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Obama allowed to keep BlackBerry

23 January 2009 By Leave a Comment

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7846232.stm

Barack Obama is to keep his BlackBerry, becoming the first US president to have access to e-mail in the White House.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said a “compromise” would allow the president to stay in touch with senior staff and personal friends.

There had been security concerns about who might be able to see the president’s e-mails.

Presidential ‘bubble’

“It’s just one tool among a number of tools that I’m trying to use, to break out of the bubble, to make sure that people can still reach me,” he told CNN.

“If I’m doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an e-mail and say, ‘What are you doing?’”

I cut the hell out of the article, so go read all of it. I just want to say, I am so glad to have a president who is seemingly so accessible. He’s started a WhiteHouse blog, and even on his own website has kept people in the loop. I know it’s not 100% in the loop, but it’s a lot more than any previous president has done.

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Obama ‘to end abortion funds ban’

23 January 2009 By Leave a Comment

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7847651.stm

President Barack Obama is set to lift a ban on US funding for groups that provide abortion services abroad, officials say.

The move would reverse a policy of his predecessor, George W Bush.

The policy, also known as the “global gag rule”, has stopped US government money going to groups that perform or provide information about abortion.

Health groups say they have been badly hit. The US is one of the key backers of family planning programmes globally.

Correspondents say hundreds of organisations working in the world’s poorest nations – places where maternal mortality and infant death are high – have faced a tough choice: either sign the gag rule and be silenced on abortion, or refuse and lose millions of dollars in US aid.

Pro-life groups in the US say taxpayers’ money should not be used to pay for abortion or its promotion.

Repeated reversals

A spokesman for the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) told the BBC that under the Bush administration, the organisation had lost more than $100m (£73m) in funding, affecting its services across 176 countries.

“It’s had a massive impact on delivery of services of family planning across the globe, but in particular in Africa,” said Paul Bell of the IPPF.

“No money supplied by the US federal government can be used for abortion-related services. But this rule effectively gags foreign NGOs from talking about the issue if they accept US funding. It is not applied to US-based NGOs as it would be deemed unconstitutional.”

The policy has become a see-saw issue between Republican and Democratic administrations.

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, repealed the policy when he took office in 1993 and George W Bush reinstated it in 2001.

The ruling is also known as the Mexico City Policy, because it was first introduced at a UN conference there in 1984 by former Republican President Ronald Reagan.

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BBC NEWS | Americas | US Elections 2008 | Obama ‘to rebuild crumbling US’

6 December 2008 By Leave a Comment

BBC NEWS | Americas | US Elections 2008 | Obama ‘to rebuild crumbling US’.

US President-elect Barack Obama has promised to invest in infrastructure on a scale not seen since the 1950s, when the US highway system was established.

He used his weekly address to outline that the spending would be part of his plan to create at least 2.5m new jobs in the ailing US economy.

He also spoke of the need for expanded access to high-speed internet and the modernisation of school buildings.

Unemployment rose by more than 500,000 during November, figures have shown.

That was the biggest monthly rise in job cuts since 1974, and it drove up the jobless rate to a 15-year high of 6.7%, up from 6.5% in October.

The figures came less than a week after the National Bureau for Economic Research said the US economy had been in recession since late 2007.

Mr Obama, who takes office on 20 January, has previously said that his incoming team will be tasked with generating 2.5m new jobs by 2011.

Broadband drive

On Saturday, speaking in his weekly address, Mr Obama outlined how most of that employment might be created.

We will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s,” he said.

“We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.”

The president-elect said that broadband internet connections in the US should be available to schoolchildren and hospitals.

“In the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online and… that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world,” he said.

School buildings, he continued, would be modernised and upgraded to make them energy-efficient.

The new administration, he added, would launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs.

“Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world – we need to change that,” he said.

I don’t mind the spending, and I love his “use it or lose it” although to my knowledge it’s always been that way. If money isn’t spent this year, you get less next year and what you don’t get, get’s diverted to another area. I thought that was why I saw my own city replacing things that didn’t need replacing (to my untrained eyes), so the money would be there next year in case they do need it for something more important. I could be wrong.

I lvoe that he is looking to create 2.5 million jobs. I don’t even know what those jobs are, but frankly, it doesn’t matter. I think I’d take a job as a street sweeper if I was out of work long enough and hungry enough.

I am still very excited about Obama. I truly believe he will bring us back around.

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A debate for sobering times | Salon News

8 October 2008 By Leave a Comment

Never before in the 48-year history of presidential debates has a candidate begun his substantive remarks, as Obama did, by starkly declaring, “I think everybody knows now we are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” Yet as a first-term senator — a candidate whose meteoric rise has been fueled by his opposition to the Iraq war, his charisma and his life story — Obama did a masterly job of coming across as the candidate of economic reassurance.

Bill Clinton — who overwhelmed George H.W. Bush in the first town-meeting debate in 1992 — was the unquestioned master at feeling (or feigning) the pain of an individual voter. But Obama and McCain had the much more difficult challenge of feeling the pain of an entire economy. In one of his strongest moments — even though it was unlikely to make the morning-after highlight reels — Obama explained the credit crunch in a way that even the most economically unsophisticated voter could understand:

“The credit markets are frozen up and what that means … is that small businesses and some large business just can’t get loans. If they can’t get a loan, that means that they can’t make payroll … If you imagine just one company trying to deal with that, now imagine a million companies all across the country.”

Looking at the debate purely in political terms obscures the reality that much of what both candidates are saying about the economy is only tangentially connected to the worldwide financial crisis. Middle-class tax cuts, Obama’s favorite balm, would not lift America out of a deep recession or do much to restore retirement accounts devastated by the stock-market dive. McCain was even further off the mark with his proposal for an “across-the-board freeze” on government spending — defense, of course, excluded. McCain’s green-eyeshade approach to economic calamity suggests that he lives in an alternative universe where the economic-stimulus lessons of John Maynard Keynes have never been demonstrated.

A debate for sobering times | Salon News.

I actually did not watch this debate, so I am depending on what I’ve read. This article sums up about how I thought it would go though. I’ve copied out a few choice paragraphs from the article.

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Palin hits Obama for ‘terrorist’ connection – CNN.com

8 October 2008 By Leave a Comment

ENGLEWOOD, Colorado (CNN) — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday slammed Sen. Barack Obama’s political relationship with a former anti-war radical, accusing him of associating “with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lashed out at Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to controversial figure William Ayers.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lashed out at Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to controversial figure William Ayers.

Palin’s attack delivered on the McCain campaign’s announcement that it would step up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate with just a month left before the November general election.

“We see America as the greatest force for good in this world,” Palin said at a fund-raising event in Colorado, adding, “Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

Palin made similar comments later at a rally in Carson, California. CNN Fact Check

Obama’s Chicago, Illinois, home is in the same neighborhood as Bill Ayers, a founder of the radical Weather Underground, which was involved in several bombings in the early 1970s, including the Pentagon and the Capitol, and the two have met several times since Obama’s 1995 campaign for a state Senate seat.

Palin hits Obama for ‘terrorist’ connection – CNN.com.

How does that not reflect poorly on the McCain group? I mean, really, how does it not?

Obama is over here saying “look at his record, he did this, this and this” and McCain is over on the other side saying “when he was 8, he lived in the same neighborhood as an accused, but not convicted bomber.” They are grasping at straws and I cannot understand how so many people can’t see this.

I also didn’t realize how young Obama was (48 whenever that statement was made!) and I would think that more people would vote for someone younger. I mean, I can see the seniors voting McCain, he’s their age, supposedly on their side (ha!) but…

As I said a few posts ago, I want someone who is going to inititate the change we need, not bring us four more years of decline. I don’t need the US to be a world supoer power, but I certainly don’t need it to become a third world country either, where our children are broadcast on European televisions as needing a few pennies a day for rice. In my world, we get that country, we send them food, and while I have always believed we should help our own homeless, our own hungry, I have never in my life thought that our country as a whole would turn into that hungry little girl.

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