Thank you for taking the time to stop by here and take a look at my Obama blog… started in August O8 – ended in Nov 5th – 09. This was a true labor of love for me as an individual. Along the way, I collected some truly historical links and articles regarding his run for the Presidency. I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I loved doing it? …
Peace be unto you!
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As we move forward deeper into the Obama Administration…I wanted to stop and reflect on the past with Miles Davis – So What !
Has no political affiliation other than I love Miles!
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“Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed,” Obama declared in a ringing inaugural address. “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.
Obama’s day was replete with the emotion of the past — the son of a white Kansas mother and a Kenyan father took his oath from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on the Bible used by Abraham Lincoln more than a century ago.
But his inaugural address, though filled with eloquent references to American will and its historic successes, was also a sharp attempt to wrest the country from the path set by outgoing President Bush.
Several times, he appeared to repudiate decisions by the Bush administration, including its curbing of some scientific efforts and, most dramatically, decisions that lessened constitutional freedoms in pursuit of the Iraq war and the larger fight against terrorism.
“We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he said. “Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expediency’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”
He took special pains to speak to Muslims, who have bridled at what they saw as Bush’s cavalier treatment and go-it-alone demeanor.
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
Obama repeated his 35-word oath before a rapturous and massive crowd, supplemented across the country with separate, if just as boisterous, celebrations. In the carefully scripted inaugural pageant, the swearing-in itself provided one brief bit of spontaneity: Chief Justice Roberts misplaced one word of the oath, then restated it correctly before Obama repeated the line.
Minutes before Obama took office, former Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden became the nation’s new vice president with the assistance of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.
The day unfolded with the nation invoking the familiar rituals of a peaceful change in power, although history hung in the air.
The day ushered out the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, who came into office vowing to unite the country and led the nation through the tumult of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, only to founder over an ill-managed war in Iraq, lengthening battles in Afghanistan and a downward-spiraling economy.
But the bracing turnover was cultural as much as political, as the nation grasped the import of November’s election again: After 220 years, for the first time it was not a white man taking the oath of office. The fact of Obama’s parentage rippled across the inauguration platform and the assembled crowd, both more diverse than at past inaugurations.
From black Americans who had lived through the civil-rights era and who had never presumed they would see such a day as this, to Americans whose experience of discrimination is limited to history books, Obama’s journey evoked both emotions and echoes. He took the oath of office looking westward toward the Lincoln Memorial and its great marble likeness of the president who freed America’s slaves. The steps of the very same memorial welcomed, in 1939, black contralto Marian Anderson after she was refused entrance to Constitution Hall, and in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. for his “I Have a Dream” speech. On Sunday, at the first of the inaugural festivities, a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, Obama sat there as president-elect, his dream realized.
Before the swearing-in, Nelson and Tina Daniel stood in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at the foot of the Washington Monument, halfway between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. The Los Angeles residents had staked out their position at 5 a.m.
“This is big history,” said Nelson Daniel, a 63-year-old African American. “Once-in-a-lifetime experience. My mother and grandparents dreamed of it. I have a chance to witness it for them.”
Also in the crowd was Gloria Washington-Lewis Randall, an African American from Alabama who spent 2 1/2 weeks in jail for participating in a civil-rights demonstration in 1963. Now, at 62, she watched the ceremonies via one of the giant viewing screens set up on the Mall.
“I’m totally ecstatic,” she said. “You don’t really notice the cold out here. It’s a warmness that’s coming up. Because no more will we be called black or white. We’ll be called Americans.”
A counterpoint to the enthusiasm greeting Obama was the grim reality facing the new administration. Obama inherits the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-American sentiment around the globe and, at home, the harshest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Much of his transition was spent trying to infuse optimism that his proposals will work, while simultaneously warning Americans that recovery will take years, not months.
“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” he said, reprising a campaign theme. “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.”
“Our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint,” he said.
He promised to “begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people,” with no mention of a timetable for doing so. He also said he would “forge a hard-earned peace” in Afghanistan, where opponents have proved intractable. But he gave no quarter to those who have fought Americans, whether in skyscrapers in New York or the streets overseas.
We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you,” he said.
Obama’s improbable journey began less than two years ago when, with what even he acknowledged was “a certain presumptuousness,” he announced his candidacy for president in a speech in Springfield, Ill., Lincoln’s adopted hometown. At the time, Obama had served only two years in the United States Senate.
Few gave him strong odds at the beginning of his quest. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the front-runner and all-but-certain nominee, but as the pre-primary polling gave way to the sentiments of actual voters, her veneer of inevitability cracked. Obama’s campaign was built on soaring rhetoric and substance — his early opposition to the Iraq war contrasted sharply with Clinton’s vote for it.
Less measurable early on — but ultimately more potent — was his emotional reach among voters who wanted to turn a page on the divisive politics that many felt Clinton personified. On their backs, and on the backs of young voters whose eventual turnout was suspect until election day, Obama built a stunning, tech-savvy organization. His campaign appearances in the general election regularly drew numbers unseen in past campaigns — 100,000 in St. Louis, 90,000 in Manassas, Va., 75,000 in Kansas City, Mo.
Obama upended the race with a smashing victory in the first contest, the Iowa caucuses, but Clinton came back days later to win in New Hampshire, setting up a grinding primary contest that would last until she relented in June. Like Biden, himself a candidate in 2008, Clinton would find a place in the Obama Administration hierarchy, as the designated secretary of State.
The general election saw Obama trounce Arizona Sen. John McCain, who fought against a sweeping Democratic voter registration effort but ultimately fell under the weight of the economic downturn. McCain also suffered from the election’s anti-Republican cast; the party lost seats in the House and Senate, and Bush leaves office for his Texas retirement with a positive approval rating at less than three in 10 Americans.
Obama, by contrast, has strengthened his hand since election day. Several polls have placed the percentage of Americans who say they feel optimistic about his tenure at more than seven in 10, well above his 53%-46% margin over McCain.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, and Biden and his wife, Jill, began their day by attending services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, the traditional destination for an incoming president, located across Lafayette Park from the White House.
Then they traveled to the president’s residence for coffee with outgoing President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with House and Senate leaders. Bush and his wife, Laura, met the Obamas at the north portico, where they embraced and exchanged greetings. The group later caravaned to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony, charting a reversal of the path that Obama’s inaugural parade will take as it kicks off later today. In between, he was honored at a lunch in the Capitol, where a key Obama supporter, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, was taken ill. Kennedy, who has been battling brain cancer, was rushed to a hospital.
The Bushes, meanwhile, departed the city they have called home for the last eight years and had visited often during his father’s earlier presidency. After the inaugural ceremony, the Obamas escorted Bush and his wife, Laura, to a Marine helicopter on the east side of the Capitol; they flew to Andrews Air Force Base, where a jet from the presidential fleet took them home to Texas.
The new president woke this morning to a city overwhelmed with revelers. Suburban parking lots for the city’s subway system were filled before dawn, and masses of people thronged on foot toward entrances to the National Mall. With hours to go before the ceremony, the Mall was packed from the Capitol west to the Washington Monument, and overflow crowds spilled onto the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial as well.
Yet concerns that the crush of people would prompt security crises and cellphone network implosions were largely unrealized. The crowds were docile, if cold, and temperatures topped out in the 30s. Although there were no massive traffic tie-ups, there was pedestrian gridlock. As the crowd dispersed after Obama’s speech, the sea of visitors moved en masse toward whatever direction appeared to allow movement, butting up against the security barriers that blocked free access to the Mall and parade route.
The Mall swarmed not only with security forces — seen and unseen — but also those who seized on the inauguration as their personal ticket out of economic malaise. T-shirts, knit caps, key chains, pencils, coffee mugs, American flags, all decorated with Obama’s face, were being vigorously hawked across the district. The chaotic display competed with the formal red-white-and-blue bunting that draped the graceful old Capitol, the stately backdrop for the drama.
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It is now winter in America and not just in the seasonal term. Our economy is in a freefall and is as bad as 1929 when the stock market crashed and the banks closed their doors. Our new President has inherited a felled economic system in America with high unemployment, foreclosures of homes at record levels, small and large businesses closing, and our banks seeking government bailout after bailouts.
We all have our own economic problems as individuals and as family members. I have never seen America in this situation before and it will take years to pull out of this. Our new President is proposing printing money to solve our problems by putting over 750 billion dollars into our economy to help jump start us back to the road of economic recovery.
We are in deep global recession that will take years to come out of. I say this to each of you so that you really understand the true nature of our national problems and how it will effect you and your families. We must all dig down deep within our souls and intellect to survive the historic economic downturn in America. The jobs you have today may be gone tomorrow, that is the reality of it, plain and truthful. You must ask yourself, I am I prepared as an individual to survive tough times in America. We must reach out to each other as friends, relatives and help each other as never before. Be true to yourself and those around you.
Understand that America is still the greatest country in the world! Our greatest strength is the people within it. We have the inner will and power within ourselves to change the course of history in America, because we are a great people.
January 20th 2009 represents a major shift in American political policy. Change has come to America but it will not happen overnight. We must all realize our individual responsibilities toward making our lives better for ourselves and our children.
America is great! and change is coming we must all believe in ourselves and do all you can to help our country be great once again. We must think in terms of collective economics and political harmony.
We will Prevail, and once again lead the ourselves and the world toward economic recovery through hard work, sacrifice and commitment towards changing how we do business in America. We must understand that we are our brothers’ keeper and help each other as never before.
We must live for the present and the future and know deep down within ourselves that change is here for a better America for all of us.
President Obama’s historic victory says to every American that our dignity and destiny are in our hands.
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This week in Virginia, promoting his plan during an address about the urgency of taking action in dire economic times, Obama said that 3 million new jobs are possible within the next few years under his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
That estimate comes in a week in which unemployment was posted at 7.2% in December, with the total number of jobs lost last year — 2.6 million — the largest number since 1945. Three-quarters of those jobs disappeared in the last four months.
“The jobs we create will be in businesses large and small across a wide range of industries,” Obama said in his address today. “And they’ll be the kind of jobs that don’t just put people to work in the short term, but position our economy to lead the world in the long term.”
“These made-in-America jobs — building solar panels and wind turbines, developing fuel-efficient cars and new energy technologies — pay well, and they can’t be outsourced,” he said.
The plan will put nearly 400,000 people back to work repairing infrastructure, crumbling roads, bridges and schools and laying down miles of broadband line, he says. Obama has conceded that the price could grow larger as Congress starts working on the proposal.
“Finally, we won’t just create jobs, we’ll also provide help for those who’ve lost theirs, and for states and families who’ve been hardest hit by this recession,” he said. “That means bipartisan extensions of unemployment insurance and healthcare coverage; a $1,000 tax cut for 95% of working families; and assistance to help states avoid harmful budget cuts in essential services like police, fire, education and healthcare.”
Recovery will not come overnight, he warns.
“But we have come through moments like this before,” he said. “I am confident that if we come together and summon that great American spirit once again, we will meet the challenges of our time and write the next great chapter in our American story.”
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 An article we all should read, people of all races…Dr. Manis
When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it?
Now I want to ask: “When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that “Election Spurs Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than “talk the talk.”
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps.
But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying -that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?” How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -once and for all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
How long before we starting “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn’t believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don’t believe I’ll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here’s my three-point plan:
First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice, “We HAVE overcome.”
Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon’s Center for
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This is a very important historical document…. Enjoy and share
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HiYSmiRX6U
This is where it all began = Check it out!
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