barack obama
Barack Obama: Page 2
Discussed in (click each link for the full post):
Sat. 3/21/09: Obama organizing petition signing drives for his stimulus plan (door-to-door, at malls, etc.) - 03/20/09
In an apparent attempt to define creepy down, Obama for America - the successor to Barack Obama's campaign organization - is organizing a "Pledge Project Canvass", where the president's supporters will go door-to-door asking people to sign a pledge in support of the stimulus plan. They'll also be stationed at malls, stores and other places with large numbers of people. The training video is attached, and the pledge itself is deceptively simple:
* I support President Obama's bold approach for renewing America's economy
* I will ask friends, family, and neighbors to pledge their support for...
Obama get $500,000 children's book deal just before taking office - 03/18/09
On January 15, Barack Obama signed off on an advance for a children's version of his "Dreams From My Father" book. That was less than a week before he took the oath of office: link.
Analysts say there don't appear to be any rules that would bar such transactions after a president takes office, but it's unclear whether an incoming or sitting president has ever signed a book deal upon entering the White House.
"I don't recall any sitting president entering into a book deal," said campaign finance lawyer Jan Baran, former general counsel to the Republican National Committee. "They all have...
Obama thanks Canadians "who came over the border to campaign for me during the election" - 02/19/09
Speaking in Canada at a press conference with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Barack Obama just said this:
"I want to also, by the way, thank some of the Canadians who came over the border to campaign for me during the election... It was much appreciated."
If anyone has accounts of Canadians campaigning for our new, supposed U.S. president please leave a comment. And, note that the Obama campaign was helped by a large number of sockpuppets, including those who were from foreign countries. Note also the still unresolved Obama money issue, in which he received millions of dollars in questionable...
Payback: union labor might be requirement on federal construction projects (example: the stimulus bill) - 02/07/09
On Friday, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order [1] that contains this:
...it is the policy of the Federal Government to encourage executive agencies to consider requiring the use of project labor agreements in connection with large-scale construction projects in order to promote economy and efficiency in Federal procurement.
"Project labor agreements" mean the exclusive use of union labor, as described elsewhere in the Order. A "large-scale" project is one over $25 million, and there would no doubt be a large number of such projects under the stimulus plan. On the one hand, this might...
Assignment: document Obama, FEMA, MSM response to ice storms in Kentucky - 02/02/09
As of last week, hundreds of thousands in Kentucky and others in Arkansas were without power due to ice storms, and dozens have died. While not as major a disaster as Katrina, some have called into question the mainstream media's coverage of the response, wondering whether they would have approached it differently if it had happened during the Bush administration.
Your assignment: compare the government response to past incidents, and compare the MSM's coverage to how they covered past incidents including Katrina and others. And, find out whether Barack Obama has paid as much attention to...
January 20 is now the "National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation" - 01/20/09
As one of his first acts, president Barack Obama has issued a proclamation on Whitehouse dot gov proclaiming that January 20 is our new "National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation". Unfortunately, what exactly that means isn't explained, although the presumed subtext doesn't sound too good at all.
Obama's Organizing for America: a corps of supporters answerable only to him? Fight disasters and political enemies? (CNSF) - 01/17/09
The Barack Obama movement is about to get even creepier, with his announcement of "Organizing for America" ("OFA"), part of "Barack Obama 2.0", the continuation of his campaign even after he's been elected president.
From this:
"As President, I will need the help of all Americans to meet the challenges that lie ahead," Obama said in a video message e-mailed to supporters (and reporters) this morning. "That's why I'm asking people like you who fought for change during the campaign to continue fighting for change in your communities."
The video is here. Apparently OFA will be part of the...
The "Citizen's Briefing Book", the latest Barack Obama scam - 01/15/09
The latest scam from the Barack Obama camp is a "Citizen's Briefing Book" at change dot gov: citizensbriefingbook.change.gov
Obama releases official portrait: first taken with digital camera. Obama fan reveals ignorance. - 01/14/09
My well of sarcasm is about tapped out, so I'll just point out that Barack Obama's official portrait has been released, and it's the first to be taken with a digital camera: change.gov/page/-/officialportrait.jpg
Obama dines with illegal immigration-supporting conservatives David Brooks and ? - 01/13/09
Earlier tonight, Barack Obama went to George Will's house in Chevy Chase, Maryland for a no doubt jovial evening with a few (or more) conservative pundits. Will may or may not have been there, but three known attendees were Fred Barnes (see the update), William Kristol, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer (link). FWIW, the Huffington Post assures us that Rush Limbaugh was not there.
We have (thankfully) only two entries here involving Krauthammer, both from 2007. The first is good, where he discussed a biased CBS/NYT poll. The second isn't so good; he's a NAU denier.
As for Barnes and...
Mexico's Calderon meets Obama, proposes "strategic alliance"; immigration; NAFTA - 01/12/09
Mexico's president Felipe Calderon met with Barack Obama for an hour and a half earlier today in Washington DC. After the meeting, Calderon said:
"I've proposed to President Obama that we make a strategic alliance of our two governments to confront the common problems and resolve them together, among them security."
And, it looks like Obama is open to that idea; see the statement from change dot gov cached here:
[Obama] expressed his continued commitment to upgrading NAFTA to strengthen labor and environmental provisions to reflect the values that are widely shared in both of our countries,...
"Dear Rod": form letter from Obama to Blagojevich - 01/06/09
Judicial Watch has obtained two letters sent to Rod Blagojevich; one from Barack Obama himself, the other from his transition team. PDFs at that link.
Unfortunately, both appear to be form letters sent out after the National Governors Association on December 2, 2008 in Philadelphia. The one from Obama pawns off all contact on Nick Rathod. The other letter is from Valerie Jarrett, John Podesta, and Pete Rouse, and likewise pawns off contact on others in case Blago wanted to "share thoughts". Whether similar letters were sent to other governors isn't known.
The only three things that seem like...
Henry Kissinger: Obama can create a "New World Order" - 01/06/09
Henry Kissinger appeared on yesterday's Morning Call with Mark Haines on CNBC and was asked "What do you think the most important thing is for Barack Obama?" The response:
"....His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period, when really a "New World Order" can be created . It's a great opportunity. It isn't such a crisis."
UPDATE: They aren't even hiding it anymore. Kissinger offers an editorial called "The chance for a new world order" (link):
...The financial collapse exposed the mirage. It made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock...
What Michelle Obama's "court ordered inactive status" as a lawyer means - 01/05/09
If you go to the website run by the Attorney Registration and Displinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois and search for the record belonging to Michelle Obama (link, earlier screengrab here), you'll find that her Illinois Registration Status is listed as "Voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice la
Obama releases "answers" to change.gov user-generated "questions" (420, dude) - 12/15/08
Barack Obama's change dot gov recently asked the citizens to submit questions which he would deign to answer. Now, the answers to the "top" questions have been released here.
The questions were weak, the answers were weak and could have been gleaned from Obama's positions. All that was predictable; see the discussion of popular voting systems.
First, my question - tougher than any of the others I saw - got 17 up votes versus 13 down votes. Since the question is fact-based, one wonders why 13 people didn't think Obama should have been asked it.
Reading these questions is making me weep for our...
Obama/Blago picture deleted from Illinois state website - 12/15/08
Remember the picture of Barack Obama "conferring" with recently-arrested Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich? If not, see this 12/10 post.
New Obama scam: visitors vote for questions he'll be asked - 12/10/08
Barack Obama has recently launched a new effort that lets visitors to change dot gov submit questions he should be asked. Others then vote those questions up or down, and he'll presumably answer the top rated questions at some point in time: change.gov/page/content/openforquestions
This is, in a word, a scam: it shares the same huge design flaw as other popular voting systems in which weak questions are pushed to the top while the questions he should be asked are ignored. In fact, he has experience with such a scheme, where a weak question from the 10Questions group was asked of him after...
KHQA pulls 11/5 article on Obama meeting with Blagojevich (cached copy) - 12/10/08
On November 5, Iowa/Illinois/Missouri TV station KHQA published "Who will fill Obama's senate seat?", which said that Barack Obama would be meeting with recently-arrested Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on the afternoon of 11/5. It was previously at this link, but that now says it's "unavailable".
Photo: Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich confer about Senate replacement - 12/10/08
[UPDATE: The state of Illinois has deleted the PDF containing this picture; see the link for some cached copies of the Gazette documents.]
From the "Governor's Gazette" - an Illinois state publication - dated November 12, 2008 comes the following undated photo of Barack Obama speaking privately with recently-arrested IL governor Rod Blagojevich. It could conceivably have taken place months before and in relation to something else, but there's a very good chance it was taken sometime just after Obama was elected. A screengrab of the first page of the Gazette is here. The PDF of the Gazette is...
Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich arrested by FBI on federal corruption charges; accused of trying to sell Obama's senate seat - 12/09/08
Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich - aka "Blago" - and his chief of staff have been arrested for trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. And, Barack Obama - or at least his advisor Valerie Jarrett - probably knew what he was doing; see the "SEIU Official" paragraph below. And, Obama may have lied about his recent conversations with Blago; see the first update. Uh-oh: Obama might be more worried about this than it would at first appear; see the second update.
From a U.S. Department of Justice press release (usdoj.gov/usao/iln/pr/chicago/2008/pr1209_01.pdf, text version here):
Illinois Gov...
Luis Gutierrez made $420,000 on real estate deals with political contributors (FBI involved) - 12/08/08
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez made $420,000 on a series of speculative real estate deals, some involving political contributor and Chicago real estate developer Krzysztof Karbowski. And, the FBI is at least looking into some of Gutierrez' past activities:
Gutierrez sent a letter to Mayor Richard Daley seeking support for a controversial project built by one of the congressman's political donors who also had lent him money. The newspaper reported that federal authorities investigating zoning matters have shown interest in the Gutierrez letter... The FBI has obtained the letter Gutierrez wrote in...
My new favorite actress is Heather Zichal (Aaron Sorkin's 'ChangeDotGov') - 11/19/08
Move over, Janeane Garofalo!
Zogby poll shows how misinformed Obama's supporters are (and is yet another example of Obama's opponents making mistakes) - 11/19/08
John Ziegler - a former KFI talk jock who was pushed out after a dispute with John & Ken - has a video documentary including interviews with Barack Obama supporters showing how ignorant and/or misinformed they are.
His site (link) also includes a Zogby poll he commissioned that tries to show the same thing. Unfortunately, some of the questions that are supposedly true either aren't true or are disputed.
So, it's a two-fer. The poll shows not only how misinformed many Obama supporters are, but also provides yet another example of Obama's opponents making mistakes. See #18 at that list...
Jesse Washington/AP's supposed "outbreak of racial anger" after Obama win - 11/16/08
Jesse Washington of the Associate Press provides another example of Obama supporters continuing to play the race card after the election and by so doing shows that Obama's method of winning hasn't actually done much about race relations. The article is an example of the MSM and friends basically just keeping one race in line as was done in the past with another race (link).
Crosses burning. Children chanting, "Assassinate Obama." Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.
Yes, there definitely has been an outbreak of isolated incidents involving those who have no real power. Washington can...
Defeating Obama was easy, it's just that no one wanted to do it - 11/13/08
Barack Obama could have been easily defeated. The problem was that many people concentrated on ineffective means to oppose him and no leaders pushed effective plans.
Barack Obama faked Selective Service registration? - 11/13/08
Barack Obama might have faked his Selective Service registration; see this. Schlussel has a copy of the form that Obama supposedly filled out as well as a print-out associated with the form. And, things don't add up. I'll let you wade through the details, but there actually appears to be something there.
Brooks Jackson/FactCheck spins Obama's Civilian National Security Force - 11/13/08
One of the mistakes that Obama opponents kept engaging in during the election was to make exaggerated or not 100% legalistically formulated claims (e.g., "palling around"). The MSM then jumped on the exaggerated part of those statements in order to draw attention away from the parts that were true.
And, Brooks Jackson of FactCheck uses that technique in his discussion of Rep. Paul Broun's remarks about Obama's "civilian national security force": factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_obama_planning_a_gestapo-like_civilian_national.html
Jackson quotes the Obama speech as I did here, and ends with:
Does...
In the tank: Google Maps front pages "Obama's Journey" - 11/12/08
Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt is a member of Barack Obama's Economic Transition Team (link), so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the increasingly-political company he heads has given the president-elect (and Joe Biden) a special treat that they've probably already gawked over. In Obama's case, he might even have had a private chuckle over it too.
If you go to maps.google.com near post time, you'll see the image below.
Gebe Martinez/Politico misleads about role of "Hispanic vote" in Obama win - 11/12/08
Ethno-boosting hack Gebe Martinez of the Politico offers "GOP must tone down rhetoric to woo Latinos" (link):
More than 10 million Hispanics voted last week, up from 7.6 million in 2004. If Hispanics were removed from the tallies, McCain would have had the winning edge in the battleground states of Indiana and New Mexico. Latinos also were a major factor in his losses in the former red states of Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and Florida.
Take the Chicago Barack Obama Challenge! (list of all of Obama's mainstream associates) - 11/12/08
Barack Obama supporters, I'm throwing the floor open to you. Will you dare take the Chicago Barack Obama Challenge?
In comments, please list all the past associates of BHO who are completely mainstream. Just people, not organizations. And, "past" means those prior to, say, 2004 and doesn't include, say, his current associates, those who simply endorsed him at any time, and the like. "Associates" means those with whom Obama has voluntarily worked, funneled money to, received money from, and the like.
Portland pre-teens want to name school after Barack Obama - 11/12/08
One of the highly effective but largely ignored ways that Obama could have been opposed before the election would be to point out his cult-like followers as well as his plan to get pre-teens to join his movement.
Obama cabinet might include Democrat titans: Gore, Napolitano, Vilsack, Howard Dean, Caroline Kennedy... - 11/11/08
The Barack Obama cabinet might include such Democratic Party titans as Al Gore, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, Caroline Kennedy, Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, John Kerry, and many more truly titanic names. This link has a "transition flowchart", a PDF showing some potential picks and all of them are truly great figures who will help the Repu... er, I mean the Democrats. While this could all be a jolly joke, who knows since the head of the transition team is John Podesta and his think tank the Center for American Progress is as much a joke as the Harding...
Obama spins Civilian National Security Force as for Iraq rebuilding - 11/11/08
Back in July, Barack Obama gave a speech in Colorado where he proposed creating a "Civilian National Security Force". That was just in one line of the speech, and it didn't appear in the version as prepared for delivery (copy here). Since that time, many have speculated over what he could have meant, and just recently Georgia congressman Paul Broun compared the creation of such groups to that in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (link). Now, at the last link, the Barack Obama camp has responded:
spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama was referring in the speech to a proposal for a civilian...
I posted satires about Barack Obama... at his own site! - 11/10/08
Now it can be revealed!
Cached copy of Barack Obama's change.gov agenda section - 11/10/08
Barack Obama's change.gov - the official president-elect transition site - deleted their entire Agenda section over the weekend. There's apparently a cached copy here, although I haven't verified it since I didn't bother saving off my own copy.
UPDATE: There's a better-looking version from Google's cache here. As with the other one I didn't verify it.
National Council of Ethnic Americans demands equal representation in Obama cabinet - 11/09/08
The National Council of Ethnic Americans (NCEA) - a coalition consisting of the Ethnic American Legal Defense and Education Foundation (EALDEF), the National Association of Ethnic American Elected Officials (NAEAEO), and the League of United European and Mediterranean American Citizens (LUEMAC) - has just sent the following missive:
President-Elect Barack Obama:
We are the Ethnic-Americans. During the election you reached out to us (my.barackobama.com/page/content/eahome) and asked for our support.
Mandatory community service still included in Obama's preK-12 education plan - 11/08/08
Yesterday, we discussed how one page at Barack Obama's new change.gov site said he'd push for mandatory community service. The campaign later changed that page to match the more voluntary-oriented statements the campaign made elsewhere.
However, there's still one thing they'll probably want to send down the memory hole. The file barackobama.com/pdf/issues/PreK-12EducationFactSheet.pdf (available under the link "Read the Pre-K to 12 Plan" at barackobama.com/issues/education contains the following:
VIII.
Washington Post admits coverage tilted to Obama, doesn't admit their incredibly biased coverage for him and their lies for him - 11/08/08
Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell offers "An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage" (link). Unfortunately, about the only "tilt" she admits to is in the amount of coverage. She almost completely ignores the fact that the Washington Post served as little more than an arm of the Obama campaign by lying and misleading on his behalf and by serving as the source for and amplifier of smears.
AVWatch: Barack Obama's economic advisors include... Antonio Villaraigosa - 11/07/08
Los Angeles' inept, corrupt, illegal activity-supporting mayor Antonio Villaraigosa - a former leader of a racial separatist group - is one of the members of Barack Obama's economic advisory board. Even the L.A.