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January 4, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Radio & web address by President-elect Barack Obama, 3 January 2009
As the holiday season comes to end, we are thankful for family and friends and all the blessings that make life worth living. But as we mark the beginning of a new year, we also know that America faces great and growing challenges—challenges that threaten [...]
December 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
A hard core of Republican senators demanded ideological concessions from autoworkers, blaming the front-line manufacturing workers —whom John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, repeatedly called “the best in the world” during their campaign for the White House— for America’s embattled automakers’ financial hardships. The bloc included all 8 senators from the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, where foreign automakers, like Toyota and Hyundai, have spent billions to build factories that have led to the creation of thousands of jobs in those states.
December 9, 2008 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: No Comment Yet
The spread of cholera due to Zimbabwe’s foundering hygienic infrastructure is reaching crisis proportions. UNICEF is calling for an emergency fund of $17.5 million to fight the spread of cholera in Zimbabwe, calling the outbreak “a cholera crisis of unprecedented levels”. With 13,960 cases already declared and an estimated 589 dead to date, the UN warns upwards of 60,000 people could become infected if drastic and immediate action is not taken to contain the epidemic.
December 7, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
[W]e need action — and action now. That is why I have asked my economic team to develop an economic recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main Street that will help save or create at least two and a half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil, and saving billions of dollars. We won’t do it the old Washington way. We won’t just throw money at the problem. We’ll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve — by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world.
November 27, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Gunmen have taken positions in at least nine sites across Mumbai, where civilians have been killed and Indian security forces now battle to regain control. Media reports suggest there are confirmed attacks at the following locations: Chowpatty Beach, Dockyard Road, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Gokuldas Tejpal Hospital, Cama and Albless Hospital, Municipal Corp. of Greater [...]
November 27, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A band of as yet-unidentified terrorists have attacked between 7 and 9 locations around Mumbai, India’s financial capital and a city roughly twice the size of New York. One group of gunmen reportedly came ashore in an inflatable dinghy, while authorities have suggested others were lying in wait to rise up and contribute a significant amount of stockpiled weapons to the fight. Indian authorities are struggling to regain control of various locations where hostages have reportedly been killed in large numbers.
November 23, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday in his weekly radio address —now also a video staple on YouTube— he has already tasked his economic team “to come up with an economic recovery plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January 2011″. Obama has long pledged he would incentivize development of a green-energy economy, as a response to the imperatives of economic sustainability, job-creation and reduced environmental impact. The president-elect added that “it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job-creation”, ostensibly a first building-block in what may be a broader economic recovery, which he hopes will be in full swing before the end of his first term.
November 18, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Despite urging from the Russian prosecutors and the potential national-security implications of a case involving at least one former FSB (successor to KGB) agent, the trial of those accused of conspiring in the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya will be held in open court. The first trial hearings began “behind closed doors”, and Karina Moskalenko —a human rights lawyer working with Politkovskaya’s family— was allegedly poisoned while in France.
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.
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.
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.
November 3, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
2008 has already seen a heated contest for the integrity of the vote, with Republicans smearing groups like ACORN that work to register low-income and minority voters, and Democratic supporters accusing the GOP of trumping up claims about voter-fraud. We have seen repeatedly over the last 8 years, reports of major state-run operations, designed to reduce the number of registered voters able to cast ballots on election day, usingspurious claims of widespread voter fraud as a justification.
November 3, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
An electronic voting machine made by Premier Election Solutions (Diebold) has been found to flip votes repeatedly to Republican candidate John McCain. A local election official in Adams County responded to the complaint by halting the machine’s use and sequestering it, so it could be examined for evidence of tampering and/or persistent malfunction.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
September 3, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Eight years after the debacle of the 2000 presidential election, the state of Florida still has not secured its balloting system against errors, missed votes, flawed counts and tampering. In the wake of the flawed electronic counts from the 2006 Buchanan-Jennings race, Sarasota opted for paper ballots, which are counted by optical scanners. The glitch encountered in a recent primary occurred when absentee ballots entering the system would not transfer to the main tally on a central server.
August 31, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The company now known as Premier Election Solutions —formerly Diebold, long criticized by election integrity activists for unverifiable, unreliable touchscreen machines (achieving maximum notoriety when its chief executive said he would “do anything” in his power to win Ohio for Bush in 2004)—, has acknowledged that its machines have been “losing votes”, malfunctioning, and providing erroneous counts for more than a decade, affecting elections in 34 states.
August 29, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Last night, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) told the Democratic National Convention that “at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.” John McCain has chosen a vice-presidential running mate from as far away from Washington as you can get: first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a strong backer of new drilling and a young female conservative with a reputation for reform. The pick appears in many ways designed to inoculate the McCain campaign against a number of the advantages the Obama-Biden ticket has accumulated.
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.
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.
August 28, 2008 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
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.
August 26, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) tonight called on her supporters to give the full support to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who defeated her in the Democratic primary process. Clinton’s rousing speech sparked numerous ovations, and moved many in the audience of Democratic party devotees to tears, including her husband, former president Bill Clinton. The catch phrase that may be most widely quoted by the press was her “No way, no how, no McCain” quip.
August 24, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has chosen Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) to be his running mate. Biden brings a wealth of experience from nearly 36 years in the US senate, including work on military and foreign policy, as well as Constitutional issues and the Senate judiciary committee. The two appeared for the first time as running mates in front of the old Illinois Statehouse, in Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln launched his candidacy, as did Obama fully 18 months ago.
July 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) today gave a major address on foreign policy and international security and cooperation at the foot of the Victory Column, in the heart of Berlin, Germany. German authorities estimate the crowd exceeded 200,000 individuals. Reports from Berlin indicate the crowd included people of all races, and from many countries, eager to hear the Democratic nominee deliver what the US media have treated as an historic address and an attempt to demonstrate the ability to achieve renewed unity.
July 24, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Radovan Karadzic, considered one of the three “most-wanted” men in Europe, has been captured in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. He is accused of war crimes for his role in allegedly planning the murder of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica and of 12,000 during the siege of Sarajevo, during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. His alleged crimes have been officially classed as genocide by the war crimes court at the Hague, and the accusations are the worst allegations of mass murder in Europe since World War II.
July 10, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
T. Boone Pickens has started what USA Today reports will be “the biggest public policy ad campaign ever” to promote a national economic shift from oil to renewable fuels, primarily wind. The campaign is centered on the PickensPlan website, which shows the oil tycoon explaining how and why the US can and must break its dependence on foreign oil —for which American consumers pay $700 billion per year— by transitioning to an energy economy founded on exploiting the massive wind resources of the Great Plains.
June 8, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign began telling the press that she intended to officially concede defeat, withdraw from the campaign and endorse Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, as the Democratic party’s nominee, as early as the morning after the final primary votes. She scheduled a farewell gathering for campaign staffers and supporters on Friday, the date pushed back to allow more people to attend. And on Saturday, she followed through and gave a rousing speech to supporters, officially endorsing Obama and calling on her supporters to follow suit.
June 4, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Illinois senator Barack Obama has won the race for the Democratic party’s nomination for the US presidency. He is the first African-American to become a major-party candidate for president in the US. Obama spoke to 18,000 supporters in St. Paul, Minnesota, and dedicated the celebration of his achievement to his grandmother, telling supporters, “Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another.”
March 19, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
‘WE THE PEOPLE, IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION’ SPEECH TACKLES RACIAL DIVIDE IN U.S., DISTANCES CANDIDATE FROM PASTOR’S REMARKS
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, by the slimmest of margins the frontrunner for the Democratic party’s nomination for president, yesterday delivered a major policy speech on race and tolerance in America. Major mainstream media [...]
November 18, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Due to the science we already have, the laws we have to govern our own activity and to force government to act for the public health, we face the real possibility of being forced, in American courts, in the future, to pay for damage done to the most affected populations in other parts of the world, as a result of inaction by our government. And if not in court, then as a matter of the de facto urgencies of international political stability.
August 14, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
When Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder asked Pres. Bush to “leave this world alone” in song, online viewers watching Lollapalooza via AT&T’s ‘Blue Room’ webcast were not able to hear it. The company cut the political lyrics from the webcast in what band-members, fans and net-neutrality advocates have called blatant censorship. AT&T blamed an outside contractor and apologized for the ‘mistake’.
August 9, 2007 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Journalist Bill Moyers explains how Net Neutrality is really about stipulating for all media regulations an ‘Equality of Access provision’ like that imposed on AT&T after “Free Press and Save the Internet.com orchestrated 800 organizations, a million and a half petitions… a top-shelf communications campaign…”
August 8, 2007 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Arusha, Tanzania, played host last week to leaders from “more than 10 Darfur rebel groups”, as the groups held talks to work out common ground and a structure for negotiating peace with the Sudan government, in light of the coming deployment of 26,000 UN-mandated peacekeepers for Darfur. The conflict which began as an effort to stamp out regional differences and secure control for Khartoum has become a crisis of global interest and one which the United Nations now seeks to put an end to.
February 10, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
US Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has announced his plans to run for president in the 2008 elections. He will face a tough field of heavyweight contenders, led by the star-power and financial backing of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), just to win the nomination of his party. The historic announcement, seen by many as the first African-American candidate with nationwide electability, brought thousands of citizens together to hear and witness the event.
February 10, 2007 :: staff :: One Comment
But let me tell you how I came to be here. As most of you know, I’m not a native of this great state. I — I moved to Illinois over two decades ago. I was a young man then, just a year out of college. I knew no one in Chicago when I arrived, was without money or family connections. But a group of churches had offered me a job as a community organizer for the grand sum of 13,000 dollars a year. And I accepted the job, sight unseen, motivated then by a single, simple, powerful idea: that I might play a small part in building a better America.
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