With his family by his side, Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States by Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2009. More than 5,000 men and women in uniform are providing military ceremonial support to the presidential inauguration, a tradition dating back to George Washington's 1789 inauguration. VIRIN: 090120-F-3961R-919 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You can put a black man in the White House and that is quite a statement to 500 years of world history, but race is too deep and complicated an issue to be resolved by one black man's elevation to high office. And Barack Obama just admitted as much. Gutsy for the guy to talk about it in such plain language.
“I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away,” Mr. Obama said in the briefing room. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.” ..... “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son,” he said. “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” ..... “I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.” ..... “I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations,” the president said.
Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Looks like Barack swept them all, almost all.
All that talk about it all boiling down to Ohio: Barack Obama won before Ohio revealed its colors.
Looks like Florida is still counting -- it is secretly hoping to again become the center of attention like in 2000. Sorry, Florida, the results are out, sorry to put it bluntly, but you don't matter, bring the results in. Hurry.
I think Florida will show up blue.
I am looking at the map, and I see only North Carolina going the other way. But then that was not a swing state in my book.
Look what I said: Romney Can Have North Carolina but I am taking every other so called swing state on behalf of Barack Obama. That is what happened.
As he tours Sandy devastation with Chris Christie, swing state polls break for the president ..... With reliable polls in Ohio and Wisconsin Wednesday showing Obama with solid leads there, Romney has almost no path to victory on Tuesday. Polls today also showed him holding smaller leads in the swing states of Virginia, Florida and Nevada, and tied in North Carolina. .... White working class voters in both Ohio and Wisconsin are key to Obama’s strength there ..... Romney was going to focus on “cultural” issues – read racial issues – to court those white voters. Romney and Paul Ryan stepped away from the welfare lies after everyone from Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich said there was no evidence for the claim. But there it is again, in ads going up in Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado and Florida, as Romney tries to tap into traditional white taxpayer association between welfare and minorities. ...... Romney’s lies about the auto industry are arguably more brazen and baseless, and they’ve drawn unprecedented rebukes from officials at GM and Chrysler. But so far they’re not working either. Even as worried Ohio Chrysler employees sought reassurance that they’d keep their jobs, polls were showing that Ohio voters believe Obama cares more about them than Romney does. Almost half of white working class voters believe the economy is getting better, which helps account for why Obama is tied among those voters while he trails by up to 30 points with the same demographic in Florida and Virginia ...... the Obama team is sounding confident while Romney’s sounds desperate. ..... The criticism by Christie, Chrysler and GM is a welcome sign that Republicans and corporate leaders may learn to cooperate with the president so many of their colleagues disrespect and deride. It also tells me something else: those three titans think Romney is likely to lose, and they don’t need to pay him any deference or worry about working with him in January.
Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I do want him in the center. I do think his primary season stances on abortion were fake. But he never came over to the center, not on economic issues, not on social issues. His party convention was his chance to do so. He did not make the move. Mitt has not changed his extremist policies. His recent rhetoric of moderation is fake.
Romney sounded more conservative during most of this year’s Republican primaries. But he morphed back into The Pragmatic Massachusetts Governor during his triumphant first debate with President Obama on Oct. 3, and he’s been lavishing Moderate Mitt on the Sunshine State ever since, starting with an Oct. 5 rally in St. Petersburg, where he offered emotional personal anecdotes. Women voters there have warmed to his softer rhetoric on contraception and abortion, and even Florida’s non-Cuban Latinos, especially in the all-important I-4 Corridor between Tampa and Orlando, are listening to Romney’s promise to forge the comprehensive immigration reform that Obama pledged but has not delivered.
Obama's 2008 opponent John McCain beat him among white voters by 12 points. According to the Washington Post poll, Obama is trailing Romney among whites by 23 points. .... Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House council of economic advisers, said that over those 13 months the economy had expanded by 7.2% overall.
polls of people who already have cast ballots show President Barack Obama with a comfortable lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney .... Obama leads Romney 54 percent to 39 percent among voters who already have cast ballots .... About 18 percent of registered voters already have cast ballots ...... Early voting, which began in some states in September, is now underway in nearly all 50 states, either by mail-in or in-person voting. Political scientists who specialize in early voting predict that a record 35 to 40 percent of all U.S. voters will cast their ballots before the November 6 election. ..... states like Iowa and Ohio - both of which are considered pivotal in the election - show a faster pace of early voting than in 2008. ..... As a sign of the importance the Democrats place on early voting, Obama became the first sitting president to vote early when he cast his ballot in Chicago on Thursday.
He has confronted two inherited wars and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. He brought America's misguided adventure in Iraq to an end and arrested the economic downturn (though he did not fully reverse it) with the 2009 fiscal stimulus and a high-risk strategy to save the U.S. automobile industry. He secured passage of a historic health care reform law - the most important social legislation since Medicare. ...... he showed himself to be an adult, less an ideologue than a pragmatist, more cautious than cocky. Despite Republicans' persistent obstructionism, he pushed for - and enacted - stronger safeguards against another Wall Street meltdown and abusive financial industry practices. He cut the cost of student loans, persuaded auto manufacturers to take an almost unimaginable leap in fuel efficiency by 2025 and offered a temporary reprieve from deportation to young immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents. He ended the morally bankrupt "don't ask, don't tell" policy that had institutionalized discrimination against gays in the military. ...... Obama swept into office as a transformative figure, but the expectations built up by the long campaign thudded back to earth amid an unexpectedly steep recession and hyperbolic opposition from the right. That the GOP has sought to block his agenda wherever possible is undeniable, but truly great leaders find ways to bring opposing factions together when the times demand it; Obama has not yet been able to do so. ....... former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has demonstrated clearly that he's the wrong choice. He's wrong on the issues, from immigration to tax policy to the use of American power to gay rights and beyond. And his shifting positions and willingness to pander have raised questions about who he is and what he stands for. ........ Romney wants to cut taxes, spending and regulations in the hope that the mix of stimulus and austerity will spark growth and reduce the federal deficit. Obama wants to trim spending but raise taxes on high-income Americans, shrinking the deficit without sacrificing investments in the country's productive capacity or curtailing Washington's role in protecting the vulnerable. ....... The centerpiece of Romney's campaign is his plan to cut tax rates 20% below the Bush-era cuts while eliminating enough tax breaks to make up for the loss in revenue, after factoring in economic growth. But the plan lacks credibility, in no small part because Romney has declined to specify how he'd make the numbers work. The risk is that his tax reform will drive up costs for the very middle-income Americans he says he wants to protect, who are the biggest beneficiaries of those tax breaks. ...... it's irresponsible to seek a deep, permanent tax cut when the government is deeply in the red. And Romney would exacerbate the situation by spending extravagantly on defense even as the last of the Bush-era wars ends. His main proposal for reducing the deficit is to cap federal spending at 20% of the economy. With Social Security and Medicare commitments growing in tandem with the rising population of retirees, however, such a cap would inevitably force draconian cuts in federal programs that are vital to productivity, such as higher education, transportation and research. ......... It's hard to analyze the effect of Romney's plans because he's left so many blanks to be filled in after the election. ...... he wants to replace the health care and financial regulatory reforms enacted in 2010, but he won't say with what exactly. He's also advocated rolling back the clock on clean energy, overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving women's reproductive rights at the mercy of state legislators and abandoning efforts to help distressed borrowers keep their homes. And he has sounded bellicose on foreign policy, particularly in regard to the complex challenges posed by Iran, Russia and China, with which he appears determined to start a trade war. ......... The most troubling aspect of Romney's candidacy is that we still don't know what his principles are. Is he the relatively moderate Republican who was governor of Massachusetts, the "severely conservative" one on display in the GOP primaries or the more reasonable-sounding fellow who reappeared at the presidential debates? His modulating positions on his own tax plan, health care reform, financial regulation, Medicare, immigration and the national safety net add to the impression that the only thing he really stands for is his own election. ...... Obama's recalls the successful formula of the 1990s, when the government raised taxes and slowed spending to close the deficit. The alternative offered by Romney would neglect the country's infrastructure and human resources for the sake of yet another tax cut and a larger defense budget than even the Pentagon is seeking.
I never doubted Barack Obama would win re-election. For me, all along, it has been about the House, and not the White House. Barack Obama's goal in November is to win back the House. That is what this is about.
Mitt Romney has truly become his own worst enemy .... The US Senate looks poised to stay in Democratic control because of a crop of unusually strong Democratic challengers. ..... Democrats have a 74% chance of taking back the House. .... Republicans who know that they could lose control of all branches of government ..... how the last two years have played out. Jobs Bill -- no votes in the House. Affordable Care Act -- the House voted 33 times to repeal ..... While the public views inefficacy in Congress with disdain, the Republican leadership sees it as an accomplishment .... Electing President Obama and defending a Democratically controlled Senate is no small feat, but to truly move this country forward we have to do more. ..... We need 25 seats to take control of the House, and we have dozens of progressives running to make sure we have a shot. ..... the knock out currently happening in Florida
