Michelle Obama rips Trump in new book

WASHINGTON, United States — Former first lady Michelle Obama blasts President Donald Trump in her new book, recalling how she reacted in shock the night she learned he would replace her husband in the Oval Office and tried to "block it all out."

In her memoir "Becoming," set to come out Tuesday, Obama writes candidly about everything from being subjected to racist comments to early struggles in her marriage to Barack Obama as he began his political career and was often away.

She writes that they met with a counselor "a handful of times," and she came to realize that she was more "in charge" of her happiness than she had realized. "This was my pivot point," Obama explains. "My moment of self-arrest."

Obama denounces Trump for bragging in 2005, on the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape, about sexually assaulting women. She also accuses him of using body language to "stalk" Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, during an election debate. She writes of Trump following Clinton around the stage, standing nearby and "trying to diminish her presence."

Trump's message, according to Obama, in words which appear in the book in darkened print: "I can hurt you and get away with it."

The Associated Press purchased an early copy of "Becoming," one of the most anticipated political books in recent memory. Obama is admired worldwide and has offered few extensive comments on her White House years. And memoirs by former first ladies are usually best-sellers.

Obama launches her promotional tour this month not at a bookstore, but at Chicago's United Center, where tens of thousands of people are scrambling for tickets — from just under $30 to thousands of dollars — to attend the event moderated by Oprah Winfrey. Other stops are planned at large arenas across the nation, with guests including Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Jessica Parker. Ten percent of tickets at each event are being donated to local charities, schools and community groups.

"Becoming" is part of a joint book deal with former President Barack Obama, whose memoir is expected next year, that is believed worth tens of millions of dollars. The Obamas have said they will donate a "significant portion" of their author proceeds to charity, including the Obama Foundation.

Michelle Obama has long said she has no interest in running for office, although she held a few campaign-style rallies before the midterms urging people to register to vote. The rallies were part of her work as co-chairman of the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization When We All Vote.

Last year, she launched a program to help empower girls worldwide through education. The Global Girls Alliance aims to support more than 1,500 grassroots organizations combating the challenges girls encounter in their communities.

source: philstar.com

Obama To Kick Off Campaign

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama will headline his first re-election rallies next week, marking an important turning point in the race for the White House, as Republican nominee-in-waiting Mitt Romney intensified efforts to unite his party and raise money for the battle ahead.

The president will hit the campaign trail with back-to-back rallies May 5 in Ohio and Virginia, according to an Obama campaign official who requested anonymity to speak ahead of the campaign's formal announcement. Obama carried both states in the 2008 election and will need them again in November if he wants to hold the White House.

Michelle Obama, the popular first lady, will join the president at the rallies, which will be held on the campuses of Ohio State University in Columbus and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, the official said.

Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden is calling the foreign policy outlined by Romney shallow, ill-informed and dangerous.

Biden says Romney would return the United States to what he called ``the past we have worked so hard to move beyond.''

In remarks prepared for delivery Thursday at an overtly partisan campaign event in New York City, Biden says that Obama will gladly stack accomplishments such as killing terror mastermind Osama bin Laden against Romney's rhetoric.

The Associated Press obtained excerpts of the speech Wednesday.

The campaign speech at New York University represents a broad defense of Obama's national security record. So far, neither Romney nor Obama has made foreign policy a major issue in the campaign.

With Romney now assured of the Republican Party's nomination, Obama couldn't afford to stand off to the sidelines much longer in what is shaping up to be a close contest.

Even the White House, which has been loath to engage fully in the election as it seeks to project a focus on the day-to-day business of governing, acknowledged Wednesday that the general election was in full-swing. White House spokesman Jay Carney, referring to the Republican contest, declared that ``the race is over on that side.''

The campaign official said Obama would use his return to the campaign rally circuit to lay out what he sees as the real stakes in the election, and DRAW a contrast between his economic approach and what the campaign says is the Republican Party's desire to return to the policies that crashed the economy.

The campaign rallies could serve as a way to energize his base, especially the young voters on the campuses where the events will be held. They also break down the barrier the White House has tried to maintain between the president and the political bickering on the campaign trail.

That barrier has been thin at best. Obama has for months been wooing donors at campaign fundraisers across the country, building up a sizeable money advantage over Romney. And Obama's official events have often had a campaign vibe, with Air Force One landing in politically important states and crowds breaking into chants of ``four more years.''

News of Obama's first campaign rallies followed word from the Republican National Committee that it had filed a formal complaint with the Government Accountability Office requesting an investigation into whether Obama was using taxpayer money to fund travel that benefited his re-election campaign.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Obama's campaign ``has been cheating the American taxpayer by using taxpayer dollars to fund their general election efforts.''

While young voters were solidly behind Obama in the 2008 election, they are being aggressively wooed by Romney. His campaign is hoping he can appeal to young voters burdened by a bleak employment picture and student loan debt.

At official events this week on college campuses in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa, Obama told crowds that Congress needed to act on a bill to freeze the interest rate on student loans.

In 2008, Obama had a 34-point advantage over Republican Senator John McCain among voters under age 30. But new polling suggests the president may face a harder sales job with younger voters this time around.

Romney, meanwhile, moved aggressively to raise money for the battle against Obama and reconcile with a divided Republican Party.

Despite the former Massachusetts Governor's struggle to win over the most conservative Republicans, his well-financed campaign knocked over his main rivals one-by-one during the arduous state-by-state primary race.

Priebus marked the transition Wednesday by proclaiming Romney the party's ``presumptive nominee.''

Two of Romney's once-bitter rivals signaled they would support him.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had a friendly telephone conversation Wednesday with Romney and had started planning an event where he would throw his support behind the likely nominee, Gingrich spokesman R.C Hammond said. The pair agreed to work together to unite conservatives against Obama.

``It's clear Romney is the nominee and the focus should be on defeating Obama. We should not focus on defeating ourselves,'' Gingrich, who has not formally dropped out of the race, told disappointed supporters in North Carolina.

Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania Senator who suspended his campaign two weeks ago, said he intended to sit down with Romney's representatives on Wednesday and with Romney himself in the next week or two.

``Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee,'' Santorum told CNN, ``and I'm going to support the nominee.''

Romney was attending fundraisers Wednesday and Thursday to prepare for what may be the most expensive presidential contest in the history of American politics. He exuded confidence Tuesday night, but faces a 10-to-1 cash disadvantage in a general election matchup against the president.

source: mb.com.ph

Obama And Romney Talk Economic

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney; striding into the long battle for the White House – are peddling vastly different stories about the American economy, and the outcome of the November election depends on which of them recession-battered American voters decide to believe.

The economy finally is showing signs of a fragile but sustained recovery, and that is good news for Obama, whose poll numbers are ticking upward and who holds an early polling lead over Romney. But there are 6 1/2 months remaining before the election and untold foreign, domestic and economic challenges yet to reveal themselves.

For now, Obama is faced; barring a sudden economic acceleration, with trying to prove a negative, to convince voters of his argument that things would have been far worse had he not administered a massive stimulus to the economy as he took office three years ago in the midst of a near financial meltdown and raging job losses.

He continues exhorting Americans to not forget that their economic pain was the fault of former President George W. Bush. While polls show most Americans accept that argument, they can't help but remember that they felt the pain of the country's crushing economic downturn; the deepest since the Great Depression, on Obama's watch. He has said he expected he would be a one-term president were he not able to right the economy before the upcoming election.

Then there's the massive increase in the national debt, now above $15 trillion, part of it piled up to pay for the Obama stimulus. Can he convince a nation that has tightened its belt, scouring the household budget for even the smallest non-essential spending, of his vigilance with the federal government's purse strings in a second term?

For his part, Romney is hammering Obama as fiscally inept, directly responsible for the laggardly recovery and solely to blame for the skyrocketing US debt.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and multimillionaire businessman, insists he knows how the economy operates, would have pulled it out of the staggering downturn more quickly and will be an experienced and steady hand, ready to curb deficit spending and rapidly create jobs to bring down unemployment.

Thus, on the key issue of the economy; the one most important to voters as the long campaign stretches toward election day on November 6, both Obama and Romney are left trying to sell unproven and not provable hypotheticals.

Simply put, Obama claims he saved the nation from falling into the economic abyss; Romney says Obama to fault for the country's laggardly recovery and massive debt.

James Broussard, a professor at Lebanon Valley College and a Republican who is chairman of the Pennsylvania special interest group ``Citizens Against Higher Taxes,'' says voter worries about the debt ``will give Romney a powerful second line of attack.''

But he acknowledges the strength of the Obama argument that he was indispensable for the ongoing recovery.

Broussard's advice to Obama: ``He's got to say `Don't judge me on where we are. Judge me on where we came from and remember it was the Republicans who put us there. Do you want to keep the guy that got us out of the catastrophe or a return of the Republicans who put us into it.'''

He said he wouldn't bet one way or the other on the outcome.

``Obama is right, we were going off a cliff when he came in,'' he said. ``Romney is right in saying this has taken too long because of Obama.

It all depends on the specifics, said Mac Clouse, the director of the Reiman School of Finance at the University of Denver.

``If one of them comes up with concrete ideas, that could be a big plus in this election. If we can take things on more than just their word or good faith; that would make sense. They are going to have to come up with some pretty creative ideas,'' he said.

In that regard, polls show a majority of Americans back Obama's push for higher taxes on wealthy Americans, the so-called Buffett rule that Obama has been pushing in recent campaign stops.

The tax increase Obama wants; one that would cut the national debt but not on the massive scale needed, is named for billionaire Warren Buffett. He famously said it was wrong that his tax rate was lower than that paid by his secretary.

source: mb.com.ph

Obama sends Easter, Passover greetings

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama extended Easter and Passover greetings Saturday as Americans celebrated the Christian and Jewish holidays.

"These holidays have their roots in miracles that took place thousands of years ago. They connect us to our past and give us strength as we face the future," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "And they remind us of the common thread of humanity that connects us all."

Passover began at sundown Friday and ends on April 14. It commemorates the Israelites' exodus from slavery in Egypt, receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai and eventual journey into the Promised Land.

At a festive dinner called a Seder, unleavened bread is consumed during the seven-day holiday to re-live the hasty flight from Egypt, during which there was no time to allow the bread to rise.

The Gospels say Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion and burial on the morning of what has become known as Easter Sunday -- the most important day of the year for Christians.

"For me, and for countless other Christians, Easter weekend is a time to reflect and rejoice," Obama said in the address stressing his own religious fervor.

"Christ's triumph over death holds special meaning for Christians. But all of us, no matter how or whether we believe, can identify with elements of His story. The triumph of hope over despair. Of faith over doubt.

"The notion that there is something out there that is bigger than ourselves."

Obama, a Christian who attends church regularly with his family, has faced slurs in the past from opponents who painted him as un-American and even a "closet Muslim" -- his middle name is Hussein.

Saying the core values at the heart of Easter and Passover "help unite Americans of all faiths and backgrounds," Obama wishes all Americans "a weekend filled with joy and reflection, focused on the things that matter most."

source: interaksyon.com

U.S.-backed battery firm Ener1 seeks Chapter 11 bankruptcy

U.S. government-backed battery supplier Ener1 has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the third U.S.-backed energy company to file in as many months.

Ener1 posted a notice today stating that it "has reached agreement with its primary investors and lenders on a restructuring plan that will significantly reduce its debt." This action will pave the way for up to $81 million for recapitalization, the company said.

A "pre-packaged" Chapter 11 case was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. Ener1 is planning to complete the restructuring process within 45 days.



"This was a difficult, but necessary, decision for our company," Ener1 CEO Alex Sorokin said in a statement. "Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles," he added.

Its already precarious position was exacerbated when it lost a major customer, Think Global, which filed for bankruptcy in June 2011. "For which we were exclusively providing commercial lithium-ion battery packs," Sorokin said.

Ener1 has also had trouble competing with battery companies in China and South Korea, where manufacturing costs are lower, according to a report. That is not unlike statements solar system manufacturer Solyndra made when it filed for bankruptcy in August.

And U.S.-based energy storage company Beacon Power filed for bankruptcy in November. Both Solyndra and Beacon Power received loans through the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee program, though Beacon still has a shot at emerging from Chapter 11.

Ener1 is the parent of a company that received a $118 milliont U.S. Energy Department grant to make electric-car batteries.

The New York-based company listed assets of $73.9 million and debt of $90.5 million as of December 31 in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, according to Bloomberg.

In the State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Obama said "some companies will fail" but promised he would "not walk away from the promise of clean energy."


source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57367210-64/u.s.-backed-battery-firm-ener1-seeks-chapter-11-bankruptcy/?tag=mncol