Obama visit 'helps put Holland on map'

Obama meet to discuss immigration enforcement

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) said Thursday that President Obama assured her that he would send White House staff members to her state to talk with officials about efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. The governor said her meeting with Obama in the Oval Office was cordial, despite their disagreement over the widely criticized state law she signed in April, which gave police greater powers to enforce federal immigration laws. The White House said in a statement that the meeting went well but that Obama reiterated his concerns about the law, including that a patchwork of state immigration regulations would complicate the federal government's role in setting and enforcing immigration policy.White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that, in particular, the president hoped Brewer would help persuade Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to support broad immigration legislation, as he did several times earlier this decade. "I doubt we are going to get comprehensive immigration reform if we don't have John McCain doing what he did during those years," Gibbs said. But as she was leaving the White House, Brewer said that she thinks the border must "be secured" first.


source by-washingtonpost.com

He’ll Push for Clean Energy Bill commented by Obama

President Obama said Wednesday that it was time for the United States “to aggressively accelerate” its transition from oil to alternative sources of energy and vowed to push for quick action on climate change legislation despite almost unanimous opposition from Republicans and continued skepticism from some Democrats. Mr. Obama promised to find the lagging votes in the Senate to get the climate change and energy bill passed this year. Last year, the House passed a version of the bill, which tries to address global warming by putting a price on greenhouse gas pollution and provides incentives for alternative clean energy sources. “If we refuse to take into account the full cost of our fossil fuel addiction — if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and national security costs and true economic costs — we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future,” Mr. Obama said. “The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.”
“From our efforts to rescue the economy to health insurance reform to financial reform, most have sat on the sidelines and shouted from the bleachers,” the president said. “They said no to tax cuts for small businesses, no to tax credits for college tuition, no to investments in clean energy. They said no to protecting patients from insurance companies and consumers from big banks.”“Out-of-control Washington spending,” Mr. Cantor said, “has created a massive debt, private-sector businesspeople — small and large — are preparing for additional tax increases, and the government keeps on growing.”A day after disclosing that the federal government is conducting criminal and civil investigations of BP and other companies in connection with the spill, Mr. Obama did not directly criticize BP or the oil industry generally. A day after disclosing that the federal government is conducting criminal and civil investigations of BP and other companies in connection with the spill, Mr. Obama did not directly criticize BP or the oil industry generally.

End dependence on fossil fuels :Obama

President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil and pass a clean-energy bill that he says would help the nation end its dependence on fossil fuels."The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months," Obama told an audience at Carnegie Mellon University. "I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can, and I will work with anyone to get this done. And we will get it done."
Obama said the country's continuing dependence on fossil fuels "will jeopardize our national security, it will smother our planet and will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.""The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future," the president said.Obama said that the Gulf spill "may prove to be a result of human error — or corporations taking dangerous shortcuts that compromised safety" — but that deepwater drilling is inherently risky and the U.S. cannot rely solely on fossil fuels.
Obama also used the speech to lash out at Republicans with partisan rhetoric, saying they have mostly "sat on the sidelines and shouted from the bleachers" as he's tried to restore the economy.
The GOP, Obama said, has fought him on tax cuts for small businesses, tax credits for college tuition, new spending on clean energy and more.The president said that as the election approaches, he expects Republicans to make the same economic argument they have for decades."To be fair, a good deal of the other party's opposition to our agenda has also been rooted in their sincere and fundamental belief about government," Obama said. "It's a belief that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet its collective challenges."



source by-google.com, you tube

We need raid 'facts' ASAP:Obama

President Barak Obama meeting with the prime minister, presses for IDF flotilla-raid details, expresses "deep regret at loss of life."Obama spoke by telephone with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday after the latter cancelled a planned Oval Office meeting scheduled for Tuesday. Their 15-minute conversation, Obama conveyed his understanding for Netanyahu’s decision to return immediately to Israel from Canada and not stop in Washington following the deadly clash between the IDF and activists trying to break the Gaza blockade earlier in the day.


source by jpost.com

BP's top kill

The most ambitious bid yet to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history ended in failure. BP was unable to overwhelm the gusher of crude with heavy fluids and junk. President Obama called the setback "as enraging as it is heartbreaking."
The company determined the "top kill" had failed after it spent three days pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater.It's the latest in a series of failures to stop the crude that's fouling marshland and beaches, as estimates of how much oil is leaking grow more dire.
U.S. history — exceeding even the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster — and has dumped between 18 million and 40 million gallons into the Gulf, according to government estimates.
BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said,"This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far,"
President Barack Obama .visited the Gulf Coast to see the damage firsthand. Obama said,"It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking, and we will not relent until this leak is contained, until the waters and shores are cleaned up, and until the people unjustly victimized by this manmade disaster are made whole."
In the latest try, BP engineers pumped more than 1.2 million gallons of heavy drilling mud into the well and also shot in assorted junk, including metal pieces and rubber balls.
The hope was that the mud force-fed into the well would overwhelm the upward flow of oil and natural gas. But Suttles said most of the mud escaped out of the damaged pipe that's leaking the oil, called a riser.

"If they can't get that valve on, things will get much worse," said Philip W. Johnson, an engineering professor at the University of Alabama.

Johnson said he thinks BP can succeed with the valve, but added: "It's a scary proposition."

"They are going to destroy south Louisiana. We are dying a slow death here," said Billy Nungesser, the parish president. "We don't have time to wait while they try solutions. Hurricane season starts on Tuesday."

source by news.yahoo.com