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Barack and Family   Barack Obama   Barak Obama on the Iraq War   Barak Obama   Obama 2008  

 

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&ping=1&indicate=1

Our New President, Barack Hussein Obama

"We may not get there in one year or even in one term," ... "But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there"

 

Obama receives congratulations from world leaders (AP)

 

President-elect Barack Obama is accompanied by U.S. Secret Service agents as he arrives for meetings in Chicago, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)AP - President-elect Obama accepted congratulations from nine presidents and prime ministers Thursday, returning calls from world leaders who reached out after his presidential victory. The global financial crisis was among the topics Obama discussed with key U.S. allies he'll deal with during his administration.

On Sunday, Barack was honored to receive the endorsement of General Colin Powell.   
General Powell is one of the most widely-respected soldiers and statesmen of our time -- a unifying figure who has defended our nation in uniform and worked closely with Republicans and Democrats throughout his public life.  As a prominent Republican -- and a donor to John McCain's primary campaign -- General Powell forcefully condemned the negative tone of the McCain campaign, and crossed party lines to endorse Barack.

Watch the full video of General Powell's endorsement and share it with your friends, especially your undecided friends.


 

Tribune endorsement
American families are in desperate need of economic relief.

Barack's plan will cut taxes for 95% of families. John McCain will provide billions in tax breaks for big oil companies and giant corporations with no relief for millions of middle-class Americans.

Barack is calling for three times the tax cuts for middle-class families.

Find out what this means for you and your family -- use our new tax calculator:



With our country facing the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression -- over 760,000 jobs lost this year, unemployment skyrocketing, and retirement losses exceeding $2 trillion -- we need to take immediate steps to recover.

Yesterday, Barack unveiled his Economic Rescue Plan for The Middle Class, including special measures for job creation, a moratorium on foreclosures, and increased tax relief for families.

As president, Barack will provide a new $1,000 tax cut for workers and new tax benefits to help families pay for college, childcare, and save for retirement.

See how these plans would affect you and your family -- and forward this email so others can also calculate their taxes:

http://taxcut.barackobama.com
I am so lucky to be married to the woman who delivered that speech last night.   Michelle was electrifying, inspiring, and absolutely magnificent. I get a lot of credit for the speech I gave at the 2004 convention -- but I think she may have me beat.

You have to see it to believe it.   And make sure to forward this email to your friends and family -- they'll want to see it, too.


You really don't want to miss this.  And I'm not just saying that because she's my wife --|
I truly believe it was the best speech of the campaign so far.
 

 
All but one of the Photos below are  by Peter C. Little, Portland, Oregon Photographer (Shannon provided the other one)
Here are first person, backstage photos by Peter C. Little of Portland, Oregon. 
These are supplied by
 The Wordsmith Collection  
Photos from Barack Obama's visit to Portland  
http://www.slide.com/r/h9lbfhd14D-4jP9_bjunEJDd0D-teSxJ
A Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy    By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Barack Obama’s huge foreign policy team, organized like a mini State Department, is on the spot this week as the senator plans his overseas trip.
PORTLAND, Ore. — In the breathless weeks before the Oregon presidential primary in May, Martha Shade did what thousands of other people here did: she registered as a Democrat so she could vote for Senator Barack Obama.
The next phase of the Campaign for Change is up and running in Oregon, and people like you are already building the movement that will help carry Barack to victory in November.
http://or.barackobama.com/ORofficeopenings
Thanks, Jack Shapiro  Oregon General Election Director  Campaign for Change
VoteFree Obama button! Get yours today, then tell your friends. 

                    Get Your Free Button
 

Senator Barack Obama is a happily married family man who is honest, capable, charismatic & eloquent.  Oregon Weekend Canvass EventsIt's been less than a week since we opened our Oregon Campaign for Change state headquarters in Portland, and staff and volunteers all over the state are already working hard to grow our movement.
Democrats in Oregon are energized, united, and ready to work for change up and down the ticket.  This weekend we're organizing a big voter registration push across the state, and we need your help to reach new voters and bring new voices into the political process.
Join us for a voter registration canvass this weekend:
http://or.barackobama.com/ORcanvass
Together, we've built this movement across the country one person at a time. Supporters in all 50 states have reached out to their friends, neighbors, and coworkers to share their story and work for the change we need.
Face-to-face contact is the most effective way to bring new supporters into our movement. Join us this weekend and reach out to your fellow Oregonians.
No prior experience is necessary to get involved. Our staff will give you everything you need.
Join us this weekend for a voter registration canvass:
http://or.barackobama.com/ORcanvass

He is an intelligent, spiritually-centered man and a thoughtful and inspiring speaker.  This graduate
of Harvard and Columbia universities has experience as an attorney and a US Senator.  He intends to
greatly increase spending on Healthcare and Education and will pay for these programs by lowering taxes
on the middle class while requiring fortune 500 corporations & the rich to finally pay their fair share.

John Sidney McCain III is an adulterer who dumped his hospitalized wife of twenty years to marry his girlfriend.  He has a hair-trigger temper and foul mouth.  He attended the US War College and was at the bottom of his his class at the US Naval academy.  He has been a beer distributor, senator, and representative.  He will decrease spending on the Arts and Space Exploration and does not plan to increase spending on Healthcare.  In spite of deficits, he would reduce corporate tax rates hoping their ever-increasing riches would somehow trickle back down to the working people who created them.
 Some working people feel they have already been tricked and "trickled on" for quite long enough.

www.writingresource.info/mccainupdate.html   www.projectvotesmart.org
Article in the Agence France-Presse
Obama faces runaway expectations from US allies
JUNE 8 - "Obama out-Bushed Bush with his proclamation on Jerusalem. This is not an anti-imperialist we would be electing," said Karen Dolan, adding: "But it's true that he elicits those desires for the second coming of Camelot and John F. Kennedy. There's so much goodwill toward him. There would be a honeymoon phase where folks at home and abroad would give him the benefit of the doubt."
Peter DreierPeter Drier

Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers?

This article originally appeared in Dissent Magazine.   Read Post

Americans are used to voting for presidential candidates with backgrounds as lawyers, military officers, farmers, businessmen, and career politicians, but this is the first time we've been asked to vote for someone who has been a community organizer. Of course, Barack Obama has also been a lawyer, a law professor, and an elected official, but throughout this campaign he has frequently referred to the three years he spent as a community organizer in Chicago in the mid-1980s as "the best education I ever had."

This experience has influenced his presidential campaign. It may also tell us something about how, if elected, he'll govern. But, perhaps most important, there has not been a candidate since Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy who has inspired so many young people to become involved in public service and grassroots activism.

Through his constant references to his own organizing experience, and his persistent praise for organizers at every campaign stop, Obama is helping recruit a new wave of idealistic young Americans who want to bring about change.

...Whether or not he wins the race for the White House, Obama, through his own example, has already dramatically increased the visibility of grassroots organizing as a career path, as well as a way to give ordinary people a sense of their own collective power to improve their lives and bring about social change.

...After his election in 1960, President John Kennedy encouraged baby boomers to ask what they could do for their country. At the time, JFK meant joining the Peace Corps and the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) program. He could not have anticipated the wave of protest and activism--around civil rights, Vietnam, and later feminism and the environment--that animated the sixties and seventies.

President Lyndon Johnson was initially no ally of the civil rights movement. However, the willingness of activists to put their bodies on the line against fists and fire hoses, along with their efforts to register voters against overwhelming opposition, pricked Americans' conscience. LBJ recognized that the nation's mood was changing. The civil rights activism transformed Johnson from a reluctant advocate to a powerful ally. LBJ's "Great Society" program--although criticized as too tame by United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther and other progressives--provided some community organizing positions with anti-poverty agencies, job training groups, and legal services organizations in urban and rural areas. Many of today's veteran activists got their first taste of grassroots organizing in the anti-poverty, civil rights, and farmworker movements.

Now comes Obama, a one-time organizer, who consistently reminds Americans of the importance of grassroots organizing. If he's elected president, he knows that he will have to find a balance between working inside the Beltway and encouraging Americans to organize and mobilize. He understands that his ability to reform health care, tackle global warming, and restore job security and decent wages will depend, in large measure, on whether he can use his bully pulpit to mobilize public opinion and encourage Americans to battle powerful corporate interests and members of Congress who resist change.

For example, talking about the need to forge a new energy policy, Obama explained, "I know how hard it will be to bring about change. Exxon Mobil made $11 billion this past quarter. They don't want to give up their profits easily." Another major test will be whether he can help push the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)--a significant reform of America's outdated and business-oriented labor laws--through Congress against almost unified business opposition. If passed, EFCA will help trigger a new wave of organizing that will require enlisting thousands of young organizers into the labor movement.

If Obama wins the White House, progressives within his inner circle will look for opportunities to encourage his organizing instincts to shape how he governs the nation, whom he appoints to key positions, and which policies to prioritize. Meanwhile, a new generation of volunteer activists and paid organizers will be looking to join President Obama's progressive crusade to change America. But if it appears that he is veering too far to the political center, they will--inspired in part by Obama's own example, and perhaps with his covert support--mobilize to push him (and Congress) to live up to his progressive promise.

 

Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program, at Occidental College. He is coauthor of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century and The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City. He writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and American Prospect. From 1984-92 he served as senior policy advisor to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, and currently serves on the boards of several organizations, including the LA Alliance for a New Economy , the Liberty Hill Foundation, the National Housing Institute, and the Southern CA Assn for Nonprofit Housing.

 

Obama on Oil prices: 
Sen. Barack Obama has promised to begin an immediate, gradual withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq if he is elected president. According to Ismael Hussein-Zadeh, a professor of economics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, this very act would help stop the crippling increases in energy and food prices.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 
 The professor blames the US war on Iraq and Afghanistan for driving the prices of crude oil in his article titled, “Worried About the Price of Gas? End US Wars.”

"The current oil price hikes started with the beginning of the Bush administration’s wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.” Hussein Zadeh said.

“Oil prices have gone from the mid $20 range in the fall of 2002 to $127 yesterday (it’s now at $135 plus per barrel)—a rise of $100/barrel in just over five years,” he said.

Hussein-Zadeh attributes those increases mainly to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the threats of war against Iran. “Soon after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq the price of oil began to escalate in tandem with the escalation of war and political turbulence in the Middle East . . . Anytime there is a renewed US military threat against Iran, fuel prices move up several notches.”

Hussein Zadeh also blames the US military campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan for the fall of the dollar since, he notes, the war has been costing the US government $200 billion a year, all in borrowed funds.

There is no other choice as far as Hussein-Zadeh is concerned. “The political-implications of this discussion are clear: to bring down the prices of fuel and food requires bringing home the troops. By lowering the energy costs of production and transportation this will help save our own and many other economies from the plagues of inflation and stagnation. It will bring relief to hundreds of millions worldwide who are burdened by crippling energy bills and the crushing costs of feeding their families.”

Obama wants to invest $150 billion over the next 10 years to establish a green energy sector; create a national low-carbon fuel standard to ensure that the fuel is more efficient, and invest in clean energies like solar, wind and biodiesel.

This will create up to 5 million new green energy jobs.

Obama's plan for relief includes putting a windfall profits tax on oil companies, using the proceeds to help Pennsylvania families pay their heating and cooling bills. He also wants to increase transparency in the way prices are set, "so we can make sure that energy companies aren't bending the rules," according to his campaign.

"Immediate steps we need to take to provide working Americans with relief. A broad-based, middle class tax cut, to help offset the rising cost of gas and food. A foreclosure prevention fund, to help stabilize the housing market. A health care plan that lowers costs and gives those without health insurance the same kind of coverage members of Congress have. A commitment to retirement security that stabilizes Social Security, and provides workers a means to increase savings. And a plan to crack down on unfair and sometimes deceptive lending in the credit card and housing markets, to help families climb out of crippling debt, and stay out of debt in the first place."

Obama has a plan, and McCain is not able to come up with one...
His only plan is to let transnational economic cartels do whatever they choose
and to let the American middle class shrink while he provides tax breaks for the rich.
His plan is to continue the Bush legacy...  war, deficits, death, destruction, and dishonor.

 

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75,000 people came out on Sunday to join Barack and his family in Portland, Oregon. 
Video: Barack in Portland Democrats across the country are coming together to support Barack.
Watch this video of the Portland rally and share it with your friends:

For the people who weren't there on Sunday 
(of which at least for Portland Democrats, 
it's hard to imagine there were many), 
take a listen to the full audio of Obama's speech, 
the Decemberists set and Earl Blumenauer's introduction.

Blumenauer introduces:
           Download audio file (Earl_Blumenaeur.mp3)

Obama speaks:
Download audio file (Obama_Speech.mp3)

Decemberists play:
DSC_0046Download audio file (Decemberists.mp3)

For those of you who were there, when you finish applying aloe vera to your sunburn, 
let us know what you thought about the event and how it will play into the next two days.

   Thanks to Parrisa Peik for the photos above  http://my.barackobama.com/portlandrallyvideo

       SANTA FE, N.M. - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the nation's only Hispanic governor, is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president, calling him a "once-in-a- lifetime leader" who can unite the nation and restore America's international leadership. Richardson, who dropped out of the Democratic race in January, is to appear with Obama on Friday at a campaign event in Portland, Ore., The Associated Press has learned
MySpace Exclusive: MySpace/MTV Presidential Dialogue with Barack Obama

MySpace & MTV team up to bring you a series of Presidential Dialogues with leading candidates. Click here to learn how you can be part of these LIVE, interactive events right here on MySpace. Check out highlights from the second Dialogue with Barack Obama live from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA and see how he handled tough questions from the crowd and from YOU.

 Barack has been traveling across the country asking people to speak out and let their Senators know that it's time to end the Iraq war.

One Republican colleague has already called this "not Senatorial." But this isn't about Washington etiquette, it's about bringing our troops home.

This isn't a game. We need just 16 additional votes to override the president's veto and bring to a close this sad chapter in American history.

It's going to take some convincing, but Senators need to hear from people in their states that they can join us to bring a responsible end to the war.
 Update on the Obama Campaign

 Barack Obama stands with workers: Make Employee Free Choice Act Law of the Land
by James Parks, Mar 3, 2007 
Downtown Chicago turned green today as nearly 2,000 green-shirted AFSCME members, waving signs and banners proclaiming “It’s Time for Justice” and “It’s Time for Respect,” rallied in the Windy City in support of the Employee Free Choice Act and the 10,000 health care and support service workers fighting for justice at Resurrection Health Care (RHC).   The RHC workers’ struggle got a big shot in the arm from hometown Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, elected officials and top union leaders who joined the workers for the mass rally in Chicago.  The crowd, which overflowed the ballroom of a local hotel, cheered when Obama declared the House passage of the Employee Free Choice Act on Thursday and said loud and clear that "if most workers in an organization want a union, they’ll get a union.  And now we’re gonna make sure the Senate passes the Employee Free Choice Act too.  And then we’ll let the White House know that the working men and women of America believe it’s time to make this the law of the land. "  http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/03/03/obama-make-employee-free-choice-act-law-of-the-land/
We need a change in our government.  see... Obama 2008
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On the "Bailout"
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