November 19, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
President-elect Barack Obama is reported to be filling out his cabinet with prominent and experienced appointees. Some critics are already alleging ther are too many “Washington insiders” getting positions, but the transition team insists there is a new tone being set and these individuals will be ideally positioned to effect key reforms. Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) has been offered the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services, and has reportedly accepted. Longtime Justice official and Obama aide Eric Holder is expected to get the nomination to serve as attorney general.
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November 18, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Rumors have been swirling for a little under a week that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has been offered the position of Secretary of State by her former rival, the US president-elect Barack Obama. Now, the Guardian newspaper is reporting, even as msot media continue to focus on the vetting of former Pres. Bill Clinton’s financial dealings, that “Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama”.
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November 17, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Obama/McCain: “At this defining moment in history, we believe that Americans of all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the bad habits of Washington so that we can solve the common and urgent challenges of our time. It is in this spirit that we had a productive conversation today about the need to launch a new era of reform…”
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November 17, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Iraqi cabinet has approved a security deal with the US, governing the role of US forces in the country. According to the deal, the US will withdraw its soldiers from Iraqi streets sometime in 2009 and will withdraw entirely from Iraq by the end of 2011. The Associated Press has circulated a photo of Iraqi police dancing with a US soldier in apparent celebration of the withdrawal agreement.
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November 17, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Just a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom dictated that financial minds must view “green technology” as pie in the sky, an unaffordable idealistic quest for something beyond the “easy” solution of endless oil. Then, almost overnight, the financial markets discovered that oil was not infinite, that the entire US economy was beholden to the pricing whims of an international cartel —this was long known, but tolerated—, and failure to go green could cripple the world’s most powerful democracy.
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November 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
President-elect Barack Obama’s healthcare proposal, as laid out, aims to expand availability of safe generic prescriptions drugs, in order to bring down costs across the system and help secure full treatment for all Americans. High prescription-drug costs inflate insurance premiums and often determine whether patients will receive adequate treatment for sometimes serious health conditions. A prescription-drug plan, passed by George W. Bush, in concert with a bipartisan coalition in the then Republican-controlled Congress, aimed to help increase availability, but was not aggressive in reducing costs.
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November 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Critics have sought to characterize President-elect Obama’s healthcare proposal as “socialized medicine”, despite its relying almost entirely on market dynamics and the private sector. Government spending is considered to be one area where Obama’s plan could be unacceptable to fiscal conservatives, though Obama’s fiscal policy is largely in line with conservative fiscal policy and aims to cover new spending with spending cuts elsewhere. New analysis suggests there is already money to cover his plan and to reach near universal coverage with a few workable adjustments in current legislation.
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November 10, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
President-elect Barack Obama has been welcomed by Pres. Bush as the two confer on the work of governing, the process of transition, the inner workings of the residence and security issues. It is Obama’s 8th trip to the White House, his first to the Oval Office itself. Reuters reports that Bush and Obama “were expected to discuss the global financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other challenges the Republican president will bequeath to his Democratic successor”.
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November 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
To understand the relevance and virtues of Barack Obama’s economic vision, we have to look at the long history of struggle between American laissez-faire capitalism and American middle-class capitalism. We are on the verge of what is likely to be a comprehensive philosophical shift in economic policy toward generative investment, which means counting as economic imperatives the resilience and productive expansion of the positive bases of economic growth, i.e. human and environmental health and well-being, resource-density and cyclical models of resource use and reproduction.
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November 7, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Barack Obama’s election victory, making him 44th president of the United States, was resounding not only for its historic significance, not only because the nation faces monumental crises and is calling for serious reform at a potential turning point in political trends, but because mathematically, it was decisive. Obama carried at least 28 states —with Missouri still in recounts—, won more than 65.1 million votes —nearly 8 million more than McCain—, and if McCain takes Missouri and the one unassigned Nebraska vote, his Electoral College margin is 364 to 174.
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November 7, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party has seen virtually every one of its over-arching policy assumptions discredited or rejected, in the 2006 and 2008 elections. It now faces an historic challenge, to reinvent itself in a climate where the other party dominates both houses of Congress and has elected a popular new president by a wide margin. The campaign of Sen. John McCain struggled to overcome the Obama message, in part because it was relying on the assumption that specific Republican party platform planks were the political ideas most en vogue with the electorate, when they were in fact at odds with current economic and political reality.
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November 6, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Sen. Barack Obama, as president-elect, now faces the daunting task of staging a transition from campaign to governing, and from the Bush years to the Obama years, in what must be the most artful and adroit performance of the task seen in decades. Facing two wars, looming multifaceted economic crisis, and the need to overhaul national energy policy and fight environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale, Obama is faced not just with forming a cabinet and White House team, but formulating a strategy for enacting the change he has promised in a time of historic difficulty.
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November 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
John McCain used to be a “maverick”, an independent thinker, a rebel against his party’s leadership, and that entailed adopting, promoting and furiously defending ideas that diverged from his party’s stated agenda and its leaders’ most prized political philosophies. He shed the trappings of the true moderate or independent in an apparent effort to win favor among his party’s decision-makers and financial backers, which dampened his appeal as an independent thinker. And most importantly, he seemed blind to the real spirit of the times, which rejected the politics of fear and called for an activist approach to crisis.
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November 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
I have long felt, as so many Americans do, a profound emotional attachment to the ideals we always speak of when we talk about our founding revolution, our enlightened democracy, our progress toward a freer and more just world. And I have always aspired to see those ideals put on display, not just by an historic moment, but by the collective awareness of millions of impassioned American citizens. This moment in history is a sea change in our collective mindset, and a victory for all Americans.
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November 5, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
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November 5, 2008 :: staff :: 3 Comments
They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided; too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night – at this defining moment in history – you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do; what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days; what America can do in this New Year. In schools and churches; small towns and big cities; you came together as Democrats, Republicans and Independents to stand up and say that we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come.
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November 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has defeated Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to become the 44th president of the United States of America. Around 11pm Eastern Time, American news media and wire services began projecting that enough states would deliver their Electoral College votes to Obama to make him president-elect. Shortly afterward, Sen. John McCain phoned his rival to congratulate him on his historic victory. Sen. Obama is the first African American to win the presidency of the United States.
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November 4, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
Early voting —in some states actually in-person absentee voting— has allowed as many as 40% of registered voters in North Carolina to cast ballots already, before the opening of the first polls on Election Day. According to ABC News, in North Carolina more African American voters have already voted than in the 2004 election, and in Georgia some 85% of the 2004 African American turnout have already cast ballots. George Stephanopoulous reports that of so-called “likely voters” who have voted so far, fully 58% were leaning toward Obama, as opposed to 40% for McCain.
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November 4, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Madelyn Payne Dunham, nicknamed “Toot” —grandmother, in Hawaian— by grandson Barack Obama, has passed away, one day before the election which may make him president of the United States. Dunham died after a long struggle with cancer, and the candidate said she passed peacefully in her sleep. He told a rally in Charlotte, NC, that “She’s gone home”, and that it was a difficult joy amid the tragedy that his sister was able to be with her when she passed.
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October 21, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, is the candidate that is best positioned to offer the solutions our nation requires, in these troubled and challenging times. His positive vision of a dynamic American society, capable of innovating to combat a global energy crisis, principled in defending Constitutional law and human rights, combines the open and dynamic nature of American democratic culture with an energetic commitment to tackling new challenges, motivating a resurgence of the kind of major projects that will help rebuild and spur our economy.
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October 20, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Barack Obama has begun to raise the issue of how rival Sen. John McCain plans to pay for added costs in his budget, particularly healthcare, given his tax cut plan and his claims about coverage. According the Wall Street Journal, which cites his own campaign, he will do so with massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Sen. Obama used the figure of an $882 billion cut to Medicare coverage alone.
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October 19, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
In an interview with Meet the Press, former Sec. of State Colin Powell said he knows both John McCain and Barack Obama to be “distinguished Americans, who are patriotic, who are dedicated to the welfare of our country”, criticized his friend Sen. McCain for “a little unsure” what to do about the economic crisis, suggesting he “didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems”. Powell also questioned a number of McCain’s judgments on policy and campaign tactics, and praised Sen. Obama’s “intellectual vigor” and “steadiness” in dealing with serious challenges.
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October 19, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Chicago Tribune, conservative monument of American journalism, which has never endorsed a Democratic candidate for president, since 1847, has endorsed Barack Obama, the US senator from Illinois, for president. Perhaps the most poignant phrase for many voters would be “He is ready.” The fact that this was the major sticking point for many suggests the rest of his appeal is an easy sell.
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October 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Barack Obama appears to have kept his cool, delivered his message and kept his focus firmly on issues and the work of governing. John McCain fired a number of gimic-enabled shots at Obama, but failed to deliver a coherent message, other than his allegation that Obama wants to raise taxes and he would cut them for everyone, a factually untrue claim about his tax proposal.
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October 15, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The monumental series of 7 3-hour-long debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas ended on 15 October 1858, exactly 150 years to the day before tonight’s third Obama-McCain televised 90-minute debate. The two Illinois politicians were competing for one of the state’s two Senate seats, and their epic debates are considered a watershed for intellect in American politics, a transformative political moment and a media revolution that drove democracy’s expansion in human society.
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October 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Sen. John McCain may be scrambling to save his political life. Of course, until the American people vote, it remains true he might win and become the next president of the United States. But the Branchflower report has just found his vice-presidential candidate guilty of abusing her office as Alaska governor, and he has just had to scold his own supporters for espousing racist and paranoid views which his campaign had at least implicitly sought to smear Obama with. His standing in the polls has fallen dramatically —as of today, RCP’s daily tracking poll average projects 313 Electoral College votes going to Obama, 158 to McCain, with 67 “toss up”—, and conservative luminaries are weighing in on his weakness as a candidate.
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October 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Arizona Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign has become mired in a controversy over its aggressive personal attacks on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, which has put the Republican candidate in a supremely awkward position. During a week in which rallies held for his candidacy have featured allegations that Sen. Obama is somehow linked to domestic terrorists or has suspicious overseas supporters, more than once audience members have shouted out threats to Sen. Obama’s life.
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October 9, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago, has suspended law-enforcement support for evictions, expressing outrage at mortgage lenders, and saying too many innocent renters are being forced onto the street with literally zero notice. Sheriff Thomas Dart says all foreclosure-related evictions will be postponed indefinitely, because law-enforcement has “no idea who’s in the home” when they show up to force residents to leave. He says there are too many “unjust” circumstances in which innocent people, whom nobody has informed of the building’s foreclosure, are targetted by evictions.
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October 9, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
Dear Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson: There is grave concern in low-income communities about a potential coming wave of foreclosures. Because regulators are partly responsible for creating the environment that is leading to rising rates of home foreclosure in the subprime mortgage market, I urge you immediately to convene a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses to the challenge.
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October 9, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A Public Policy Polling survey of North Carolina voters gives Sen. Barack Obama a 6% point lead over Sen. John McCain, in a state no Democrat has carried since 1976. Reports suggest that new voter registration favors Democrats 6 to 1, and some have expressed concern that Republican party operatives may try to stop first-time voters from casting votes, challenging their registration or misdirecting them to incorrect polling places. The state may move toward Obama because he is “connecting” with voters on economic issues.
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October 9, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Since Sunday, when the McCain-Palin campaign consciously opted to “go negative”, attacking Obama as having “poor judgment” and “palling around with terrorists”, rallies for Sen. McCain’s candidacy have been marred by what appear to be increasingly hot racial tensions. A spokesman for the campaign has told Café Sentido they “do not play the race card”, but observers have questioned whether there is a conscious effort being made to spark racial or ethnic biases and instill fear in the electorate about Sen. Obama’s background or personal associations.
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October 6, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
The presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) this weekend shifted aggressively to personal attacks on Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) character, openly announcing that they intend to sow doubt in voters’ minds and move the political debate across the nation away from economic issues. McCain’s running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, began attacking Obama’s character, trying to link him to BIll Ayers, a onetime member of the group the Weather Underground. The Obama campaign has responded by putting together a documentary linking Sen. McCain to the savings and loan corruption scandal of the late 1980s.
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October 6, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. John McCain’s campaign has begun to launch personal attacks on Sen. Obama, who appears to have solidified leads in most “battleground states”. Meanwhile, Sen. Obama has said McCain’s campaign is “out of touch, out of ideas and running out of time”, and has assailed McCain’s healthcare plan for raising taxes on working people. McCain’s plan would tax employer-provided healthcare benefits, offering individuals a tax credit for buying their own healthcare. Obama says McCain’s tax credit is insufficient to cover private healthcare costs and will leave people struggling.
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October 2, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
Senators Biden, Obama, McCain vote with majority (74 to 25) to support the financial rescue bill, including a raft of tax incentives aimed at creating economic stimulus, putting money in hands of non-banking interests. The Senate’s version of the rescue package includes tax credits for wind and solar power, “greening” the recovery plan so that individual Americans can begin to take action that will make the energy economy more sustainable and give leverage to those budding industries. Importantly, the bill also raises the FDIC cap for individual accounts to $250,000, from $100,000.
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September 29, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
With the nation facing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and voices in private finance calling for a major bailout, with the Republican president, his financial advisers, leaders of both parties in Congress calling for a $700 billion bailout package, the US House has voted down the rescue package. The stock market closed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 777.68 points. Talks of a “done deal” are obviously over, and the administration and Congressional leaders will now be starting over.
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September 8, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Sen. John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was meant to be his answer to the stadium-sized explosion of his rival’s historic address, his moment to demonstrate his own version of leadership. It is now being mocked by political commentators as a ham-fisted attempt at catching the wave. McCain performed rhetorical acrobatics to try to both be like Obama and be like Bush, while supposedly offering something of his own entirely distinct brand of politics. Botched stage-craft was an added drag on the speech’s resonance.
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September 5, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
My heartfelt thanks to all of you who helped me win this nomination and stood by me when the odds were long. I won’t let you down. To Americans who have yet to decide who to vote for, thank you for your consideration and the opportunity to win your trust. I intend to earn it.
Finally, a word to Sen. Obama and his supporters. We’ll go at it over the next two months. That’s the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other. We’re dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. No country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn’t be an American worthy of the name if I didn’t honor Sen. Obama and his supporters for their achievement.
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September 4, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska accepted the Republican party’s nomination for vice president in at their convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. She said she was looking forward to the “challenge of a tough fight against competent opponents”, but wasted no time getting to the red meat. She said she was joining a ticket that would “serve and defend America”, and that John McCain put the “security of the country that he loves” ahead of his own political fate, reminding the audience that McCain said he “would rather lose an election than lose a war”.
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September 3, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Al Gore’s choice for VP in the 2000 election, and still a self-proclaimed Democrat —though he was voted out in his party’s primary, before winning back his Senate seat as an independent— addressed the Republican National Convention last night, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lieberman enthusiastically endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and said his goal is to work as hard as possible to make him the next president of the United States.
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September 2, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party kicked off its nominating convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, last night, with a heavy focus on the plight of those displaced by Hurricane Gustav. Fortunately, the storm did not turn out to be “the storm of the century”, but it did leave over 1 million homes and businesses without electricity along the Gulf coast. So in an effort to avoid anything resembling the perceived indifference with which the catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was met, the GOP has devoted significant time to voicing its support for efforts to send aid to the Gulf coast.
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September 2, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Howard Dean’s predecessor as chairman of the DNC, has said 2008 will be “the most vicious campaign we have ever faced”. Already shadowy “527 groups” and PACs are running ads and sponsoring the publication of books full of disproven rumor and innuendo, with the openly stated aim of “defeating Barack Obama”. Author Jerome Corsi, who has written a best-selling anti-Obama tome, openly admitted, against the wishes of his publisher, that his book is not intended to be factual, but rather to further the anti-Obama agenda, with the aim of influencing the outcome of the November election.
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August 29, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Over the 4 days of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, media analysts have repeatedly asked where the real ‘red meat’ was? Who would throw the red meat to the delegates hungry for an affirmation of the party’s cause and will to fight? Who will blitz John McCain with attacks and insults. There was, apparently, a resistance to believing that Barack Obama’s message might be real, that he could defend his ideas and take the fight to his opponent without demeaning or smearing him. The speech Obama delivered last night demonstrated with astonishing clarity that the red meat he’s throwing to his audience is not insults or attacks, but a vision of possibility and a call to action in common values.
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August 29, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more. Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit card bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach.
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August 28, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
As is usually the case in a presidential election year, we are hearing non-stop talk about cutting taxes. The Republican candidate, as usual, relentlessly accuses his Democratic opponent of conspiring to “raise taxes” and “punish” American businesses for success. And as usual, we are being deprived of an opportunity to really examine the facts of the matter. The truth is, both Obama and McCain are proposing their own tax-cut plans, but we might be better served by thinking about tax-credits, and what they should be aimed at achieving.
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August 28, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Last night, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton interrupted the roll-call vote, asking her New York delegation to support her call for nomination by acclamation; the delegates supported the motion, and Sen. Barack Obama, far ahead in the delegate count, was officially nominated to be the candidate of his party for the presidency. Clinton had spoken the night before, giving her full support to Obama’s candidacy, saying the future of our children and of the nation “hang in the balance”, at risk should McCain win the November election.
