Hey 1961 kids -
In honor of Barack's 47th brithday today, why not consider making a donation of 19.61 (or $47, or even 61 cents!) on the People Born in 1961 for Barack Obama group page at http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/PeopleBornin1961forBarackObama
Let's celebrate each other's 47th birthday this year in this way! Sure saves on shipping costs :-)
Thanks, Kevin
I don’t know if this is entirely off topic, but I have to get this off my chest.
I live in Baton Rouge, and earlier today I voted for Don Cazayoux, a relatively conservative Democrat, as our next Congressman. Our prior Congressman, Democrat-turned-Republican Richard Baker, resigned earlier this year so that he could take a lucrative lobbyist position. After some 20 years of public service, I almost can’t blame him.
What my beef is with concerns the truly disgusting campaign the Republican candidate, Woody Jenkins, ran here. If you look at his website and you’re from outside the district, you’d think he’s just another good-ole-boy who touts conservative family values. That’s all well and good, in a way, but if you lived in the district you would have been slammed with tons of stunningly appalling negative advertising in your mailbox. Virtually none of this junk mail would have told you why you –should- vote for Jenkins, but why a vote for Cazayoux would be almost a vote for al-Qaida, the Antichrist, etc.
Even worse, you would have been deluged with robocalls – I work at a state agency, by the way- for Jenkins. Of course, the caller ID would be blocked, so you didn’t know who was calling. I have better things to do at work, thank you very much.
This isn’t the forum to go into details, but from all the junk mail I got, let’s put it this way – if this were the 1930’s, I have little doubt that Jenkins would have deemed Social Security a Communist plot, and if this were the 1950’s he would have been a fellow traveler, but with Joe McCarthy.
As of the moment Jenkins is leading by about 7 points. Ye Gads. Can’t people see through this garbage?!?
Hello everyone -
I was just looking at the page http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/actioncenter/
and I noticed a graphic of a car with the Obama logo on the door.
While this graphic jazzes up the page, I'm afraid it sends the wrong message to some potential Obama voters. The car used in the graphic is a Toyota Prius, which has a well-deserved green reputation, but is made in Japan by a Japanese manufacturer. This could be really problematic for some voters.
May I suggest that the graphic be redone with a fuel-efficient but made-in-America car, such as the Ford Focus (made in Wayne, Michigan), Chevy Cobalt (made in Lordstown, Ohio), or any one of the Chrysler cars made in Belvidere, Illinois, which are the Jeep Compass, Jeep Patriot, and Dodge Caliber.
Thanks all for hearing me out. We might gain a few votes if this graphic is changed...and every vote counts!
Kevin
This is from Lark News, which could be best described as The Onion of mainstream Christianity:
AUSTIN — Ginny McCallum, 43, who has been confined to a wheelchair for much of her adult life, came to hear presidential candidate Barack Obama speak at the University of Texas. Afterward she found herself in a wheelchair access breezeway as Obama and his entourage exited the arena. The candidate spotted her, came over, grabbed her hand and pulled her up. She found herself standing for the first time in eleven years. "He smiled at me and said, ‘Yes, you can,’" she says. "I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do." McCallum is among hundreds of people who say they have been healed by the Democratic candidate, in one of the most surprising and little-acknowledged aspects of his campaign. Reporters have shied away from the story, chalking it up to "Obama-mania" and people’s feelings of elation. "We don’t talk about it a lot, but yeah, it does happen," says one staffer who says he has seen multiple people healed on a rope line. "We don’t know exactly how or why it’s happening, and the Senator won’t talk about it. He usually insists that people keep it quiet and just report it to their pastor or priest." Greeting supporters after a rousing speech in Houston, Obama stepped into the dense crowd and spontaneously began touching people: a legally blind woman, a man deaf in one ear, a cancer sufferer and a lame man. "Yes, you can," Obama said as he laid hands on afflicted bodies. The people’s reactions were so joyous as to be almost frightening. They jumped and shouted and wept. Before they could thank or embrace the candidate he was well down the rope line healing others. Their excitement was lost in the general din of the crowd. Aides acknowledge that the phenomenon is occurring with greater frequency. "His power goes beyond simple inspiration," says one aide. "There is something developing here that I’m not sure any of us fully understands." They say Obama has told them privately that his time has not yet come, so it would be inappropriate to talk about the healings right now. He says he will wait until the convention to speak publicly about the "special calling" he believes he has to lead the country. They do expect him to start alluding to "the providential nature of what is happening on the campaign trail" in an upcoming address, mostly because word is getting around. People have begun bringing relatives by the score to campaign events in hopes of a healing touch. "It’s not the speeches that are drawing people anymore, as good as they are," says a senior staff member. "It’s people wanting to get better, and wanting their friends and relatives to get better. It’s the belief that there’s something more here."
When do y'all think HRC jumped the shark? Or has she yet to do so? For those who don't know what 'jumping the shark' means, see the Wikipedia description at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
From today's NY Times:
The fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is increasingly portrayed as one between romantics and realists.
But a realistic view of Obama would be that he is best placed to seize and shape a new world of such possibilities. He has the youth, the global background, the ability to move people, and the demonstrated talent for reaching across lines of division, even those etched in black and white.
He would, as Andrew Sullivan has written, “rebrand” America. Wieseltier dismisses such rebranding. But even the Papacy was rebranded in our times, by a Pole, and Poles then precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire.
From Bastrop Daily Enterprise:
Almost 30 months after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, the city of Bastrop is still seeking to be reimbursed by FEMA for expenses city city incurred in hosting thousands who were displaced by the storm.Willie McKeen, administrative assistant for Mayor Clarence Hawkins, met Tuesday with representatives from the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP)to review expenses the city feels it is owed after municipal facilities were used to provide for up to 3,000 people in the days and weeks following Katrina.In addition to expenses related to the use of the Bastrop Municipal Center and Dodson Park Gymnasium, McKee said the city was seeking to recover money paid to police officers who worked overtime to provide security at the facilities.
Though the expenses will ultimately be repaid by FEMA, McKee said GOHSEP does the leg work for the agency."They will take the information we give them and provide it to FEMA," McKee said. "If FEMA has any questions or needs any additional documentation, they'll let (GOHSEP) know and they'll bring it back to us."Shortly after taking office, Gov. Bobby Jindal shifted oversight of the state's hurricane assistance programs from GOHSEP to the Louisiana Recovery Authority. McKee met Tuesday with assistance employees who are now assigned to the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
McKee said he anticipates "maybe one more meeting" before the city will be reimbursed almost $90,000 in expenses.Asked if he felt two and one-half years was a long time to try and get reimbursements, McKee said "It's a long, drawn-out process. And based on what I got from them, we're a lot farther along in the process that other areas are."
From the Times-Picayune:
BATON ROUGE - The Federal Emergency Management Agency's top two administrators will meet with state and local leaders in Louisiana this week to hammer out fixes to systemic problems that have delayed the distribution of billions of dollars for rebuilding public assets, the state's top recovery official said Tuesday.
FEMA administrator David Paulison and U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Harvey Johnson, the agency's No. 2 official, will meet privately with representatives of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, other state officials and the presidents of seven hurricane-ravaged parishes Wednesday and Thursday in Baton Rouge, LRA Executive Director Paul Rainwater said.
Johnson vowed during a trip to Algiers last month that he would convene a "summit" within 30 days to work through the bottlenecks that for more than two years have dogged FEMA's Public Assistance program, which local governments and nonprofit agencies rely upon to get reimbursed for the cost of restoring public assets, from staplers to squad cars to sports arenas.
The rest of the article is here.
From the January 24th Patriot News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania:
"Robert Gleason, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said (Pa. Gov.) Rendell's endorsement (of Hillary Clinton) "warmed my heart.""There's one candidate who can unite the Republican Party: Hillary Clinton," he said.Some Pennsylvania Democrats, who fear Clinton as the nominee would make it more difficult to retain or win some congressional seats and state House and Senate districts, were not pleased either.While Clinton maintains a wide advantage in Pennsylvania and most national polls, about 40 percent of voters in the state and nationally have a negative perspective of her.
Story Published: Jan 4, 2008 at 5:42 PM CST
Story Updated: Jan 4, 2008 at 5:42 PM CST
It's been more than a month after more than a dozen FEMA parks closed their doors, but many families are still living in trailers.
Renaissance village is one of 13 FEMA parks that closed back in November. One month later, more than 300 families remain of the more than 800 that moved there after Hurricane Katrina, folks who have stayed on say job counselors and other services are gone.
Since FEMA shut down the trailer parks, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken over the task of finding families permanent housing.
The full link is at http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/local/13064877.html
The NY Times just published an article on Barack's use of the 'present' vote while he was in the Illinois Senate. While the article looks relatively balanced on first impression, I'm concerned about the unfair and unbalanced hype about this from certain other campaigns. I also note that the Times failed to mentioned that Barack's use of 'present' accounts for only 3% of all his votes.
The article is here (free registration required).
By Tony Mauro Legal Times
Among prominent federal appeals court judges in the 1990s, Barack Obama was known as “the one who got away.”
In 1990, Obama had been elected the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review, which made him a blazingly hot prospect as a law clerk for one of the top federal appeals judges, who in turn would almost certainly send him on to the Supreme Court as a clerk.
But with a remarkable certitude that still amazes his friends and elders, Obama said no to all that, preferring to return to Chicago after graduating in 1991 to resume community and civil rights work and to write a memoir that turned into a best seller, “Dreams from My Father.” Now, only 16 years later, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois is a top contender for the presidency of the United States.
Eschewing a possible Supreme Court clerkship could stand as Obama’s biggest “road not taken,” a decision that would have taken him on a path toward a top law firm, law school faculty or judgeship.
Instead, Obama plunged into Illinois politics, charting a trajectory that could put him in the position of appointing Supreme Court justices as president—or, in an alternative scenario floated recently by The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin and the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page, serving on the Supreme Court as Hillary Clinton’s first appointee.
“He had a lot of chutzpah, doing what he did,” recalled Abner Mikva, who actively pursued Obama as a possible clerk when he was chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Mikva, a former Democratic congressman with his own Chicago roots, ended up a good friend and mentor to Obama and is an active supporter of his presidential bid. “I often tease him about how he could have been a clerk for me,” says Mikva, now 81 and on the University of Chicago Law School faculty. Of Obama, Mikva says, “I have not been this impressed by a political talent since the day I saw FDR in a parade as a boy.”
The rest of this article is available at http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1196849068428&hub=TopStories
From the Baton Rouge Advocate:
New Orleans evacuee Celeste Jackson packed her clothes and most of her belongings in her car Thursday and prepared to move out of the FEMA trailer park on Victoria Drive that she has called home for two years.
The Mount Olive Gardens park, still home to about 75 families, is one of 13 trailer parks scheduled to close today as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s effort to move hurricane evacuees into permanent housing.
FEMA, however, has said as long as there are people still living in the parks who have not found apartments or houses to rent, the parks will stay open.
“They never told us that,” said Jackson, 18, who lives in a trailer with her infant son and her mother.
“My stuff is already packed,” she said. “My mother didn’t pack anything because why pack if we don’t have anywhere to go? It doesn’t make any sense.”
On Thursday, a day before the announced closing date, residents of the FEMA-run park expressed mixed opinions about leaving. Several residents said they were confused about the agency’s official policy for the park.
FEMA said it placed fliers on the trailers two months ago notifying residents of the pending closing date and encouraging them to contact their FEMA case workers.
The agency has created a database of rental properties that case workers will give to trailer residents to help them find a permanent place to live.
Ronnie Simpson, a FEMA spokesman, said any confusion over today’s closing date likely occurred because some residents never contacted their case workers.
Only some residents responded immediately to the fliers, Simpson said.
“It’s been difficult from our standpoint to get in touch with some of these folks as well as help them help themselves.”
Simpson said most of the parks scheduled to close today have fewer than 10 families. Mount Olive Gardens, with more than 70 families, is an exception.
Simpson said between 20 and 30 of the families at the trailer park had secured permanent housing by Thursday, although few of those had moved out of their trailers.
More here.
From the NY Times:
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 28 — Almost 3,000 families here and across Louisiana will have to leave their government-supplied trailers over the next few months under a new schedule prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA officials said Wednesday that the agency planned to close all the trailer camps it runs for victims of the 2005 hurricanes by the end of May, including its biggest camp for evacuees, outside of Baton Rouge. Here in New Orleans, 926 families are living in smaller FEMA camps, some of which are supposed to close within days. The agency says its action is intended to hasten the move of residents from trailers to permanent housing, and officials said FEMA is committed to helping them find new housing before the parks close. Counselors will work with residents to track down available apartments.
“We’re with them every step of the way,” said Diane L. W. Perry, a spokeswoman for the agency here, who added that no one will be forced out of a trailer without a home in which to live.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development will assume responsibility for paying to house poor families, as it is also doing for evacuees who are already in rental units around the country. Volunteer groups have been assisting with down payments and furniture in some cases, she said.
This is from the Brooklyn for Barack listserv...if you're interested, contact Rhys Southan at the e-mail address below.
I'm friends with a building owner in New York City whois a Barack Obama supporter, and she wants an artistto paint a large mural of Obama on one of herbuildings in Manhattan. She will buy the paints andbrushes, but is looking for an artist who can do thepainting itself for free.That's why I'm posting this to Obama supporters. Weneed an artist who supports Obama enough to take onthis portrait project purely out of excitement for hiscandidacy (and of course a chance to paint a mural ona Manhattan building and credit for the art). Ifyou're interested, write me back atnotsanpaku@yahoo.com. Thanks!Rhys (Southan)
From Times-Picayune:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will spend at least $2.9 million for nearly 1,000 street-related repair projects in Slidell, with most of the work occurring in the city's hurricane-battered southern section.
Mayor Ben Morris announced Friday that the city had received the funding, though the agency approved the projects two months ago. He said he didn't want to say anything "until the money's in the bank."
Noting that FEMA now has formally obligated the money, Morris said the agency concurred with 97 percent of the works list compiled by the city. And more Submerged Roads Program money may be forthcoming for the work, the vast majority of which will be south of Fremaux Avenue.
Earlier this year, teams of city officials and employees walked the streets in Slidell and put together an exhaustive list of projects to fix streets, curbs, sidewalks, driveways and related works. FEMA inspectors later retraced the city's steps and ultimately agreed that almost all of those projects qualified for funding.
The damage was the result of Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters and brutal winds in August 2005, and by the subsequent swarms of heavy equipment and truck traffic during the hectic early post-Katrina recovery months.
"This isn't reimbursement for money the city already has spent," Morris said. "This is all going to be new work. It's all Katrina-related. We couldn't go in and do any repairs because it wouldn't be reimbursed without prior approval from FEMA."
Morris said the city wants to get started on the work as soon as possible, though officials already conducted much of the preliminary engineering work while compiling the detailed 66-page report to FEMA. Richard Lambert will serve as the program's consulting engineer.
The agency's initial repair cost estimate for the projects it accepted as eligible under the program is $2.9 million. However, the final total will be determined by the "actual cost of repair." That's expected to be much higher, with FEMA picking up the total tab.
The list from which FEMA and the city are working breaks down into 983 projects on or along 271 streets, of which 731 projects on or along 183 streets are in the southern half of the city.
Although the south Slidell projects are 74 percent of the total, they represent about 92 percent of the potential cost because of the greater damage caused south of the Fremaux Avenue "slosh line."
The project worksheet indicates the streets in the subdivisions on either side of Pontchartrain Drive -- particularly Yester Oaks, Westchester Estates, Lakeshore Village, Magnolia Heights and Windsor Place -- and the tidally influenced Palm Lake area suffered the most extensive damage.
From the Lafayette Daily Advertiser:
Aquarium officials replaced the dead fish by fishing for them in the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys and Bahamas. They caught enough to restock at an expenditure of $99,766. FEMA -- which would have approved an allotment of $600,000 had the fish been bought from commercial suppliers -- denied the request for reimbursement of the $99,766.
The dispute dragged on until Wednesday when FEMA acknowledged that aquarium personnel "demonstrated that it was more cost effective to catch the replacement fish". After more than a year and a half, the reimbursement will be approved.The original decision, however, supports the call of many in Congress for a total revamp of FEMA.
From TheSequitur.com:
Most people probably didn’t know too much about FEMA before the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Since then, the agency has been under intense public and government scrutiny. Some might even say that FEMA has serious work to do before they can gain back their street cred.Enter Scott J. Wolfson, who wrote and performed the “FEMA for Kidz Rap.” The laughable lyrics include such dope rhymes as, “Disaster prep is your responsibility/And mitigation is important to our agency,” which could get any young hip-hop connoisseur totally grooving.Will the kid-friendly ultra-hip song get more kids to pay attention to this government agency? Doubtful, as the song is neither kid-friendly (how many “kidz” do you know who are familiar with the idea of mitigation as it relates to disaster relief?) or ultra-hip (one look at the lyrics should prove that). At the least, though, FEMA has finally provided the kind of aid that everyone in the world can use: fodder for a good chuckle.
Full story here.
