This weekend, in his weekly address, President Obama attempted to cut through the noise, chatter and protests of last week’s heated health care debate. He boiled the issue down to its most essential point: what changes in health care will mean to the average person. Criticized last week by many for not presenting his case for reform with a clear plan – or a finished bill, the President pointed to the benefits of his proposal while carefully addressing the main concerns of his opposition: high costs in a downturned economy, comprised care, death panels, etc. He also reached back to other times in American history when major policy changes, like Medicare, came in to being and the roadblocks those initiatives ran into because of staunch resistance from political opponents. “TV loves a ruckus,” said President Obama about angry outbursts captured on television last week. “What you haven’t seen – because its not as exciting – are the many constructive meetings all over the country where Americans are airing their hopes and concerns about this important issue.”

See the Video: Watch the President’s Speech

In this week’s address, President Obama discusses how America can create a good economic foundation through using clean energy. The move would reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and create jobs in this country, he said.

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Two Pillars of a New Foundation

In this week’s address, President Barack Obama discusses the steps he’s taking to improve the country’s economy, which include a plan to reform the nation’s credit card industry.

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Credit Card Reform

President Barack Obama used this week’s address to assure Americans that the government is “acting quickly and aggressively” to fight the spread of the swine flu. Watch.

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Government Actions to Address the H1N1 Flu Virus

The neighbors say they were shocked by the discovery.
Historic D.C.-area church is defaced. Members of the First Baptist Church of Chesterbrook got the word last Sunday – the “N”-word, spray-painted in bold, block letters right next to the front door. “It was a very upsetting time,” Andre Johnson, a longtime member of the historic African-American church, told The Washington Post, adding that many of the congregants are concerned. “It was very disturbing to the membership” and “to me,” said James R. King, chairman of the board of deacons at the church, which traces its history to the Civil War era, when the neighborhood was known as Lincolnville. “That you would deface a house of worship . . . shocked us more than anything,” King said. It was the first racist incident he could recall in about 30 years – when somebody burned a cross on the front lawn of the edifice. The community has been very supportive, he said. “It’s a sick person who did that, [and] not an indication of what the community around us is like.”

White man files $6 million discrimination suit. Kevin Stevens, a 46-year-old air-conditioning maintenance worker, is suing the school board in Annapolis for $6 million, saying he’s been getting passed over for manager posts because he’s White. Stevens, who has been with the county school system for the past 28 years, says that he has been trying to move up for the past year and a half. “The hiring authority won’t allow me to advance,” Stevens told The Capital newspaper. “You work so hard, and you attain all these licenses and advanced education, and when no one will allow you to move, it’s very frustrating.” Stevens fixes heating and air-conditioning systems in county schools, but a year ago, he sought a post as night quality-control manager, according to his lawsuit. In that capacity, he would have been in charge of supervising night housekeeping crews in the schools. The Black man promoted instead worked under him for the past several years, says Stevens, noting that he has received high ratings on his evaluations and “has more letters of recommendation and more experience than the man who got the job,” the Capital reports. The supervisor of the operations division is also African American, which Stevens says is the reason he was not promoted.

Black weekly ceases printing amid money woes. After 16 years, The Bay View has bottled up the ink. From now on, according to founder Mary Ratcliff, the Oakland-based African-American weekly will be available online only. “This is not a goodbye to you, our beloved readers, though,” she promised her readers. “As the headline suggests, the Bay View’s not dead; we’ll see you on the Web! We’re pouring all our energy into improving our Web site, www.sfbayview.com, which has already recovered from a bad hacking enough to draw over a million hits a month.” She said that the printed version of the newspaper has been “a labor of love and the love,” but she and husband Willie Ratcliff were never able to make it profitable – or even sustainable. “Now we’ve had to face the reality that we’re flat out of funds or any source to tap.”