20 LIers win tickets to Obama inauguration

Twenty Long Island residents have been randomly selected to attend President Barack Obama's second inauguration next month in Washington.

The lottery winners were among 225 chosen across New York State and each will receive two tickets for the swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 21 outside the Capitol. 

Winners included Ashley Falzone, Dwana Taylor and Vinnette Bennet, all of Bay Shore; Heather...

Source  http://www.newsday.com/long-island/20-liers-win-tickets-to-obama-inauguration-1.4369649

Obama vows action on gun violence: 'These tragedies must end'

s" following the mass shooting, which left 20 children, seven adults and the suspected shooter dead.

He used the speech to lay down a marker, vowing to take action to address gun violence amid yet another high-profile mass shooting in his presidency.

"We can't tolerate this anymore," Obama said. "These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change."

"In the coming weeks I'll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens … in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this," he said.

Obama offered no specifics as to what type action he might take or legislation he might seek to address these incidences of violence. A top Senate Democrat said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that she would introduce legislation on the first day of the new Congress next year to re-institute a ban on assault weapons, something which Obama has previously endorsed but not actively sought. 

The call-to-action was weaved together with words from the president meant to console mourners in Newtown, with whom Obama met earlier in the day.

"This is our first task, caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged," Obama asked. "And by that measure, can we truly say that, as a nation, we're meeting our obligations?"

The president added: "I've been reflecting on this the past few days, and if we're honest with ourselves, the answer's no. We're not doing enough. And we will have to change."

Obama's comments came in response to yet another mass casualty incident in America over the past few years. The most high-profile attacks include one against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, a shooting at a movie theater this past summer in Colorado and another shooting at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin in August

None of those events managed to prompt a groundswell for political action to address gun rights and other underlying causes of these attacks.

An effort to address mass casualty events might also involve less politically touchy efforts, like boosting support for mental health. 

If Obama were to lead an effort to push gun control, though, he could meet resistance from the politically influential National Rifle Association and other gun rights' groups. Advocates of gun control, though, have urged Obama to throw political caution to the wind; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sunday that gun control should be Obama's "No. 1 agenda."

Source  http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/16/15953192-obama-vows-action-on-gun-violence-these-tragedies-must-end?lite

Brinksmanship on Obama Medicaid expansion for poor

It's health care brinksmanship, with hundreds of billions of dollars and the well-being of millions of people at stake.

President Barack Obama's health care law expands Medicaid, the federal-state health program for low-income people, but cost-wary states must decide whether to take the deal.

Turn it down, and governors risk coming off as callous toward their neediest residents. Not to mention the likely second-guessing for walking away from a pot of federal dollars estimated at nearly $1 trillion nationally over a decade.

If the Obama administration were to compromise, say by sweetening the offer to woo a reluctant state, it would face immediate demands from 49 others for similar deals that could run up the tab by tens of billions of dollars.

As state legislatures look ahead to their 2013 sessions, the calculating and the lobbying have already begun.

Conservative opponents of the health care law are leaning on lawmakers to turn down the Medicaid money. Hospitals, doctors' groups, advocates for the poor, and some business associations are pressing them to accept it.

"Here's the big thing: The state does not want to expand Medicaid and get stuck with the bill," said Dr. Bill Hazel, Virginia's health secretary. "Our legislators do not like to raise taxes to pay for a benefit someone else has promised. The concerns we have ... are around federal solvency and the ability of the federal government to meet its commitment."

Medicaid covers nearly 60 million low-income and disabled people but differs significantly from state to state. Under the health care law, Medicaid would be expanded on Jan. 1, 2014, to cover people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $15,400 a year for an individual.

About half the 30 million people gaining coverage under the law would do so through Medicaid. Most of the new beneficiaries would be childless adults, but about 2.7 million would be parents with children at home. The federal government would pay the full cost of the first three years of the expansion, gradually phasing down to a 90 percent share.

The Supreme Court said states can turn down the Medicaid expansion. But if a state does so, many of its poorest residents would have no other way to get health insurance. The subsidized private coverage also available under Obama's law is only for people making more than the poverty level, $11,170 for an individual. For the poor, Medicaid is the only option.

Although the health care law fully funded the Medicaid expansion and Obama has protected the program from cuts, the federal government's unresolved budget struggles don't give states much confidence.

Most states, including Republican-led Virginia, are considering their options.

A recent economic analysis by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute found that states will receive more than $9 from Washington for every $1 they spend to expand Medicaid, and a few will actually come out ahead, partly by spending less on charity care. States are commissioning their own studies.

So far, eight states have said they will turn down the expansion, while 13 states plus the District of Columbia have indicated they will accept it. The eight declining are Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. Nearly 2.8 million people would remain uninsured in those states, according to Urban Institute estimates, with Texas alone accounting for close to half the total.

Hospitals aren't taking "no" for an answer in the states that have turned down the expansion. Although South Carolina's Republican Gov. Nikki Haley has had her say, the Legislature has yet to be heard from, said Thornton Kirby, president of the South Carolina Hospital Association.

Hospitals agreed to Medicare cuts in the health care law, banking on the Medicaid expansion to compensate them.

"We've got a significant debate coming in January," said Kirby. "There are a lot of people tuning in to this issue."

In Maine, Democrats who gained control of the Legislature in the election are pushing to overcome Republican Gov. Paul LePage's opposition.

"Obamacare" was once assailed as a job killer by detractors, but on Wednesday in Missouri it was being promoted as the opposite. Missouri's hospital association in released a study estimating that the economic ripple effects of the Medicaid expansion would actually create 24,000 jobs in the state. The University of Missouri study found that about 160,000 state residents would gain coverage.

"This is not a political issue for us ... this is the real world," said Joe Pierle, head of the Missouri Primary Care Association, a doctors' group. "It makes no sense to send our hard-earned federal tax dollars to our neighbors in Illinois."

By Thursday, Gov. Jay Nixon, D-Mo., had announced his support for the expansion, but he faces a challenge in persuading Republican legislative leaders.

In Florida, where GOP Gov. Rick Scott says he is rethinking his opposition, the state could end up saving money through the Medicaid expansion, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, which studied the financing. The reason is that Florida would spend less on a state program for people with catastrophic medical bills.

Back in Washington, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says states can take all the time they need to decide. They can even get a free trial, signing up for the first three years of the expansion and dropping out later.

But she hasn't answered the one question that many states have: Would the Obama administration allow them to expand Medicaid just part way, taking in only people below the poverty line? That means other low-income people currently eligible would be covered entirely on the federal government's dime, and they would be getting private coverage, which is costlier than Medicaid.

Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, says he doesn't think states will get an answer anytime soon.

"This is a game of chicken that we're seeing," said Salo. "Are the states bluffing, or are these states really serious? And at what point does the administration rethink things, and decide it's worth getting half a loaf?"

Source  http://blog.al.com/wire/2012/12/brinksmanship_on_obama_medicai.html

Colin Kenny: How not to protect a country

Here’s the scene: You’re playing one of those military strategy games. The country you are charged with protecting has cold winters, borders on a superpower and is extremely dependent on exports for its economic well-being. It has huge coastlines to the east and west, an expanse of land, ice and water to the far north, and that aforementioned superpower glowering at you from the south because the folks there don’t think you’re doing much to defend the continent you share.

A good part of the border with the superpower runs through some very large lakes and other waterways. Some of these bodies of water fester with illegal activity, such as smuggling. Nobody has been able to control the traffic on these waters, which means worse things than smuggling could take place.

If it sounds like I’m describing Canada, I am.

To protect this country and aid your allies abroad, you have a small, aging fleet of naval ships. Some need refitting, others need replacing, urgently. So what do you declare your priority to be? Building ships designed only to patrol the Arctic? Whoops! You just got knocked out of the board game.

Embarrassing, isn’t it? But that’s what is happening (for real) in Canada.

Everyone agrees that there is no military threat to our country in the Arctic, which is one of the main reasons our navy hasn’t patrolled there for 50 years. The coast guard does. Instead of spending a reasonable amount of money to upgrade the coast guard’s icebreaking capabilities, the government is charging ahead with the construction of six to eight armed Arctic patrol vessels to get the navy involved in northern “defence.” It is doing so despite a shortage of funds to build other naval vessels needed in southern waters and for deployment abroad.

Canada is down to two antique destroyers, 12 middle-aged frigates and one active submarine, with two more promised sometime soon. That’s what is available to defend a nation of slightly less than 10 million square kilometres, largely surrounded by water. Official navy documents have predicted that even this small fleet will be significantly diminished over the next eight to 10 years — many of the frigates will be unavailable due to refit, and the destroyers will have to be docked as maintenance costs spiral out of control.

Itemizing Canada’s military weaknesses across the board would fill the pages of this newspaper, so allow me to focus on this one issue with regard to the navy: Why spend scarce dollars on ships that won’t even cut through heavy ice when you have a dearth of real icebreakers? Why spend that money on ships that will be slower than fishing boats when what we need are fast ships that can intercept vessels in our southern waters? The government will argue that the Arctic patrol ships can be transferred to our East and West coasts in the winter. But if they are not designed as minesweepers or even as combat vessels, what would be the point? Why not spend the money on real warships, and give the coast guard real icebreakers?

Threats to our ports may not be imminent, but they are real. Harbours across the country are ripe targets for anyone who might choose to drop delayed-action mines and then scurry away. That is dead easy to do, using technology that’s been around since the Second World War and that we’d have no defence against. We need minesweepers to deal with that potential threat to our trade routes. All we have at the moment are Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDVs) that are good for training reservists, but little else.

This government has placed a priority on boosting Canada’s international trade. It has also branded its military strategy as “Canada first,” which suggests that it is serious about trying to ensure the security of Canadians.

If it’s big on trade, and big on security, why not build vessels capable of protecting our ports and our seaways? Why build vessels whose only purpose is to bolster our sovereignty claims in the Arctic? Sovereignty issues are going to be decided through diplomacy and/or in the courts. Arctic patrol ships won’t matter there.

Building minesweepers to protect our ports while leaving Arctic patrol to the coast guard would be a far more intelligent investment. It’s one thing to lose a board game. It’s an entirely different thing for a country to waste more than $7-billion on window dressing.

Source  http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/11/19/colin-kenny-how-not-to-protect-a-country/

Obama defeats Romney to win second term, vows he has 'more work to do'

President Obama won a second White House term Tuesday night, overcoming concerns about the fragile economic recovery to soundly defeat Republican nominee Mitt Romney. 

"We've got more work to do," Obama declared, addressing a cheering crowd at his victory rally in Chicago early Wednesday morning. Obama spoke to supporters at his campaign headquarters shortly after Romney called the president to concede. Obama congratulated his opponent on a "hard-fought campaign." 

After one of the nastiest political battles and most gridlocked terms in modern American history, the president vowed to reach out to the other side in a second term on everything from immigration to the deficit. He asked supporters to keep the "hope" and said that while the "passions" and "controversy" won't wane after Election Day, "progress will come in fits and starts." 

"While our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come," the clearly fired-up president told the crowd. 

Romney conceded shortly after midnight, delivering a brief speech to a subdued crowd of supporters at his Boston headquarters, where he said he would "pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation."

The former Massachusetts governor urged Washington's politicians to set aside the "bickering" and "political posturing" going forward, and "put the people before the politics."  

"This election is over, but our principles endure," Romney said. 

The president's projected victory came shortly after he was declared the winner in the crucial battleground of Ohio. The president was leading by a narrow margin in that state as returns continued to stream in overnight, but a streak of victories in other battlegrounds put him well over the 270 electoral votes required to win. The count, with the results from Florida still not in, stood at 303 electoral votes for Obama, to Romney's 206. 

Obama held a narrower lead in the popular vote count. But despite that and the race being tied up nationally in polls leading up to the election, Obama's investment -- in time and money -- in a handful of swing states evidently paid dividends. Obama scored a big win in Pennsylvania, a vital contest where Romney made a late play for support. Obama also walked away with wins in the swing states of Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan. 

The victory caps a campaign that was far tougher in its tone than the president's 2008 run. On defense over a term marked by lackluster economic growth, Obama sought to cast Romney -- even before he was nominated -- as an elite, tax-dodging, corporate champion. His campaign seized on hidden-camera comments in which Romney said 47 percent of Americans, those who don't pay federal income taxes, consider themselves "victims." 

He and Democratic officials also hammered the message that Romney's policies would be bad for women, in an appeal to an important voting bloc for the president who in exit polls backed Obama, 55-43 percent. 

Romney, though, accused the man who ran in 2008 on big ideas of going small because he couldn't defend his first-term record. The Republican nominee, who emerged bruised but not broken from a protracted primary battle, initially struggled to gain on Obama in the polls. But following a strong lead-off debate performance in October, Romney drew the race to what appeared to be a dead heat. 

Romney was able to capture a key victory Tuesday night in the battleground of North Carolina, a state Obama won in 2008 and where Democrats held their 2012 convention. 

Elsewhere, Obama and Romney each racked up expected victories Tuesday night in relatively safe territory. 

Romney was the projected winner in Utah, Montana, Alaska, Arizona, Missouri, Idaho, Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana and Kentucky. 

Fox News projected Obama the winner in home state Illinois, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Washington, Minnesota, New Mexico, Maine, New York, Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia. 

Election Day was unexpectedly busy for the campaigns. While Obama himself kept a low profile in Chicago, the campaign dispatched Vice President Biden to Ohio where he visited a Cleveland restaurant and later posed for pictures with volunteers before joining up with the president. 

Romney, meanwhile, made stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania before heading back to campaign headquarters in Boston. 

The presidential election coincided with hundreds of congressional races, as well as a slew of votes on controversial state ballot initiatives across the country.

As races continued to be called well into the morning, it appeared that the balance of power in Washington would remain the same next year. Republicans kept their majority in the House, while Democrats fended off a series of challenges to retain their majority in the Senate.

The vote Tuesday marked the end of a grueling and costly election cycle. Aside from all the money spent and raised in the congressional races, each of the presidential candidates raised roughly $1 billion. For Obama, the election was the last time he said his name will appear on a ballot. For Romney, the election closed out a nearly six-year run for the presidency. The Republican nominee ran unsuccessfully for the nomination in 2008. 

The 2012 campaign was decidedly different from 2008, when Obama ran on a lofty message of change and leveraged voter dissatisfaction with the George W. Bush administration -- particularly the war in Iraq -- to defeat Republican nominee John McCain. 

This time around, each candidate's campaign message was bound to the state of the economy, having gone through a recession shortly before Obama took office. Romney argued forcefully that Obama failed to deliver the kind of economic rebound that typically follows a downturn.

The Republican nominee accused the president of throwing money at the problem with a poorly designed stimulus and then abandoning the issue altogether to focus on passing ObamaCare. Romney argued that the health care law, along with countless regulations and an allegedly anti-business attitude, all combined to stand in the way of a full-throated recovery. Issues like the Libya terror attack and the threat from Iran's nuclear program brought foreign policy into the mix, but the economy remained central. 

Yet Obama argued all along that, despite the slack in the system, the country was moving in the right direction. He pointed to recent economic reports, including Labor Department data showing the jobless rate falling below 8 percent for the first time since he took office, as signs that the economy was improving and would get better over time. 

He warned that Romney's agenda -- which he described as tax breaks for the rich and giveaways to corporations -- would only reprise the "failed" economic policies of the prior administration, which he claimed led to the recession. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/06/obama-defeats-romney-to-win-second-term-fox-news-projects/#ixzz2BWLiW7Kb

Australia’s Opportunity in Emerging Asia

With its abundance of natural resources and proximity to key emerging markets in Asia, Australia is a top destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). In fact, according to data compiled by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the land down under currently ranks fourth for total FDI, with USD41.3 billion of inflows in 2011.

Beyond that, it is one of the few major developed-world economies where FDI inflows exceed outflows. Last year, for example, Australia’s total outflows were just under USD20 billion, or less than half the reported inflows.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Australia’s inflows were a substantial 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011, which was almost two-and-a-half times the average among the 34 member nations of the OECD. By contrast, its outflows constituted just 1.1 percent of GDP, which was less than half the average among its OECD peers.

While that’s an enviable situation for a country’s internal growth and development, it also means that Australia has yet to fully avail itself of nearby opportunities among Asia’s emerging markets.

Before proceeding further, it should be noted that the calculation for FDI does not include all inflows of foreign capital into a country. Rather, the figure is limited to those inflows that result in a foreign firm holding at least 10 percent voting power in a domestic enterprise or expanding an existing business in which it already has a significant ownership stake.

Since the downturn, Australia’s outflows to key trading partners in Asia are still well below their peak. Its direct investment in nearby Indonesia plunged 52.5 percent in 2009, and though it ramped back up to USD340.3 million in 2010, that’s still roughly USD50 million shy of the peak in 2008. For the sake of context, that amount accounts for just 2.5 percent of Indonesia’s total inflows for that year.

Meanwhile, other Asian countries that are transforming themselves into low-cost manufacturing centers, such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangladesh, have received scant attention from Australia. There were no reported outflows toward Cambodia and Bangladesh in 2010, while outflows to Vietnam were just USD35.8 million. Direct investment in Malaysia, however, is at USD266.9 million, just 9 percent below the high in 2009, though that level still only constituted 2.9 percent of Malaysia’s total inflows.

Overall, Australian companies’ investments overseas have yet to recover to the heady days of 2008, when outflows peaked at USD33.6 billion.

Given the recent downturn in the global commodities market, it’s unlikely that this situation will change in the near term since so much of the Australian economy is heavily dependent upon its resources sector. But over the long term, it’s in the nation’s best interest to diversify its economy beyond merely being one of the world’s key suppliers of raw materials.

Should China enter into a protracted slowdown, the resulting regional vacuum could afford Australian firms the opportunity to expand their investments among their growing neighbors in Southeast Asia. In 2011, China’s outflows dipped 5.4 percent to USD65.1 billion. Additionally, European firms have slowed their pace of investments or withdrawn from the region due to the sovereign-debt crisis.

At the same time, Japan has increased its role as a significant investor in the region, particularly in some of the aforementioned Southeast Asian countries that offer low-cost manufacturing. In 2010, Japan’s outflows to Malaysia jumped 67.1 percent from the prior year to USD1 billion. And outflows to Thailand rose 38.8 percent to USD2.3 billion. In 2011, Japan’s merger and acquisition activity in the region climbed 42 percent from the prior year and is on track to sustain that torrid pace.

As far as outflows to Australia are concerned, Japan has hardly been a slouch there either, with USD52.3 billion in direct investment in 2011. While Australia has understandably been focused on China the past few years, the Middle Kingdom’s direct investment in Australia is still dwarfed by Japan’s stake.

And now, Japanese companies are anxious to extend that ownership bond toward Asia’s emerging markets. Indeed, some Japanese management teams believe Australian firms would make natural partners in establishing an enduring presence in emerging Asia. The question is whether Australian firms possess the strategic vision as well as the wherewithal to explore such joint ventures. Should they do so, then the Australian growth story could eventually become about more than just resources.

Source  http://www.investingdaily.com/15764/australias-opportunity-in-emerging-asia

Google Uses Canadian Research to Illustrate Flaws in Antitrust Laws Worldwide

A technological war is being transformed into a legal battle in the case of Google in Europe and in the US.

Google must defend itself against charges that it has abused its dominant market position to the detriment of users, who spend 3.4% of their Internet time using search engines. According to Marie-Josée Loiselle, associate researcher at the Montreal Economic Institute, the case of Google and the upcoming nomination of a new Commissioner at the Competition Bureau of Canada offer an opportunity to take stock of what Google describes as "certain flaws in antitrust laws."

In an economic note titled Flawed Competition Laws: the Case of Google published this week with the MEI, Ms. Loiselle explains that competition is not reducible to a list of companies or their market shares. It is rather the number of potential competitors that counts. In the highly coveted high tech sector, there is "no shortage of pretenders to the throne," as Google puts it.

“The application of competition laws to the high tech sector is particularly delicate, especially because of the speed at which the sector evolves. A company can have a quasi-monopoly one moment, and a few short years later be displaced by a new technology. That’s what happened to IBM with personal computers, and to Sony and its Walkman, and more recently to the MySpace networking site. I don’t think we should penalize a company because it revolutionizes the market and gets consumers to flock to its new product,” says the report's author.

Google continues the argument:

Furthermore, cases of “regulatory capture” can occur when less efficient industry players try to fight a dominant company using the legal system instead of doing so by reducing their prices or offering better products. This has the consequence of distracting the company from its innovative activities since it must pay out large sums of money to defend itself before the courts. At the end of the day, the real losers from such a slowdown in innovation are consumers.

Google has been feeling the heat from several countries, most notably the US, in recent years due to the incredible wealth of information and power it holds being the world's most ubiquitous internet search engine.

Source  http://www.techvibes.com/blog/google-points-to-canadian-research-to-illustrate-flaws-in-antitrust-laws-worldwide-2012-09-25

Obama uses rallies, speech to woo votes, helpers

President Barack Obama's campaign rallies in battleground states aren't just about winning hearts and minds. They're also about something more practical — courting voters and volunteers.

For more than a year, Obama has used appearances that draw thousands of people to focus on the nuts and bolts of campaigning. That means registering new voters and getting them to the polls — and persuading them to tell others to do the same.

That effort was supposed to have reached a pinnacle Thursday with Obama accepting his party's presidential nomination before a crowd of 74,000 at an outdoor stadium near the Democratic convention site. It would have been by far his biggest crowd of this campaign as the president seeks to build a massive get-out-the-vote operation ahead of the Nov. 6 election. But warnings of severe weather forced Obama to scrap those plans.

Instead, he will speak to a crowd of mostly delegates and the media in the much smaller Time Warner Cable Arena. And, tied to his address, his campaign will step up its get-out-the-vote efforts in battleground states.

From Nevada to Virginia to Florida, Obama and fellow Democrats have consistently been outspent on the airwaves by Mitt Romney and his GOP allies. So Obama has been trying to leverage a longstanding edge in people power — volunteers and neighborhood-by-neighborhood advocates who formed the base of a grass-roots organization that carried him to victory in 2008. He has sought to keep that group active since then and build upon it by collecting a trove of voter data, including email addresses and cellphone numbers.

"We might be outspent in this election, but we are absolutely not going to be out-organized," Jen O'Malley-Dillon, Obama's deputy campaign manager, told the Iowa delegation this week.

Four years ago, Obama was able to win partly because he had both the financial and the organizational advantage.

But, mindful of the possibility that Republicans could outspend him, Obama has redoubled his efforts to motivate supporters and persuade others to come together to form the foundation of his campaign.

In recent weeks, Obama has visited several college towns, including Ames, Iowa, Fort Collins, Colo., and Charlottesville, Va., in an effort to register students in their college dorms as they were returning to school.

"Take out your cellphone, put it in the air," ordered Sarah Andrews, a student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in the moments before Obama took the stage at a rally Sunday. Andrews, a campaign volunteer, instructed her classmates to text the word "vote" to 62262 for voting details and other information. "We need to organize door by door, dorm room by dorm room, community by community."

Obama, who was a community organizer who led a voter registration drive in Chicago in 1992, has been making specific appeals lately to supporters at rallies.

In Urbandale, Iowa, on Saturday, Obama urged supporters to go to www.GottaRegister.com to ensure they were registered to vote.

"It's not "got to," it is "gotta" — g-o-t-t-a register.com," Obama said.

He capped his pitch by reminding Iowans that early voting begins in the state Sept. 27.

"In Iowa, you don't have to wait until Nov. 6 to vote," he said. "I'm counting on you. And I need your help."

As he accepts the nomination Thursday, the campaign plans to host several thousand viewing parties, asking volunteers in battleground states and those that border them to bring along people who haven't been involved in the campaign or remain uncertain about supporting Obama. Many of the watch parties will be preceded by door-to-door neighborhood canvassing of voters and staffing phone banks aimed at drumming up support for Obama's re-election. The campaign also plans to conduct college-campus voter registration drives tied to Thursday's speech.

In the Denver suburbs, volunteers will walk door to door to spread Obama's message in the hours before the president takes the stage and then gather at homes to watch the speech in small groups.

Obama loyalists also planned to watch the speech in Google hangouts and in places like the Park Road Bar and Grill in Painesville, Ohio, outside Cleveland, the Horizon Bay retirement home in Tamarac, Fla., and Buzz BBQ in Las Vegas.

The president's speech will be streamed online, where the campaign will push voter registration. Supporters will use social media to remind their friends to watch Obama's address, posting appeals on behalf of the president in Facebook status lines and in their Twitter feeds. The campaign will encourage supporters to send text messages in order to receive voting information or ask for donations by text.

Both Obama and Romney are accepting small-dollar contributions, with the charges appearing on the user's phone bill. Supporters can give a maximum of $200 via text per election cycle.

This week, the campaign also tried to make the most of Tuesday's keynote speech by San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, holding watch parties in Latino households and streaming the speech online in Spanish as a way to attract more attention in states like Colorado, Nevada and Florida, where success could hinge on the support of Latino voters. Obama's speech will be streamed online in Spanish as well.

In North Carolina, which Obama carried by fewer than 14,000 votes in 2008, Democrats hope to use the convention site as a catalyst for the fall. Democrats have added about 40,000 voters since January, but the big gains in the state have been among unaffiliated voters, which have grown by more than 100,000 this year, according to records maintained by the North Carolina Board of Elections. Democrats hold an advantage of about 750,000 registered voters over Republicans, but many Democrats are conservative ticket-splitters who back Republicans in presidential races.

Obama used his convention in a similar fashion in 2008, when his campaign registered voters in Colorado and urged tens of thousands of supporters at Denver's Invesco Field to send a text message to the campaign to receive more information. In Colorado, the party added more than 175,000 registered Democrats to the state's voting rolls between January 2008 and Election Day.

Obama easily carried Colorado against John McCain in 2008.

Source  http://www.wpri.com/dpp/onpolitix/barack_obama/Obama-uses-rallies-speech-to-woo-votes-helpers_87304184

Campaign trips abroad by Obama, Romney a study in contrasts

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is here to begin his seven-day, three-country foreign trip, a trip that is different in scope and focus from his rival's trip four years ago.

President Obama, then a senator, visited eight countries -- Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, England and France -- over eight days.  

Romney’s doing a much smaller tour over one week, focusing on England, Israel and Poland.  John McCain stopped by Jordan, France, England and Israel in 2008, when he was the Republican running for president.

These trips, typical for a nominee in election year, take the candidate off their domestic campaigning but showcase their reception and leadership on the world stage.

Obama in 2008 and Romney this year each picked late July to travel, while McCain's trip was much earlier in the year, in March just after he had clinched enough delegates to win the nomination.  

Romney is looking to home in on strong U.S. allies, kicking off with an emphasis on the so-called “special” relationship with Britain. He’ll also attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics and meet with athletes, which political observers expect to be a moment to highlight his leadership and work running the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. 

The presumptive Republican nominee prefaced the trip with a speech in Nevada at a conference of the VFW, saying, “I am not ashamed of American power. I take pride that throughout history our power has brought justice where there was tyranny, peace where there was conflict and hope where there was affliction and despair.”  He was making an apparent reference to Obama’s 2009 foreign trip, which critics dubbed as an “apology tour” of American strength.  

Romney starts his day Thursday meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron, Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

He then heads to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, the leader of the opposition party and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Romney has been friends with Netanyahu since the 1970s, when both were in Boston and recruited by the same consulting firm.

Iran is expected to be the main issue the two will talk about, and the Obama campaign in particular will be watching to see if Romney definitively calls for any military action. Netanyahu's and Obama's relationship has been somewhat tenser, so this could be a chance for Romney to appear a stronger ally to Israel.  

Netanyahu was cautious about wading into American politics, telling Fox News on Sunday, “I will receive Mitt Romney with the same openness that I received another presidential candidate, then-Senator Barack Obama, when he came almost four years ago, almost the same time in the campaign, to Israel.”

The prime minister has asserted Israel's right to pursue military action to handle Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and Romney has said he doesn’t think Obama has done enough to back Israel's right to defend itself. In December at a GOP debate, Romney said, “I'd get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say, ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do’?”

Romney will give remarks in Israel before heading to Poland, where he’ll also give a speech.  Those are the only two formal remarks expected.

In contrast, Obama gave a major speech titled “A World That Stands as One” in Germany to 200,000 cheering people in front of the Victory Column in Berlin's Tiergarten Park. He also gave several press conferences on his foreign swing and interviews with all three major broadcast networks, who flew out to sit down with him.

Romney will also do some interviews but will not be giving any press conferences.

Obama was criticized for the length of his trip, with some saying he was running for president of the world instead of the United States. He started his trip visiting troops and commanders in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq and benefited from Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki endorsing his Iraqi troop withdrawal plan ahead of his trip. Of course, the trip came while the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were still a front-and-center political issue, while now the campaign is mostly about the economy. 

Romney will round out his trip in Poland, visiting the historic port city of Gdansk and then to Warsaw. He’s expected to highlight Poland as an example of economic and Democratic values. It also can’t be overlooked that making Poland a star is setting up Romney’s positioning and comparison to Russia, which Romney once called the United States’ biggest foe.

Romney is not expected to make any major policy announcements on this tour and will stick to focusing on listening to other world leaders.

He’s also holding fundraisers in London and Jerusalem. Obama did not raise cash on his trip, but the Romney campaign was quick to point out Obama still used his foreign trip as a tool to ask for cash, asking for donations online after his Berlin speech.

Read more: http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2012/07/25/campaign-trips-abroad-obama-romney-study-contrasts#ixzz21hNbHlVp

Obama Defends Record in Florida Visit Article Comments (4) Washington Wire HOME PAGE »

President Barack Obama wrapped up a two-day campaign swing Tuesday night by setting the stakes of the November election in dramatic terms for voters in the nation’s largest battleground state.

Mr. Obama told a packed, and raucous, house in the Jackie Gleason Theater that the next president and Congress will face a set of economic decisions that will impact the country for at least another generation.

Mr. Obama also delivered, as he did in every speech through four states, a lengthy defense of his record, including his controversial health-care reform law. In doing so he challenged his audiences, saying whether these accomplishments are maintained depends on them.

“I believe health reform was the right thing to do,” Mr. Obama said Tuesday, just days before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the signature achievement of his first term. “That’s what I believe, but it’s up to you. You decide.”

The president’s trek hauled in an estimated $5 million for his re-election campaign. Every stop he made except one, a rally in New Hampshire, was a fundraiser.

The trip as a whole showed the president has no intention of backing down from attacks on presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s tenure at the private-equity firm Bain Capital. Mr. Obama, who has come under criticism from some members of his own party for such attacks, used Mr. Romney’s Bain experience – in particular reports that he oversaw deals that shipped jobs overseas – as a launch-pad into what he says is the former Massachusetts’ governor’s economic vision.

That vision, as summed up by Mr. Obama, is essentially a two-point plan: roll back regulations and extend Bush-era tax cuts on top of a new $5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy.

“So when Mr. Romney says he’s some financial wizard who can fix our economy, that’s how he intends to do it,” Mr. Obama said.

The Romney campaign disputes Mr. Obama’s characterization of Mr. Romney’s economic plan, of course, as well as reports that the former governor had a hand in shipping American jobs overseas.

Mr. Obama’s Romney attacks engaged his crowds, but several themes were consistently his biggest applause lines. They offer a glimpse of what pieces of Mr. Obama’s record Democratic audiences may find most appealing heading into November.

Women: By far his biggest applause line was when a reference to women’s health. “You can decide whether we should restrict access to birth control or de-fund Planned Parenthood, or we can make a decision that in this country, women control their own health choices,” Mr. Obama said, eliciting a standing ovation in Boston.

Declaring his candidacy: A close runner up. Any time Mr. Obama said “and that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States” – and he said it repeatedly – the audience got on its feet.

Don’t ask don’t tell: The president’s mention of his effort to end the policy that banned gays and lesbians from serving in the military riled up the base. But he steered clear of spotlighting his support for gay marriage.

Ending the wars: “My opponent thinks that it is tragic that I ended the war in Iraq the way I did,” Mr. Obama told donors in Weston, Mass. And in Boston he said, “You can decide whether we keep our brave men and women in Afghanistan indefinitely, as Mr. Romney proposes, or whether we stick to the timeline that I established that allows us to finally bring our troops home.”

The speech in Miami wrapped up a day of political bickering between the Obama and Romney teams over the president’s ribbing Bostonians about a trade from their Red Sox to his beloved White Sox, Mr. Obama seemed to hit the right note in congratulating the Miami Heat for winning the championship.

Except it sounded a lot like he said “Miami Heats.”

Source  http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/06/26/obama-ends-campaign-swing-in-packed-florida-theater/

Obama's global rankings down a bit

President Obama still gets high ratings from most other countries -- certainly higher that predecessor George W. Bush -- but Obama's rankings have slipped over the past three years, says a new survey of 21 nations.

"Europeans and Japanese remain largely confident in Obama, albeit somewhat less so than in 2009, while Muslim publics remain largely critical," reports the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project.

"A similar pattern characterizes overall ratings for the U.S." as a whole, the report says. "In the EU and Japan, views are still positive, but the U.S. remains unpopular in nations such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan."

The story is a little bit different in China, where confidence in Obama has declined by 24% and approval of his policies has fallen 30 points.

"Mexicans have also soured on his policies, and many fewer express confidence in him today," reports Pew.

Source http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/06/obamas-global-rankings-down-a-bit/1#.T9lYmlJlO1s

President Obama Presses Congress on Student Loan Interest

Student loans and the interest millions of Americans pay on them have been getting a lot of attention recently. Student loan payments and interest are a financial reality for men and women in many different kinds of jobs across the United States.

The Department of Education says interest rates for Direct Subsidized Student Loans will double to just under seven percent on July first. Five years ago, Congress passed a measure that lowered interest rates for the government loans. But the law is set to expire.

The president has called for the lower, three point four percent interest rate in his new budget. But if Congress does not act, new student borrowers will pay more. Other borrowing-related costs will also go up. The Obama administration says this will cost each student borrower an additional one thousand dollars on average.

Higher education in the United States is costly. The Department of Education says the average yearly cost of attending a public college was about twelve thousand eight hundred dollars in twenty ten. The total for private schools was over thirty-two thousand.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York collects financial information. It says Americans owed eight hundred forty-five billion dollars in student loans last year. Some reports say the amount is now near one trillion dollars.

The administration says seven point four million students will be affected without a new law. This week, President Obama traveled to several college campuses. At the University of North Carolina, he talked about his own experience.

BARACK OBAMA: “We didn’t come from wealthy families.  So when we graduated from college and law school, we had a mountain of debt. When we married, we got poor together.”

Supporters of low student loan interest rates have promised a campaign to get new legislation. An extension is estimated to cost the government six billion dollars. Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s likely presidential candidate, supports an extension. Republican leaders in the House of Representatives say they like the popular program. They just differ on how to pay for it. Republicans want the money to come from the new health care reform law.

The Democratic Party has proposed increasing taxes on some businesses, including oil and gas companies. Last Tuesday, President Obama put his argument to music on a late-night television program.
BARACK OBAMA: (Music Under) "Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people.”

Source http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/business/President-Obama-Presses-Congress-on-Student-Loan-Interest-149158575.html

President Obama, family attend worship service at historic church near White House

resident Barack Obama attended service at a historic church that is steps away from the White House and often frequented by sitting presidents.

Obama was accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and daughter, Sasha, on the cloudy, brisk morning as they walked through Lafayette Square to St. John’s Episcopal Church.

The service included scripture readings from Numbers 21, Ephesians 2, John 3 and the singing of “Amazing Grace.”

The visiting pastor, Rev. Thomas Reid Ward, Jr., reflected on the words of the popular hymn written by John Newton, and told the congregation that God’s grace instills faith and courage.

“All we have to do is believe,” he said.

The Obamas participated in the audience welcome of greeting pew neighbors and in holy communion before walking back to the executive mansion.

Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/president-obama-family-attend-worship-service-at-historic-church-near-white-house/2012/03/18/gIQAdswqKS_story.html

Obama on Super Bowl Sunday: ‘I deserve a second term’

President Obama said Sunday that he deserves to be reelected because his administration has made progress on the economy, but he acknowledged there is much more work to do.

“I deserve a second term, but we’re not done,” Obama said during a

President Obama talks about the economy during an event at Fire Station #5 in Arlington, Va., Friday. Fire Station No. 5 was one of the first stations to respond to the Sept. 11, 2001 attack at the Pentagon. (Susan Walsh - AP) pre-Super Bowl interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer.

Lauer had asked Obama about an interview they did before the 2009 Super Bowl, when Obama had said that if the economy was not fixed in three years he did not deserve another term.

“When you and I sat down, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. . . now we’re creating 250,000 jobs,” Obama said, referring to Friday’s jobs report which showed unemployment falling from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent. “We’ve made progress. The key now is to make sure we don’t start turning in the wrong direction.”

Obama also addressed escalating concerns about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, after Israeli leaders warned last week of possible airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites.

Obama said he does not believe Israel “has made a decision on” taking military action to stop the Iranian threat.

“They, like us, believe Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program,”Obama said.

He defended his administration’s approach of applying pressure through multilateral economic sanctions, saying Iran is “feeling the pinch.”

As he has said before, Obama said all options remain on the table, but he added that “obviously any additional military activities inside the Gulf would be disruptive. Our preferred solution is diplomatic. We will do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and creating an arms race in that volatile region.”

During a lighter moment in the interview, Obama declined repeatedly to predict who would win the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and New York Giants.

Lauer noted that when New England won the Super Bowl in 2004, incumbent president George W. Bush was re-elected, but when the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl in 2008, Obama won the White House.

Obama still wouldn’t bite. “I’m just looking for a good game,” he said with a chuckle.

Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-on-super-bowl-sunday-i-deserve-a-second-term/2012/02/05/gIQA9elMsQ_blog.html?tid=pm_politics_pop