Will Christie Hefner be America's first Secretary of Centerfolds? The soon-to-be-former Playboy Enterprises CEO gave an interview to CNBC this morning in which she hinted that she may be angling for a role in the Obama Administration.
"Like many Americans, I've been struck by the call to service that was the hallmark of the campaign, and I was an early supporter of Senator Obama, now President-Elect Obama, and I believe deeply in what he wants to do for our country," she told Larry Kudlow and Erin Burnett. "I'll be looking for ways in which I can serve to be helpful in that regard."
Hefner also denied that the timing of her departure has anything to do with Playboy's struggles. "Quite the opposite. I wouldn't be able to step down if the company weren't in such strong shape."
Source Portfolio.com
The court without comment declined to accept a stay application in the case of Donofrio vs. Wells, Secretary of State of New Jersey. Leo Donofrio of New Jersey tried to get all three presidential candidates stricken from the state ballot, claiming none was legally entitled to take office. The U.S. Constitution specifies the president must be a "natural born citizen" of the United States.
"My question is on a pure constitutional ground," Donofrio told the Chicago Tribune. "(Obama) is a citizen of the United States. I just don't believe he's a natural-born citizen."
Hawaiian officials have certified the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate as a "native-born" U.S. citizen.
The action marked the second time in three weeks the court has declined to rule on the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, SCOTUSblog reported. A Pennsylvania challenge is still awaiting presentation before the court.
The challenges to Obama's birth status have been fueled by the Internet, right-wing radio talk shows and WorldNetDaily, a right-leaning Web site, the Tribune reported.
Source UPI.com
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ill Ayers, co founder of the Weather Underground penned this op/ed about himself…..if you missed it, here it is:
December 6, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Real Bill Ayers
By WILLIAM AYERS
Chicago
IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.
Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”
Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.
I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.
With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.
Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close. Here are the facts:
I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.
I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I’ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education.
I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.
The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.
We — the broad “we” — wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.
The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.
President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.
Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.
William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of “Fugitive Days” and a co-author of the forthcoming “Race Course.”
Source Gretawire.com
December 8, 2008
BY MAUREEN O’DONNELL Staff Reporter
President-elect Barack Obama made a “bad decision” by distancing himself from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his church, Wright said Sunday — but that’s OK.
“He’s still my child,” Wright said in a sermon in which he expressed pride in Obama’s longtime association with Trinity United Church of Christ.
His talk was spiced with his trademark blend of history lesson, mimicry, singing, and — depending on your point of view — insults, or telling it like it is. One object of contempt seemed to be Elisabeth Hasselbeck of ABC’s “The View,” whom — while not saying her name — Wright twice referred to as a “broad,” including once as “that dumb broad.” Hasselbeck has criticized Wright on “The View.”
Wright, speaking at Trinity on its 47th anniversary, said he was proud of “the only church that produced the first and only African-American president in the 211-year history of the United States. No other church can say that.”
“The hatred of the media and the haters in politics may have caused him to distance himself from us, but the love of Christ will never allow me to distance myself from him,” Wright said of Obama. “I can no more disown him than I can disown any other child of mine who makes [a] bad decision. He made a bad decision, but he’s still my child.”
Wright also compared the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib Prison to the abuses of old colonial powers. “What we doing with a base in Cuba?” he asked. “We just take stuff.”
He retired from Trinity this year but was invited back to speak Sunday. Wright and his sermons were a lightning rod in the presidential race, particularly one in which he said “God damn America.” Obama subsequently cut ties with Wright and the church where he was married and where his children were baptized.
Also at Trinity on Sunday was the Rev. Michael Pfleger, whom Wright called “my main man.”Pfleger drew heat with criticism of then-candidate Hillary Clinton last spring.
Source GretaWire.com
Personally, I am so tired of celebrities. Why waste time on this. Don't they get enough attention?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barbra Streisand is visiting the White House but says she'll play nice. Streisand, a vocal critic of President George W. Bush, was a guest Sunday at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue during one of Washington's few A-list events.
"Art," she said, "transcends politics this weekend."
The singer and actress this year is a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, along with Morgan Freeman, country singer George Jones, dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp and musicians Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who.
The honors recognize individuals who have had an impact on American culture through the performing arts, part of the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy.
"I'm really excited and I'm touched" about being selected as an honoree, Townshend said.
Musician B.B. King wore his Kennedy Center honoree medal from 1995 to the event.
"I'm here because of one of my idols called Morgan Freeman," he said.
Jones said there were no strained moments between Streisand and Bush during the reception.
"Everything went so smooth," he said.
After the reception, the group traveled with the president and first lady Laura Bush to the performing arts center for a gala in their honor.
The gala will include the young singer-songwriter Ne-Yo singing Streisand's 1965 hit "Lover, Come Back to Me."
"Barbra Streisand is the epitome of emotion in music. You feel every word, that's something that artists in my day and age don't really pay attention to," he said.
Musician Rob Thomas said he would sing The Who's song "Baba O'Riley" during the tribute for Townshend and Daltrey.
"These are people who have influenced everyone," he said. "It's not just their music, it's their attitude."
The Kennedy Center Honors come just a month after the presidential election. Streisand, 66, was one of the most outspoken honorees on politics during the campaign season, saying the past two elections had been "stolen." On the day after the Obama's win, she was riding high.
"November 5th ... what a day ... a new day ... finally (Martin Luther King's) words ring true," Streisand, a longtime Democrat, wrote on her Web site. "I am so proud of our country."
At a State Department dinner for the honorees Saturday night, Streisand said, "It's just great to be honored by one's own country."
Jones, who earned the nickname "No Show Jones" for performances he missed during his wild days, promised to show up this time. As he entered the reception, the 77-year-old said, "I'm in a daze" about being an honoree.
Performers from New York, Nashville and Hollywood will salute the honorees with surprise tribute performances Sunday evening. The show will air Dec. 30 on CBS.
Tickets to the gala sell for as much as $4,000. Last year, the event raised $5 million to support Kennedy Center programs.
The awards were presented Saturday night at a State Department dinner hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She addressed each honoree, beginning with Freeman, who once played the president in the movie "Deep Impact."
"I know that when you played the African-American president of the United States, most people thought that would happen when a comet hit," Rice said, drawing laughs and cheers. "But wonder of wonders, fiction has become true."
Freeman, 71, who starred this year in "The Dark Knight," also made headlines after suffering broken bones in a Mississippi car crash in August. On Saturday, the Oscar-winning actor said he was still recovering from nerve damage in his left hand and wore a glove to control the swelling.
Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman hailed the "extraordinary genius and tenacity" of the 2008 lifetime achievement award recipients.
Dancer Damian Woetzel hailed Tharp, 67, for "taking a dance and treating it like music." Her work has helped define modern dance, contemporary ballet and Broadway musicals.
Past honorees, including Clint Eastwood, Elton John and Sidney Poitier, made nominations for the awards, along with members of the Kennedy Center's national artists committee, including Glenn Close and Reba McEntire.
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