I think that's an improvement over previous polls.

Polls, schmolls I say.
The only ones that count are in November of this year and in 2012.

Tonight might be your chance to find out.

Frontline on PBS - a 'Behind The Scenes' look at the eventual passage of the healthcare bill.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/...source=proglist

I'm gonna cipher for ya, Uncle Jed. One and one are two. Two and two are four. Four and four are . . . aaawww . . . Uncle Jed????

WASHINGTON (AP)– In a move hailed as a step toward fairness for same-sex couples, President Barack Obama is ordering that nearly all hospitals allow patients to say who has visitation rights and who can help make medical decisions, including gay and lesbian partners.

The White House on Thursday released a statement by Obama instructing his Health and Human Services secretary to draft rules requiring hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments to grant all patients the right to designate people who can visit and consult with them at crucial moments.

The designated visitors should have the same rights that immediate family members now enjoy, Obama's instructions said. It said Medicare-Medicaid hospitals, which include most of the nation's facilities, may not deny visitation and consultation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
The move was called a major step toward fairness for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

"This is a critical step in ending discrimination against LGBT families and ensuring that, in the event of a hospital stay, all Americans have the right to see their loved ones," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The new rules, Obama said, should "guarantee that all patients' advance directives, such as durable powers of attorney and health care proxies, are respected," and that patients' designees be able to "make informed decisions regarding patients' care."

It's a step in the right direction.

I agree!


TIS

Any of you guys watched "The Obama Deception" documentary on youtube?

NYPD and Feds working well to catch this wanna be terrorist in less than fifty hours and the right wingers are saying we were "lucky." Looks like damn good national security work to me. Cheney and his ilk are probably disapointed.

At least the "drill baby drll" crowd can still try to blame Obama for the oil spill.

I think everyone does it to a greater or lesser extent but there's something really off with folks when they try to distort reality by implying that there's something wrong with reading an American citizen his Miranda rights (there are exceptions to this and evidently Shahzad fell under this exception initially) or out and out saying that Obama wanted the oil spill.

How many attacks is this under Obama's watch now? Be prepared for more. How many did Bush or Clinton have?Does anyone know?

All of us tend to define "terrorist" in line with our own agenda.

But under Bush we had the anthrax letters, the DC snipers, the 2002 attack against the El Al counter in LA, the attempted shoe bomber attack by Richard Reid, and the 2006 UNC attack by Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar who ran down pedestrians on campus in order to avenge what he saw as wrongful killings around the world. And of course we had 9-11...

That's why I never use the word myself (except to quote others or describe what others say), and think it should be retired altogether. Since virtually nobody calls themself a terrorist, it's used exclusively to describe others, making it an inherently highly subjective term. One could certainly make an argument, for example, that George W. Bush was a terrorist.

I don't think anyone knows for sure.

Clinton had the first World trade center bombing, and also the bombings in the African Embasies and and also the Cole, if you are counting overseas attacks.

Bush had 9/11 on his watch, and somehow made himself out to be a hero for it. He also had the anthrax attacks, and I believe there was something at the LA Airport that they thwarted. There were also the Madrid and London attacks when Bush was president. I think they also thwarted something in the NY subways.

So far there have been no terrorist attacks under Obama. The Times Square thing was a bust, thank God.

Terror is a tactic, and it is stupid to declarw "war" on it. I think the cool handling of this latest incident, and the notion that thousands of people were back in Times Square the next day shows we are not going to allow ourselves to be terrorized. If the preident gets all bellicose whenever one of these things hapens, as McCain and all the righties who I believe are hoping for an attack to work, then terrorism is working. We need to be like Israel. One day they bomb a square, and the next day they clean it up and start using it again.

I think the stepped up activity in Pakistan with drones has been a good strategy, and
may account for the second rate training this last one got.

So overall I believe Obama has done better than Bush. Did I mention 9/11 was on Bush's watch?

It would be like if Britain and France had declared war on Blitzkrieg in 1939 instead of on Germany.

I don't understand how you can say that.
Fort Hood attack and now Times square. Please correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the Fort Hood attacker in cahutes(sp) with terrorists?



With all due respect DT not all of us righties what an attack to go through. I pray to God that there will never be another one anywhere in the world.

Unless I'm mistaken, the Ford Hood attacker acted on his own (crazy) initiative. Because he's a Muslim, of course he is in "cahutes" with the terrorists. Did I understand you right Mig?



With all due respect DT not all of us righties what an attack to go through. I pray to God that there will never be another one anywhere in the world.[/quote]

To be fair DT is only employing the same language the George W. Bush White House used, and technically no foreign* "terrorist" attacks did occur inside our borders during his Presidency.

Nor Obama's so far.

I mean Jesus the Right Wing in general has gone crackers when Glenn Beck comes off the sane one about the Miranda Rights hissy fit. I mean how the hell did that happen?

On a tangent note, notice the Obama Presidency hasn't exactly done much of the "reform" on the whole torture/legality logistics of detainees issue they had claimed they would conduct. Probably because they don't want the possible political whiplash if an attack did indeed happen.

Of course the Left in true partisan spirit haven't made thrown as much of a tantrum about it. Kinda like the Righties did when Dubya became the biggest spending Presidency since LBJ. At least we're bipartisan about something.

*=Exempting that whole Anthrax Scare. Remember?

That's why I said please correct me if I'm wrong.

msnbc.com news services updated 41 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Pakistani-American accused of a failed car bombing in Times Square is believed to have worked alone in the United States on the plot almost immediately after returning from a five-month visit to his native land, authorities said Wednesday.

They said they have yet to find a wider link to extremist groups.

Anyone yet noticed that in both the failed Detroit and Times Square attacks, both bombs were poorly made, amateur hour? In fact the Detroit explosive was so poorly constructed, the terrorist himself apparently accidentally set fire to his crotch when he tried to detonate it.

When was the terrorist attack on the olympics in Atlanta? Also I think Oklahoma City was under Clinton's watch.... oh never mind, they were Christians.

Too bad he didn't blow himself up.

Looks like it's going to be Kagan for the SC vacancy.

First gay justice? Not sure. I always wondered about Souter.

I dunno. There was a blogger (Salon or Time??) that "outed" her but got heavy pushback from the White House. I don't know much about her other than she is said to have an expansive view of presidential prerogatives and is respected by some conservatives. Glenn Greenwald has evidently written quite a detailed and mostly negative analysis of her which I will read sometime today or tomorrow.

Greenwald's Case against Kagan

Greenwald Index of issues against Kagan

Well, now the Obama administration is telling us that the Pakistani Taliban was behind this plot all along.

I credit them for finally uttering the "T" word (terrorism), where the Muslim extremists are concerned. Now I just hope they'll do something about it. Not only will big city residents feel safer, this is a golden opportunity for Obama to win favor with his critics, who think he's blind to terrorist threats on the homefront.

I actually had a Manhattanite friend of mine tell me just yesterday that he actually felt, gasp, safer, under "that moron Bush's watch." And this guy is a lifelong Democrat, who lives on the Upper West Side (statistically the MOST liberal zip code in the entire nation, and that's a fact).

Go get 'em, President Obama!

I heard Mayor Mike on the radio complaining about the lack of federal support for NYC. He said NYC has 1000 cops assigned to anti-terror, while Chicago has four. Come on BO, how about some $$$$$.

Ask the House of Representatives for the $$$.

Yeah ask the Reps for $$ for NYC. Those yokels probably wont give it.


On another front, Obama may be making good Supreme Court choices, but he certainly is not judging them on their looks!