A few key points on President Barrack obama’s plan and Medicare:

• President Obama is committed to protecting and strengthening Medicare for America’s seniors - Medicare beneficiaries will not experience any cuts in benefits as a solution of reform.

• His plan does not use a penny of the Medicare trust fund to pay for reform; instead, it eliminates waste, fraud and abuse to make stronger the financial health of the program.

• The President has planned to eliminate waste from the Medicare Advantage program to strengthen the financial health of the overall program

• Medicare Advantage is one of the parts of Medicare program that allows beneficiaries to receive services through private insurance plans.

• At present, private insurance companies that participate in Medicare Advantage receive significant subsidies from the government. Medicare pays those private plans 14 percent more on regular than they pay traditional Medicare - but doesn’t result in any better care for seniors.

• Putting an end to these overpayments will strengthen the Medicare program; expand its solvency and lower costs for all beneficiaries.

• The scare strategy on Medicare is just the latest in a series of politically motivated attacks by some Republicans to stall and kill reform.

• Republicans has never championed Medicare - they have been waging a war against the program for years. In fact, as recently as last April, 80 percent of House Republicans voted to “end Medicare as we know it” by turning it into a voucher program that would have provided seniors a fixed sum of money to purchase private insurance, a plan one AARP policy official called “a very dangerous idea.”

President Barack Obama is best at making speeches. His best ones create a strongly seductive political mood that change is coming, not just at home but in the way the United States does business with the rest of the world.

His address to the UN General Assembly showed, once again, not simply his rhetorical skill but his understanding of the forces that drive international affairs.

But his speeches can’t answer the biggest question about Mr Obama's leadership: can he translate fine words into concrete actions?

So far he could not manage it in the Middle East. No reasonable being should expect a solution inside his first year.

But Mr Obama has suffered because of the expectations that his own words has aroused.

In what may not go down well with Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama Didn’t favor the current Secretary of State as husband Barack Obama's vice-presidential nominee in the race to White House, a new book has claimed.

According to the book, 'Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage', Michelle instead favored Joe Biden, the President's eventual choice.

"Do you really want Bill and Hillary now down the hall from you in the White House? Could you live with that?" Michelle allegedly told her husband who later appointed the Former US First Lady as his Secretary of State.

The book has also exposed that it was Michelle who persuaded her husband to use the winning campaign slogan "Yes We Can!" during his 2004 senate race, even after Obama thought the phrase was "childish" and "corny" when it was proposed by his adviser David Axelrod.

But, Michelle told him: "It will work. Trust me." Moreover, Andersen, who has so far penned 28 books, including best-sellers on the Clintons, Princess Diana and Caroline Kennedy, has claim Obama dragged his feet over marriage and that Michelle talked to friends about adoption because of early difficulties conceiving.

U.S. President Barack Obama began biggest week yet on the world stage, facing pressure for results on an agenda of rekindling Middle East peace talks, tackling climate change and reshaping financial regulations.

Obama's global star power remains strong but doubts are emerging about what he can deliver in a week in which he will make his United Nations debut and host a financial summit.

The nuclear argument with Iran and the Afghanistan war will be among the top issues as Obama begins three days of U.N. meetings on Tuesday. He will lay out his foreign policy idea in his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday.

At home, Obama's once sky-high approval ratings have tumbled in recent months in the middle of a heated debate over his proposal to reform the healthcare system as well as doubts about his handling of the economy.

President Barack Obama sought to rally support from young people for his health-care plan, telling a college viewers Thursday that the debate is the "defining struggle of this generation.”

The president addressed a cheering audience at the University of Maryland in College Park, just outside Washington, as he tried to assemble some of the same people who helped propel his presidential campaign.

"You believe America can still do great things," Obama said. "I need your voice."

The president offers no new proposals, repeating the outline he gave last week in an address to a joint session of Congress - include as his support for a government-run insurance plan. That provision faces unified opposition from Republicans and it is not included in the latest version of a health-care system overhaul in the Senate.

"When I was running for president I never said change would be easy," Obama said, frequently invoking his campaign theme during his speech. Everyone must do their part, he said, adding that, "Americans are ready and willing to take on that responsibility."

As he finished his remarks, Obama led many of the estimated 15,000 people packed into the arena in a chant of "Fired up, ready to go," which became an Obama campaign slogan in the presidential race. "Let's go change the world," he said.

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday deliver a strong, personal and highly visible endorsement to the 2016 Olympic bid of his hometown of Chicago.

Obama, who will be busy with healthcare reform, will send his wife Michelle to lobby for Chicago ahead of the vote process.

The International Olympic Committee decides the host city for the 2016 Summer Games on October 2 in Copenhagen.

Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro are the finalists.

Rio de Janeiro, bidding becomes the first South American city to host an Olympics, and Chicago is being seen as front-runners.

Earlier today, the President travel to Pittsburgh, PA for the annual AFL-CIO convention. He addressed the gather union members, thanking them for their support and laying out his priority. He spoke about the Recovery Act, his priorities for renewal a new, greener economy, and how health insurance reform will help all Americans achieve security and stability when it comes to their medical care.

Experts from the speech:

For over half a century, the achievement of America has been built on the success of our middle class. It was the formation of the middle class that lifted this nation up in the wake of a Great Depression.

We are putting Americans to work across this country rebuilding breakdown roads and bridges and waterways with the largest investment in our infrastructure since Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.

I have also said that one of the options in this exchange should be a public option. (Applause.) Now, let me be clear. Let me be clear, because there is been a lot of misinformation out here about this. This could just be an option. Nobody has forced to choose it. No one with insurance could be affected. But what it would do is suggest Americans more choices, and promote real competition, and put pressure on private insurers to make their policies affordable and treat their customers better.

President Obama will carry a major address to spell out his vision for health insurance reform to a special joint session of Congress. As we head into the next phase of the debate, the President's address will be a main moment in our campaign for change.

Across the country, Organizing for America supporters will be meeting at local watch parties with friends, neighbors and fellow supporters to hear directly from the President. Afterward, everyone at the party will be invited to join a particular conversation with Obama for America campaign manager David Plouffe to discuss how we can help make the President's vision a reality.

Hosting a watch party is easy. Just select a location where friends and neighbors can gather around a TV, set out some chairs, and have a great evening with folks who share your passion about the need for change.

There are several OFA supporters in your area who would love to join a watch party Wednesday night, but they won't be able to if someone like you doesn't open your doors to host. This is also an opportunity to reach out to friends, family and colleagues who still have questions about reform, so they can hear the details from the President himself.

US President Barack Obama has said given a chance he would like to have dinner with Mahatma Gandhi, whom he considers as a real hero.
Obama called for students to take task and to learn from their failures so that they succeed in the end.
"Hi. I'm Lilly. If you can have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be," Obama was asked by one of the students.

"Dinner with anyone dead or alive? Well, you know, dead or alive, that's a attractive big list," Obama responded amidst laughter. The next second he was serious.

"You know, I think that it might be Gandhi, who is a actual hero of mine," Obama said. "Now, it would almost certainly be a really small meal because he didn't eat a lot," he said amidst laughter. But Mahatma Gandhi is someone who has enthused people across the world for the past several generations, he said.
"In my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embody the kind of transformational change that could be made when normal people come together to do extraordinary things," he wrote in the ethnic India Abroad newspaper last year.

The start of school has been moved in front a day, so our kids will miss some hard-earned wisdom from the man who proved anyone really can grow up to be President.

They will also miss a great opportunity to discuss why nut-job conservatives got into such a tizzy over President Obama's back-to-school speech Tuesday to students across the country about the importance of assuming responsibility for their education.

Our own kids have started the year with those words, but deals between the city and the teachers and principals unions moved the start of classes from today to tomorrow.

And no kid can be expected to come in from playing to tune the TV past the Disney Channel to a message from the President, even one as profoundly and historically cool as Obama.

Tomorrow, partly in answer to the nut jobs, more for the sake of our kids, each school in the city should begin by playing Obama's message.

The Obama family returned from Camp David. It's unclear whether President Obama's ratings slip is based on personal issues or policy.

His approval ratings with the critical bloc have plunged since April. Strategists say the healthcare debate is mainly to blame, but that's not the only reason.

After a summer of healthcare battles and sliding approval ratings for President Barack Obama, the White House is facing a troubling new trend: The voters losing faith in the president are the one he had worked hardest to attract.

New surveys show steep declines in Obama's approval ratings among whites - including Democrats and independents - who were critical elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country's first black president.

Surveys show that the vast majority of Americans like Obama personally, but that they are ever more skeptical of policies that seem to expand the scope of government.

US President Barack Obama praise Islam and American Muslims during an Iftaar party hosted by him at the White House and said he was committed to build a better relationship between the US and Muslim world.

"Together, we have a responsibility to foster appointment grounded in mutual interest and mutual respect. And that's one of my fundamental commitments as President, both at home and abroad," Obama said at the Iftaar, the meal that break the daily fast during Ramadan, on Tuesday evening - his first at the White House.

"Tonight (Sep 2), we celebrate a great religion, and its commitment to justice and development. We honor the contributions of America's Muslims, and the positive example that so many of them set through their own lives. And we rededicate ourselves to the work of building improved and more confident world," he said.

Correspondents say Mr Barack Obama will use the speech to regain the initiative on healthcare, after a summer dominated by opponents.

Passing a healthcare reform bill is Mr Obama's best policy priority for 2009.

The House of Representatives looks set to pass a bill, but US senators have yet to agree on the particulars of reform.

Although Mr Obama has given a lot of speeches on healthcare reform at town hall meetings throughout the US, his address to Congress will be his most high-profile intervention in the healthcare debate since he entered the White House.

Mr Obama made a strategic decision to let lawmakers take the lead on drafting a healthcare bill, and urge each house of congress to pass a bill before the beginning of August.