Recovery

Sure, a bit of propoganda. But, noone else seems to be touting this stuff. The Democrats might as well.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, economy, President Obama, Stimulus Plan

posted by Stash @ 8:47 AM

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Rate Obama's First Year in Office

CBS News Poll.

Labels: Barack Obama, Obama, President Obama

posted by Stash @ 10:40 AM

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Orly Taitz Comedy - MSNBC Mash-up

Stash was watching the original appearance on MSNBC and can attest it was a real hoot. The video has been pulled, but bits and pieces can be found here from The Young Turks.

more Orly Taitz foolishness

Labels: Barack Obama, Humor, MSNBC, Orly Taitz, YouTube

posted by Stash @ 12:23 AM

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Obama makes a 10 year-old girl's day... or year...

Obama writes girl a note for missing school

The Associated Press



GREEN BAY, Wis. - Ten-year-old Kennedy Corpus has a rock-solid excuse for missing the last day of school: a personal note to her teacher from President Barack Obama.

Her father, John Corpus of Green Bay, stood to ask Obama about health care during the president's town hall-style meeting at Southwest High School on Thursday. He told Obama that his daughter was missing school to attend the event and that he hoped she didn't get in trouble.

"Do you need me to write a note?" Obama asked. The crowd laughed, but the president was serious.

On a piece of paper, he wrote: "To Kennedy's teacher: Please excuse Kennedy's absence. She's with me. Barack Obama." He stepped off the stage to hand-deliver the note — to Kennedy's surprise.

"I thought he was joking until he started walking down," Kennedy said after the event, showing off the note in front of a bank of television cameras. "It was like the best thing ever."

The fourth-grader at Aldo Leopold elementary in Green Bay already knew what she was going to do with the note: frame it along with her ticket to the event. She said she'd make a copy for her teacher.

Kennedy said she had never seen Obama before. "He's really nice," she said.

Labels: Barack Obama, human interest

posted by Stash @ 4:22 PM

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Bet she wishes she could have this one back.

Hey, Susan? Think any those sick people might be workers?

From HuffPo

Labels: Barack Obama, Healthcare, Republicans, Stimulus Plan

posted by Stash @ 11:51 AM

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A $91 Billion gift to their friends

Washington State Senators Murray and Cantwell were among the 10 Democrats joining all 41 Republicans to cut estate taxes for America's wealthiest families.

We'll have to wait and see what comes out of the compromise bill. The give-away to the rich is not in the House bill nor in the Obama budget.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, Taxes

posted by Stash @ 6:58 AM

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Diplomacy... after eight years in the wilderness

Obama Plays Peacemaker in French-Chinese Smackdown Over Tax Havens

Jake Tapper - ABC News

According to sources inside the room, President Obama just played peacemaker in a spat between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China.

In the finaly plenary session among the G-20 leaders, Sarkozy and Hu were having a heated disagreement about tax havens.

France and other European nations have been pushing for rules and regulations to apply to various tax havens; Germany's Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck has said "these tax havens are also places where unregulated financial market deals are made."

But Chinese leaders fear a crackdown would hurt banking centers in Macao, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Other countries agree, though they are less outspoken publicly.

The exchange between Sarkozy and Hu got so heated, said a source -- who is not a member of the Obama administration -- it was threatening the unity of the G-20 leaders' meeting.

"They were going through the revised draft," a senior Obama administration official said.

The issue: Sarko wanted "a list of non-compliant jurisdictions," tones that allow tax havens, he senior official said. "Other countries wanted it too, but (Sarkozy) was the most outspoken."

Sarkozy specifically was pushing for a list from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to be included in the G-20 Leaders' Statement.

Headquartered in Paris, the OECD has 30 member countries -- all capitalist democracies.

China opposed any such list being included in the final Leaders' Statement.

"China tends to have a problem endorsing the documents of organizations like the OECD that they're not a party to," the senior administration official said.

But Mr. Obama, according to this account, stepped between the two men, urging them to try to find consensus, and giving them a "pep talk" about the importance of working together.

The senior adminstration official said that Mr. Obama pulled Mr. Sarkozy aside, took him to a corner, "and discussed possible alternatives," the senior official said.

Once they arrived at one, President Obama "sent a message to the Chinese" that a counter-offer was on the table. The Chinese spent some time considering the offer. But they took a few minutes.

So Mr. Obama, with the assistance of translators, suggested that he and Mr. Hu have a conversation as well. They, too went to the corner to talk. After a few minutes, Mr. Obama called upon Mr. Sarkozy to join them.

"Translators and sherpas in tow, they reached an agreement," the official said. "There was a multiple shaking of hands."

The agreement: the final G-20 document would state that the G-20 nations "stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information."

The Obama administration official described this compromise as a "meeting in the middle." The word "note" -- as in "we note the OECD has today published a list" -- doesn't necessarily carry any weight.

Moreover, any sanctions are "future-oriented," the senior official said, meaning there are as of now no actual sanctions.

The OECD also has yet to publish any such list, though Obama adminstration officials said the organization would do so today.

Soon after Mr. Obama helped to resolve the problem, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that "we have agreed to tough standards for those (tax shelters) who don't come into line in the future," which seems to overstate the case.

"I'd suggest we'd still be in there had he not done this," the senior Obama administration official said.

Labels: Barack Obama, Diplomacy

posted by Stash @ 3:36 PM

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The media's tax fraud

An article worth reading from Media Matters on the fraud corporate media plays with President Obama's tax policy.

The money quote:

See, when the Republican Congress passed, and President Bush signed, the tax cuts in 2001, they decided not to make them permanent, scheduling them to expire in 2010. Obama's proposal simply allows that to happen for the top rates -- it makes no change to what is already going to happen under current law.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, media, Republicans, Taxes

posted by Stash @ 7:23 AM

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Republicans increase irrelevance

The House passed the stimulus plan on Friday without a single Republican vote... AGAIN.


Detractors like John A. Boehner House Minority Leader (R-Ohio) criticized spending. "The bill that was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, jobs has turned into a bill that is all about spending, spending, spending."

Congress Boehner was in the majority for 6 years of the Bush Administration while spending like drunken sailors and running up a 10 Trillion Dollar Debt!

He doth protest too much, methinks.

Labels: Barack Obama, Boehner, House, Republicans

posted by Stash @ 3:05 PM

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What About Howard Dean?

h/t emptywheel

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Healthcare, Howard Dean

posted by Stash @ 12:36 AM

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Obama in Afghanistan

Some of the wounded lay where they fell, waiting for what they knew would come. For others, a comradely shot to the head was thought humane. Rudyard Kipling captured the essence of the terrible decision:

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,

An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

That was January 1842. A British army of 5,000 troops and 12,000 civilians left Kabul, Afghanistan in a mad retreat to Jalalabad. As the Afghanis cut them to pieces, chaos prevailed among the British soldiers who, it is reported, knocked down their officers with the butts of their muskets. On the 13th of January, just seven days after the retreat commenced, one man, bloody and torn, mounted on a miserable pony, and pursued by horsemen, was seen riding furiously across the plains. The other 17,000 lay dead on the snowy ground.

Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Alexander the Great, Moghuls, the British, and the Soviet Union were all driven from Afghanistan.

The United States now has 30,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. It’s Bush’s war. “We are on the verge of significantly expanding the war in Afghanistan,” Ray Bonner wrote in the New York Times Book Review, “which will inevitably affect Pakistan as well. Unfortunately, there has been little or no debate about President-elect Barack Obama’s plan to send in more troops,” Bonner concluded. When he does that, when Obama escalates the war by sending in 20,000 more troops, on that day it will be Obama’s war.

Why is the United States in Afghanistan? Contrary to the propaganda of the Bush and now Obama administrations, as Bonner points out, “the threat presented by Al Qaeda has been exaggerated.” Al Qaeda’s “importance in the general scheme of things is greatly overstated by the West,” Tariq Ali writes in his new book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and adviser to three presidents, “acknowledges that enlarging the war in Afghanistan is exactly what Al Qaeda wants, just as it wants the conflict in Iraq to continue. ‘In its view,’ Riedal says, the bleeding wars offer the best opportunity to defeat the United States’.”

Have we learned nothing from history? Does no one remember that Osama bin Laden is a creation of the United States? Does no one remember that some of the weapons he now uses on U. S. soldiers were supplied to him through the largess of Congressmen Norm Dicks and Charlie Wilson?

After seven years of war and occupation, Afghanistan is a failed, narco-state. It has a puppet president whose authority does not extend beyond Kabul. He depends for his survival on NATO and U. S. mercenaries. It has, according to Ali, “a corrupt and abusive police force, a nonfunctioning judiciary, a burgeoning criminal layer and a deepening social and economic crisis.”

Sounds to me a lot like Vietnam under U.S. tutelage in the 1950s and 1960s. I hope Obama does not go down this road, to compound the tragedy we have already induced..

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's 

Labels: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Empire, imperialism, Iraq War

posted by Gary Murrell's What's Left @ 5:04 PM

1 Comments

Mr. President!

The 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.


** Update**

The Inaugural Speech Transcript:

SPEAKER: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you.

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

Continue

Labels: Barack Obama, Election 2008, Inauguration

posted by Stash @ 9:15 AM

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Interesting Times

Three Ex-Presidents, One President-Elect, and the current office occupier on January 7th, 2008.

It cannot become 4 Ex-Presidents too soon.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Carter, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush

posted by Stash @ 4:11 PM

0 Comments

An ObamaNation... Rick Warren? Really?

President-elect Barack Obama has announced that Rick Warren will be speaking at his Inauguration.

We understand it's Obama's Inaugural. We also understand a plethora of reasons to object to Warren exists.

We only have one. Rick Warren doesn't think an atheist should be President.

Just like the Boy Scouts of America, Rick Warren believes it is appropriate to discriminate against someone because of religion.

Normally, we'd give Obama a pass. His success at breaking barriers and his remarkable win over McSame earn him a honeymoon period. He'll get it on this as well. But, we will refuse to let it go unnoticed.

Rick Warren giving the invocation at the Inaugural is a mistake.

Labels: Atheism, Barack Obama, religion, Rick Warren

posted by Stash @ 10:04 AM

0 Comments

You did it!

"I'm going to Disneyland!"

Pretty cool, huh?

Labels: Barack Obama, Election 2008

posted by Stash @ 8:07 PM

0 Comments

Today!

PDB

Labels: Barack Obama, Election 2008

posted by Stash @ 9:05 AM

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32 1/2 Hours!

The Polls close here on the West Coast in 32 1/2 hours. I have a wonderful friend Winona who at 94 years old has seen incredible changes in her life time.

Two World Wars, women getting the vote, the stock market crash, the Great Depression, The New Deal (FDR made her a Democrat for life!), Korea, the Civil Rights Act passage, Kennedy's Assassination, Viet Nam, MLK's Assassination, man landing on and coming back from the moon, a President resign and a President impeached, etc!

This doesn't even take into account the technological changes such as computers, the internet, email, cell phones, jet travel, television, etc.

But, she is convinced the one thing she never thought she'd see is an African American being elected President.

We have a mail-in election. She's already voted. She voted for Obama. She is convinced he is going to win.

32 1/2 hours of work left.

Make it happen... for Winona... and for America!

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election 2008

posted by Stash @ 10:30 AM

0 Comments

So what if he were an Arab?

Excellent blog on Kos regarding the comments of CNN's Campbell Brown.

Labels: Barack Obama, CNN, Election 2008, John McCain, Race

posted by Stash @ 12:04 PM

0 Comments

The Truth About John McCain

Steal it. Post it. Send it... far and wide.

Labels: Barack Obama, Election 2008, John McCain, Republicans

posted by Stash @ 9:06 AM

0 Comments

Les Misbarack

This is just too cool. To the ramparts citizens....

Labels: Barack Obama, Les Miserables

posted by bleeding blue @ 2:31 PM

4 Comments