Obama is speaking now

[Michael Tee]

on CNN live.  He started off badly, a lot of babble about nothing, some empty cliches, the obligatory mention of Dr. Martin Luther King, and then WOW! the guy suddenly hit his stride.  He's talking now about health care - - take a small victory and keep on marching.  Analogy to Ike desegregating the armed forces.  This guy is brilliant.  Once he steps into Massachusetts, he's gonna save Coakley's ass.  He's just gotta lose the cornball hokum he starts off with and get into the meat right from the beginning.  What a pleasure to watch this guy.  Just the feeling that once again there is some intelligent, basically decent guy sitting in the Oval Office.  It's refreshing.  I guess there are limits to what he can do, to some extent he's still a prisoner of the military-industrial complex, but at least he gives one a sense that he's not a dupe or a willing participant in their games.

[BT]

He's talking now about health care - - take a small victory and keep on marching.  Analogy to Ike desegregating the armed forces.

So he admits the  current bill is crap and he can't even get it right on who desegregated the armed forces.

[Kramer]

no he's probably reading a prepared statement off a teleprompter. of course if he's rambling with hmms, hwws and other staggering sounds then he's using his gift or lack of gifted public speaking ability -- but hey, nothing like presidential affirmative action to give him a leg up.

[sirs]

I'm guessing Tee got a tingle up his leg, when the chosen hit his supposed socialist stride

Thank God the country only has to deal with it for 1 term

[Plane]

Whether we get National Health Mandated Insurance depends on Red sox fans.

http://www.npr.org/

Obama Makes Last-Ditch Attempt To Save Senate Seat
by The Associated Press

text sizeAAAJanuary 17, 2010 President Obama campaigned to save an endangered Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and the critical 60th vote needed for his health care plan while the White House and congressional Democrats scrambled to pass the legislation quickly in case of a loss.

The unexpectedly tight race for the seat held so long by Edward M. Kennedy, in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3-to-1, reflects a nasty anti-establishment environment that threatens Obama's support in Congress now and heading into this fall's elections.

Republican Scott Brown, a little-known state senator, has tapped into voter anger and anxiety over federal spending to pull even with Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general.

Brown says he would vote against Obama's health care bill, robbing Democrats of the 60-vote majority needed to prevent Republicans from blocking it.

[Plane]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122613570

Hutchins himself is from Michigan. "I understand the fact that, my family included, people are impatient," he says. "People on the ground there are living this catastrophic situation; they're not looking at it with a global view, a worldview — they're looking at it like, 'I live in Detroit, and it sucks.' "

A musical about Obama plays in Germany.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96778361&ps=rs

Another in Kenya.

[Michael Tee]

<< . . . he can't even get it right on who desegregated the armed forces. >>

? ? ? ? ?

He said Eisenhower, and I thought it WAS Eisenhower.  If he got it wrong, then I got it wrong.  I know they were desegregated in the Korean War, during Truman's Presidency, but I always thought it was Eisenhower who pushed for it.

[BT]

Truman ordered it. Eisenhower implemented it.