That’s It! President Obama Really Deserves Re-election

I’m not sure about President Obama. Sometimes I wonder if he’s tough enough, sometimes I wonder it the pile on by nearly everyone is just too much to bear.  Whatever you think of  him, one thing you have to know whether you considered it or not. It takes a special, courageous, person to be President of the United States.  It is a thankless job.  I will be frank with you. I doubt very seriously if I could handle the pressure.  Yet President Obama still fights on.

No one can say that this  man does not have fortitude and commitment.  He has both.  For that reason we all should be proud of  him and he deserves re-election.

So its Tainted Tomatoes or Imported Food

Originally posted November 2007

Now we can’t seem to figure out the source of the salmonella outbreak. Three weeks ago everyone was sure that the culprit was tomatoes. So you were hard pressed to find a decent BLT. But wait; the plot thickens, now they say the investigation is expanding to include imported foods, from where; perhaps Mars? The Food and Drug Administration seem to enjoy administrating, but dislikes finding ways to identify what is making so many Americans sick.

In the meantime tomato farmers across this great country of ours are stuck with tons of tomatoes that they can’t begin to sell. Perhaps this is some sort of diversion to distract us from the other crises; lack of low price gas syndrome. It looks like the standard prescription; one pill every four hours until symptoms disappear; want work. We need something stronger.

Perhaps this may even require a clinical trial of some sort. Wanted: 50 individuals who may or may not be sick. That how ridiculous this is. We can be sure that your meter is read correctly and the utility companies can continue to make a great living at our expense; but we cannot for the the life of us find out why we are getting sick from, tomatoes, or maybe; an imported food.

While we wait for the FDA to stop tripping over itself; I say go to your local health food store or lawn and garden center buy a pack of tomato seeds and plant them. Let’s hope you you live in the right climate. If so maybe you’ll have tomatoes by the fall. If you’re successful, then you’ll have a decent version of organic. At least there will not be a FDA investigation.

Thoughts on 911

“We give our prayers to the Lord, for those who suffered the loss of a love one or love ones, ten years ago at ground zero, in Pennsylvania, and in Washington, D.C.   May the Lord God give them peace that defies all understanding to  manage their loss and the resiliency to move forward.  In Jesus name we pray, Amen.”

As we remember those who gave their lives on that eventful day, September 11, 2001,  we  honor them and lift our prayers up to them.  There are no words that can explain or  describe the pain suffered for those who lost their lives  or the pain that their families have endured.   We  have moved on despite horrendous circumstances, because God gave us the strength and the power to move forward and to move on.

America remains strong, America’s resolve continues. God has blessed America. We look back and we look ahead to the present and the future, as we rebuild America and rebuild our infrastructure and rebuild our principles around the world.  The thoughts of America are changing throughout the world and with God’s help we will weather the storm and continue to prosper as a nation.

May God bless the families of those who lost their lives on 9/11/2001 and May God Bless America!

What Causes Cancer?

The more we talk about cancer, the more we continue to be stumped as to what causes it.  Many of us have our theories, genetics, environment, work environment, the food we eat, the debate goes on.  What could possibly be the ultimate cause? We have many studies that have shown different conclusions that shed light on possible causes, but there are simply very few positives.  We are are in a perpetual state of perplexity.

For those of us who know someone with cancer, or may have experienced the disease or even currently living with it, we are challenged to find answers.  We know the affects of the disease and we know it is certainly no  walk in the park. Trust me.

The research continues, the same is true for the warnings that are issued  on a daily basis.  This only gives cause for alarm, so we’re left to continue to search while considering the research, and drawing our own conclusions.  We can only hope that a cure can be found. This will in itself  be another of God’s  miracles.

Mr. President Your Speech To Congress was a Home Run

Mr. President, you  stood up to the Republicans in Congress tonight.  You made it awfully hard for Republicans to ignore your plea ” To Pass This Plan Now.”  I am with you and proud of your response.  I believe the response was right on time!   This is what the country needed from you.  They needed this speech desperately from you.  You will see your poll numbers rise rapidly as a result of this speech.

The American people needed you to fight for them and you certainly did that for us tonight.  We are with you, Mr. President!  We know that you will continue to be passionate about helping the American people.   This speech was a home run and  when your Poll numbers rise, it will be because the American people truly believe that you are really fighting for them.

Yes, it was high stakes, and you rose to the moment and delivered. Congratulations!

President Obama To Congress : “Use Should Pass it Right Away”

From Fox News

Seeking to boost a slumping economy along with his hopes for re-election, President Obama on Thursday night implored Congress to pass a $450 billion jobs plan that he says will give an array of tax cuts to small businesses that hire while reforming the corporate tax code and investing in infrastructure projects.

In a highly-anticipated speech to a joint session of Congress, Obama repeatedly called on lawmakers to pass his plan “right away,” saying “there should be nothing controversial” about the American Jobs Act. Obama said all the proposals are paid for with spending cuts although he won’t detail them until next week.

 “Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans – including many who sit here tonight,” he said. “The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working.”

Obama also called on Congress to “stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy.”

The biggest element in Obama’s plan calls for increasing and extending a payroll tax cut for workers that goes to Social Security, while providing the tax cut to employers, too. For workers, the tax that has been cut from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for this year would fall to 3.1 percent under Obama’s plan — a $175 billion cost. The tax will go back up to 6.2 percent without congressional action by the end of the year.

The president’s plan would also spend $25 billion on school infrastructure to modernize at least 35,000 public schools, including spending on computer labs and on emergency repairs. He would spend an additional $35 billion to prevent layoffs of up to 280,000 teachers and support the hiring of thousands more.

Senior administration officials wouldn’t say how many job the plan would create but noted that it could have an immediate impact.

The idea is to have an effect “within the year,” one official said.

Obama’s plan strikes the “right balance” and contains the “right mix” of elements to get people back working again, an official said. But the officials added there’s no “magic here.”

Republicans didn’t rule out support for Obama’s plan but noted that they had their own proposals too.

“The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. “We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well. It’s my hope that we can work together to end the uncertainty facing families and small businesses, and create a better environment for long-term economic growth and private-sector job creation.”

Obama wanted to convey a deep sense of urgency about the economy in his speech and try to back Republicans into a corner, said top Democrats who spoke to the president about his speech.

But top Republicans wonder why it took nearly three years to convey this urgency. They suspect the timing has more to do with the president now trying to save his own job.

“The president’s so-called jobs plan is to try those very same policies again and then accuse anyone who doesn’t support them this time around of being political or overtly partisan, of not doing what’s needed in this moment of crisis,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. “This isn’t a jobs plan. It’s a re-election plan.”

A key audience is the all-important independent voters who helped elected the president in 2008 but have been fleeing. One year ago, 40 percent of independents approved of his job performance. Now it’s down to 31 percent, according to the latest Fox News poll.

The president is gambling that since Congress has an approval rating of only 10 percent, Republicans will feel election pressure to work with him. But passage of the plan may rest on how the president plans to pay for it.

Obama Unveils $300 Billion Jobs Package

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will roll out a jobs package on Thursday that strives to lift the ailing economy through $300 billion worth of tax credits,  and $300 Billion in new cuts.  The jobs package will include school renovation projects, job training for the unemployed and a program to prevent teacher layoffs, according to a person familiar with the administration’s plans.

In his speech before a joint session of Congress, Obama also will ask lawmakers to renew the 2 percent payroll tax cut that was approved last December and to extend jobless benefits, said the person, who requested anonymity to talk more freely about White House internal deliberations.

The White House would not confirm specifically what is in the plan. And details could change as White House advisers fine-tune the package.

The address being written by chief White House speechwriter Jon Favreau looms as one of the most important of Obama’s presidency. Unemployment stands at 9.1 percent and the fragile economic recovery appears to have stalled.

A new wave of polling this week shows that people are deeply pessimistic about the country’s future and dissatisfied with Obama’s management of the economy.

A survey by The Washington Post-ABC News showed that 77 percent believe the country is on the wrong track.

Obama is under pressure from his Democratic base to submit a “bold” package that would put a real dent in the jobless rate — and revive his re-election prospects.

To the extent he follows this advice, though, he risks alienating Republicans and even conservative Democrats who want to avoid anything that smacks of another expensive stimulus package.

Briefing reporters on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that impartial economists will conclude that the new jobs plan would “have a direct, quick and positive impact on the economy and job creation.”

Carney also said the package would be “paid for,” not financed through deficit spending.

Whether it can pass the Republican-controlled House is no sure thing. Obama has said the jobs plan would include ideas that Republicans have traditionally embraced. One such proposal is a tax credit for businesses that hire new workers, an idea that fits within Republican economic doctrine. But the level of polarization in Congress doesn’t bode well for any new presidential initiatives.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky gave a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday predicting that Obama would unveil ideas that “represent more of the same failed approach that’s only made things worse over the past few years.”

The top-ranking House Republican leaders, meantime, sent Obama a letter Tuesday asking him to meet with congressional leaders of both parties and discuss his jobs package before laying it out in a nationally televised speech.

An aide to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that in crafting the jobs package, the White House has not consulted Boehner.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address- The Greatest Speech In American History

The Gettysburg address is known today as the greatest speech ever given in the United  States. It stands out for it clarity,  inventiveness, and economical use of words. President Abraham Lincoln the author,  delivered the speech  in a little over two minutes. Despite the  brief presentation, Lincoln delivered an American treasure  for the ages.

Abraham Lincoln’s carefully crafted address, secondary to other presentations that day, came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as “a new birth of freedom” that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, ensure that democracy would remain a viable form of government, and would also create a unified nation in which states’ rights were no longer dominant.- Wikipedia

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address………..

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

President Abraham Lincoln

Delivered Thurday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Rick Perry’s Super Pac Money

WASHINGTON — A Super PAC backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination plans on spending $55 million to help secure the nomination for Perry, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

The extensive plans of Make Us Great Again, a Super PAC founded by former Perry chief of staff Mike Toomey, mark the most striking development in the rise of Super PACs and the decentralization of political campaigns following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year.

Super PACs were created after the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and subsequent court cases implemented the ruling, that there was no legitimate corruption concern when independent political action committees raised and spent money in elections but did not donate directly to politicians. The decision allowed corporations and unions to make unlimited direct donations to these committees or to spend that money themselves to make direct electoral appeals to the public.

“It’s a game changer,” Paul S. Ryan, the FEC director for the campaign finance watchdog Campaign Legal Center, said of the $55 million plan. “Super PACs will make the 2012 presidential election unlike any election we’ve seen before.”

Make Us Great Again, which asserted control of the pro-Perry Super PAC universe in August, has fielded a top campaign team to reach its spending target. Aside from Toomey, the Super PAC boasts executive director Scott Rials, formerly on Newt Gingrich’s presidential team, which also included Perry campaign staffers Dave Carney and Robert Johnson; senior adviser Barry Bennett, a close associate of Carney; and finance director Tony Russo, a California fundraiser.

The $55 million plan, if successful, would vault Make Us Great Again into the stratosphere of outside spending in elections, besting the $33 million in “issue” advertising by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the $21 million by the Republican-supporting Super PAC American Crossroads in 2010. That a Super PAC supporting only one candidate might raise and spend so much should come as both a surprise and a rebuke to both the Supreme Court and the appeals court that issued rulings creating this deregulated campaign finance playing field.

“How five members of the Supreme Court, or anyone else, can think that this environment is any different than someone cutting a $1 million check and giving it to a candidate is beyond me,” Ryan said.

Make Us Great Again will likely be able to raise and spend more money than the actual Perry campaign and will easily dwarf the campaigns of all the other candidates and their Super PACs, with the exception of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The Perry campaign, which must raise money under federal contribution limits, could be freed to spend more on grassroots organizing than television advertising. Make Us Great Again donors would surely have great influence.

According to NBC, those close to the Super PAC state that Toomey is telling donors that it’s impossible to run a presidential campaign with the current contribution limits of $2,500 or $5,000 per individual.

“It strikes me as beyond odd that that remark would be made less than four years after a presidential campaign was run that shattered all records while under federal campaign limits,” Ryan told HuffPost.

Only three of the single-candidate Super PACs — of which there are nearly a dozen — have reported any contributions yet, and only one can hold a candle to the amount Make Us Great Again plans to raise.

Restore Our Future, a Romney-supporting Super PAC, raised $12.2 million in the first half of 2011, with an average donation of $135,000. A mere 12 donors — four giving $1 million and eight giving $500,000 — accounted for $8 million of the total raised.

The Make Us Great Again plan obtained by NBC calls for raising and spending $45 million between now and March 24, 2012, the peak of the primary season. That would mean raising $225,000 per day from Sept. 6 through March 24. The PAC plans to raise another $10 million to cover the final months of the primary campaign. – Huffington Post

Colin Powell Invest in Electric Car- Fisker Karma

Electric Vehicle Investment

Colin Powell’s Electric Car

By Jeff Siegel
Monday, September 5th, 2011

A few years ago, I attended a fundraising meeting for Fisker Automotive.

This is the company that’s just delivered the Fisker Karma, the world’s first plug-in hybrid electric luxury car.

Now although I did not partake in the early raise, I have no doubt those who got in first will walk away with a nice little profit.

And quite frankly, it’s an absolutely beautiful car…

In fact, when it comes to luxury cars, I think the Fisker Karma is one of the most impressive pieces of machinery I’ve seen a very long time.

And of course, I wish nothing but success for the company — after all, Fisker is the reason there are 120 less out-of-work Americans today. Those folks will be staffing an old General Motors plant in Wilmington, Delaware.

All in all, it’s a great company with a great product.

But to be honest, I’ve never been all that interested in high-end luxury electric cars — at least, not from an investment standpoint…

Instead, I’m more interested in the development of electric vehicles for regular middle-class folks.

The fact is, these are tough times. And as we head further into the vortex of Peak Oil, it’s not going to get any easier for struggling middle-class families that rely on their gas-guzzling cars to get them to and from work and school every day.

While the Fisker Karma is beyond impressive, I’m looking forward to seeing the regular guy’s electric car: a vehicle that can boast the same swagger as the original Ford Model T – affordable to the common middle-class American.

A Model T Moment

Thanks to Ford’s innovations (specifically, assembly line production), 15 million Model T’s were produced and sold in less than 20 years.

In less than two decades, the Model T replaced the horse.

Of course, when Henry Ford first started laying the groundwork, he heard time and again that the horse could never be replaced by an automobile. In 1903, the president of the Michigan Savings Bank actually told Ford’s lawyer the automobile was merely a novelty, a fad.

Today, we are at the cusp of a similar transition, moving from outdated internal combustion technology to hybrid and electric propulsion technologies. And there are plenty of folks today who have about as much wisdom as that old bank president in Michigan more than a century ago…

They’re looking for every excuse in the book to criticize the very real disruptive power of electric cars. I suspect folks like these will continue to carry on about it. But that’s of no concern to us. Because the bottom line is that no matter how you slice it, the transition to hybrid and electric propulsion is already underway.

It will be a necessity in a post-Peak world, not a cute little side project for tree huggers and wealthy eccentrics.

And there isn’t a damn thing the detractors can do to stop it.

The Proverbial Middle Finger

While the first Fisker Karmas arrive for those who got in line early — former Secretary of State Colin Powell and insanely wealthy actor Leonardo DiCaprio, just to name two — the major automakers are grinding away to get their “less flashy” electric offerings out the door as well.

The Chevy Volt and the Nissan LEAF were the first to hit. Both are nearly impossible to get your hands on as there is limited supply to meet demand: Fleet operators got first dibs, and the remaining inventory was delivered to those who put down their deposits nearly two years ago.

Both GM and Nissan are plugging away to get these vehicles into the hands of the innovators and early adopters that will put these vehicles through their paces.

Meanwhile, Mitsubishi’s “i” will be available in the U.S. market next year, as will the Ford Focus Electric. Beyond that, there’s essentially a conga line of new electric offerings coming out over the next three to five years from every major automaker on the planet…

And every year, they’ll become less and less costly to produce — getting us to the point where the average middle-class American can afford to buy one, and then happily give the proverbial middle finger to every hostile oil-producing nation that’s got us by the ball bag.