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Sunday Roundup

Posted: 04/29/2012 12:00 am

This week, Newt Gingrich announced that he'd be dropping out of the presidential race next week -- thoughtfully softening the blow to America by giving us all time to come to terms with it. And President Obama slow jammed the news with Jimmy Fallon -- a move that was way, way cooler than his much slower moves to address the student debt crisis affecting millions of college students and grads, including many who went door-to-door and to the polls for him in '08 and helped get him elected. And two weeks before Mother's Day, I want to invite you to join the community initiative to send Mother's Day wishes to Trayvon Martin's mom, Sybrina Fulton. Beyond the political and racial issues surrounding this case, it's important to remember that this is, first and foremost, about a mother who has lost her child and will be facing her first Mother's Day without him. Learn more about it on HuffPost BlackVoices.

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10:50 AM on 05/01/2012
This week, Newt Gingrich announced that he'd be dropping out of the presidential race next week -- thoughtfully softening the blow to America by giving us all time to come to terms with it."
Nice opening line, Ms. Huffington. Very nice indeed. What a wicked sense of humor you have. This was certainly one of you better "Sunday Roundups". That one line made the article.
You might enjoy this song I wrote in support of the President. Think of it as a pleasant way to counter all the anti-Obama propaganda you're going to encounter between now and the elections.
It's called "Obama". It's on YouTube.
Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MSZNNWisAk
President Obama's not perfect, but he's so much better than Romney.
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Consumer99
We need to WIN 2014
10:01 PM on 04/29/2012
Thanks for just having a voice no matter. Ohmmmmm, Obama 2012
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Mac Howard
Thank god we got convicts, you got the puritans
07:56 PM on 04/29/2012
Regardless of how you see this tragic event a mother will have a heartbreaking day this Mother's Day and hopefully all can spare a little sympathy for that.
04:18 PM on 04/29/2012
Help me out. What the hell is "slow jammed the news?"
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Roses
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
06:59 PM on 04/29/2012
Look it up and listen?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
David Steven
04:07 PM on 04/29/2012
I believe the majority of Americans want our President to show leadership qualities, not how "cool" he is. There is a saying..."A fish rots from the head". Was it cool when Obama's Secret Service was caught participating in unethical behavior? Was he cool when his Attorney General became involved in the Fast and Furious scandal? Was it cool when he appointed a Supreme Court Justice with no experience? Or when he picked a tax cheat as his Secretary of the Treasury? How cool was it when we discovered how much we had to pay for the recent lavish convention by the GSA in Vegas? I didn't think it was cool that Obama's Green Jobs czar was a Marxist, who had to resign in controversy. I could continue, but I'm running out of my word allotment here...
05:50 PM on 04/29/2012
"I could continue, but I'm running out of my word allotment here..."
Oh by all means, please continue, David Steven.
At some point you'd have to concede
that the President's not perfect (Who is? Are you?) but
nonetheless he's is so much better than Mitt Romney
and I HAVEN'T run out of my word allotment here... (smile):)
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HUFFPOST COMMUNITY MODERATOR
Pupadup4oBama
02:25 AM on 04/30/2012
Snap!!

2-O-12
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LMPE
I connect the most dissimilar things
08:49 PM on 04/29/2012
I assume that you know what Marxism is. If you do, then I'll accept your dislike of Van Jones as perfectly legitimate.
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Absolute
Teacher and Old-School Liberal
01:33 PM on 04/29/2012
Why is it first and foremost about a mother losing her child? It's about TWO PARENTS losing their child. The mother's feelings are no more important than the father's.
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Roses
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
07:02 PM on 04/29/2012
I agree. But Arianna was talking about Mothers Day. As far as I know it is not yet 'Parents Day'.
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rejoyce5
01:03 PM on 04/29/2012
Let's get all the facts in the Martin case first. Zimmerman has been tried by the blogs and the press. Not the courts yet. Yes, losing a child to violence is terrible but so is condemning a man without due process.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
TheShrew
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart...
01:35 PM on 04/29/2012
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Her statement is nothing short of a slap against another mother who is suffering as well. People should understand the hell of both mothers.
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appacom
Still fired up!
03:03 PM on 04/29/2012
He killed a kid police told him not to pursue. There is no grey here. Zimmerman condemned himself when, with no authority, he created a situation that led to the death of an unarmed young man. If it turns out that Trayvon had him down and was punching him out, the boy had every reason to protect himself from a stalker.
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mrbeadle
Finds Eeyore too Pollyannish.
12:32 PM on 04/29/2012
"newt drops out next week...thoughtfully softening the blow to America by giving us all time to come to terms with it."
I doubt that time matters---we may never recover. ":^p
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Roses
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
07:04 PM on 04/29/2012
I wonder why he needs to warn us that he 'dropping out'. Doesn't warning the public kind of make everything else he says between now and next week, moot?
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LMPE
I connect the most dissimilar things
08:50 PM on 04/29/2012
I'll be perfectly happy if Newt and his Stepford wife move to his proposed moon colony. With the proviso that they have to come up with their own air, cuz they can't have any of ours!
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12:20 PM on 04/29/2012
Thank you, Arianna, and to all the mothers who have lost children through mindless violence, whether as a result of war, chance, or circumstance. Truly there is no excuse for the continuing slaughter of American children, and it is well past time to acknowledge that we lose more children to violence and poverty than abortion.
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haimchaim
10:25 AM on 04/29/2012
try to respect your mother .. 2 weeks to make it special ..
09:46 AM on 04/29/2012
Every time there is a subsidy for education, the schools quickly soak up all those benefits and more in raising tuitions that have outpaced inflation for decades. There is no other empirical conclusion when we have so many unemployable along with a Trillion loan debt. The real solution is for colleges to lower tuitions by an order of magnitude as well as their cost structure if necessary and not looking for government to help.
I noticed this same failure of our government during the health care debate. A friend jumped the line in England went directly to a doctor and paid in cash for a surgery. The cost? $5,000. My mother had the exact same surgery here and the same device. Her out of pocket? $5,000! But the bill was a total of $30,000! The true value of the surgery is likely somewhere around $5,000. The rest? I have a pretty good idea.
So the same goes for education, the true value and the costs are so out of whack because of government involvement. The housing bubble and current malaise was ignited by Fannie and Freddie’s government mandate to expand home ownership. We are just now seeing the true value of that real estate. Another anecdotal conclusion that is irrefutable in practice. The government is helping create these bubbles and bust cycles.
So this begs the next question. The true value of our current government. The GAO says there is $400 billion of duplication. I say thats low.
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Ukridge
“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t
10:30 AM on 04/29/2012
I think though, the reason costs have gone up, mostly anyway, is because of governments un-involvement. MOre and more, the costs are supposed to be footed by the little guy, so the rich could get the 3 huge Bush tax cuts, and Mitt could pay only 17% tax rate, and CEO's can make 100 times the pay of the guys doing the work, ( 30 years ago, the hey day of US prowess in the economic world, they only made 40X).
01:25 PM on 04/29/2012
Nice try to spin this between rich and poor. If the schools lower tuition, and make it affordable, it fixes the root cause of the problem. No government involvment is required. That said, in fact the root of our divide is between government and everyone else not rich and poor. The Bush tax cuts included the middle class and the little guy. Once they expire taxes go up for everyone including some that are off the rolls right now. When you have more poverty today that when Obama took office, much higher Insurance costs than when Obama took office, even after throwing Trillions of dollars at the problems, any other conclusion is fallicy. And since we have so many without proper education and working at the poverty level, of course the divide is greater. This is Obama’s economic failures in practice. All the empirical evidence demonstrates that more spending equals greater inequality. Lastly when you remove retirement savings, i.e. the payroll tax from the equation 50% of all people pay NO in Federal taxes. The top 10% pay over 70% of all federal taxes. Seems more than Fair.

The only logical conclusion is that government is growing for its own sake. Even if the programs have little to no real value. When the GAO , the only government agency that cannot be manipulated says you have a spending problem, you better believe them. The CBO can be gamed with false assumptions.

The Obama 2013 fiscal cliff makes everything unaffordable.
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06:44 PM on 04/29/2012
If we cut aid to education and simultaneously force tuition reduction, what do we do when the schools go bankrupt?

Health care is a different issue. You seem to prefer the English system, you know, single payer, socialism.

The Republicans are with you on your position of education (subsidized eduction -kill it) and against your position on health care.
07:48 AM on 04/30/2012
On Education: Did you see the endowments? How about all those professors on tenure doing nothing? That is not a credible argument at all.

On Health Care: Many businesses supported single payer in fact. But what Obama passed along with huge amounts of political payoffs and graft demonstrates someone that was bent on passing anything as a legacy, as opposed to common sense. In advance there was no medicine negotiation, biologics excluded and in the end an enormous give away to the Insurance industry. Today they are writing *junk* polices for another 50 million forced consumers!

Consistent with my argument on value. IF Obama fixed it and then passed HCR, we would be in a better place. But what he did was add 50 million people more onto the most expensive system in the world that results in mediocre outcomes.
And what is the worst thing? These people are already in a system that accounts for everyone financially right now. When this program became so bastardized, we should have stopped at preexisting conditions and allowing children to stay on their parents policies and have been done with it.
We cannot afford the waste any more. Already the startup costs have doubled from $100B to $200B from what Obama promised. We are destined to have a more costly system with worse outcomes.

That is the government in action and the evidence is irrefutable and defenseless of course.
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Hearts Fantasy
08:43 AM on 04/29/2012
why is it
no one has connected the low unemployment to the republicans firing of governmant workers it has been a successful approach to increase the unemployment and to sabatoge the democratic process Without the middleclass who buys the goods need money to purchass There is DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN THE MUNICIPLE LOSS OF JOBS AND THE ECONOMY
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wbcoc
My micro-bio is empty
10:38 AM on 04/29/2012
"Without the middleclass who buys the goods need money to purchass There is DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN THE MUNICIPLE LOSS OF JOBS AND THE ECONOMY"

If the gov borrows money from other countries with interest and "deals" to give to the middle class to spend on products made in other countries, then how in the world does that benefit this nation?
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knott wrench
01:23 PM on 04/29/2012
You're spot on here.
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sal ear
Hi, how are you?
03:03 AM on 04/29/2012
Arianna, again, I completely agree with you! (You're obviously very bright!)

;)

RE: Obama's "much slower moves to address the student debt crisis affecting millions of college students and grads, including many who went door-to-door and to the polls for him in '08 and helped get him elected." Well said - Obama will be re-elected because the Republicans are so offensive (JMHO!) and the best they have to offer - Romney - is not acceptable/electable.

But I QUESTION whether Obama - (who is erudite, charming, intelligent, possibly as charismatic as Clinton, looks fantastic in a Tux!) - has a REAL, GENUINE commitment to resolving the very grave economic problems that continue to PLAGUE working-class Americans like me.

At the end of the day, my circumstances have diminished! Life & earning a living are MUCH more difficult for me now than 4 years ago. I am aware Obama did NOT cause these problems; he inherited a very bad situation from G W.

But he took the job of President to bring about significant, POSITIVE change. IMHO, he has failed to do so, and failed to fix the problems. I'd never vote for Romney or any other Republican candidate, but Obama so far seems to have been marginally effective.

We need FDR, who was the Real Thing.
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noelie19
10:09 AM on 04/29/2012
sal ear - you're spot on! Like you 'my circumstances have diminished...' Ditto for the rest of it. However, I do not relish 'keeping step' and try each day to bolster my way of life as I re-enter the job market.

Arianna, thank you for your insight and straight talk.
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sal ear
Hi, how are you?
07:22 PM on 04/29/2012
Best wishes, Noelie - I hope you have much success with your new job!
10:14 AM on 04/29/2012
Obama is at the root of this divide. I am going to listen to Romney and decide for myself. I will not let someone else tell me what to think. The hyperbole is so deafening it cannot be true. There must be something there. I sure miss Hillary....
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TheShrew
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart...
01:37 PM on 04/29/2012
I would suggest listening to Ron Paul as well.
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sal ear
Hi, how are you?
07:04 PM on 04/29/2012
I also miss Hillary & I voted for her!

I'm a working-class Democrat, Romney doesn't even grasp my problems - and IMHO, wouldn't care.

I respect your efforts to evaluate & make YOUR OWN best possible choice.

I hope whoever is elected President in 2012 FIXES the the Economy! JOBS JOBS JOBS for American Citizens are the answer!
01:14 AM on 04/29/2012
Our election system needs deep reform to fix our country's problems. We need the best leaders we can get and only a functioning and well designed election system can produce those leaders. Many different organizations are working towards these efforts. See my new website about democracy worldwide:

democracychronicles.com
12:42 AM on 04/29/2012
Love and respect has been missing since 2008
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Godiva
GLBTQ - A
04:23 PM on 04/29/2012
Only in your little twisted segment of the world.