President Barack Obama is in downtown Los Angeles today at another townhall meeting. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis spoke (bi-lingually) to the crowd a few minutes ago. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is speaking now and he shares the stage with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. You can watch a livestream HERE.

Antonio just introduced Arnold with a big figurative smack on the lips. Uggh. "It doesn't matter party affiliation, we need to work together to get through tough times like now." What a crock. Schwarzenegger should take his own advice.

Update [2009-3-19 16:19:39 by Todd Beeton]:Schwarzenegger is raving about the stimulus, hoping some of the love of Barack rubs off on him. President Obama is in the house.

President Obama just called Arnold an "innovative leader" -- leader, really? Umm, hardly.

Between December and now, this state lost over half a million jobs...I know how tough times are. Here's what I want you to remember...we will come out the other side a stronger nation...there will be brighter days ahead.

Interesting that his comments are differing from his prepared remarks yesterday. Now he's talking about his housing plan. "CA will be receiving $145 million from HUD in additional funding to buy up and rehab vacant and rundown homes."

He's returning to yesterday's remarks now. I'll post them below the fold.

Obama is mocking those that say he's trying to do too much. "Someone today said 'President Obama shouldn't go on Leno, he has too much to do.'" Then he just laughed at them. Love it.

"It would be nice if I could pick and choose what problems I wanted to deal with. You don't get to choose between paying your mortgage and your medical bills."

Update [2009-3-19 17:10:27 by Todd Beeton]:First question: about making people healthier rather than simply focusing on health insurance. Good question. President Obama is talking about prevention: "Prevention will be a major part of whatever health care reform I sign."

Next question is from a disabled man asking about how President Obama plans to tap into the untapped human capital that exists among the disabled community.

Next question: it's more expensive to live in California but tax laws and stimulus treats CA and other states like apples and apples. Obama: bigger difference has to do with how the tax code treats Californians -- talking about the inquity of tax code where a secretary gets taxed at a higher bracket than those at the top. "All benefits go to those at the top...leads to a bubble and bust economy...bottom up economic growth is good for everyone."

"Generally I try to be a bi-partisan guy but when I start to hear folks from the other party complaining about deficits. What have you been doing?"

Public school teacher got a huge ovation from the crowd. "We need help...Where are we going to get that money?"

"We are ramping up education spending at the federal level...historically most education funding has been done at the state and local level. That's why it's so important for everyone to be engaged with various initiatives coming up to make sure that the need to take care of our kids is reflected in the state budget." Yikes wading into the May 19th initiative election. Doesn't take a stand but hope he's not suggesting a proxy endorsement of the measures.

Nice, he's talking about how folks want a lot but are unwilling to pay for it. "You can't have something for nothing...At some point you're going to have to make some choices...Somebody's got to pay for it."

An Obama volunteer asked "how can we partner with you to bring change in this country?" First answer: "patience...it's not going to happen overnight." Mentioned closing Guantanamo and now AIG.

There's more...

I had the pleasure of volunteering at a Joe Biden event last night here in Sarasota.  In Booker Highschool's gymnasium (the school Syesha attended, for you Idol fans), a standing-room only crowd gathered.  My team of folks helped the elderly and disabled in and took care of them, two elderly ladies had a hard time with the heat and it was my honor to walk them into the gym and fuss over them with water and attention.

Senator Biden showed up just about on time, not bad for having done three previous events yesterday.  He gave a twenty minute speech that was very well delivered and very well received, followed by an hour of question and answer.

There's more...

Well, now we know.

At Barack Obama's Economic Security Townhall yesterday, the Senator held up Friday's St. Petersburg Times.  The front page tells the story:

There's more...

This whole townhall back and forth between John McCain and Barack Obama puzzles me a little bit, mostly because I don't entirely understand what McCain is thinking. Jonathan Martin at The Politico catches us up on the status as it stood late last week:

Last Friday, Obama countered McCain's proposal to hold 10 town hall sessions before the Democratic convention by offering to do one town hall around July 4th and a Lincoln-Douglas-style event focused on foreign policy in August where each would offer separate speeches.

McCain said he would continue to reserve one day each week for a joint appearance with Obama.

"To really change the dynamic in Washington, change how we do business, let's change the campagin," McCain said.

So why is McCain pushing this? OK, sure, on paper, the more joint townhalls he and Obama do, the better for McCain since it means more free media for him (of which he can use all he can get) and sure, since by all measures Obama has to be considered the favorite for the presidency right now, McCain needs as many opportunities to force Obama to make an error; but I have to say, the more McCain makes an issue of Obama's reluctance to debate and the more Obama resists, the higher McCain raises the expectations for his own performance and lowers them for Obama.

Which is why I sort of can't wait until they finally do meet together on the same stage. Not only will Obama benefit from the mere juxtaposition of the two of them standing next to each other, but let's not forget, Barack Obama does quite well at these townhall meetings. Conventional wisdom is that Obama needs a speech and thousands of people in a crowd to excel but it's simply not true. Now, Barack is not as good at it as Hillary Clinton is, but remember, he's had plenty of practice this year. This is just one of the many ways in which the drawn out primary has helped make Obama a better candidate, which is one of the reasons I hope Barack takes John McCain up on his latest offer:

John McCain today proposed a joint town hall meeting with Barack Obama when both candidates speak next month to the Latino advocacy group La Raza.

"Both of us have accepted invitations to speak to that organization," McCain said at a news conference downstairs from his Arlington, Va. headquarters.  "My recommendation is that we have a town hall meeting together in front of La Raza."

The organization holds its annual conference in San Diego from July 12th to the 15th.

Another reason is more selfish: it's in San Diego, so I could potentially go, assuming media is allowed. So, while I applaud how Senator Obama has played this so far, I'm hoping he'll agree to this proposal of McCain's. Not only am I confident that he will surpass people's expectations of him in such a forum, but where better to do it than in front of the "largest national Latino civil rights advocacy organization in the United States."

There's more...

Speaking of townhalls...over at dailyKos, DaveFromQueens has a good rundown of John McCain's townhall meeting on Thursday in New Jersey. No wonder McCain prefers to stack his audiences with supporters; when challenged to answer a real question, this guy can't deal.

But the father took the mike, told how his wife and child flew out of Newark on 9/11 and that could have been them.  He then asked a very simple question, "Why haven't we gotten Bin Laden?"

A bunch of Obama people and others cheered. (I refrained, I was to be the next question.)  McCain got pissed, started rambling about the Diamondbacks and Yankees and Rudy Giuliani on a screen, said as President, Bin Laden would be caught (Guess this means Bin Laden is still safe for another few months) and people were laughing that McCain wasn't answering the question.

You could see the veins in McCain starting to burst, he got very uncomfortable that his scripted rally just got derailed by this gentleman...

Not surprisingly, local media's take was a bit different. Check out this headline from the Burlington County Times:

McCain: `I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice'

Oooh, McCain is such a tough guy, isn't he? Well, dig a little deeper into the article and, as is so often the case with John McCain, things get a little strange.

Sure, McCain promises to get bin Laden:

"I will look you in the eye and promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice," McCain said in response to a direct question from one of the 2,000 people in attendance at the college's Pemberton campus gym.

But take a look at what McCain says is crucial to his capture:

McCain said the key to ending the long search for bin Laden was to increase the number of human spies abroad.

"We need better human intelligence. We need people who can swim in the water," McCain said.

Huh?

Over at The Carpetbagger Report, Steve Benen takes McCain down.

I see. First, I'm pretty sure that plenty of Americans, both in the military and in intelligence gathering, have learned to "swim in the water."

Second, if reports are accurate, bin Laden is in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As far as I can tell, there are very few bodies of water, so swimming spies may have limited value.

My personal favorite part of McCain's quote is that he even feels the need to use the words "in the water" at all to modify "swim." Ohhhh, you mean swimming in the water, OK, thanks for the clarification.

I've got to agree with Benen:

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a presidential candidate who tries this hard not to be taken seriously.

This is one statement of McCain's I hope he's asked to explain. Not that that's terribly likely, mind you, since it's just sort of wacky rather than offensive, but really, what could he possibly have meant?

There's more...