with a lackluster approval rating of 49 percent.

Redfern argued that the stimulus program has begun to show tangible results in his state and people shouldn't expect the economy to turn around instantly.

A similar argument came from Nevada, another swing state Obama carried. Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Ross counseled patience, saying that voters in his state want Obama to succeed and that their support would be solidified once they saw stimulus-driven building projects under way.

"Generally, folks in Nevada are waiting to see the effects of the stimulus package," Ross said. "I think the president is probably just as impatient to get this money out in the country to employ people as anyone."

In Missouri, which Obama narrowly lost to McCain, Democratic strategist Steve Glorioso said hardcore base voters were as enthusiastic as ever for Obama but that there was a sense of disappointment about him among less committed Democrats and independents.

"People are scared," Glorioso said. "This is the worst economic time anyone under the age of 80 has ever experienced, and you can't discount people being afraid. Now that we are in July, the fear is turning to disappointment that the president hasn't fixed everything yet. I don't know why they thought he could change everything by now, but some did."

Glorioso said an open Senate race next year in Missouri, where Democrat Robin Carnahan is likely to face former Republican Rep. Roy Blunt, will be a crucial test of Obama's appeal.

"If the economy gets better and they pass a reasonable health care bill, his popularity will be way back up and Carnahan will win," Glorioso said. "If none of that happens, it's a moot point."

In Michigan, where the near-collapse of the auto industry has driven the unemployment rate to 14.1 percent, the nation's worst, the state's Democratic chairman, Mark Brewer, said support for Obama among Democrats has remained strong.

"People are very worried and concerned, I don't want to dispute that," Brewer said. "But they voted for the president in overwhelming numbers and want to support the things he's trying to do."

Obama traveled to Michigan this week to unveil a $12 billion program to help community colleges prepare people for jobs. There, he made an audacious declaration.

"I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, 'Well, this is Obama's economy,'" the president said. "That's fine. Give it to me!"

Redfern, the Ohio Democratic Party chairman, said he welcomed that statement but cautioned it came with a price.

"When it's the president's economy, it's the president's trouble," Redfern said. "Americans are eager for the change that they voted into office. They support him, they just want to see results sooner rather than later."

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