Political Battle over MEDICARE

Both Obama and his political opponent Romney are battling over MEDICARE.

Here is the news:

(CNN) – The political battle over Medicare, brewing since Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan as his running mate, showed no signs of easing Sunday, with operatives from each campaign claiming their side had an advantage with senior citizens concerned about their government-funded health benefits.

Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," said his campaign wasn't worried that seniors would be turned off by Ryan's House budget plan, which proposes allowing private insurers to compete with traditional Medicare on an exchange.

Romney slammed Obama Medicare

Romney attacked the MEDICARE program of Obama. Here's the news:

tt Romney attacked President Barack Obama Saturday over the future of Medicare in his first weekly podcast ahead of the November election.

In the address posted on his website, the GOP's presidential candidate said Obama’s healthcare law had taken $716 billion from the fund to finance “his takeover of the healthcare system.”

"Now if that wasn’t bad enough, his healthcare law also put in place a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats and gave them the power to make additional cuts to Medicare without even having to get approval from Congress,” he said.

“This means they could deny elderly Americans the care they’ve worked for their entire lives -- all because President Obama trusts bureaucrats more than he trusts seniors and their doctors,” he said.

“And here’s one more troubling aspect of all this: According to independent, non-partisan scorekeepers, these cuts the President’s people will take to Medicare won’t prevent it from going bankrupt: Experts estimate that Medicare’s trust funds will be exhausted just twelve short years from now,” Romney added.

Obama and Romney on MEDICARE

The focus of the debate of Obama ad Romney is MEDICARE, the health care plan for senior citizens.

Here is the news: 

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney battled over Medicare and energy policy Tuesday as the November election campaign reached out to battleground states crucial to both sides' chances for victory.

In an escalating struggle to seize the advantage on the contentious Medicare issue, the Romney campaign counterpunched with a new ad accusing Obama of cutting more than $700 billion from the government-run health care plan for senior citizens.

Romney made the same claim at two Ohio campaign appearances, three days after his selection of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan brought the issue to the forefront of the campaign spotlight.

Ryan is best-known for a conservative budget plan passed by the U.S. House that includes reforms to partially privatize Medicare, which Democrats say will kill the popular entitlement program.

To counter consistent Democratic attacks in recent days against Ryan's Medicare proposals, the new Romney ad sought to turn the tables by contending the money senior citizens have paid into Medicare for years will instead fund Obama's 2010 health care reform bill.

At a campaign event Tuesday in Ohio, Romney beat the same drum.

"When he ran for office he said he'd protect Medicare, but did you know that he has taken $716 billion out of the Medicare trust fund -- he's raided that trust fund -- and you know what he did with it?" Romney said of Obama. "He's used it to pay for Obamacare -- a risky, unproven, federal government takeover of health care -- and if I'm president of the United States we're putting the $716 billion back."

A July 24 Congressional Budget Office report said that repealing the health care law, as called for by Romney and Ryan, would increase spending on Medicare by $716 billion through 2022. At the same time, the CBO letter said keeping Obamacare in place would not mean a $716 billion decrease in Medicare spending as claimed by Romney and his ad.

The Obama campaign called Romney's claim "dishonest and "hypocritical."

"The savings his ad attacks do not cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit, and Mitt Romney embraced the very same savings when he promised he'd sign Paul Ryan's budget," said Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith.

David Axelrod, Obama's senior campaign adviser, told CNN earlier Tuesday that Medicare reforms in the president's health care law "took away subsidies, unwarranted subsidies, to insurance companies, and he used that money to help lengthen the life of Medicare by nearly a decade."

Senator Edward Kennedy 1932-2009

Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer. He was 77. He was the brother of the late President John F. Kennedy, and late Senator Robert Kennedy, both assassinated.



photocredt:washington post

Here is the excerpt of the news news:

Edward M. Kennedy, one of the most powerful and influential senators in American history and one of three brothers whose political triumphs and personal tragedies captivated the nation for decades, died at 77.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, was the last survivor of a privileged and charismatic family that in the 1960s dominated American politics and attracted worldwide attention. As heir through tragedy to his accomplished older brothers -- President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), both of whom were assassinated -- Edward Kennedy became the patriarch of his clan and a towering figure in the U.S. Senate to a degree neither of his siblings had been.

Rod Blagojevich asked to step down

The travails of the Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich who was accused of selling the position vacated by President-elect Barack Obama continue as the Attorney General asked te highest court to remove him from office.

This is from CNN

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Friday asked her state's highest court to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office temporarily.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says Gov. Rod Blagojevich needs to step down.

Moments after Madigan's announcement, news broke that Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, had resigned, a spokesman for the governor said.

Blagojevich, 52, and Harris, 46, were arrested this week on federal corruption charges relating in part to the selection of a successor to President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.

The governor's attorney has said Blagojevich did nothing wrong.

Madigan's office also asked the Illinois Supreme Court to strip Blagojevich of duties, including appointing Obama's Senate replacement.

"I recognize that this is an extraordinary request, but these are extraordinary circumstances," Madigan said Friday in Chicago.

Madigan said she wants Blagojevich out of office because, given the charges against him, she does not think he can do his job. The court filing asks that Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn become acting governor.

"As governor, Mr. Blagojevich's duty is to do what is best for the people of the state of Illinois, not for himself.

Sarah Palin's Daughter, Pregnant

Hardly a week passes and the dirt about the Vice-Presidential candidate SARAH PALIN
was already enormous.

Latest is about the 17 year old daughter, a senior high school student who is pregnant.

Here is an excerpt of the news from CNN.

Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, is pregnant and will keep the baby and marry the father, a senior aide to Sen. John McCain confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

Republican presidential candidate McCain was aware of Bristol Palin's pregnancy before he chose her mother for his running mate, the aide said.

The aide said it was decided the campaign would reveal this information now because of rampant Internet rumors that Sarah Palin's 4-month-old baby, who has Down syndrome, was actually Bristol's.

"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family," the statement said.

The Palins also asked the media to respect their daughter's privacy.

There is a saying, charity begins at home. Is this one way at looking at the VP where she's coming from.

JOHN MCCAIN PICKS SARAH PALIN AS HIS VICE-PRESIDENT

Senator JOHN Mc CAIN surprised a lot of people by picking SARAH PALIN as his Vice-Presidential candidate. Could it be because he thinks that when Hillary Clinton was not nominated, the women voters were disappointed?

"She's exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of me first and country second," the presumptive Republican nominee said at a Dayton, Ohio, rally of about 15,000 supporters, who welcomed the surprise pick of the relatively unknown politician with cheers and flags.

"She's got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today," McCain said.

Palin, 44, described herself as a fighter against corruption and a bipartisan reformer in her first appearance as a candidate for vice president, an office she said she never expected to seek.

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Bush is Silent on Tibet Crackdown

While Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the two Democratic presidential contenders, issued strong criticisms of China, Bush remained silent on Tibet crackdown. He's also determined to go to Beijing Olympics to support the athletes.

Here is an excerpt from New York Times.

WASHINGTON — China’s violent crackdown on protesters in Tibet is having powerful political reverberations in Washington, where the White House is weighing how far to go in condemning the Chinese government, even as it defends President Bush’s decision to attend the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Mr. Bush has long said the United States and China have “a complex relationship,” and that complexity was on full display this week. While his administration has called for an end to the violence, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, phoned her Chinese counterpart to urge restraint, Mr. Bush himself has remained silent.

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Obama's Clinton's Mac Cain's passport files accessed

What do these State Department Employees up to when they snooped through the files of Obama,Clinton and McCain?

Here is the exceprt of the news from MSNBC.

WASHINGTON - State Department employees snooped through the passport files of three presidential candidates — Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain — and the department's inspector general is investigating.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.

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Crackdown on Officials with Mistresses

I hope this will be adopted by other countries.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China plans to sack all officials found to have secretly "kept and supported" mistresses, in a move aimed at raising social morals, state media reported on Friday.

The step hardens up previous policy.

"It is a misunderstanding that officials who have mistresses would only be sacked when the situation is serious," the Beijing News quoted a Ministry of Personnel spokesman as saying.

Mistresses and "second wives" are common among government officials and businessmen in China, and Chinese media have said the financial pressures of keeping mistresses have driven some officials to seek money through bribes or abuse of power.

Corrupt officials are a major cause of public outrage in China, and the country's Communist rulers have warned that if graft is not checked it could threaten the party's grip on power.

The ministry said it had studied the issue and found it "necessary to make a clarification and emphasis" on the punishment for officials who supported mistresses.

"The morality of government officials shown in their management or power operation... directly affects the moral level of the whole society," the spokesman was quoted as saying.

"Therefore, officials should set up good examples, and abide by social morality rules."

Last year, a Chinese vice admiral was jailed for life on embezzlement charges after one of his many mistresses blew the whistle on him when he refused to give in to her demand for money.

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