Obama is quite the jetsetter

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/12/obama.asia/index.html

President elect, Barack Obama is setting off to Asia for an 8 day stay which will include meetings discussing the importance of Asian nations such as Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea as and how their relationship with the Us helps with economic growth, nuclear nonproliferation, the war in Afghanistan and climate change.

It is said that Obama not only is in Asia for the aid it will give to America as a nation but it also gives the president a sense of nostalgia since he spent a little bit of his childhood in Indonesia.Mainly Obama is just there to discuss important issues and have meetings to further develop relationships with the Asia countries. The main topic they will be discussing is exports which are reported to rise by 7% by next year. This increase in exports could gain America hundereds of thousands of dollars.

It seems as though this trip to Asia can bring nothing but positives for America which is this wrier is happy about. American needs something to brighten it's spirits a little bit with all the negatives going around now with the poor economy, healthcare issues, the flu of a certian farm amimal and the conflict in Iraq still going on. I think this trip to Asia Obama is taking especially if itll really improve the economy and our relationships with other countries as it seems that it will.

Is employment finally improving?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/12/news/economy/obama_economy/index.htm

Everyone would admit right now that money is tight in America, it seems the bad economy is hitting everyone and doesn't seem to be getting much better. Many important people have been searching and meeting and discussing new and better ways to improve the economy. Recently the economy has slowly improved. There are more job openings then there were in previous months and the unemployment rate has obviously gotten a lot better as a result. However Obama and others believe that the government should be doing everything possible to create a more stable economy and not just a better unemployment rate but the lowest possible. Some suggest a stimulus package would be an adequate decision but not all are convinced. Instead Congress and other members of administration are looking for smaller projects that involve both the government and the people. However there aren't many ideas that both economists and lawmakers agree on aforementioned ideas.

As for my opinion I understand America is in serious debt and the dollar isn't doing well, our economy right now pretty much sucks. However I'm quite confident that it isn't currently as bad as it was back in the 1920's during the Great Depression and eventually America got itself through that mess and if it could recover from that then it should be able to solve any economic problem. In fact with the new technology and knowledge that people have the economic problems this time around should be solved quicker and with even more grace and longterm effects.

No girls allowed

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/politics/25vibe.html?_r=1&ref=politics


President Obama is what many would call a laid back sort of guy, he can easily be found just shooting hoops with some friends and associates, but many criticize this sort of fun, saying that Obama is constantly in the company of males, not only when playing basketball, but also when making decisions.

Despite the fact that Obama has many women in positions of power and the gender split of power is technically 50/50 critics still complain that women are not as visible and while they technically hold positions of power the public doesn't get to see them make decisions or even talking to the President and it appears as though the most important sectors of the white house such as economics and national security are a boys club only.

While some people feel this way others reget the idea that there is any sort of sexism in the white house and admit that it is natural for the president to bond with people he works with in different ways.

SWINE FLU epidemic?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/24/h1n1.obama/index.html

Worried about swine flu? So is President Barrack Obama, as is evident by him calling it a 'national emergency'. Obama has taken action that he believes will help everyone deal with this epidemic that's sweeping the globe. This action is the ability of certain health care facilities such as Medicare, Medicaid and state Children's Health Insurance programs, to temporarily waive or modify certain requirements to help health care facilities enact emergency plans to deal with the pandemic. While this is normally flu season the swine flu has been taking America by storm with millions of people being diagnosed, I have to agree with Obama and say that this is defiantly an emergency.

While the H1N1 virus is clearly a legitimate disease I feel the swine flu scare is a little over the top. Not that many people have died from it and if it's not drastic enough to shut down school then I don't believe that its particularly devastating. So far the only change I've noticed is people washing their hands more and carrying around hand sanitizer. My little brother just got diagnosed with Swine Flu and so did a girl on my swim team, but I still live at my house and I still go to swim practice, not that I think I am immune to this disease, I just think people are taking it a little too far, not to imply that all the people that have been diagnosed aren't really sick. I'm sure they are, as far as how sick I couldn't be sure. However I'm sure that there are some that are more sick from the swine then others.

Presidents New and Old

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/25/obama.carter.reagan/index.html

After the newness and glamour of having Obama as president has worn off people are finding parallels with Obama and other former presidents. Jimmy Carter was one of the former presidents being compared. Critics claimed that Obama like Jimmy Carter didn't have much political experience but came at a good time when people were looking for change and a new face with new ideas. Another similarity was when Carter was first in office he had a very high approval rating but once he was there for a while it dropped down over 30 percent. Obama's not doing so well in the polls right now either. Critics are predicting that now that people have seen Obama cannot change the world as quickly as they expected there will be a drastic shift in the scheme of power and people will begin to vote for more republicans because they're so sick of Obama's broken promises.

Different critics have said the comparison to carter is weak and that one with Ronald Regan would be more appropriate as Ronald Regan also came into political power in the midst of a large war. However due to Regan and Obama being opposite parties many think the similarities stop there.

So while you could make connections between past presidents and the one we currently have, the fact of the matter is none of them are really the same.They may have similar ideas or circumstances to deal with but people are just trying to compare them to try and predict how America is going to turn out and no one can. No one knows what will happen next because while history is important it cannot tell us our future.

Popularity lessens

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/21/obama.poll/index.html


It seems as Obama begins making decisions and actually doing something about being president his popularity begins to drop. Over 51 percent of the American people disagree with the decisions currently being made by our nations president. While it appears that this is the normal trend for a new president people still remain concerned. Some say Obama may be like Regan where people don't like the things he says or the decisions he marked but they like him as a person. Although polls have also said that 1/3 of Americans did not think he deserved the Nobel peace prize. Oddly enough Hilary Clinton has risen in the popularity polls, American public used to hate and mock her and know they like her more than Obama, some wonder how this could be.

This writers opinion on this is that the public expected most of their problems to be solved by now. They wanted the war to be over, our solders home, they wanted the economy to be on its way to being solved, and they wanted universal health care. That's what Obama said he'd take care of and so far none of that has actually happened and thus I think that Obama's numbers will stay low until he makes significant change.

Health Care

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/20/obama.health.care/index.html

The discussion of health care is still a hot topic amongst everyone in the US and it seems as though Obama has been answering the same questions over and over again, particuarly about taxes. "Will taxes raise?" seems to be the quesiton on everyones mind despite the fact that Obama has been repeating that they will not. Obama is comparing getting health insurance to auto insurance, saying that everyone in America should have auto insurance as well, because it would make accident payments less messy. The requirment for health insurance is not a tax increase the current leader of our nation assures us.
Obama suggests that the costs of medicare advantage get cut which will save the government billions without costing people their medical attention that they need. The assistance will be the same he claims. Republicans believe this plan to be too good to be true, and think there must be some catch.

I beleive however that health care is something people should just step back for a while and properly examine before they jump in and yell about thier opinons on it and what we should do to save everyone in the whole world. While I do believe we should help people with universal health care I'm not sure these problems will so easily be solved by another plan or press conferece so before we do another one of those perhaps America should come up with a close to pefect plan of how were really going to solve the worlds problems in one fatal swoop.