Whatever happened to that transparency promise that Obama made while on his campaign trail? Is this promise just going to be one of the 514 other promises that he made and seems to have slipped his mind? He promised to place each bill that was coming up for a vote to place on a website for five days so that the people would have time to read it and get in touch with their congressmen and tell them how they wanted them to vote. This was going to be the most transparent government in history. What happened to this promise and what else do we not expect to get?
It was never made clear that we were going to be stock holders in the car industry, insurance industry or the banking industry either. This is why Obama will not place these bills online for us to see. The people would not have allowed such tom foolery for one this goes entirely against the Constitution. Everything that this man has done since his first day in office is to shread the Constitution of the United States of America.
The cap and trade bill that the congress passed and will go to the senate in August, does anyone remember seeing it posted anywhere for the American public to reveue? No, you didn't because this in reality is the largest tax increase in the history of this country. And guess what? Our representatives did not read this bill either!
Hello all I am interested in viewing how others are portraying our president elect.
I have recently finished a watercolor of Barack it can be seen on my web site www.heritagehillart.com what are others doing?
Dear Mr. President,
I'm your big fan from Indonesia, very proud of your success, not only because of your spectacular win, but also because part of your childhood were spent in my country Indonesia. Your success inspired others including Indonesia, even my beloved President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono could not hide his feeling and carried away by positive vibration that experience all over the world,
Mr Bush era deliver a wrong impression of America, people in Indonesia especially Moslem have a wrong understanding of America and the extremist used this to blame America as the root of all problem and must go down. But your victory reverse and shut their premis, and now people of Indonesia understand that America is nothing different. That America also hoping for a better world and a better future for the sake of mankind even better America has shown that willingness to change and good faith despite of any differences in our appeareances are the most important thing. Keep up with your all inclusive sight and don't give up talking with everybody that will effectively fight the radicals and leave them no room to grow.
I pray for you and your family, hoping for the best, we love you, Indonesia love you and waiting for you to come to Indonesia, and hoping you have time to meet your old pals or your ex teacher, we will appreciate and very proud of it and that will be last in our memory for generations to come
once again congratulation Mr President !
Mr. President-elect, I need to say "Thank you". Thank you for restoring a hope in me that I thought had died with no chance for resurrection. A hope that had been attacked with the killings of John, Bobby and Martin. A hope that was besieged by the shame of a scandal-clad Nixon regime. A hope mortgaged by the debt-laden Reagan years. And, a hope seemingly quelched by the past eight years of blind ambition, flaunted hubris and unchecked greed.
Just when I thought there was no more, I was shown one last glimmer. It started, for me, with a keynote convention speech and has culminated in an unprecedented, monumental moment. A turning from exclusive ideology to inclusive idealism. A chance to fulfill the promise of what it is to be an American - equality, opportunity, liberty, and humanity for all.
I didn't do much, made a few phone calls on your behalf. However, it's the fact that, for the first time since my late teen years, I've gotten politically active again. I've always been politically aware. But, actually involved ... well, that just doesn't happen when hope has passed.
By the looks of the outpouring of support, monetarily and voluntarily, I am not alone in this revival of belief. I, we all, owe you a debt of gratitude for showing us that we can come together. We can instigate change. We can create a better today and a brighter tomorrow. Oh, yes we can!
I know the real work begins tomorrow. For now, though, I can't help but remember the immortal words made famous by Dr. King: "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!". Free to do what is right. Free to do what is just. Free to to come together and return respect to ourselves, each other, and our country.
Thank you.
In the midst of this historic election, I can’t help but wonder whether an Obama presidency might represent a “finale” to the 60s movement that we never had. I mean, it has only been in recent years that the 1960s have been ramticized by youth and marketers eager to capitalize on its popularity. Obama's rise to the presidency is an American story brought about in large part by the revolution of thwe 1960s. But it wasn’t romantic by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t about selling hamburgers and cars in cool clothes. It was real. It was a difficult period in our history. We nearly had a nuclear war with Cuba and Russia. Kennedy was assassinated. There was the civil rights showdown on segregation in schools. The 1965 riots. Then a worsening Vietnam War and mandatory draft of young men, many going to their deaths for a war that had no direction and could not be won. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Robert Kennedy as well. Americans began to leave their churches, pareticularly, the Catholic church. Young people began resisting and demonstrating. Then there were the Kent State shootings of eight students by the Ohio National Guard. For a kid growing up in the 1960s, it was a lot to absorb.
By the mid-1970s, the Vietnam War, the 60’s activism, and Nixon presidency were over. The country seemed at a loss for direction. I was in college then. Our chief concern was in the nuclear arms buildup in trying to keep up with Russia. I recall numerous pieces in the news then how the world might end by 2008. I actually dropped out of pre-med in part because of a lack of confidence that I (and we in the U.S.) would not have a certain future. As it turns out, we did. But the manner in which it was done has become one of short sighted, weak leadership.
The country merely “moved on” from the 60s. We didn’t get it! It's like we took a “stupid pill” and forgot everything we had gone through between 1962 and 1974 - threw away our notes, and forgot to formalize conclusions that we could follow in years to come. As a result, the 70s were extraordinarily dismal economically and culturally. The leadership of both major political parties was “milk toast.” I mean, “disco” became the highlight of that critical period. That should tell you something. In 2008, we face history with the opportunity to elect a black President. Yet, some in this country who might oppose a black President for the color of his skin never "got it" from the 60s.
By the 1980s when Ronald Reagan took office, he brought a new and different course to economic and military progress. The country was amiss in problems in the Middle East and Russia. Reagan introduced trickle-down economics that sparked a new economic era, but it included cuts in needed government services and in exchange ushered in a new more accomodating view of U.S. corporate mergers and acquisitions, the real beginning of today’s deregulation that in my view led to the excesses that brought down our financial markets and economy in 2008. Despite economic prosperity in the 1980s, it was “politically incorrect” to bring up the 60s in reflection. Political candidates and business leaders frequently denounced their 60s involvement in order to become successful businessmen. Still others ended up on the street as Vietnam War Vets with PTSD and similar disorders. They and others became the illegitamate offspring of a difficult, revolutionary, and defining period in American history. Depending on who you asked, you would hear either good and bad views of this period.
By the mid to late 80s, the country had seen fairly widespread growth and prosperity, except for the forgotten war vets and increasingly crowded and poorer inner cities like Los Angeles and New York City, that had been left out of the economic expansion as companies took jobs and fled the inner cities in huge numbers for the suburbs and first wave of outsourcing with cheap foreign labor. At that time, no one figured there would be a sizable unrest just a few years later in the 1992 Los Angeles riots. We weren’t looking for it. We had Bruce Springtein, the very successful 1984 Olympics, the expansion of professional sports, the fall of the Berlin Wall, with Russia right behind it. But per the stresses released in the 1992 riots, there were siginificant pentup issues, and arguably abandonment. Also, by 1992 the U.S. and particularly California, was in the grips of a sizable recession.
Somehow - we got through the 1992 riots and that recession. And by the late 90s, we had the tech boom, NAFTA, and more outsourcing of jobs. It wasn’t real apparent, but there was a growing divide between the middle class. A lot of people lost money when the tech boom went bust, yet it gave us insight into new and creative funding of economic expansion, including, new and creative tools to fund the economy, particularly, “derivatives.” Real estate values soon began growing at a never before seen pace. Life in the U.S. between 2002 and 2006 was all about money, and how an average Joe Homeowner could pull from their home, like an ATM or slot machine. But with this period, was increasing homelessness and poverty, and failed opportunities to invest in our nation’s infrastructure and new technologies. We “jacked off the dogs to feed the cats” so recklessly, that when we woke up, we realized the dogs had died and much of everything else was starving. By 2007, an ugly handwriting was on the wall. But, Wall Street gurus responded with increasingly brazen attempts to spin and create money. Then came the news of Bear Stearns, and the 1st governemt bailout.
For too long as a nation, we have ingored the obvious, our people, our infrastructure, our sick and needy - and all in exchange for leveraged riches for just a few. And now our ways have caught up with us. But, I must correct myself here. I was NOT a part of this reckless economic expansion. Since 1992, I’ve been undergoing a series of brain surgeries to get a shunt to correctly relieve fluid pressure on my brain. During this period, my life, health, and recovery were blocked by Wall Street and FDA level failures and coverups of safety issues with a popular CNS shunt device. Yes - I was sold out for Wall Street riches - just like many of you. Brain shunts are big business. In order for me to have any hope for a future, I had to become a health advocate, FDA policy and law expert, a neuroscientist, an expert in artificial intelligence, and an inventor of a diagnostic shunt test. But no matter what I did, it was never good enough. On every occassion, I had to fight Wall Street influences. In fact, I directed my 2 most successful surgeries. But, it’s taken me 7 surgeries in all, including, my recent successful surgery in May of 2008 that finally relieved the swelling on my brain, albeit after 16 years. Why 16 years? It took that long to convince the powers that be on the right way to implant shunts, as well as numerous supportive scientive papers I had written. I nearly got my shunt of today implanted back in 1998. On that occassion, the FDA stopped me. Then, on numerous times since, each and every neurosurgeon I saw was somehow affiliated with a (Wall Street) shunt company, whose shunts all failed me. So - I am kind of like those in the inner city. Like those being drawn in or brought here illegally to work for cheaper wages than a residing American. I am an American, disenfranchised and deprived of life and liberty by today's Wall Street and its influences. Now, as much as half of the country has also been disenfranchised albeit by the same dishonest mechanism. Yes - in September/ October 2008, shit hit the fan in the U.S., and government and business leaders who had prided themselves on deregulation, low taxes, and outsourcing were brought to their knees - and in the balance, a nation waits, eager for any hope of new leadership. And, then came Senator Barrack Obama.
Yes - I had a vision today of what was, and what could again be. A proud and homogenious America, an accomplished nation. I saw Barrack Obama at the helm. I believe the excitement that so many see is that of an Obama presidency and the prospects that we might once again reconnect with our past, perhaps in a revolutionary type of way as I expect the change and resulting progress to be unharalded per any other era in our history. And we need this. We need this to help us better understand who we are as Americans, and the course we must plot in moving ahead. With the ascention of Barrack Obama as our favored next President, I couldn't think of a better "finale" and tribute to an era and movement I and others knew as the "60s."
So, with this critical election so close at hand, I again choose "us," just as I did in the 1960s.
All that fuss during the primary. All Bill and Hillary Clinton's rankering about the 18 million women supporters she brought into the primary - is now being used to aid Sarah Palin and the McCain/Palin GOP ticket. No, it wasn't just Hillary's 3am add about her supposed foreign policy experience that then hurt Barrack Obama. She caused the American voter to re-think what Presidential experience is, and what it is NOT. She spoke of how critical it is to have women serving in high office.
There is no doubt Hillary "opened the door" for Sarah Palin and the GOP, again. Palin, who could well become the President in that McCain's health and age are in question, is no Hillary. The only thing they have in common is gender and big oil. But Palin is a radical religious right loyalist, hand picked by Carl Rove. She's more right than George Bush. The only change she would bring is further to the right! The American people are getting waxed by the Rove machine!
So - where is Hillary? Where are her communications with the 18 million women she claimed were democrats in the primary? Her SILENCE is remarkable. It raises serious questions about her loyalty to the party and future in the Senate.
Wake up New York. Your Senator is about to hand the GOP the 2008 election!
Here's a link to an ad I made:
9:13 am PST, September 4, 2008. Near 16th and Mission. I am ready to begin.
I volunteered in the Obama campaign during the primary. I wanted her to win over Clinton. However, since Obama has clinched the primary, I have done nothing.
I was thinking about leaving the country when Bush beat Kerry. I didn't do it, but I was thinking about it. It's unbelivable when you think about it: Gore won in 2000, yet Bush got elected. Bush won in 2004, yet I still dispute the result. I remember watching the results come in on the internet and seeing Kerry ahead in the polls and projections. I have to admit I was really discouraged by this country at that moment in time. To even get to the point where it was close meant that I disagree with so many other voters. Now I am really proud of the Democrats. To elect Obama was great. BUT WE ARE NOT FINISHED YET AND NO ONE SHOULD BE SATISFIED!
This is all new to me. I am energized to learn, financially support, and join others in the march for Change in Michigan with Obama as our leader. I won't lie to you either. It is not easy to make phone calls to undecided voters, or walk door to door, since I am not that outgoing. But, I care so much about what is happening in this presidential campaign 08 that I am compelled to do something. I don't even know all the tiny details when it comes to compare McCain/Palin to Obama/Biden. What I do know as a simple small hometown person that the attacks on Obama are truly unfair, and not true at all. I have done so much research on my own to finally come up with what I believe is to be the truth. I trust Obama/Biden to lead us out of the liberal government that has been a republican lead, and now it is time for new ideas that make sense, and for all of us to be brave enough to step out of the box and support Obama/Biden. I hope many like me will move forward quickly and talk to other members of the Obama team to become energized as well.
Go to the Obama website and seek out local house meetings to attend like I have done. Being an American comes alive at these meeings knowing you have a right to listen, make decisions and vote for who you think is the best Candidate for Change.
If you want to know what type of support the Clintons will extend to the Obama/Biden ticket, you ought to be looking into where her money has been coming from. There were reports last year that many of the same organizations that had poured money into the McCain race also were contributing to Hillary Clinton's campaign. It should come as no surprise that the two ganged up on Obama in the primary, and are doing it again in the general election.
With the convention ready to start, perhaps some fresh news pieces on her sources of money and connection to John McCain might cause her supporters to re-think their support of her. Elected office is supposed to be "public service," not "self service!"
Here's the link to my discussion following Obama's clinching the nomination:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stevadore/gGBy5v
Can You Afford $15 Gas
Imagine a time in the United States when the price of regular gas barely reached over the $1 mark. That era was in the early 1980’s when the Federal government placed restrictions on the areas where oil could be drilled for off our nation's coast. Now we fast-forward to the present and reality hits us in the face like a concrete brick. Gas is now at a relatively high price and unfortunately, those restrictions on the outer continental shelf drilling still stand.
After much thought and research of the causes. I have come to the same conclusion as many experts that we must “DRILL HERE and DRILL NOW”. I acknowledge this is not a fix-all solution to our energy woes but merely a Band-Aid until alternative energy sources can be brought up to par with oil. However, oil is presently the life-blood of our nation and the price of gas is on the majority of American’s minds. This is accentuated by reading the following excerpt that appeared August 7, 2008 on US News and World Report’s internet site in regards to the Presidential Race.
Until recently, coastal states had taken a "not in my backyard" approach to offshore drilling. But that's beginning to change, now that gas prices are hovering at or above $4 per gallon. In Florida, 60 percent of voters now support drilling off their coasts. Perhaps more surprising, a majority in eco-conscious California is also willing to tap waters off the state's shorelines.
No matter how one looks at the evidence, it all leads to one fact: The price of gasoline will continue to be unstable. According to the statistical agency of the Department of Energy, gas prices have increased as follows.
May 1993 to May 2003 by only $.40
May 2003 to May 2008 by $2.57
May 2007 to May 2008 by a whopping $1.07
Therefore, if the trend of gas prices continues at the conservative estimate of $1.07 per year, then the price for a gallon of regular gas will be as follows.
May 2009 $5.15
May 2013 $9.42
May 2018 almost $$15 dollars
Then the sudden plummet in price recently illustrates the instability of gas. It went from record high of $4.06 per gallon to an average of $3.88 nationally in just two weeks as stated on the Department of Energy’s website. This is detrimental to our country because it gives Americans the false impression that price of gas has reached its peak and thus only drop. However, this is more than likely false when considering the many factors that affect the price of gas such as the increase in world demand, the decrease in national oil production, natural disasters, and geopolitics. Geopolitics is one area that as a Nation can be removed from the equation.
Geopolitics is an issue because of the reality that most of our oil is imported although we are the third largest oil producer. In fact, 60 percent of our oil is imported as stated by the Energy Information Administration. Of that amount, 20% comes from Africa and 16% from the Persian Gulf. This is significant because any fighting in Africa or talk of war with Iran can instantly skyrocket the price of gas.
Therefore, you ask what you can do about it. Well, we must urge our Nation’s leaders to “DRILL HERE and DRILL NOW”. The Washington Post reports that 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off limits in our own country of which would be enough oil to replace every non-North American import for 22 years. Of that 75 billion, 18 billion barrels lie in the restricted areas of the outer continental shelf as reported by the E.I.A.
Much has changed since the Federal bans on offshore drilling were enacted to include tremendous advances in technology that allows oil to be drilled with far more precision and environmental care. Not even powerful hurricanes such as Katrina and Rita caused any significant oil spills from the thousands of allowed oil well rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, the Mineral Management Service states, “over the past 20 years, less than .001 percent of the oil produced in U.S. state and federal waters have been spilled.” Furthermore, almost 60% of the oil that enters North American waters comes from natural seepage.
Like many of you, I love the beach and would be completely against offshore drilling if the slightest chance of an oil spill existed. Nevertheless, the revelation of $15 gas in just 10 years is enough for me to DEMAND CHANGE AND DEMAND IT NOW. So, sign the American Solutions petition at http://www.americansolutions.com/ to implore our Nation’s leaders to “DRILL HERE AND DRILL NOW”. In doing so, you will be heard amidst the masses of millions that feel the same pain as you instead of the government drowning out your single and silent voice.
In the last two weeks, there has been a flurry of stories that has tried to portray criticism of Barack Obama's recent stands as the sole province of disenchanted members of "the left" -- also referred to as "the far left", "left-winger bloggers", ...
Complete Article:
The Latest Media Blind Spot: Viewing All Criticism of Obama Through a Right-Left Prism
I understand why John McCain's campaign is desperately looking for negatives in Obama's overseas trip. But why have so many in the media internalized the McCain campaign's claptrap?
Commentary from Arianna Huffington.
I agree as I think Barrack will be a "calming" global influence when elected president.
Full Story:
Tell Me Again, Why is Obama's Popularity With Our Allies A Bad Thing?
<a href="http://tinypic.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i33.tinypic.com/2h7gtpy.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/sex-ed-for-kind.html
Yes barrack obama is being caught in his own lies. Do we want a guy for president that approves sex-ed for kindergarteners?
Lets not forget about hillary either... WATCH THIS VIDEO HALF WAY DOWN THE SITE.
http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2008/07/barack-obama-forgets-about-hillary.html
