Friday, March 6, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Barack Obama sends bust of Winston Churchill on its way back to Britain
Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing and pulse rates soaring among anxious British diplomats.
A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.
The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush's tenure.
But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: "Thanks, but no thanks."
Diplomats were at first reluctant to discuss the whereabouts of the Churchill bronze, after its ejection from the seat of American power. But the British Embassy in Washington has now confirmed that it sits in the palatial residence of ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald, just down the road from Vice President Joe Biden's official residence. It is not clear whether the ambassador plans to keep it in Washington or send it back to London.
American politicians have made quoting Churchill, whose mother was American, something of an art form, but not Mr Obama, who prefers to cite the words and works of his hero Abraham Lincoln. Indeed a bust of Mr Lincoln now sits in the Oval Office where Epstein's Churchill once ruled the roost.
Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr Obama than those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill's second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather.
The rejection of the bust has left some British officials nervously reading the runes to see how much influence the UK can wield with the new regime in Washington.
Now it is likely that Gordon Brown will offer a alternative symbol of Anglo-American fealty when he visits Washington to meet Mr Obama for the first time since he became President. Diplomats are still working to finalise a date for the visit which is expected in the final week of this month or early in March.
One suggestion, given Mr Obama's interest in the Lincoln era, is that Mr Brown should offer an artefact relating to the career of John Bright, the 19th Century MP and political reformer who became the most prominent British supporter of Lincoln's Union forces during the American Civil War.
A British Embassy spokesman said: "The bust of Sir Winston Churchill by Sir Jacob Epstein was uniquely lent to a foreign head of state, President George W Bush, from the Government Art Collection in the wake of 9/11 as a signal of the strong transatlantic relationship.
"It was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the President was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009.
"The new President has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned. It is on display at the Ambassador's Residence."
Saturday, February 7, 2009
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill. And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent. The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years. He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence. At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend. And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination. It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction. It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Friday, February 6, 2009
God In the White House-Book
How did we go from John F. Kennedy declaring that religion should play no role in the elections to Bush saying, "I believe that God wants me to be president"? Historian Randall Balmer takes us on a tour of presidential religiosity in the last half of the twentieth century—from Kennedy's 1960 speech that proposed an almost absolute wall between American political and religious life to the soft religiosity of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society; from Richard Nixon's manipulation of religion to fit his own needs to Gerald Ford's quiet stoicism; from Jimmy Carter's introduction of evangelicalism into the mainstream to Ronald Reagan's co-option of the same group; from Bill Clinton's covert way of turning religion into a non-issue to George W. Bush's overt Christian messages, Balmer reveals the role religion has played in the personal and political lives of these American presidents. Americans were once content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting, as in most of the modern presidential elections before Jimmy Carter.But today's voters have come to expect candidates to fully disclose their religious views and to deeply illustrate their personal relationship to the Almighty. God in the White Houseexplores the paradox of Americans' expectation that presidents should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and state. Balmer tells the story of the politicization of religion in the last half of the twentieth century, as well as the "religionization" of our politics. He reflects on the implications of this shift, which have reverberated in both our religious and political worlds, and offers a new lens through which to see not only these extraordinary individuals, but also our current political situation.Book Description
My take on the Credit Crisis and Baliout.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Why oh why can't congress do their homework!!! Any company out there that throws their future and money at a problem goes out of business! USA will have the same thing happen if we don't wise up. We are the most powerful nation on earth and I am starting to wonder if we are only out of sheer luck. If we keep going on like we are we will survive only out of sheer luck.
Please let's use our heads here. Here are some effective ways to fix our current issues without spending.
Eliminate Mark to Market accounting. It is a ludicrous way to account for your assets. Here is a definition of Mark to Market.
Another way to flood the market without spending a dime, lower the capital gains tax. Wall Street still runs the market. The people that have money are the ones we need to start investing again. These investors would come back in if we did this one simple thing. Doesn't cost us a dime. Yes, less revenue but we would not take actual cash out of our system to do it and I guarantee you will see money come back in.
Reduce the payroll tax and the price of doing business. These are effective ways to get our economy rolling again. I feel it is not what people do it is why are they doing it.
Letting people in government that are not out for the best interests of the economy, or to give them the benefit of the doubt, are well meaning but misguided, power over the economy is terrifying. What are the credentials of our leaders making our financial futures? Well, based on our last election, If Al Franken can get elected.... what can you say. Senators should have to have some kind of background in finance and other criteria to be running our country. But this will never happen. Why? Because of the huge conflict of interest. The criminals are running the prison. And so the change we really need isn't going to happen.
Letting Nancy "Kickback" Pelosi come up with these pork barrel spending bills is going to take us down. Obama, it has nothing to do with whether we accept this stupid Bailout bill. It has very little support. WE ARE NOT STUPID!!
Change we need??? This is a rerun of what Paulson and Bush did a few months ago. The rhetoric is insane. And no one is buying it.
Robyn D. Honsey
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
China censors Obama's inauguration Speech
BEIJING – China censored its translation of President Barack Obama's inauguration speech, removing references to communism and dissent, and quickly halted state television's live broadcast of the address when Cold War-era animosities were mentioned. One television official tried to downplay the cutaway as a normal break in programming while an editor with the China Daily newspaper's Web site said staff who censored online versions of the speech likely did so because they were "duty-bound to protect the country's interests." The news channel of state broadcaster China Central Televisionbroadcast the speech live early Wednesday local time, but appeared caught off-guard by Obama's reference to how earlier generations of Americans had "faced down fascism and communism." The audio quickly faded out from Obama's speech and cameras cut back to the studio anchor, who seemed flustered for a second before turning to ask a U.S.-based CCTV reporter what challenges the president faces in turning around the economy. China's ruling Communist Party maintains a tight grip over its entirely state-run media. Beijing tolerates little dissent and frequently decries foreign interference in its internal affairs. Wang Jianhong, deputy director of the CCTV general editing department, said he did not stay up to watch the inauguration broadcast but suggested the transition was a normal part of the program. "There are breakaways even when broadcasting China's own meetings," he said. "Americans might care a lot about the presidential inauguration, but Chinese may not be very interested." The China Daily Web site, the official Xinhua News Agency and popular online portals Sina and Sohu all used a translation of the speech that omitted the word "communism" from the same sentence that tripped up thenews anchor. The translation was also missing Obama's remarks on free speech when he said "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent — know that you are on the wrong side of history." An editor at the China Daily Web site said managers did not order the censorship. "Our translators and editors on the evening shift would make those decisions independently," said the editor, who refused to give his name as is common in China. "As Chinese, we are duty-bound to protect the country's interests." Another popular online portal, Netease, carried a translation that was missing the paragraph mentioning communism, though it retained the part about dissent. Rebecca MacKinnon, a journalism professor who teaches about media and the Internet at the University of Hong Kong, said this kind of censorship was common in China, though she could not say why the government would want to do so. "I can't attribute motives to it, I can't get inside their head and explain what they're thinking. But this is standard practice," she said. The full translation of Obama's speech could be viewed on the Web site of Hong Kong-based broadcasterPhoenix Satellite Television, which has a reputation as a more independent news source. The China Daily Web site posted Obama's full remarks in English only. China has previously altered the words of U.S. officials. A 2004 speech in Shanghai by former Vice President Dick Cheney was broadcast live on state-run television at the insistence of U.S. officials, but the Chinese transcript of the remarks deleted references to political freedom. In 2003, the memoirs of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's nominee for secretary of state, were pulled from publication in China after the government-backed publisher removed references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests and altered Clinton's comments about human rights activist Harry Wu.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
State senator: It doesn’t matter if Maryland’s broke as long as Obama’s president
http://www.foxbaltimore.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wbff_vid_1847.shtml
More crazy, 'Obama is the Mesiah' stuff.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Growing majority worried over Obama eligibility Even half in Illinois say issue should be reviewed, resolved
Now there’s a Barack Obama-branded cellphone (in Kenya)
Handset vendor, Mi has launched a Barack Obama branded mobile phone for sale in Kenya - the home country of the President Elect's father. The handset is co branded with the Obama colours and logo and is being sold for roughly $30. The company says that the Mi-Obama handsets are available exclusively at Fone Xpress@ Nakumatt, Tuskys and Phonelink retail stores throughout Kenya, the product in its first week of availability has already sold over 1000 units in Nairobi alone. "The coming of the new President of the USA is an auspicious moment for all Kenyans and the people of Africa. It is our pleasure to be able to launch the Mi-Obama phone as a memento that will always stay within the user's hearts and minds" says Alpesh Patel, Director of Mi-Fone. The company said that it thought the opportunity was just too good to miss. The President-Elect himself is famously addicted to his BlackBerry phone. A Barack Obama Branded Mobile Phone
Friday, January 16, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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