Obama plan funds nurse visits to new moms

It was another campaign promise that the President is living up to, for those who are keeping score.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama touted the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), founded in the late 1970s by psychologist David Olds.

"This program saves money," Mr. Obama said in 2007. "It raises healthy babies and creates better parents. It reduced childhood injuries and unintended pregnancies, increased father involvement and women's employment, reduced use of welfare and food stamps, and increased children's school readiness. And it produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family enrolled in the program.

"I will expand the Nurse-Family Partnership to provide at-home nurse visits for up to 570,000 first-time mothers each year," Mr. Obama promised. "We can do this. Our God is big enough for that."

The Obama administration kept its word. Its first budget called for a home-visitation program for new mothers costing $8.6 billion over 10 years. The home-visit program is now embedded in health care reform, costing $750 million over five years in the House bill and $1.5 billion in the Senate bill. The bills are being merged.

But, as usual, the fundies read scary things into a program that should be as non-controversial as telling someone to brush their teeth-

The program could increase "matriarchal dominance" in poor neighborhoods already awash with absent-father homes, said Gordon E. Finley, a psychology professor at Florida International University who writes on gender roles.

Most nurses are women, he said, so it would mean more women advising women, without necessarily considering the fathers. And because nursing is a female-dominated sector, the program means more jobs for women, but not men.

The program may bring "biases of the medical community into the home," said E. Christian Brugger, an ethicist and senior fellow at Culture of Life Foundation. The medical community, for instance, has a bias against large families - women in maternity wards who have delivered a second child are "routinely asked" whether they want to be sterilized, he said.

Someone sounds a little afeared of the women folk, don't they?

NIH authorizes use of first human embryonic stem cells under new policy

By GottaLaff

Hey boys and girls! In the mood for some good news? So am I! Ready? Set? Go!

The Obama administration Wednesday approved the first human embryonic stem cells for experiments by federally funded scientists under a new policy designed to dramatically expand government support for one of the most promising but also most contentious fields of biomedical research.

The National Institutes of Health authorized 11 lines of cells produced by scientists at the Children's Hospital in Boston and two lines created by researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York. All were obtained from embryos left over by couples seeking treatment for infertility.

This is where the word "hope" really hits home for me. My mother died of Alzheimer's exactly one year ago. 'Nuff said.

Oh, and in case nobody noticed, President Obama kept a campaign promise:

President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise in March by signing an executive order lifting the Bush restrictions and ordering the NIH to develop guidelines to decide which lines could be ethically used. In a political compromise, the guidelines finalized in July limited funding to lines created from excess fertility clinic embryos as long as they were deemed to have been obtained ethically. The lines have to meet a strict set of criteria, such as making sure couples were not offered any financial incentives, knew the embryos would be destroyed for research and were offered the option of instead donating the embryos to other couples.

Together now, kids, let's hit the big blue button!

President Obama to Sign Executive Order on Stem Cell Research Monday

Yeah Science!!!

ABC News has learned that on Monday morning President Obama will hold an event at the White House in which he signs an executive order overturning the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

The announcement will be about "restoring scientific integrity to health care policy," an administration official tells ABC News.

In August 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order banning federal funding on embryonic stem cell research except for a few dozen lines that were grandfathered in. The White House at the time estimated scientists would have more than 60 cell lines to use, but ultimately fewer than two dozen lines were usable.

Obama to Announce Iraqi Troop Withdrawl

By GottaLaff

Yes, good. Of course, the troops will be sent elsewhere, as in Afghanistan. But at least he is trying to keep a promise:

President Obama "plans to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by August 2010," 19 months after his inauguration, the AP reports.

"The withdrawal plan would fulfill one of Obama's central campaign pledges, albeit a little more slowly than he promised. He said he would withdraw troops within 16 months, roughly one brigade a month from the time of his inauguration."

Obama is expected to make the announcement this week.

This should save us a few bucks.

UPDATE:

The plan, expected to be announced later this week, would draw down the number of forces from the current 142,000 to around 50,000.