Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Send Barack Obama back to the White House Again

President Obama the right Leader in the New World Order

Given a fair chance of putting his vision to work, Americans would have been a shining example of a quick comeback but divisive politics got in the way. The kind of politics that say I would rather we all go down instead of one man, especially a black man, make us look like idiots. So the Republicans have dogged President Obama‘s inspired vision for a new America at every turn. They have used the same scare tactics that got American into a war that no one wanted, to keep Americans jittery and second-guessing the man they put in office with the highest majority ever across the board. In their desperation at the devastation that was wrought upon them by the previous administration, ordinary Americans scramble helter skelter to save what’s left of their homes, their livelihoods and their lifestyles that the Bush Administration and Wall Street greed took away from them. It is time for sober thinking and look at the facts.

America has a president who can deliver, he is smart, he is young and he has the genes of both Black and White Americans. In spite of what he says about being black, President Obama is not a black man, is not a white man, he is a new kind of man that America will have to embrace now and in the future. That new kind of man comes from a variety of backgrounds, and understands multicultural thinking, bicultural thinking and how to use that to create synergy – something that either a Black or White person might find more challenging. He is the man to make America great. He looks at policies and principles, philosophy and theories combined with practical know-how, gut feelings instead of people and their race or culture. He understands poverty, discrimination, exclusion and he understands privilege and wealth as well. He has the best interest of Americans with little thought of what’s in it for me. He knows he has to prove he is enough, that he is worthy of the vote and that he is looked at with more scrutiny than any previous President, why would he want to screw up? Think about it. Whatever he is trying to do is what he believes to be in the best interest of the American people. He would not want to incite a war in the hope that his company would benefit and he would become richer than ever. He does not have big business ideas for himself; he is an academic at heart. He does not stand to gain from the spoils and exploits of war; there is no conflict of interest there. Think people. This brings me to the question, why with such a strong war ethics and promoter of war against terrorists the previous government was not able to snag any, not one of the big players. Why since President Obama took office we’ve had some of the biggest gains in terrorist hunting and President Obama is not a war monger. Do you see where this is going?

Americans, I urge to pull your head out of the sand and take a look at President Obama and see the truth behind his policies. He is trying to level the playing field. Those who have do not want the playing field levelled. If the field is levelled, then what will be the advantage of the rich or to the rich? Who will they trample upon? The rich Americans have no interest in the poor but to keep them in their place as second class citizens. The poor and middle class Americans have something in common, they have to pool their resources (their votes) against the rich and powerful and show them that we in America can also have our American Spring at the next election. I urge you to send President Obama back to the White House to finish what he has started. He is the man to do it. This is not the time for sitting on the fence. It is the time for decisive action.

America has been blessed with a winning President, chosen to deliver Americans from the bondage of the rich and powerful. Give him that chance or lose it forever. Do not be fooled by those who are just trying to use you to feather their nests even more comfortable. STOP, THINK, ACT.

These are some of the good things President Obama said he would do and what he has accomplished since taking office – there is more to come, stick with him and his plan:

1. New START. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) that is purposed to reduce the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers by half and to establish a new inspection and verification regime. The treaty was recently ratified by Congress after being signed earlier this year by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.


2. DADT Appeal. President Obama recently signed the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (DADT) Repeal Bill into law, which will allow gays to serve openly in America’s military. For the first time in history, gays no longer have to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal. According to objective statistics, more than 13,000 military personnel were released under the DADT since 1993.

3. Tax Cuts. President Obama recently signed an enormous tax cut bill that will extend the Bush era tax cuts for families at all income levels through 2012. The bill also consisted of a new payroll tax cut for wage earners, numerous tax breaks for businesses and extended jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed.

4. Fair Sentencing Act. Earlier this year, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 to reduce racial inequity that has historically existed relative to the sentencing of people caught with crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. To be charged with a felony, crack users needed to possess only 5 grams of the drug to be sentenced with the same charge that powder cocaine users needed to be caught with (500 grams). Now, to be charged, crack users need to possess 28 grams of crack cocaine to 500 grams of powder cocaine.

5. Childhood Obesity Act. President Obama recently signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was primarily spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama. This bill is purposed to subsidize free meals in low-income areas, to ensure that children receive well-balanced and nutritious school meals, to provide free or reduced-price meals to nearly 31 million low-income children and to ultimately reduce childhood obesity.

6. Health Care Reform. Although controversial in nature, President Obama’s historic signing of the health care reform bill (i.e., The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010) will result in health care coverage for over 30 million additional Americans, as well as lowered costs for most Americans. Additionally, the health care reform bill will preclude insurance companies from placing lifetime limits on benefits and from denying coverage to individuals and family members with pre-existing health conditions.

7. Improper Payments. President Obama signed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act, which is purposed to prevent such payments sent by the government to the wrong person or for the wrong reasons or in the wrong amounts. President Obama also established a goal for his administration to reduce improper payments by $50 billion by 2012.

8. Iraq. One of the primary messages of his presidential campaign was the withdrawal of combat troops out of Iraq. President Obama and his National Defense personnel were able to implement this promise, as more than 90,000 combat troops were withdrawn out of Iraq by August 31, 2010.

9. Wall Street Reform. President Obama signed the historic Wall Street Reform Bill, which was established to put an end to taxpayer-funded bailouts, create a new watchdog agency within the Federal Reserve to protect consumers in financial transactions, give the government more power to break up failing companies and create greater congressional oversight over the central bank.

10. HIRE Act. President Obama signed the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act, which included $17.5 billion in tax cuts, business credits and subsidies for state and local construction bonds, and moved $20 billion into the highway trust fund for spending on highway and transit programs. The bill also exempts businesses that hire unemployed workers from paying the payroll security tax through December of 2010.

11. HBCU Funding. President Obama signed the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which will include a $98 million funding increase for HBCUs. This Executive Order will also provide funding for the repair, renovation, and construction or acquisition of educational facilities, instructional equipment, research instrumentation, and physical infrastructure.

12. Appointment of Justice Elena Kagen. In addition to appointing Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court in 2009, President Obama similarly appointed former Solicitor General Elena Kagen in 2010.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Barack Obama wants to rescue child soldiers



Obama Backs Military Aid to Countries that Use Child Soldiers


For the second year in a row, U.S. President Barack Obama has waived a Congressionally-mandated ban on military aid for four countries that use child soldiers.

October 6, 2011


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Start an Online Petition � For the second year in a row, U.S. President Barack Obama has waived a Congressionally-mandated ban on military aid for four countries that use child soldiers.



The four countries that will continue to receive military assistance despite the use of child soldiers in their armed forces include Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Yemen and the newly independent nation of South Sudan, according to a memo released by the White House late Tuesday.



All four, which are slated to receive a total of more than 200 million dollars in military aid in 2012, were given waivers by the administration last year, as well.



The latest decision was denounced by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which said it showed "a lack of leadership and a disregard for U.S. law".



"Countries that keep using child soldiers aren't going to get serious about ending the practice until they see the U.S. is serious about withholding the money," said Jo Becker, who heads HRW's children's rights division.



"The Obama administration has been unwilling to make even small cuts to military assistance to governments exploiting children as soldiers," she added. "Children are paying the price for its poor leadership."



Under the U.S. Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008, which took effect in 2010, Washington is banned from providing U.S. foreign military financing (FMF), military training, and several other military aid programmes to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 18.



Obama can waive the bans if he determines that doing so would serve "the national interest".



Five countries, as well as the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) in what in July became South Sudan, were identified last year as using child soldiers during 2009. They included Chad, the DRC, Yemen, Somalia, and Myanmar. Of those, only Somalia and Burma, with which the U.S. has no military ties anyway, were not given waivers.



At the time, the White House said that the other three countries and the SPLA had been "put…on notice" that they would be subject to future sanctions if they did not stop or reduce their recruitment practices.



In a private conference call, National Security Council Senior Director Samantha Power assured concerned non-governmental organisation (NGOs) representatives that the administration would fully enforce the law in 2011, according to foreignpolicy.com's The Cable blogger, Josh Rogin, who listened in on the call.



Of the four countries granted waivers this year, Yemen, which receives more than 100 million dollars a year in U.S. military and counterterrorism assistance, was perhaps the most notable, if only because the administration could not point to any effort on the part of its government to address the child soldier problem during the past year.



"Cooperation with the Yemeni government is a vital piece of the U.S. national strategy to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents by denying them sanctuary in the ungoverned spaces of Yemen's hinterland," the White House said in a memo justifying the waivers.



"Removing the Administration's flexibility to provide security assistance would have the potential to jeopardize the Yemeni government's capability to conduct special operations and counterterrorism missions," it said.



HRW said its monitors had observed child soldiers serving with Central Security, an elite paramilitary unit, and General Security, a police force in the capital, Sana'a, as recently as August. In addition, officers in the army's First Armoured Division, which joined the opposition earlier this year, told HRW that it had recruited children who were 15 years old or even younger, before its defection.



On South Sudan, which is supposed to receive 100 million dollars in military aid next year, the administration took the position in a meeting with NGOs Tuesday afternoon that the law should not apply to it this year since it did not exist as an independent country until after the publication in June of the State Department's 2011 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, according to The Cable blog. The report includes the official list of countries which use child soldiers.



The administration insisted that some progress had been made over the past year in addressing the child soldier problem in both Chad and the DRC.



In Chad, according to the White House, the government had issued an "action plan" to halt child recruitment and demobilise child soldiers and taken some steps towards its implementation. It said a U.N.-led task force charged with monitoring the problem had not verified any cases of recruitment during 2011 and that the government had turned over some 1,000 children to UNICEF and NGOs for re-integration programmes.



As for the DRC, the administration said it has taken "some steps to reduce child soldiers" over the past year and that some of its army commanders have made "an effort to remove child soldiers from the ranks and turn them over to the U.N.'s peace-keeping mission, UNICEF, and other humanitarian organisations.



It added, however, that the ongoing process of integrating rebel and militia groups that have also used child soldiers has made the effort more challenging. "As a result, the progress that has been made …does not yet represent the kind of institutional change required to make real progress toward eliminating child soldiers," the White House claimed.



As a result, the White House decided to grant a partial waiver whereby it will continue its military training programmes and provide non-lethal equipment to the army but withhold some 1.3 million dollars in FMF monies until the government signs and cooperates more fully with U.N. efforts to end the use of child soldiers.



HRW's Becker called the partial waiver a "positive step".



Somalia, which, like last year, was also found by the State Department to be using child soldiers, is not affected by the law, because U.S. military aid to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is channelled through the State Department's peacekeeping account.



*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.













http://www.alternet.org/story/152635/obama_backs_aid_for_military_aid_to_countries_that_use_child_soldiers?akid=7675.35630.Jub6_m&rd=1&t=27

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

President Challenges Cantor on Jobs Bill

Why are the Republicans hampering Progress? I hope the voters remember who is on their side.

Obama Challenges Cantor: Explain Exactly Why Republicans Won't Vote on Jobs Bill


Later today in Dallas, President Obama will challenge Republicans to take action on his jobs bill, singling out Eric Cantor for saying yesterday that House Republicans wouldn't even hold a vote on the proposal. According to this speech excerpt, sent out by the White House, Obama will call on Cantor to explain what in the jobs bill Republicans oppose:

Yesterday, the Republican Majority Leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now, he won’t even let the jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives. He won’t even give it a vote.

Well I’d like Mr. Cantor to come down here to Dallas and explain what in this jobs bill he doesn’t believe in. Does he not believe in rebuilding America’s roads and bridges? Does he not believe in tax breaks for small businesses, or efforts to help veterans?

Mr. Cantor should come down to Dallas, look Kim Russell in the eye, and tell her why she doesn’t deserve to get a paycheck again. Come tell her students why they don’t deserve to have their teacher back.

Come tell Dallas construction workers why they should be sitting home instead of fixing our bridges and our schools.

Come tell the small business owners and workers in this community why you’d rather defend tax breaks for millionaires than tax cuts for the middle-class.

And if you won’t do that, at least put this jobs bill up for a vote so that the entire country knows exactly where every Member of Congress stands.

There's no good reason for Republicans to oppose the American Jobs Act period, let alone for them to refuse to allow a vote on it. The only reasonable explanation for their blanket opposition is that they are playing political games, more interested in positioning themselves for the 2012 election than actually doing something to help address America's economic crisis.

Meanwhile, even though they refuse to do anything at all about the economy, House Republicans are continuing to pursue their right-wing social agenda, reviving battles from earlier this year over funding for Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting. And you know what that means: there's no chance Eric Cantor or anyone else in GOP leadership is going to explain their position in Dallas or anywhere else. They're too busy fighting Big Bird to worry about something as mundane as creating jobs.


http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/675753/obama_challenges_cantor%3A_explain_exactly_why_republicans_won%27t_vote_on_jobs_bill/#paragraph3