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.

The Obama administration has opened up a Pandora's Box of trouble for itself by moving ahead with an investigation of controversial interrogation practice of suspected terrorists that were used during George W. Bush's administration.

Attorney General Eric Holder named a special prosecutor to look into the allegations, but that won't be the finish of it. Washington insiders of both parties predict that congressional Democrats will now feel embolden to pursue their own investigations into what many Democrats consider torture, complete with hearings and angry recriminations.

"You know that Congress will want to throw its oar into the water," says a past adviser to a GOP president and that, in the end, many people will be appalled by the probes.
"Americans will think this an effort to embarrass or punish people who were trying to protect us from those who were trying to hurt us. This won't come out well." He and other analysts predict that the hard feelings over the "torture investigations" will pollute the debate in other areas, including healthcare, and undermine Obama's larger agenda.

Mr. Obama was wise to vacation this week on Martha’s Vineyard. Not because it's one of the few places in America where his health-care plan is still popular, but because by getting out of Washington he gave staff times to repair his vaunted message machine, which was starting to break down.

Two weeks ago, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod said in a now famous "viral" email that, "It's a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare profits." This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he would pay for health-care reform by "eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years" for "what's called Medicare Advantage." And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he would cover "two-thirds" of the "roughly $900 billion" of his plan's cost by "eliminating waste," again citing Medicare Advantage.

Medicare Advantage was enacting in 2003 to allow seniors to use Medicare funds to buy private insurance plans that fit their needs and their budgets. They get better health care and better value for their money.

Previously, an estimated 10.2 million seniors - one out of five in America - have enrolled in Medicare Advantage. Mr. Obama is proposing to cut the program by almost 20% and thus reduce the amount of money each will have to buy insurance. This will probable force most of them to lose the insurance they have now. Yet Mr. Obama promises in late July in New Hampshire that, "if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan."

President Obama's science advisers warned Monday that swine flu could infect almost half the U.S. population this fall and winter and cause up to 90,000 deaths, mostly in kids and young adults. The estimation is double the deaths normally associated with the seasonal flu.

The report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology laid out a "plausible scenario" where the H1N1 virus might infect 60 million to 120 million people. As many as 1.8 million people can be admitted to hospitals with up to 300,000 of them requiring treatment in intensive care units, the council found.

"This is going to be fairly serious," said Harold E. Varmus of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, cochair of 21-member council. "It's going to stress every aspect of our health system."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that parents get their family vaccinate once the shot is available.