Obama extends best wishes for Rosh Hashanah

From: http://content.usatoday.com/


President Obama has taped a special message for the Jewish holidays, including renewed hope for Middle East peace talks.

A transcript:

As Jews in America and around the world celebrate the first of the High Holy Days I want to extend my warmest wishes for the New Year. L'shana Tova Tikatevu -- may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.

Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the spiritual calendar and the birth of the world. It serves as a reminder of the special relationship between God and his children, now and always. And it calls us to look within ourselves -- to repent for our sins; recommit ourselves to prayer; and remember the blessings that come from helping those in need.

Today, those lessons ring as true as they did thousands of years ago. And as we begin this New Year, it is more important than ever to believe in the power of humility and compassion to deepen our faith and repair our world.

At a time when too many of our friends and neighbors are struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, it is up to us to do what we can to help those less fortunate.

At a time when prejudice and oppression still exist in the shadows of our society, it is up to us to stand as a beacon of freedom and tolerance and embrace the diversity that has always made us stronger as a people.

And at a time when Israelis and Palestinians have returned to direct dialogue, it is up to us to encourage and support those who are willing to move beyond their differences and work towards security and peace in the Holy Land. Progress will not come easy, it will not come quick. But today we had an opportunity to move forward, toward the goal we share -- two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.

The scripture teaches us that there is "a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." In this season of repentance and renewal, let us commit ourselves to a more hopeful future.

Michelle and I wish all who celebrate Rosh Hashanah a sweet year full of health and prosperity.

(Posted by David Jackson)

President Obama's Historic First Female Helicopter Pilot

Maj. Jennifer Grieves Is the First Woman to Fly the President in Marine One Helicopter

By ALICE MAGGIN and SADIE BASS

From: http://abcnews.go.com/

Marine One pilot Maj. Jennifer Grieves lands Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on her...

Marine One pilot Maj. Jennifer Grieves lands Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on her last day in rotation as a pilot of Marine One, July 16, 2009, in Washington, D.C. She is the first female Marine One pilot, and her final Marine One crew was made up entirely of women. She was designated a helicopter aircraft commander of Marine One in May 2008.

(Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)

Maj. Jennifer Grieves is the first female helicopter aircraft commander in the history of Marine One, the HMX-1 helicopter the president of the United States flies on.

Like Air Force One, the presidential plane, it is only called Marine One when the president is aboard.

"It's not really about being a female," said Grieves, 38. "It's about being a Marine and about being part of an organization that is exceptional."

There are only five Marine pilots selected at any one time to fly the president and his family.

"Of course, it's nerve wracking to fly the president of the United States," she said. "I think my most stressful days are when I fly Sasha and Malia."

Marines take no chances when flying, even on the simplest of flights. They follow the exact same protocol for every flight, no matter who is on board.

But sometimes more daunting than the passengers is the South Lawn of the White House. There are no runways to land on -- just landing disks the Marines call pucks.

President Barack Obama salutes as he boards Marine One as he leaves the White House in Washington,...

President Barack Obama salutes as he boards Marine One as he leaves the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 16, 2009, for a trip to New Jersey and New York to deliver remarks to the NAACP during their 100th anniversary convention in New York City.

(Ron Edmonds/AP Photo)

"The pucks are very small that we have to land on, so it's certainly intimidating the first couple times you do it," Grieves said. "You have all the cameras on you."

Marine One has been landing on the South Lawn since 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower had to get back to the White House from Rhode Island in a hurry.

Grieves enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1990 -- almost 20 years ago. Growing up, she wanted to become a veterinarian, but once in the Marines, she was encouraged to go to college and then flight school. Grieves chose the Marine Corps because it had the most rigorous training program.

"It ended up being one of the best decisions I've ever made," she said.

Since May 2008, Grieves has traveled to seven countries, including Russia, Croatia and Great Britain, to assist the president. Most recently, she flew him in Italy.

"I went to Rome for the G-8," Grieves said. "We were there a couple weeks, and then we went directly from Rome to St. Louis so he could throw out the first pitch at the All-Star game. And then I flew my last flight the day I got back home.

"It's a very busy schedule," she added. "I would have to say I'd do it for free."

Grieves Flies With All-Female Crew

Grieves won't be earning her paycheck as a Marine One pilot any longer. Most Marine One pilots have the job for a year. She has been flying the president for the past 14 months and her last trip was this week.

To honor her, the Marines arranged for Grieves' last flight to have an all-female crew -- the first in history to ever fly the president.

"As far as the female crews go, I was so incredibly proud of both of them when we came and landed," she said. "Everything about [the flight] has probably made my Marine Corps career. And if I were to retire in six months, I would retire knowing that I've been part of an exceptional organization."

President Obama acknowledged the work she has done on behalf of her country. He came in to the cockpit of the helicopter and thanked her for her service. He also gave her a rare presidential coin.

"He told us that he was very proud of us -- and not in a condescending way, but as a military-members way, as a father-of-two-daughters way," she said. "And he just thanked us again, and it was a special moment for me."

Grieves may have been the president's pilot, but she's a Marine first.

"Obviously, meeting the president of the United States is an exceptional opportunity," she said. "But I think just being a Marine is far above that privilege."

Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures

Ted Nugent Threatens to Kill Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton During Vicious Onstage Rant

By Elizabeth Goodman:

Renegade right-winger Ted Nugent recently went on a vicious onstage rant in which he threatened the lives of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Decked out in full-on camouflage hunting gear, Nugent wielded two machine guns while raging, “Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary,” he continued. “You might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.” Nugent summed up his eloquent speech by screaming “freedom!”

This isn’t the first time Nugent has been caught spewing hatred. Last January, the guitarist caused a scandal for Republican Texas governor Rick Perry when he wore a Confederate flag shirt and insulted immigrants at Perry’s inauguration event. In July, Nugent was quoted in a Wall Street Journal story blaming “stoned, dirty, stinky hippies” for “rising rates of divorce, high school drop-outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes.”

Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Townhall Comparing Obama To Hitler

At a Barney Frank town hall meeting in Dartmouth, MA, a constituent asks, "Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?"

Frank responds: "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" He then calls her approach "vile, contemptible nonsense." He closes by saying: "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table."

Finally, a health care protester we all can get behind

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people's money."

—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

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• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees' Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor's visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor's Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

Tony Hawk Skates The White House

Tony Hawk Skates The Halls Of The White House / courtesy twitpic

We were following the twitter stream of @tonyhawk today and came across this twitpic of Tony doing a manual down the halls of the white house. It appears that Tony was at the White House today for Cnn’s First Fathers event. Apparantly Ashtun Kutcher sent this tweet to Tony which basically called him out to skateboard in the white house.

With the permission of the White House officials, Tony Hawk skated the grand foyer and the nearby Old Executive Office Building. Hawk also sent out a few other tweets from today like “The Prez addressing all of us fathers before we split up to visit DC charities,” and “D Wade & Etan T make me feel short.”

Ashton Kutcher dares Tony Hawk To Skateboard in the White House

Medical marijuana requests climb sky high

Dispensary owners report 50 to 300 percent rise since Obama took office

Request for medical marijuana are up from 50 to 300 percent this year over last, say dispensary owners.

View related photos

Peter Hilz / Redux Pictures

By Brian Alexander

Brian Alexander • E-mail

The number of ailing people turning to medical marijuana to ease their symptoms has spiked this year, say dispensary owners in some of the 13 states where it's legal.

Requests have jumped anywhere from 50 to 300 percent, they say, since President Barack Obama took office and signaled that he won’t use federal marijuana laws to override state laws as the Bush administration did. Others say the economic downturn may also be responsible as more people without insurance are seeking alternatives to costly medications.

In the past few months, marijuana co-ops, clubs, businesses and even lawyers who have advocated for looser dope regulations say they've been inundated with requests for information and certifications that permit people to use marijuana for medical purposes.

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“I have been flooded with calls,” reported Seattle attorney Douglas Hiatt, a long-time marijuana advocate. “It’s ‘Where can I find a doctor [to prescribe it]? How can I start a co-op?’ You wouldn’t believe it.”

Under the George W. Bush administration, federal authorities maintained that federal marijuana laws took precedence over state law, even in states that had approved therapeutic cannabis. But Obama indicated during the presidential campaign that he supported the controlled use of marijuana for medical purposes, saying he saw no difference between medical marijuana and other pain-control drugs.

“My attitude is if the science and the doctors suggest that the best palliative care and the way to relieve pain and suffering is medical marijuana, then that’s something I’m open to,” Obama said in November 2007 at a campaign stop in Audubon, Iowa. “There’s no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief from pain.”

Video Inside one cannabis dispensary Al Roker takes an in-depth look at the nation's most used illicit drug. Here, Al visits California's "Farmacy," which is one of the state's many distributors of medical marijuana. Doc Block

In February, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to limit Drug Enforcement Administration raids of prescription cannabis dispensaries to those businesses and organizations that break both state as well as federal laws.

“Our focus will be on people, organizations that are growing, cultivating substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that’s inconsistent with federal and state law,” he said.

300 percent increase
Hard numbers and state-to-state, year-over-year sales comparisons are difficult to come by because state laws vary and because some states are still creating their programs; New Mexico expects to license its first legal marijuana producer this month. But the state of Colorado has tracked registered medical marijuana users since implementing its law on June 1, 2001. As of the end of 2008, there were 4,720 applications received, almost all of which had been approved. But as of February 28 of this year, that number stood at 6,796, an increase of 2,076 in just two months.

“I have had a 300 percent rise at my business,” reported the owner of Colorado’s Boulder County Caregivers, a marijuana dispensary. (She asked not to be named since she also works in local government.)

Medical marijuana Thirteen states allow the sale, distribution and use of marijuana for limited medical purposes: • Alaska • California • Colorado • Hawaii • Maine • Michigan • Montana • Nevada • New Mexico • Oregon • Rhode Island • Vermont • Washington

Her numbers are rising despite obstacles that remain in the path of those seeking access. For example, many doctors are reluctant to authorize their patients to use marijuana either because its efficacy has not been proven in rigorous trials, shown to be superior to other drugs, or because they themselves fear risking their own federal license to prescribe medications like opiate pain killers if they are seen to be defying federal drug law.

“I have legitimate cancer patients who cannot get a doctor to sign,” the Boulder dispensary owner said. “Their doctor will say ‘Talk to your oncologist,’ and the oncologist will say ‘Talk to your other doctor.’ So I see the same doctors’ names over and over. Patient records show the same two clinics because so many go there since their own doctors will not do it for fear of federal retribution.”

Some organizations leap this hurdle by providing their own doctors.

“I have 12 doctors working with us right now,” said Paul Stanford, director of The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, based in Portland, Ore. THCF has started clinics in eight states, often by bringing along one of its own paid doctors who happens to be licensed in that state.

Interactive map Medical marijuana laws in the U.S. See which states allow patients with qualifying diseases to possess and cultivate cannabis. msnbc.com

Stanford claimed his clinics are booming, too, with about 50 percent more calls and patient certifications than before the new administration took office.

In addition to the Obama administration's position on medical marijuana, demographics may also be a co-factor in the overall rise. Many people born after World War II have had at least some exposure to marijuana, and now that the government has indicated it will be more lenient, might be more inclined to turn to the party drug of their youth to ease the maladies of age. Few people under 65, “are truly naïve to cannabis,” suggested Dr. Frank Lucido, an Oakland, Calif., physician who has long been a leader in California’s medical marijuana community.

Economy may be playing role
Lucido has seen an increase in patients, too, but a slight one, a much smaller bump than he would have expected. It’s possible, he speculated, that because so many dispensaries have opened in California, some offering quickie — and often dubious — medical exams to certify patient need, that the total number of medical marijuana consumers has boomed, but that many are avoiding more stringent practitioners like himself. (While the state of California tracks the number of medical marijuana identification cards issued each year that allow patients to purchase from dispensaries, no numbers are out yet for 2009.)

One final possibility for the increase in numbers is economic. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that at least 45 million Americans under age 65 are now without health insurance.

As the number of medical marijuana outlets expands, and fear of federal drug charges diminishes, some of those people, faced with paying out of pocket for pharmaceutical drugs or for cannabis, “will turn to medicine that is good for a whole bunch of ailments, that you can grow yourself and not spend a tremendous amount of money on,” Hiatt said. “That’s very appealing to lots of people.”

Obama Meets Privately With the Dead

By Mary Ann Akers

Musicians Phil Lesh and Bob Weir of the band The Dead perform in NYC, March 30, 2009. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images )

The surviving (and formerly feuding) members of the Grateful Dead had a secret impromptu meeting Monday evening with the man they credit with reuniting them: President Obama.

The president welcomed all the members of The Dead, who are performing tonight at the Verizon Center in Washington, to the Oval Office just before dinner last night. They didn't talk music as much as they did history - history about the Oval Office, and the president's desk.

Apparently the band was quite taken with how tidy the president keeps his desk. And how down-to-earth he seemed, according a source who was there.

"The president was so gracious. Really, really nice and so welcoming. It hit you: you're in the Oval Office, but it was so normal," the source told us.

The entourage included the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead - Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann - plus keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (from Weir's Ratdog) and Warren Haynes, who is joining the Dead on their 2009 spring tour as lead vocalist and guitarist. Some of them had their wives in tow.

As if chatting with the president in the Oval Office weren't cool enough, something remarkable happened on their way out. Just outside the Oval Office, Phil and his wife, Jill Lesh, spotted a vase full of Scarlet Begonias sitting on a table.

For the uninitiated, "Scarlet Begonias" is one of the late Grateful Dead band leader Jerry Garcia's most famous songs. (Check out a youthful looking Jerry Garcia singing "Scarlet Begonias" in this 1977 video, and be sure you have a tissue.)

After admiring the Scarlet Begonias, the band went next door to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to meet with the most prominent Deadheads in the Obama White House: senior advisors David Axelrod and Pete Rouse, and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina. All three are planning to go to tonight's one and only Dead show in Washington, we're told.

After leaving the White House, the members of the Dead - none of whom, surprisingly, wore tie-dyed t-shirts to the Oval Office - walked over to their favorite Washington restaurant, the Old Ebbitt Grill, for dinner.

Given that the Dead sparked the "Deadheads for Obama" movement when they reunited during the 2008 presidential campaign to play a fundraiser for Obama, we expect to see plenty of happy Deadheads at the show. We'll give you a full update, so check back.

New bill would give president power to halt Internet traffic

Greg Fulton Published: Monday April 13, 2009

A recently proposed but little-noticed Senate bill would allow the federal government to shut down the Internet in times of declared emergency, and enables unprecedented federal oversight of private network administration.

The bill's draft states that "the president may order a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic" and would give the government ongoing access to "all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access."

Authored by Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 seeks to create a Cybersecurity Czar to centralize power now held by the Pentagon, National Security Agency, Department of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security.

While the White House has not officially endorsed the draft, it did have a hand in its language, according to The Washington Post.

Proponents of the measure stress the need to centralize cybersecurity of the private sector. "People say this is a military or intelligence concern," says Rockefeller, "but it is a lot more than that. It suddenly gets into the realm of traffic lights and rail networks and water and electricity."

Snowe added, "America's vulnerability to massive cyber-crime, global cyber-espionage and cyber-attacks has emerged as one of the most urgent national security problems facing our country today. Importantly, this legislation loosely parallels the recommendations in the CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies] blue-ribbon panel report to President Obama and has been embraced by a number of industry and government thought leaders."

Critics decry the broad language, and are watchful for amendments to the bill seeking to refine the provisions. According to opencongress.com, no amendments to the draft have been submitted.

Organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology fear if passed in its current form, the proposal leaves too much discretion of just what defines critical infrastructure. The bill would also impose mandates for designated private networks and systems, including standardized security software, testing, licensing and certification of cyber-security professionals.

"I'd be very surprised if it doesn't include communications systems, which are certainly critical infrastructure," CDT General Counsel Greg Nojeim told eWEEK. "The president would decide not only what is critical infrastructure but also what is an emergency."

Adds Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "Essentially, the Act would federalize critical infrastructure security. Since many systems (banks, telecommunications, energy)are in the hands of the private sector, the bill would create a major shift of power away from users and companies to the federal government."

Barack Obama to celebrate first presidential Seder

BY Kenneth R. Bazinet and Michael Mcauliff

WASHINGTON, D.C. - There's a new reason Thursday night will be different from all other nights: Barack Obama is attending what's believed to be the first presidential Seder in the White House.

Administration staffers could find examples of Passover feasts at the White House before, but never one with the President himself honoring the holiday that celebrates the Jews' biblical escape from bondage in Egypt.

Passover meals were held in the Clinton White House, for example, but the commander-in-chief was not involved.

"This certifies the resonance of this ancient narrative and its relevance to all of us," said Jason Isaacson, the American Jewish Committee's Washington director. "It's a story of liberation from bondage, it's a story of people who persevere, it's a story of God's presence in our lives."

The White House provided no details of what insiders said will be a small, private event like one Obama did a year ago while he was still battling Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

"This Seder will be very similar to - and mark the anniversary of - the Seder held last year in Harrisburg, Pa., by campaign staff, and attended by the President and a few of his friends," said an administration official.

It will be led by Eric Lesser, a campaign aide who is now David Axelrod's assistant and who assembled last year's Seder.

That celebration turned out to be prophetic in its own way.

Participants jokingly added the line "next year in the White House!" after the traditional closing line, "next year in Jerusalem."

mmcauliff@nydailynews.com

Obama's Gift to British PM Ruined by DVD Zone Restrictions

Jason Mick (Blog)

The DVD zones from around the world are seen here. Many players will not play "out of zone" DVDs as President Barack Obama and Britsh PM Gordon Brown discovered in a humorous botched gifting. Britain is in Zone 2, while the U.S. is in Zone 1. (Source: Flickr)

Here's some classic American movies... psych!

President Barack Obama hasn't just been working hard to right the American automotive ship, he's also been looking to foster better international relations, meeting with PMs and Presidents of many nations. However, on one of those recent meetings he made a humorous technical snafu, that's something most of us can relate to.

Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, paid President Obama a visit, and as a gracious gesture, President Obama gave him a gift set of 25 classic American movies, including the timeless thriller "Psycho."

Arriving back home, PM Brown settled in to watch "Psycho" only to receive a far greater horror than the movie itself could bring -- none of his DVDs would play, due to zone restrictions. While saddened and shocked, the PM maintains that American and Britain still have a "special partnership".

PM Brown presented President Obama with a working gift, a penholder carved from the timbers of an anti-slavery ship. The ship was the sister ship of the one that was broken up and the timber used to form the current desk at the Oval Office.

While the DVD mistake is no big deal, obviously, it serves a humorous reminder at the frustrations caused by industry that insists on using region coding as a means of fighting piracy. Many argue that such restrictions do little to stop actual pirates, and instead merely hinder cultural exchange, by making it harder to play foreign movies and TV programs.

Everyone Gets a Bonus from Obama's Net Neutrality Plan

Timothy Karr: Campaign Director, Free Press and SaveTheInternet.com

Buried deep in President Barack Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is a line that should bring a smile to your face -- and a scowl to phone and cable industry lobbyists.

It requires that billions of dollars directed to connect more Americans to broadband be spent on services that meet "nondiscrimination and network interconnection obligations."

What this really means is the good guys have won one battle in the fight for an open Internet. According to Obama's plan, government must now require that the $4.7 billion in federal grants for high-speed services be spent the right way: building networks that abide by Net Neutrality.

In other words, this money -- your money -- cannot be used by powerful companies like AT&T and Comcast to implement plans to "manage," filter or re-route you whenever you traverse the Web.

They have been angling to do so since it became clear that people wanted to use the Internet for more than simple email, ecommerce and search.

No Blank Checks

The good news is that this stimulus money isn't going to be a blank check to big phone and cable. It comes with strings attached, requiring that all networks built with our money leave control over the Internet in the hands of the people who use it every day -- people like you and me.

AT&T and Verizon can't use our money to invest in content filtering tools similar to the Deep Packet Inspection software now being used by China and Burma to sift through Web traffic. Comcast and Cox Cable can't block file-sharing software or other popular and legal Web applications. None of them can use taxpayer funds to decide how and when we watch videos, from whom we purchase goods and services, and where we can or cannot go online.

The only bonus being handed out here is Net Neutrality, a benefit for the millions of Americans who rely daily upon the Internet to improve their economic status, better educate their children, connect with friends and family, and participate more fully in our democracy.

A Bid to Undercut Neutrality

But get this: Just as Washington is deciding how to spend your tax dollars on an open Internet, phone and cable company lobbyists are trying to water down the Net Neutrality requirements, and stamp out consumer choice.

They came out into the open during a public meeting Monday in Washington.

"The idea that we should lay additional and unknown regulations on top of the task of the people getting this grant money is, I think, troubling at best," said Jonathan Banks of the U.S. Telecom Association during a meeting at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

James Assey, of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said that Net Neutrality requirements could create "uncertainty" in the marketplace. Chris Guttman-McCabe, speaking on behalf of the largest wireless carriers, said openness rules take away from the central focus of the stimulus package, which is "creating the most jobs and helping reverse the recession."

The Internet's Bedrock Principle

Such misleading statements are designed to make people think its in everybody's interest to hand over control of the Internet to the same companies that pay the salaries of these three lobbyists.

But what Banks, Assey and Guttman-McCabe failed to note is that Net Neutrality rules have always governed their profitable clients, such as when AT&T agreed to run a neutral network as a condition of its merger with BellSouth in 2007; or in 2008 when the FCC decided to sanction Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer protocols such as BitTorrent.

The only "uncertainty" in this marketplace would result from giving mighty network providers new powers to fiddle with our content. To do so would undercut the level playing field that has always made the Internet a great engine for free speech and commerce.

Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott just delivered 15,000 letters to the administration demanding that this basic freedom -- the right to connect to anyone, anywhere -- remains the bedrock principle of any new networks built with federal funds.

The voices of Internet users are clear and unequivocal on this, Scott told the agencies in charge of distributing the Internet stimulus. If you want to use our billions, we need to know that we're getting online freedom in exchange.

President Obama - Full Interview Jay Leno 3/19/09

Obama:"Its Like American Idol But Everybody is Simon Cowell"

Views: 86,993 The President sits down with Jay and talks about politics, the economy and adjusting to his new lifestyle

President Obama Explains His Bracketology

President Obama fills out his March Madness bracket for ESPN. The President trashes the Pac 10, says he's a "little concerned" about Tyson Lawson's toe, and likes Syracuse to upset Oklahoma. The President has Memphis, Louisville, UNC, and Pittsburgh in his Final Four with UNC winning it all

"Dear President Obama": The President Reads 10 Letters a Day from the Public

Jake Tapper is ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent based in the network's Washington bureau. He writes about politics and popular culture and covers a range of national stories.

February 23, 2009 7:15 AM

The letter to President Obama came from a woman in Arizona whose husband lost his job. He was able to find work, but the new gig came with one-third the pay; the family is struggling to make their mortgage payments.

The letter from the Arizona woman illustrated a policy conundrum, recalled senior adviser David Axelrod. President Obama read it, and absorbed the lesson.

"She said they had made all their mortgage payments, but were running out of money," Axelrod said. "And they were told they could not renegotiate unless they were delinquent in their payments."

Before President Obama's housing speech last week, he'd made copies of his letter and "sent it to his financial team and said, 'This is the kind of person our housing plan should help," Axelrod recalled.

The president had other copies made of that letter. He had it distributed to staff on Air Force One.

"He had been struck by how powerful the story was," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "He wanted us as we were creating policy to make sure that we were listening and hearing these examples as well."

Every day President Barack Obama is handed a special purple folder. The folder contains ten letters, and every day President Obama takes time to read them.

Are they from world leaders? From members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Members of the intelligence community?

No, these letters have been culled from the thousands the White House Correspondence Office receives each day from Americans who have taken the time to sit down and write to their president.

"They help him focus on the real problems people are facing," says Axelrod. "He really a absorbs these letters, and often shares then with us."

In his first week in office, President Obama requested that he see 10 letters a day "representative of people's concerns, from people writing into the president," recalls Gibbs, "to help get him outside of the bubble, to get more than just the information you get as an elected official."

Says Axelrod, "he did it because his greatest concern is getting isolated in the White House, away from the experiences of the American people...The letters impact him greatly."

Some recent examples, according to aides, include a letter from a businessman who owns a manufacturing company and says he finds it very difficult to lay off employees who have done nothing wrong. If things don't improve, the correspondent wrote, he'll have to lay off 10% of his workforce.

Another letter came from a divorced senior citizen raising a grandchild on a fixed income, including Social Security. She confessed to being depressed and scared.

A third came from a realtor who urged the president to do something about the large number of foreclosed properties. A fourth was a plea for help from an unemployed truck driver.

Monday through Friday the head of White House Correspondence delivers ten letters to be read by the President, choosing among letters that are broadly representative of the day’s news and issues; ones that are broadly representative of President’s intake of current mail, phone calls to the comment line, and faxes from citizens; and messages that are particularly compelling.

Some of these, maybe two or three each day, the President responds to in his own hand.

Gibbs says that before two different economic speeches, the President "pulled letters he has gotten and distributed them to staff, to understand what people were going through."

The vast majority of the calls coming into the White House, and over a third of the faxes have been on the stimulus package and the economy, so up to half of the letters the President sees are on that broad subject. Aides say that many of these correspondents also have other complications: bankruptcy due to health care, lost job, lost opportunities for their children.

A smaller number of the letters address other issues, such as the environment, health care, education, foreign affairs, or nuclear proliferation.

And a handful, usually no more than five a week, are from people who have a simple supportive message or inspirational story to tell.

The head of correspondence also includes letters to the President from smaller children who ask questions or give advice.

Sometimes the letters are include in the president's overnight briefing book.

As the President addresses the immense issues the nation and world face -- today the President will announce he's appointing an inspector general to head the transparency and accountability board to supervise the stimulus spending, and will host an fiscal responsibly summit; Tuesday he will address the economy before a joint sessions of Congress; Thursday he will present his budget -- the President's aides say these letters help the president stay in touch with real people and ignore the chatter here inside the DC bubble.

- jpt

(Photos by White House photographer Peter Souza)

Clinton Answers Obama’s Republican Critics

He may have had a rocky 2008, but when it comes to defending President Obama from GOP attacks, Bill Clinton hasn’t lost a step:

Key passage:

“He has reached across, and it takes two to tango. I find it amazing that Republicans, who doubled the debt of the country in eight years and produced no new jobs doing it — gave us an economic record that is totally bereft of any productive result — are now criticizing him for spending money. … This stimulus is our bridge over troubled waters. He did the right thing.”

George Bush's Obama Speech Doodles

Obama Promises Science-Centric, Eco-Friendly Presidency

By: Kit Eaton

President Obama's Inaugural speech included a clutch of promises and observations that will have scientists, medical researchers and environmentalists in the US and around the world breathing a sigh of relief.

"We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost," is Obama's key phrase, and it contains a multitude of subtle points.

"Rightful place" is at first a dig at George W. Bush's sidelining of scientific thinking during his two presidential terms. It's no secret that Bush's personal beliefs pushed many science issues into the background, and Obama's words suggest he holds science in higher regard for its role in our modern world. Wielding "technology's wonders" is immediately a powerful phrase underlining the benefits that science and technology can bring, and it is specifically referenced in terms of improving health care, rather than bringing economic success or just "new gadgets."

While Bush spoke of health care in both his inauguration addresses, it was in broad, political and economic terms: "We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance" came in the second, while "Government has great responsibilities for public safety and public health," in the first. Throughout his presidency "tricky" health care issues like high teenage pregnancy rates and stem cell research were dealt with from a decidedly moral, as opposed to scientific viewpoint. "From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth," is a line from Bush's second speech that underlines this--and explains why in 2006 he used the presidential veto to stop a bill that would've freed up more federal money for stem cell research.

In an interesting moment in 2005 Rep. Henry Waxman clashed very publicly with Bush's science adviser, accusing the administration of actually fudging its scientific models on climate and health care--and of underlining scientific "uncertainty" to quash research and laws with results or intents counter to Bush policies.

Climate issues were downplayed often during Bush's early years in power, and in 2002 when the EPA surprised the administration by issuing a report that supported theories that global warming had a significant human component, Bush dismissed it thus:
"I read the report put out by the bureaucracy."

President Obama, on the other hand, made a direct reference to climate issues in his speech, and gave tacit support to the theory global warming is man made: "we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the spectre of a warming planet." That neatly tied global war catastrophes to the environment too.

Obama also promised to actually respond to the issue of climate change: "We will harness the Sun and the winds and soil to fuel our cars and run our factories," is a guarantee that more environmentally-friendly policies will be coming out of the White House, particularly in terms of alternative energy sources. It's impossible to "consume the world's resources without regard to effect," he noted, going on to suggest that "the world has changed, and we must change with it."

It sounds very much like the winds of change are blowing through the corridors of power in Washington, and bringing new regard for science, medicine, and the environment along with them.

[via New Scientist, image: Getty]