News politics 2008-07-06 Andanh.com

Republican Party ad assails Obama on energy Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:25 EDT
TITLE: "Balance."

LENGTH: 30 seconds.

AIRING: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

SCRIPT: Announcer: "Record gas prices. A climate in crisis. John McCain says solve it now with a balanced plan: Alternative energy, conservation, suspending the gas tax, and more production here at home. He's pushing his own party to face climate change. But Barack Obama? For conservation, but he just says no to lower gas taxes, no to nuclear, no to more production. No new solutions. Barack Obama: Just the party line. The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising."

KEY IMAGES: A screen broken into hexagons portrays scenes of traffic, gas prices, the sun. A still photograph of McCain against green forest. The hexagons fill with images of windmills, solar panels, compact fluorescent light bulbs, an offshore oil rig, a nuclear cooling tower. Obama appears, framed by the same forest setting. But the screen grows darker and a script appears: "No Lower Gas Taxes." "No Nuclear Power." "No New Offshore Production." "No New Solutions." As the ad ends, bold type asserts: "Barack Obama. 97 percent party line voting, 2007"

McCain's health plan: A threat to employer plans? Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:31 EDT
There's a great unknown about Sen. John McCain's health plan: How many employers would drop insurance coverage for their workers because of his tax policies?

The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting has proposed that everyone buying health insurance get a refundable tax credit, $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families. At the same time, he would treat employer contributions toward health insurance like income, meaning workers would have to pay income, but not payroll, taxes on it.

McCain's Democratic rival, Barack Obama, says the plan would "shred" the employer-based system that provides health insurance to about 158 million workers.

Most health analysts won't go that far, but both liberals and conservatives say McCain's approach would strengthen the individual and small-group insurance market. And by strengthening that market, it will pull in workers now covered through their jobs.

The workers most inclined to make that transition will be younger, healthier ones who most likely will be able to buy a policy on the individual market for less than their tax credit, said Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, which studies employee benefits.

Presidential candidates' housing plans at a glance Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:20 EDT
Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama envision the Federal Housing Administration backing new, cheaper mortgages for distressed homeowners who otherwise would have difficulty refinancing into more secure government-insured loans with lower monthly payments. For the plans to work, lenders would have to be willing to take a substantial loss by reducing the amount owed on the loan in the hope they could recoup more money through refinancing than through a costly foreclosure and resale.

McCain:

- To be eligible for the FHA-insured mortgages, certain borrowers who live in their homes must prove creditworthiness at the time of the original loan and that they can meet the terms of a new 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

-Separately, McCain wants the Justice Department to create a task force to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing in the mortgage industry.

Obama:

Analysis: McCain struggles to regain footing Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:25 EDT
John McCain calls himself an underdog. That may be an understatement. The GOP presidential candidate trails Democrat Barack Obama in polls, organization and money while trying to succeed a deeply unpopular fellow Republican in a year that favors Democrats.

McCain also doesn't seem to have a coherent message let alone much of a strategy despite securing the nomination three months earlier than Obama.

"This is a tough race. We are behind. We are the underdog. That's what I like to be," the GOP nominee-in-waiting frequently tells donors these days, keenly aware not only of his woes but also his proven comeback ability: He won his party's nomination despite the implosion of his campaign last summer.

One year later, and now in the general election, McCain's troubles are so acute that he recently gave senior adviser Steve Schmidt "full operational control" of the day-to-day campaign and, effectively, scaled back the duties of campaign manager Rick Davis. The shift in responsibilities came after weeks of Republican quibbling that McCain had not adequately made the transition for the fall.

"The frustration is there's no big theme around which to build a winning campaign," said Steve Lombardo, a Republican pollster. "They need a big strategic message that will show the differences between the two campaigns, and allow for a win."

Obama: Media response to Iraq remarks overblown Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:15 EDT
Barack Obama celebrated "active faith" as an obligation of religious Americans and a chief agent of societal change while speaking Saturday to a nearly all-black roomful of churchgoers, but hoping to reach far beyond them.

Earlier in the day as he flew from Montana to Missouri, Obama told reporters he was surprised at how the media has "finely calibrated" his recent words on Iraq, and reaffirmed his commitment to ending the war if elected.

Making a less than two-hour stop in the battleground state of Missouri, the Democratic presidential nominee implored the thousands attending a national meeting of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation's largest and most politically and civically active black denominations, to help fix national and local ills.

He preached individual responsibility, saying he knew he risked criticism for "blaming the victim" by talking of the need for parents to help children with homework and turn off the TV, to pass on a healthy self-image to daughters, and teach boys both to respect women and "realize that responsibility does not end at conception."

But Obama's main message was the government's duty to address what he said are "moral problems" - such as war, poverty, joblessness, homelessness, violent streets and crumbling schools - and to employ religious institutions to do it.

Play of the Day: Malia Obama's "best birthday" Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:37 EDT
Malia Obama told her parents that spending her 10th birthday helping her father campaign for the presidency far from home and "rocking out" with her family after takeout in a modest hotel room was the best she has ever had.

"I don't know whether she was just telling us what we wanted to hear. But from my perspective it was one of the best times I've had in a long time," Barack Obama, his voice choking up just a tad, told reporters traveling with him here Saturday from Montana, site of the birthday festivities over two days.

The Obama clan - the Democratic presidential nominee, his wife, Michelle, their daughters, Malia and Sasha, and his sister and her family - transplanted to Butte, Mont., for Friday's Fourth of July holiday, which also was Malia's birthday.

It was a full, hot day of campaigning.

There was dutiful attendance at the small mining town's parade, a campaign-hosted "family picnic" for hundreds on sun-drenched a hillside, and a long afternoon of several media interviews that included pictures of the girls playing and even questions from television's "Access Hollywood," despite the Obamas' typical prohibition on media attention for them. Obama also was the subject of intense filming attention, as Davis Guggenheim, the Academy Award-winning director of "An Inconvenient Truth" - Al Gore's environmental documentary - spent the day shooting him for the biopic to be aired at the Democratic National Convention next month.

Obama, Clinton to hold joint fundraisers in NY Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:15 EDT
Now that they're allies, Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton will help each other raise money in a series of fundraisers in New York next week.

Obama campaign spokesman Jen Psaki said the Democratic nominee-in-waiting and Clinton will hold three fundraisers. Two events are scheduled for Wednesday night - one to raise money for his general election campaign and one to help pay off debts from her primary campaign. A third fundraiser, for Obama, is a breakfast Thursday morning with women donors that Clinton, a New York senator, will attend.

The fundraisers will be the first joint appearances by the former foes since their lovefest in Unity, N.H., on June 27.

Respect for military service doesn't translate into votes Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:23 EDT

WASHINGTON . How important is military service in this presidential election?

Republican nominee John McCain has a vaunted military record. Democrat Barack Obama has none. But four months out from the voting, Obama is ahead in national surveys.

History shows that whether a candidate has military experience rarely determines who'll win election to the nation's highest office. Still, there's enough evidence that Americans respect military service and connect it to patriotism that Obama has been making a concerted effort, especially as Independence Day approached, to talk about his love of country and respect for an institution he never joined.

.We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform . period,. Obama said Monday in a speech about patriotism, adding that a silver lining of the war in Iraq .has been the widespread recognition that whether you support this war or oppose it, the sacrifice of our troops is always worthy of honor..

GOP .attack machine' is MIA in 2008 election Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:28 EDT

WASHINGTON . Democrats and the media have used the term so much that it's almost an article of faith. But the so-called .Republican attack machine. waiting with piles of unregulated cash to chew up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is anything but.

Obama cited the threat of unregulated attack groups to justify dropping his pledge to take public financing . along with its spending limits . for the general election campaign. The groups are called .527s. because they're authorized to raise unlimited cash under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Service code.

Yet there's no 2008 equivalent to the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which spent $22 million attacking Democrat John Kerry. Prominent groups and donors that played key roles in independent conservative 527 groups four years ago say they're sitting out this election. And while they've raised more than they had at this point four years ago, the independent pro-Republican groups still lag more than $50 million behind pro-Democratic groups.

Why? Analysts and Republican insiders point to several reasons:

Obama marks holidayin conservative Montana Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:23 EDT

BUTTE, Mont. . It was a family Fourth of July for Democrat Barack Obama as his wife, daughters, sister and other relatives helped him make an Independence Day play for this reliably conservative state.

Obama paid tribute to a nation in which the son of a single mother could rise to such heights.

.I know that there is no other country out there where I could be standing before you as somebody who could potentially be president of the United States,. he said at a campaign-sponsored .family picnic. for hundreds of people . part rally, part birthday party for his oldest daughter, Malia, who turned 10 on Friday. .We are going to change the world..

Cheers greeted Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters everywhere. As they arrived to watch the Fourth of July parade, the crowd broke into a rendition of Happy Birthday for Malia.

McCain goes to church, visits VA hospital Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:36 EDT
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain attended church Sunday and later visited a Veterans Affairs hospital in his hometown.

The senator and his wife Cindy took part in the 75-minute service at the North Phoenix Baptist Church and shook hands with greeters, ushers and church members before and after the ceremony.

McCain had remained out of sight for most of the holiday weekend and many of the hundreds of worshippers did not seem to notice that he was sitting in the church with his wife.

The theme of the sermon by Pastor Dan Yeary was that people can lift their spiritual lives through sacrifice.

Shortly after the church service, McCain and his wife went to a Veterans Affairs hospital in central Phoenix for a 45-minutes visit.

Foreclosures expected to rise despite rescue plans Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:29 EDT

WASHINGTON . Home foreclosures will keep rising next year no matter who is elected president in November.

Even the optimism that surrounds a new president cannot resurrect home values overnight, and presidents have no direct ability to reduce rising mortgage rates. Nevertheless, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain both promise help for homeowners facing foreclosure.

Obama supports a broader role for government than does McCain. Both envision the Federal Housing Administration providing new, cheaper mortgages to distressed home.owners who otherwise would have difficulty refinancing into more secure government-insured loans with lower monthly payments.

For the plans to work, lenders would have to be willing to take a substantial loss by reducing the amount owed on the loan. But some would have a powerful incentive to do so. A refinancing deal could allow them to recover far more money than they would get from the costly process of foreclosing on the property and trying to resell it.

New laws take effect July 15 Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:23 EDT

FRANKFORT . Penalties will increase for child abusers. Torturing dogs or cats might lead to jail time.

Women with no insurance will be covered by Medicaid for breast and cervical cancer treatments. And gas station operators will be able to recover from fuel theft without going to court.

These and a slew of other new rules for living in Kentucky will take effect July 15, thanks to Kentucky's 2008 General Assembly.

Though this year's legislative session was dubbed by some as one of the worst in memory for its shortage of major initiatives, it did approve hundreds of pieces of legislation that affect many people.

Chinese Dir