Our Empowerment

Paypal Complaints

2009-04-17T19:56:00.001-04:00

If you have any problems with Paypal, these are the numbers to call:

402-953-7733
888-221-1161

American Violet

2009-04-15T08:34:00.002-04:00

Dee Roberts, a 24 year-old African American single mother of four, finds herself charged as a drug dealer and given an ultimatum: Remain in prison or plead guilty and return home as a convicted felon.

Ave Maria/Schubert ~ Yolanda Rhodes sings - Ric Louchard Accompanies

2009-02-15T22:11:00.001-05:00

Ave Maria/Schubert ~ Yolanda Rhodes sings - Ric Louchard Accompanies

Ave Maria/Schubert ~ Yolanda Rhodes sings - Ric Louchard Accompanies

10 Year OId Reporter Damon Weaver Wants To Interview Obama

2009-01-05T14:05:00.003-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

God Bless America --- For Obama

2008-12-16T00:41:00.003-05:00

Three Totally different slideshows with one central focus, enjoy (it's okay to cry [smile]):

I told you so ... Obama Spanked McCain ... 300+!!!

2008-11-05T01:21:00.000-05:00

Obama Addresses The Nation, Obama Informercial, Obama Ad

2008-10-30T01:13:00.001-04:00

Obama Addresses The Nation, Obama Informercial, Obama Ad

2008-10-30T01:13:00.000-04:00

One Of The First To Get Arrested For Plotting To Kill Obama

2008-10-27T17:54:00.000-04:00

The following is a pretty weird story, however my guess is there will be very many of the same sorts over the next 4 years.

WASHINGTON - A plot by two Neo-Nazi skinheads to assassinate Barack Obama and kill dozens of other African Americans has been foiled, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said Monday.

Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman, 18, of West Helena, Ark., were charged Friday with making threats against a presidential candidate, illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun and conspiracy to rob a gun store.

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville ATF field office, said the two men sought to go on a national killing spree that included an unnamed African-American school, with Obama as their final target.

The two planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14, he added. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

“They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama,” Cavanaugh said. “They didn’t believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying.” Shooting from the windows Court documents show that Cowart and Schlesselman said they "planned to drive their vehicle as fast as they could toward Obama shooting at him from the windows."

" Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt," the court complaint states. Cavanaugh said there's no evidence that others were willing to assist Cowart and Schlesselman with the plot. He said authorities took the threats very seriously.

"They seemed determined to do it," Cavanaugh said. "Even if they were just to try it, it would be a trail of tears around the South.

The two men were arrested in Crockett County, Tenn., and have already made a court appearance. The plot unraveled when one of the men was arrested on other charges and in the course of interviews he revealed plans for the plot.

According to court records, the pair discussed robbing a gun shop in order to gather weapons and ammunition to use in a "killing spree."

This story really has to be more thoroughly explained. In the mean time, I think its time for all HBCUs to arm up.

Obama Doctrine (Part IV Taxes)

2008-10-25T11:45:00.003-04:00

BARACK OBAMA’S COMPREHENSIVE TAX PLAN

Barack Obama’s tax plan delivers broad-based tax relief to middle class families and cuts taxes for small businesses and companies that create jobs in America, while restoring fairness to our tax code and returning to fiscal responsibility. Coupled with Obama’s commitment to invest in key areas like health, clean energy, innovation and education, his tax plan will help restore bottom-up economic growth that helps create good jobs in America and empowers all families achieve the American dream. The Obama plan will:

• Cut taxes for 95 percent of workers and their families with a tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples.

• Provide generous tax cuts for low- and middle-income seniors, homeowners, the uninsured, and families sending a child to college or looking to save and accumulate wealth.

• Eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, cut corporate taxes for firms that invest and create jobs in the United States, and provide tax credits to reduce the cost of healthcare and to reward investments in innovation.

• Dramatically simplify taxes by consolidating existing tax credits, eliminating the need for millions of senior citizens to file tax forms, and enabling as many as 40 million middle-class Americans to do their own taxes in less than five minutes without an accountant.

Under the Obama Plan:

• Middle class families will see their taxes cut – and no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase. The typical middle class family will receive well over $1,000 in tax relief under the Obama plan, and will pay tax rates that are 20% lower than they faced under President Reagan. According to the Tax Policy Center, the Obama plan provides three times as much tax relief for middle class families as the McCain plan.ii Indeed, according to the National Review, McCain’s plan “offers very little in the way of direct benefits to Americans in the middle of the income scale.”

• Families making more than $250,000 will pay either the same or lower tax rates than they paid in the 1990s. Obama will ask the wealthiest 2% of families to give back a portion of the taxes they have received over the past eight years to ensure we are restoring fairness and returning to fiscal responsibility. But no family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s. In fact, dividend rates would be 39 percent lower than what President Bush proposed in his 2001 tax cut.

• Obama’s plan will cut taxes overall, reducing revenues to below the levels that prevailed under
Ronald Reagan (less than 18.2 percent of GDP).iii The Obama tax plan is a net tax cut – his tax relief for middle class families is larger than the revenue raised by his tax changes for families over $250,000. Coupled with his commitment to cut unnecessary spending, Obama will pay for this tax relief while bringing down the budget deficit.

I. TAX RELIEF FOR MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES:

At the core of Senator Obama’s tax plan is broad middle class tax relief. After the first economic recovery on record where ordinary Americans saw their incomes decline by nearly $1000, Obama believes it is critical to focus tax relief on middle class families. Obama’s middle class tax cuts are designed to help relieve the burdens on families today, while empowering them to get ahead in the future. Barack Obama’s middle class tax cuts include:

o A $1,000 “Making Work Pay” Tax Credit. For 95 percent of workers and their families—150 million workers overall—the “Making Work Pay” credit will provide a refundable tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples. This credit will benefit over 15 million self employed workers and for 10 million low-income Americans, will completely eliminate their federal income taxes.

o A Refundable $4,000 American Opportunity Tax Credit. Barack Obama will provide a $4,000 fullyrefundable tax credit to ensure that college is affordable for all American families. This credit will cover 100% of the first $4,000 of qualified tuition expenses, making community college essentially free and covering about 2/3 of the cost of public 4-year college.

o A Universal 10% Mortgage Interest Tax Credit. Barack Obama will provide a 10% refundable credit to offset mortgage interest payments and make homeownership more affordable for lower- and middle-income families. This universal credit will provide an average tax cut of $500 to 10 million homeowners who do not currently itemize.

o Eliminating Income Taxes for Seniors Making Less than $50,000. Barack Obama will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year. This will eliminate taxes for 7 million seniors – saving them an average of $1,400 a year-- and will also mean that 27 million seniors will not need to file an income tax return at all.

o Expanding Retirement Savings Incentives. To increase retirement security, Barack Obama will ensure that every American worker has the option of saving in an easy, automatic pension account and will expand the existing Savers Credit to match 50 percent of the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn under $75,000. He will also make the Savers Credit fully refundable.

o Health Care Tax Credits. Obama’s health plan centers around tax credits that, together with his other proposals to expand pooling options and ease enrollment, will ensure that health insurance is available and affordable for all families.

o Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit: Obama will increase the number of working parents eligible for EITC benefits, increase the benefits available to noncustodial parents who fulfill their child support obligations, increase benefits for families with three or more children, and reduce the EITC marriage penalty, which hurts low-income families.

o Increase Tax Benefits for Child Care: Obama recognizes that ensuring affordable child care is critical to helping working parents get ahead. His plan will reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit on the first $6,000 of child care expenses. This will benefit 7.5 million working mothers.

Expanded Tax Credits for Clean Vehicles: Obama will help families purchase more energy efficient appliances and products by extending the existing consumer tax credits and offering up to a $7,000 tax credit for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles.

o Simplify Tax System So 40 Million Americans Can Do Their Taxes in Less Than Five Minutes. Obama will reform our tax system to greatly reduce its complexity, consolidating several credits and giving taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Under the Obama tax plan, 40 million Americans who take the standard deduction will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes and will not have to hire an accountant. This will save Americans more than $2 billion in tax preparer fees and more than 200 million hours of work.

II. TAX CUTS TO ENHANCE COMPETITIVENESS AND HELP CREATE JOBS

Barack Obama’s tax plan will help small businesses grow and will encourage job creation in America. He will directly cut taxes for small business and for firms that invest and create jobs in the United States, will relieve healthcare costs for all firms and will reward investments in innovation. Barack Obama pro-business tax policies include:

o Eliminating Capital Gains Taxes for Entrepreneurs and Investors in Small Business. Barack Obama understands that small businesses are the engines of our economy, and he will eliminate all capital gains taxes on investments in small and start up firms.

o Cutting Corporate Tax Rates for Firms that Create Jobs in America. Barack Obama will repeal tax breaks and loopholes that reward corporations that retain their earnings overseas, and will use those savings to lower corporate tax rates for companies that expand or start operations in the United States.

o Offering a Small Business Healthcare Tax Credit: To help small businesses compete in the global economy while still providing quality health insurance, Barack Obama will offer a new refundable 50 percent health tax credit on employee premiums paid by employers. His comprehensive healthcare plan will relieve health costs for all firms by bringing down national healthcare costs by $2,500 per family, annually.

o Making the R&D Tax Credit Permanent. Barack Obama will make the Research and Development tax credit permanent so that firms can rely on it when making decisions to invest in domestic R&D over multiyear timeframes.

III. CUTTING TAXES BELOW THE LEVEL UNDER RONALD REAGAN WHILE RESTORING FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

Barack Obama will keep taxes low for everyone, while working to reform our tax code and make sure that everyone pays their fair share. Obama also believes that after eight years of reckless fiscal policies that squandered historic surpluses and added $4 trillion to the deficit, it is vital for candidates to put forward specific ideas on how they will pay for their proposals without passing on further deficits, debt, and a weaker economy to our children. That is why he has called for closing inefficient tax loopholes, cracking down on offshore tax havens, and repealing a portion of the tax cuts passed in the last eight years for families making over $250,000. In net, even after these tax changes, the Obama plan is a tax cut. His middle class tax cuts are larger than the
loophole closers and rollbacks that he has proposed for families making over $250,000.

According to the Tax Policy Center, the Obama plan would reduce taxes as a share of the economy to less than 18.2 percent - the level of taxes that prevailed under President Ronald Reagan.v The Obama plan pays for these tax cuts by cutting spending overall. Obama’s spending cuts include responsibly ending the war in Iraq, limiting payments to highincome farmers, cutting subsidies for private plans in Medicare, reforming student loans, cutting earmarks to at
least the level they were in 1994, ending no-bid contracting, and phasing out unnecessary and duplicative programs. He will also support pay-as-you-go budget rules and a constitutionally acceptable line-item veto to cut pork-barrel spending. Overall, Barack Obama’s budget will reduce the deficit relative its current level and its realistic future trajectory.

The fiscally responsible tax changes that Obama is calling for include:

o Broaden the corporate tax base and eliminate special preferences: Our tax code is riddled with special interest loopholes that allow some corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. As President, Obama would move aggressively to close inefficient loopholes by taking steps that include:

o Reforming international tax loopholes: including reforming deferral to end the incentive for
companies to ship jobs overseas and closing the offshore pension loophole;

o Closing domestic tax loopholes: including clarifying the economic substance doctrine and increasing reporting of capital gains to close the tax gap;

o Eliminating special tax breaks for oil and gas companies: including repealing special expensing
rules, foreign tax credit benefits, and manufacturing deductions for oil and gas firms; and

o Closing other loopholes: including taxing carried interest as ordinary income, and closing the CEO pay loophole.

o Cracking down on international tax havens: According to a recent Congressional investigation, offshore tax abuse costs this country up to $100 billion each year.vi Barack Obama has been a leader in the Senate on designing efforts to crack down on tax havens by requiring greater disclosure of financial transactions in tax secrecy jurisdictions. As President, Obama would work with Congress to enact meaningful legislation to ensure that the Treasury and IRS have the tools they need to close down the use of international tax havens for improper tax avoidance or tax evasion. This will save the United States tens of billions of dollars each
year.

o Repealing a portion of the Bush tax cuts for families over $250,000 while continuing to leave their tax rates at or below where they were in the 1990s:

o Ordinary Income: The top two income tax brackets would return to their 1990’s levels of 36% and 39.6%. All other tax brackets would remain as they are today. Obama would also restore the 1990’s levels for the personal exemption and itemized deduction phaseouts (known as PEP and Pease). Obama would work with the Treasury Department to adjust the thresholds of these rates slightly to ensure that no married couple making less than $250,000 (or single making less than $200,000) was affected by these changes.

o Capital Gains: Families with incomes below $250,000 will continue to pay the capital gains rates that they pay today. For those in the top two income tax brackets – likewise adjusted to affect only families over $250,000 – Obama will create a new top capital gains rate of 20 percent. Obama’s 20% rate is equal is the lowest rate that existed in the 1990s and the rate that President Bush proposed in 2001. It is almost a third lower than the rate that President Reagan signed into law in 1986.

o Dividends: The top dividends rate for people making over $250,000 would be set at 20 percent. Dividends will not return to being taxed at ordinary income tax rates. Obama’s 20 percent rate on dividends will be 39 percent lower than the rate President Bush proposed in 2001, and would be lower than all but 5 of the last 92 years we have been taxing dividends.

o Estate Tax: The estate tax would be effectively repealed for 99.7 percent of estates. For the
remaining 0.3% of estates over $7 million per couple, Obama will retain a rate of 45%. This policy would cut the number of estates covered by the tax by 84 percent relative to 2000.ix

o Average Tax Rates Below the 1990s: Overall, the top 1 percent of households – people with an
average income of $1.6 million per year – would see their average federal income and payroll tax rate increase from 21 percent today to 24 percent, less than the 25 percent these households would have paid under the tax laws of the late 1990s.

Obama Doctrine (Part III Faith (cont))

2008-10-25T11:35:00.000-04:00

Call to Renewal Keynote Address
June 28, 2006

Washington, DC

Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here at the Call to Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America conference. I've had the opportunity to take a look at your Covenant for a New America. It is filled with outstanding policies and prescriptions for much of what ails this country. So I'd like to congratulate you all on the thoughtful presentations you've given so far about poverty and justice in America, and for putting fire under the feet of the political leadership here in Washington.

But today I'd like to talk about the connection between religion and politics and perhaps offer some thoughts about how we can sort through some of the often bitter arguments that we've been seeing over the last several years.

I do so because, as you all know, we can affirm the importance of poverty in the Bible; and we can raise up and pass out this Covenant for a New America. We can talk to the press, and we can discuss the religious call to address poverty and environmental stewardship all we want, but it won't have an impact unless we tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America.

I want to give you an example that I think illustrates this fact. As some of you know, during the 2004 U.S. Senate General Election I ran against a gentleman named Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is well-versed in the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives as both immoral and godless.

Indeed, Mr. Keyes announced towards the end of the campaign that, "Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama. Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."

Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.

Now, I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining. And since at the time, I was up 40 points in the polls, it probably wasn't a bad piece of strategic advice.

But what they didn't understand, however, was that I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously, for he claimed to speak for my religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, he was saying, and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, but supports the destruction of innocent and sacred life.

And so what would my supporters have me say? How should I respond? Should I say that a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? Should I say that Mr. Keyes, who is a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the Pope?

Unwilling to go there, I answered with what has come to be the typically liberal response in such debates - namely, I said that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can't impose my own religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.

But Mr. Keyes's implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me, and I was also aware that my answer did not adequately address the role my faith has in guiding my own values and my own beliefs.

Now, my dilemma was by no means unique. In a way, it reflected the broader debate we've been having in this country for the last thirty years over the role of religion in politics.

For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest "gap" in party affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called Red States and those who reside in Blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don't.

Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.

Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that - regardless of our personal beliefs - constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word "Christian" describes one's political opponents, not people of faith.

Now, such strategies of avoidance may work for progressives when our opponent is Alan Keyes. But over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people's lives -- in the lives of the American people -- and I think it's time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.

And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.

This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by skilled preachers or the draw of popular mega-churches. In fact, it speaks to a hunger that's deeper than that - a hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause.

Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily rounds - dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets - and they're coming to the realization that something is missing. They are deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough.

They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They're looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness.

And I speak with some experience on this matter. I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

It wasn't until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.

I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well -- that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And if it weren't for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn - not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship -- the grounding of faith in struggle -- that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

That's a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.

And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

In other words, if we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses will continue to hold sway.

More fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical - if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice.

Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's I Have a Dream speech without references to "all of God's children." Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting "preachy" may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.

After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man.

Solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers' lobby - but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we've got a moral problem. There's a hole in that young man's heart - a hole that the government alone cannot fix.

I believe in vigorous enforcement of our non-discrimination laws. But I also believe that a transformation of conscience and a genuine commitment to diversity on the part of the nation's CEOs could bring about quicker results than a battalion of lawyers. They have more lawyers than us anyway.

I think that we should put more of our tax dollars into educating poor girls and boys. I think that the work that Marian Wright Edelman has done all her life is absolutely how we should prioritize our resources in the wealthiest nation on earth. I also think that we should give them the information about contraception that can prevent unwanted pregnancies, lower abortion rates, and help assure that that every child is loved and cherished.

But, you know, my Bible tells me that if we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not turn from it. So I think faith and guidance can help fortify a young woman's sense of self, a young man's sense of responsibility, and a sense of reverence that all young people should have for the act of sexual intimacy.

I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology - that can be dangerous. Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith. As Jim has mentioned, some politicians come and clap -- off rhythm -- to the choir. We don't need that.

In fact, because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they're something they're not. They don't need to do that. None of us need to do that.

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of "thou" and not just "I," resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.

Some of this is already beginning to happen. Pastors, friends of mine like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influences to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur. Religious thinkers and activists like our good friend Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the Biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality.

And by the way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you've got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don't need and weren't even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate.

Across the country, individual churches like my own and your own are sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives, and rebuilding our gulf coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

So the question is, how do we build on these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular people of good will? It's going to take more work, a lot more work than we've done so far. The tensions and the suspicions on each side of the religious divide will have to be squarely addressed. And each side will need to accept some ground rules for collaboration.

While I've already laid out some of the work that progressive leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what conservative leaders need to do -- some truths they need to acknowledge.

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing. And if you doubt that, let me give you an example.

We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.

Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.

But it's fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason.

Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion.

This goes for both sides.

Even those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages - the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ's divinity - are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.

The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics.

But a sense of proportion should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and state. Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation - context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase "under God." I didn't. Having voluntary student prayer groups use school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats. And one can envision certain faith-based programs - targeting ex-offenders or substance abusers - that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problems.

So we all have some work to do here. But I am hopeful that we can bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this debate. And I have faith that millions of believing Americans want that to happen. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don't want faith used to belittle or to divide. They're tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon. Because in the end, that's not how they think about faith in their own lives.

So let me end with just one other interaction I had during my campaign. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School that said the following:

"Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win. I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you."

The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to be "totalizing." His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of the Republican agenda.

But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my website, which suggested that I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor went on to write:

"I sense that you have a strong sense of justice...and I also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reason...Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded....You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others...I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."

Fair-minded words.

So I looked at my website and found the offending words. In fairness to them, my staff had written them using standard Democratic boilerplate language to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

Re-reading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in fair-minded words. Those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

So I wrote back to the doctor, and I thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own - a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.

And that night, before I went to bed I said a prayer of my own. It's a prayer I think I share with a lot of Americans. A hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all. It's a prayer worth praying, and a conversation worth having in this country in the months and years to come.

Thank you.

Obama Doctrine (Part III BARACK OBAMA ON FAITH)

2008-10-25T11:15:00.001-04:00

BARACK OBAMA ON FAITH

Key values in Barack Obama’s public statements on faith and politics

• God is constantly present in our lives, and this presence is a source of hope.

“Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.” – Democratic National Convention Keynote Address.

• Progressives should boldly approach matters of faith and values.

“[I]f we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse…Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another…others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.” – Call to Renewal Keynote Address

“Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting “preachy” may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in addressing some of our most urgent social problems.” - The Audacity of Hope.

• As Joshua built on the work of Moses, leaders of today – the ‘Joshua Generation’ – must build of the foundation of previous generations to move our nation forward.

“The final thing that I think the Moses generation teaches us is to remind ourselves that we do what we do because God is with us. You know, when Moses was first called to lead people out to the Promised Land…the Lord said I will be with you. Throw down that rod. Pick it back up. I'll show you what to do.

The same thing happened with the Joshua generation. Joshua said, you know, I'm scared. I'm not sure that I am up to the challenge. The Lord said to him, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you. Be strong and have courage, for I am with you wherever you go. Be strong and have courage. It's a prayer for a journey. A prayer that kept a woman in her seat when the bus driver told her to get up, a prayer that led nine children through the
doors of that Little Rock school, a prayer that carried our brothers and sisters over a bridge right here in Selma, Alabama. Be strong and have courage.” -Address to Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, Selma, Alabama, on the Anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

• Faith should not be used as a wedge to divide.

“We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them, and drives us further apart.” – The Audacity of Hope.
“Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America – there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America – there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red

States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.” – Democratic National Convention Keynote Address.

• The separation of church and state is critical and has caused our democracy and religious practices to thrive.

“[Conservative leaders] need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland…It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religion, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith…” – Call to Renewal Keynote Address

• We are a nation of many faiths and of those with no faith at all. The religious practices of all must be respected.

“Given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.” - Call to Renewal Keynote Address

• Faith is a source of action for justice.

“Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's I Have a Dream speech without references to "all of God's children." Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.” – Call to Renewal Keynote Address

“We should never forget that God granted us the power to reason so that we would do His work here on Earth - so that we would use science to cure disease, and heal the sick, and save lives.” – World AIDS Day Speech: Race Against Time

“Pastors, friends of mine like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes, are wielding their enormous influences to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur. Religious thinkers and activists like our good friend Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the Biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality…Across the country, individual churches like my own and your own are sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives, and rebuilding our gulf coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.” – Call to Renewal Keynote Address

• Government alone cannot solve all of our problems – we have an individual responsibility to be our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper.
“And although government will play a crucial role in bringing about the changes we need, more money and programs alone will not get us where we need to go. Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility - for instilling an ethic of achievement in our children, for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities, and sharing some measure of sacrifice. So let us begin. Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation.” - Presidential Announcement Speech

Obama Wins Election, 300+ Electoral Votes

2008-10-24T04:45:00.003-04:00

Obama wins 2008 presidential election in a true landslide.

The above map indicates a prediction, however I'm actually calling it now for Obama! I'm also throwing in IN for a grand total of 348.

Although I don't expect it to be a record breaker (Franklin D. Roosevelt over Alfred Landon, 523 to 8, in 1936), I do expect it to spell M-A-N-D-A-T-E for "Change".

Love for Obama in Israel

2008-10-24T04:42:00.000-04:00

A Little Bit Of Comedy,

2008-10-19T22:43:00.001-04:00

Chocolate News
Preview - First Black President?

To White folk [regarding Obama]: " ... just vote for the White half!"

Obama Doctrine (Part II The Family)

2008-10-19T12:48:00.000-04:00

At a Glance
Support Working Families
Strengthen Our Schools
Help American Families Stay Healthy
Protect Homeownership
Strengthen Families at Home
Strengthen Retirement Security

Speak your mind and help set the policies that will guide this campaign and change the country.

Present your ideas
Watch VideosThe Problem
Over the last few decades, too many American families have worked hard their whole lives only to find that sometimes the game is rigged against them. Too many rungs have been removed from the ladder to middle-class security, and the safety net that's supposed to break any falls has grown badly frayed. Many families face increased anxiety when it comes to paying medical bills or balancing their home and work life or finding ways to send their children to college. At the same time, others have tumbled into poverty, watching jobs disappear, and the chances for their children's success slip further and further away.

Providing these families with the same chances that previous generations have had is a daunting challenge, but it is certainly one we can meet. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will bring the much needed leadership and vision to Washington to finally restore the promise of the American Dream to all American families.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan
Support Working Families
Provide a "Making Work Pay" Tax Cut for America's Working Families: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they need. Obama and Biden will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.

Raise the Minimum Wage to $9.50 an Hour by 2011: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that people who work full time should not live in poverty. Before the Democrats took back Congress, the minimum wage had not changed in 10 years. As president, Obama will further raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation.

Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit: In both the Illinois State Senate and the U.S. Senate, Obama has championed efforts to expand the EITC, which is one of the most successful anti-poverty programs to date. As president, Obama will reward work by increasing the number of working parents eligible for EITC benefits, increasing the benefit available to parents who support their children through child support payments, and reducing the EITC marriage penalty which hurts low-income families. Under the Obama-Biden plan, full-time workers making minimum wage would get an EITC benefit up to $555, more than three times greater than the $175 benefit they get today. If the workers are responsibly supporting their children on child support, the Obama-Biden plan would give those workers a benefit of $1,110.

Expand Paid Sick Days: Half of all private sector workers have no paid sick days and the problem is worse for employees in low-paying jobs, where less than a quarter receive any paid sick days. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will require that employers provide seven paid sick days per year.

Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA): The FMLA covers only certain employees of employers with 50 or more employees. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand the FMLA to cover businesses with 25 or more employees. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand the FMLA to cover more purposes as well, including allowing workers to take leave for elder care needs; allowing parents up to 24 hours of leave each year to participate in their children's academic activities at school; allowing leave to be taken for purposes of caring for individuals who reside in their home for 6 months or more; and expanding FMLA to cover leave for employees to address domestic violence and sexual assault.

Encourage States to Adopt Paid Leave: As president, Barack Obama will initiate a 50 state strategy to encourage all of the states to adopt paid-leave systems. Obama and Biden will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs and to help states offset the costs for employees and employers.

Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children. Obama will include measures to maximize performance and effectiveness across grantees nationwide.

Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit: The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides too little relief to families that struggle to afford child care expenses. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit for their child care expenses.

Protect Against Caregiver Discrimination: Workers with family obligations often are discriminated against in the workplace. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will commit the government to enforcing recently-enacted Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines on caregiver discrimination.

Expand Flexible Work Arrangements: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will address this concern by creating a program to inform businesses about the benefits of flexible work schedules for productivity and establishing positive workplaces; helping businesses create flexible work opportunities; and increasing federal incentives for telecommuting. Obama and Biden will also make the federal government a model employer in terms of adopting flexible work schedules and permitting employees to petition to request flexible arrangements.

For more information about Barack Obama and Joe Biden's plan to help more Americans succeed in the workforce, please visit the Economic Policy page.

Strengthen Our Schools
Expand Early Childhood Education: Obama has been a champion of early childhood education since his years in the Illinois legislature, where he led the effort to create the Illinois Early Learning Council. Obama has introduced a comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan to provide critical supports to young children and their parents by investing $10 billion per year to create: Early Learning Challenge Grants to stimulate and help fund state "zero to five" efforts; quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start and increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both; work to ensure all children have access to pre-school; provide affordable and high-quality child care that will promote child development and ease the burden on working families; and create a Presidential Early Learning Council to increase collaboration and program coordination across federal, state, and local levels.

Improve Public Schools: From the moment our children step into a classroom, the single most important factor in determining their achievement is their teacher. Barack Obama and Joe Biden value teachers and the central role that they play in education. They will work to ensure competent, effective teachers in schools that are organized for success. The Obama-Biden K-12 plan will expand service scholarships to recruit and prepare teachers who commit to working in underserved districts. To support teachers, Obama and Biden will foster ongoing improvements in teacher education, provide mentoring for beginning teachers, create incentives for shared planning and learning time for teachers. To retain teachers, Obama and Biden will support career pathways that provide ongoing professional development and reward accomplished teachers for their expertise. This Career Ladder initiative will help eliminate teacher shortages in hard-to-staff areas and subjects, improve teacher retention rates, strengthen teacher preparation programs, improve professional development, and better utilize and reward accomplished teachers.

Reform and Fund No Child Left Behind: The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act is the right one - ensuring that all children can meet high standards - but the law has significant flaws that need to be addressed. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe it was wrong to force teachers, principals and schools to accomplish the goals of No Child Left Behind without the necessary resources. We have failed to provide high-quality teachers in every classroom and failed to support and pay for those teachers. Obama and Biden understand that NCLB has demoralized our educators, broken its promise to our children and must be changed in a fundamental way. Obama and Biden will work with mayors and state leaders to ensure that NCLB reform addresses the need for a broader and better range of assessments and an accountability system that focuses on improving schools, rather than punishing them.

Make College More Affordable: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university. Recipients of this credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of public service a year.

For more information on Barack Obama and Joe Biden's education plan, please visit the Education Policy page

Help American Families Stay Healthy
Provide Universal Health Care and Lower Health Costs: Barack Obama and Joe Biden are committed to signing universal health legislation by the end of their first term in office that ensures all Americans have high-quality, affordable health care coverage. Their plan will save a typical American family up to $2,500 every year on medical expenditures by providing affordable, comprehensive and portable health coverage for every American; modernizing the U.S. health care system to contain spiraling health care costs and improve the quality of patient care; and promoting prevention and strengthening public health to prevent disease and protect against natural and man-made disasters.

For more information on Barack Obama and Joe Biden's health care plan, please visit the Health Care Policy page

Protect Homeownership
Create a Universal Mortgage Credit: The current mortgage interest deduction excludes nearly two-thirds of Americans who do not itemize their taxes. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will ensure that anyone with a mortgage, not just the well-off, can take advantage of this tax incentive for homeownership by creating a universal mortgage credit. This 10 percent credit will benefit an additional 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year. Non-itemizers will be eligible for this refundable credit, which will provide the average recipient with approximately $500 per year in tax savings.

Combat Mortgage Fraud and Subprime Loans: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must establish stiff penalties to deter fraud and protect consumers against abusive lending practices. Obama introduced the STOP FRAUD Act, which would increase funding for federal law enforcement programs, create new criminal penalties for mortgage professionals found guilty of fraud, and require industry insiders to report suspicious activity. In March 2007, Obama urged Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to bring together lenders, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing agencies for a summit meeting on preserving home ownership. The bill also provides counseling to homeowners and tenants to avoid foreclosures. As president, Obama will continue to fight to ensure more Americans can achieve and protect the dream of home ownership.

Mandate Accurate Loan Disclosure: Today's subprime mortgage problem stems in large part from the lack of easy-to-understand information that borrowers receive from mortgage brokers. As president, Barack Obama will enact laws to ensure that all prospective homebuyers have access to accurate and complete information about their mortgage options. Obama and Biden will create a Homeowner Obligation Made Explicit (HOME) score, which will provide potential borrowers with a simplified, standardized borrower metric (similar to APR) for home mortgages. The HOME score will allow individuals to easily compare various mortgage products and understand the full cost of the loan. The HOME score would also help borrowers understand their long-term obligations and would be required to include mandatory taxes and insurance.

Close Bankruptcy Loophole for Mortgage Companies: As president, Obama will work to eliminate the federal bankruptcy law's Chapter 13 provision that prevents bankruptcy courts from modifying an individual's mortgage payments. This forces individuals who seek bankruptcy protection to continue paying the full amount of their existing mortgage plans. This provision, which provides unique protection to the mortgage industry, places the interests of big lenders over than of low and middle-income Americans. Obama and Biden believe that the subprime mortgage industry, which has engaged in dangerous and sometimes unscrupulous business practices, should not be shielded by outdated federal law.

Strengthen Families at Home
Strengthen Fatherhood and Families: Barack Obama has re-introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, ensure that support payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies, fund support services for fathers and their families, and support domestic violence prevention efforts. As president, Obama will sign this bill into law and continue to implement innovative measures to strengthen families.

Support Parents with Young Children: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand programs like the successful Nurse-Family Partnership to all low-income, first-time mothers. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis concluded that these programs produced an average of five dollars in savings for every dollar invested and produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family enrolled in the program. The Obama-Biden plan would assist approximately 570,000 first-time mothers each year.

Strengthen Retirement Security
Eliminate Income Taxes for Seniors Making Less Than $50,000: Obama and Biden will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year. This will provide an immediate tax cut averaging $1,400 to 7 million seniors and relieve millions from the burden of filing tax returns.

Create Automatic Workplace Pensions: The Obama-Biden retirement security plan will automatically enroll workers in a workplace pension plan. Under their plan, employers who do not currently offer a retirement plan, will be required to enroll their employees in a direct-deposit IRA account that is compatible to existing direct-deposit payroll systems. Employees may opt-out if they choose. Experts estimate that this program will increase the savings participation rate for low and middle-income workers from its current 15 percent level to around 80 percent.

Expand Retirement Savings Incentives for Working Families: Obama and Biden will ensure savings incentives are fair to all workers by creating a generous savings match for low and middle-income Americans. Their plan will match 50 percent of the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn less than $75,000. The savings match will be automatically deposited into designated personal accounts. Over 80 percent of these savings incentives will go to new savers.

Obama Doctrine (Part I - The Economy)

2008-10-19T12:41:00.000-04:00

At a Glance

Jumpstart the Economy
Provide Middle Class Americans Tax Relief
Trade
Job Creation
Support Small Business
Labor
Protect Homeownership and Crack Down on Mortgage Fraud
Address Predatory Credit Card Practices
Reform Bankruptcy Laws
Work/Family Balance

Wages are Stagnant as Prices Rise: While wages remain flat, the costs of basic necessities are increasing. The cost of in-state college tuition has grown 35 percent over the past five years. Health care costs have risen four times faster than wages over the past six years. And the personal savings rate is now the lowest it's been since the Great Depression.

Tax Cuts for Wealthy Instead of Middle Class: The Bush tax cuts give those who earn over $1 million dollars a tax cut nearly 160 times greater than that received by middle-income Americans. At the same time, this administration has refused to tackle health care, education and housing in a manner that benefits the middle class.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan
Jumpstart the Economy
Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families:Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.
Provide $50 billion to Jumpstart the Economy and Prevent 1 Million Americans from Losing Their Jobs: This relief would include a $25 billion State Growth Fund to prevent state and local cuts in health, education, housing, and heating assistance or counterproductive increases in property taxes, tolls or fees. The Obama-Biden relief plan will also include $25 billion in a Jobs and Growth Fund to prevent cutbacks in road and bridge maintenance and fund school repair - all to save more than 1 million jobs in danger of being cut.
Provide Middle Class Americans Tax Relief
Obama and Biden will cut income taxes by $1,000 for working families to offset the payroll tax they pay.

Provide a Tax Cut for Working Families: Obama and Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they need. Obama and Biden will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
Eliminate Income Taxes for Seniors Making Less than $50,000: Barack Obama will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year. This proposal will eliminate income taxes for 7 million seniors and provide these seniors with an average savings of $1,400 each year. Under the Obama-Biden plan, 27 million American seniors will also not need to file an income tax return.
Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: Obama and Biden will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama and Biden will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Experts estimate that the Obama-Biden proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees.
Trade
Obama and Biden believe that trade with foreign nations should strengthen the American economy and create more American jobs. He will stand firm against agreements that undermine our economic security.

Fight for Fair Trade: Obama and Biden will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. They will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. Obama and Biden will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.
Amend the North American Free Trade Agreement: Obama and Biden believe that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. They will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.
Improve Transition Assistance: To help all workers adapt to a rapidly changing economy, Obama and Biden will update the existing system of Trade Adjustment Assistance by extending it to service industries, creating flexible education accounts to help workers retrain, and providing retraining assistance for workers in sectors of the economy vulnerable to dislocation before they lose their jobs.
End Tax Breaks for Companies that Send Jobs Overseas: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that companies should not get billions of dollars in tax deductions for moving their operations overseas. Obama and Biden will also fight to ensure that public contracts are awarded to companies that are committed to American workers.
Reward Companies that Support American Workers: Barack Obama introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007 with Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to reward companies that create good jobs with good benefits for American workers. The legislation would provide a tax credit to companies that maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in America relative to those outside the US; maintain their corporate headquarters in America if it has ever been in America; pay decent wages; prepare workers for retirement; provide health insurance; and support employees who serve in the military.
Invest in the Manufacturing Sector and Create 5 Million New Green Jobs
Invest in our Next Generation Innovators and Job Creators: Obama and Biden will create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to identify and invest in the most compelling advanced manufacturing strategies. The Fund will have a peer-review selection and award process based on the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund, a state-level initiative that has awarded over $125 million to Michigan businesses with the most innovative proposals to create new products and new jobs in the state.
Double Funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership: The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) works with manufacturers across the country to improve efficiency, implement new technology and strengthen company growth. This highly-successful program has engaged in more than 350,000 projects across the country and in 2006 alone, helped create and protect over 50,000 jobs. But despite this success, funding for MEP has been slashed by the Bush administration. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the MEP so its training centers can continue to bolster the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers.
Invest In A Clean Energy Economy And Create 5 Million New Green Jobs: Obama and Biden will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, invest in low emissions coal plants, and begin transition to a new digital electricity grid. The plan will also invest in America's highly-skilled manufacturing workforce and manufacturing centers to ensure that American workers have the skills and tools they need to pioneer the first wave of green technologies that will be in high demand throughout the world.
Create New Job Training Programs for Clean Technologies: The Obama-Biden plan will increase funding for federal workforce training programs and direct these programs to incorporate green technologies training, such as advanced manufacturing and weatherization training, into their efforts to help Americans find and retain stable, high-paying jobs. Obama and Biden will also create an energy-focused youth jobs program to invest in disconnected and disadvantaged youth.
Boost the Renewable Energy Sector and Create New Jobs: The Obama-Biden plan will create new federal policies, and expand existing ones, that have been proven to create new American jobs. Obama and Biden will create a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) that will require 25 percent of American electricity be derived from renewable sources by 2025, which has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs on its own. Obama and Biden will also extend the Production Tax Credit, a credit used successfully by American farmers and investors to increase renewable energy production and create new local jobs.
New Jobs Through National Infrastructure Investment
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that it is critically important for the United States to rebuild its national transportation infrastructure – its highways, bridges, roads, ports, air, and train systems – to strengthen user safety, bolster our long-term competitiveness and ensure our economy continues to grow.

Create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will address the infrastructure challenge by creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. This independent entity will be directed to invest in our nation’s most challenging transportation infrastructure needs. The Bank will receive an infusion of federal money, $60 billion over 10 years, to provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation. These projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.
Technology, Innovation and Creating Jobs
Barack Obama and Joe Biden will increase federal support for research, technology and innovation for companies and universities so that American families can lead the world in creating new advanced jobs and products.

Invest in the Sciences: Barack Obama and Joe Biden support doubling federal funding for basic research and changing the posture of our federal government from being one of the most anti-science administrations in American history to one that embraces science and technology. This will foster home-grown innovation, help ensure the competitiveness of US technology-based businesses, and ensure that 21st century jobs can and will grow in America.
Make the Research and Development Tax Credit Permanent: Barack Obama and Joe Biden want investments in a skilled research and development workforce and technology infrastructure to be supported here in America so that American workers and communities will benefit. Obama and Biden want to make the Research and Development tax credit permanent so that firms can rely on it when making decisions to invest in domestic R&D over multi-year timeframes.
Deploy Next-Generation Broadband: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we can get broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation's wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives.
Support Small Business
Provide Tax Relief for Small Businesses and Start Up Companies: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will eliminate all capital gains taxes on start-up and small businesses to encourage innovation and job creation. Obama and Biden will also support small business owners by providing a $500 “Making Work Pay” tax credit to almost every worker in America. Self-employed small business owners pay both the employee and the employer side of the payroll tax, and this measure will reduce the burdens of this double taxation.
Create a National Network of Public-Private Business Incubators: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support entrepreneurship and spur job growth by creating a national network of public-private business incubators. Business incubators facilitate the critical work of entrepreneurs in creating start-up companies. Obama and Biden will invest $250 million per year to increase the number and size of incubators in disadvantaged communities throughout the country.
Labor
Obama and Biden will strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions. He will fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Obama and Biden will ensure that his labor appointees support workers' rights and will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers. Obama and Biden will also increase the minimum wage and index it to inflation to ensure it rises every year.

Ensure Freedom to Unionize: Obama and Biden believe that workers should have the freedom to choose whether to join a union without harassment or intimidation from their employers. Obama cosponsored and is strong advocate for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bipartisan effort to assure that workers can exercise their right to organize. He will continue to fight for EFCA's passage and sign it into law.
Fight Attacks on Workers' Right to Organize: Obama has fought the Bush National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) efforts to strip workers of their right to organize. He is a cosponsor of legislation to overturn the NLRB's "Kentucky River" decisions classifying hundreds of thousands of nurses, construction, and professional workers as "supervisors" who are not protected by federal labor laws.
Protect Striking Workers: Obama and Biden support the right of workers to bargain collectively and strike if necessary. They will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers, so workers can stand up for themselves without worrying about losing their livelihoods.
Raise the Minimum Wage: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.
Protect Homeownership and Crack Down on Mortgage Fraud
Obama and Biden will crack down on fraudulent brokers and lenders. They will also make sure homebuyers have honest and complete information about their mortgage options, and they will give a tax credit to all middle-class homeowners.

Create a Universal Mortgage Credit: Obama and Biden will create a 10 percent universal mortgage credit to provide homeowners who do not itemize tax relief. This credit will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year.
Ensure More Accountability in the Subprime Mortgage Industry: Obama has been closely monitoring the subprime mortgage situation for years, and introduced comprehensive legislation over a year ago to fight mortgage fraud and protect consumers against abusive lending practices. Obama's STOP FRAUD Act provides the first federal definition of mortgage fraud, increases funding for federal and state law enforcement programs, creates new criminal penalties for mortgage professionals found guilty of fraud, and requires industry insiders to report suspicious activity.
Mandate Accurate Loan Disclosure: Obama and Biden will create a Homeowner Obligation Made Explicit (HOME) score, which will provide potential borrowers with a simplified, standardized borrower metric (similar to APR) for home mortgages. The HOME score will allow individuals to easily compare various mortgage products and understand the full cost of the loan.
Close Bankruptcy Loophole for Mortgage Companies: Obama and Biden will work to eliminate the provision that prevents bankruptcy courts from modifying an individual's mortgage payments. They believe that the subprime mortgage industry, which has engaged in dangerous and sometimes unscrupulous business practices, should not be shielded by outdated federal law.
Address Predatory Credit Card Practices
Obama and Biden will establish a five-star rating system so that every consumer knows the risk involved in every credit card. They also will establish a Credit Card Bill of Rights to stop credit card companies from exploiting consumers with unfair practices.

Create a Credit Card Rating System to Improve Disclosure: Obama and Biden will create a credit card rating system, modeled on five-star systems used for other consumer products, to provide consumers an easily identifiable ranking of credit cards, based on the card's features. Credit card companies will be required to display the rating on all application and contract materials, enabling consumers to quickly understand all of the major provisions of a credit card without having to rely exclusively on fine print in lengthy documents.
Establish a Credit Card Bill of Rights to Protect Consumers: Obama and Biden will create a Credit Card Bill of Rights to protect consumers. The Obama-Biden plan will:
Ban Unilateral Changes
Apply Interest Rate Increases Only to Future Debt
Prohibit Interest on Fees
Prohibit "Universal Defaults"
Require Prompt and Fair Crediting of Cardholder Payments
Reform Bankruptcy Laws
Obama and Biden will reform our bankruptcy laws to protect working people, ban executive bonuses for bankrupt companies, and require disclosure of all pension investments.

Cap Outlandish Interest Rates on Payday Loans and Improve Disclosure: Obama and Biden will extend a 36 percent interest cap to all Americans. They will require lenders to provide clear and simplified information about loan fees, payments and penalties, which is why they'll require lenders to provide this information during the application process.
Encourage Responsible Lending Institutions to Make Small Consumer Loans: Obama and Biden will encourage banks, credit unions and Community Development Financial Institutions to provide affordable short-term and small-dollar loans and to drive unscrupulous lenders out of business.
Reform Bankruptcy Laws to Protect Families Facing a Medical Crisis: Obama and Biden will create an exemption in bankruptcy law for individuals who can prove they filed for bankruptcy because of medical expenses. This exemption will create a process that forgives the debt and lets the individuals get back on their feet.
Work/Family Balance
Obama and Biden will double funding for after-school programs, expand the Family Medical Leave Act, provide low-income families with a refundable tax credit to help with their child-care expenses, and encourage flexible work schedules.

Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act: The FMLA covers only certain employees of employers with 50 or more employees. Obama and Biden will expand it to cover businesses with 25 or more employees. They will expand the FMLA to cover more purposes as well, including allowing workers to take leave for elder care needs; allowing parents up to 24 hours of leave each year to participate in their children's academic activities; and expanding FMLA to cover leave for employees to address domestic violence.
Encourage States to Adopt Paid Leave: As president, Obama will initiate a strategy to encourage all 50 states to adopt paid-leave systems. Obama and Biden will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs and to help states offset the costs for employees and employers.
Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Obama and Biden will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve a million more children. Obama and Biden will include measures to maximize performance and effectiveness across grantees nationwide.
Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit: The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides too little relief to families that struggle to afford child care expenses. Obama and Biden will reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit for their child care expenses.
Protect Against Caregiver Discrimination: Workers with family obligations often are discriminated against in the workplace. Obama and Biden will enforce the recently-enacted Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines on caregiver discrimination.
Expand Flexible Work Arrangements: Obama and Biden will create a program to inform businesses about the benefits of flexible work schedules; help businesses create flexible work opportunities; and increase federal incentives for telecommuting. Obama and Biden will also make the federal government a model employer in terms of adopting flexible work schedules and permitting employees to request flexible arrangements.
Barack Obama's Record
Housing: In the U.S. Senate, Obama introduced the STOP FRAUD Act to increase penalties for mortgage fraud and provide more protections for low-income homebuyers, well before the current subprime crisis began.
Predatory Lending: In the Illinois State Senate, Obama called attention to predatory lending issues. Obama sponsored legislation to combat predatory payday loans, and he also was credited with lobbying the state to more closely regulate some of the most egregious predatory lending practices.
American Jobs: Barack Obama introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007 to provide a tax credit to companies that maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in America relative to those outside the US; maintain their corporate headquarters in America; pay decent wages; prepare workers for retirement; provide health insurance; and support employees who serve in the military.

Vital Message From Colin Powell About Obama

2008-10-19T12:33:00.000-04:00

Colin Powell is the person that should have been running for President, and you can see and hear that when you examine this video.

Barack Obama Burned In Effigy At Christian College

2008-10-13T15:05:00.001-04:00

www.bet.com Posted Sept. 25, 2008 – George Fox University in Oregon may be a Christian school, but you’d never know it by the way some of its students behave.

On campus Tuesday, somebody lynched a life-sized cardboard dummy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. George Fox University President Robin Baker said that a custodian found the six-foot cutout of Obama swinging from a tree on campus and removed it – sending a chilling historic flashback through the minds of its African-American students.

Between the late-19th century and mid-20th century, Blacks were routinely lynched throughout the South and Midwest, often for nothing other than having darker skin. Sometimes successful African Americans were lynched by Whites who were merely jealous of their accomplishments.

Obama, a Harvard graduate, Grammy winner, best-selling author and millionaire is the first Black person to land a major-party presidential nomination.

The image of Obama was accompanied by a note: “Act Six reject.” A minority scholarship program at the university is called “Act Six.” Baker told The Associated Press that he met with the students in Act Six who are on full scholarship, noting that he had another meeting scheduled for the entire student body this week.

Elder Statesman John Lewis Did The Right Thing.

2008-10-12T23:38:00.000-04:00

By RHYS SAUNDERS
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Oct 12, 2008 @ 01:52 AM

As he spoke in Springfield on Saturday of his own involvement in some of the most historic episodes in the civil rights movement, U.S. Rep. John Lewis was making headlines nationally for remarks that the McCain-Palin presidential campaign is “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” with its negative attacks on Barack Obama.

The Georgia congressman and civil rights activist, in Springfield as the keynote speaker for the Illinois NAACP’s state convention at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel & Conference Center, had issued a statement earlier Saturday that was sharply critical of John McCain and Sarah Palin for adopting a tone that stirred “hostility” and was reminiscent of the tactics of Alabama Gov. George Wallace in the 1960s. The statement drew an angry response from McCain.

After his speech Saturday, Lewis retreated somewhat from the Wallace comparison but stood by the rest of his statement.

“I wasn’t trying to compare them to Governor Wallace, I was only saying the language that they’re using could be partisan and it could provoke violence,” Lewis said Saturday night. He said he was “sorry the senator (McCain) feels that way.”

For a veteran of the civil rights movement like Lewis, however, Saturday’s back-and-forth with McCain amounts to minor encounter.

Lewis spoke about his involvement with nonviolent protests and civil disobedience during the 1960s as well as the sacrifices many made to end segregation and ensured blacks the right to vote.

“When it came time for us to sit in, we’d be sitting in an orderly and peaceful fashion, waiting to be served at a lunch counter,” Lewis said. “And someone would come up and put a lit cigarette out in our hair, down our backs, spit on us, pull us off the lunch counter stools, beat us and then we would be arrested and taken to jail. We didn’t fight back, we didn’t strike back, we didn’t become bitter or hostile.”

Lewis participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides that challenged segregated bus seating in the South and chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group that organized student activism. By 1963, he had become a nationally recognized leader and was deemed one of the Big Six — along with Martin Luther King Jr. — of the civil rights movement.

During an interview with The State Journal-Register on Saturday, Lewis also made no secret about endorsing Obama as the next president.

“I think Barack Obama has emerged on the American scene as one of the few individuals of our time that have inspired an entire generation,” he said. “I see people who a few years ago wouldn’t have had anything to do with social action or being involved in American politics … who are now committed and dedicated.

“Barack Obama will have America at the table, dealing with the global issues of peace and war, issues of the environment, and making this planet a little safer, a little more peaceful and a little more greener for generations to come.”

Rhys Saunders can be reached at 788-1521.

Will Allen: urban farmer, 'genius'

2008-10-11T13:26:00.001-04:00

Milwaukee's Growing Power founder snags a much-deserved MacArthur
Posted by Tom Philpott at 9:31 AM on 23 Sep 2008
Read more about: agriculture food loal food brilliance
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Fifteen years ago, a former professional basketball player named Will Allen made a most unlikely career move: he decided to launch a farm in a low-income neighborhood in Milwaukee. His farmhands would be un- or ill-employed neighborhood teens.

Will Allen.
At the time, brutal economic conditions were pushing the nation's few remaining African-American farmers into bankruptcy; and the concept of "urban farming" seemed more like an oxymoron than an answer to the inner city's economic and public-health problems.
Since that time, Allen's organization Growing Power has established itself as a model for how urban resources can be used to grow delicious, healthy food and revitalize neighborhoods at the same time. Growing Power's model was so successful in Milwaukee that Allen's daughter Erika has established an equally innovative offshoot in Chicago (which I wrote about recently here.)
Today, the MacArthur Foundation announced it has awarded Allen one of its prestigious "genius" fellowships. I hope this award helps Allen spread his vital message: food need not be a vehicle for spreading poor health and sucking resources out of low-wealth communities. It can also simultaneously build health and wealth. Congratulations to the Allen family on this much-deserved honor.

Obama's Mother and Sister

2008-02-26T22:04:00.000-05:00

Obama, Is More Than A Lucky Barackstar, He's Truly Blessed.

2008-02-22T03:33:00.001-05:00

In 2004 Senate race, Obama went from underdog to front-runner
Senate race in Illinois exploded much as his current campaign has

10:26 PM CST on Wednesday, February 20, 2008
By RUDOLPH BUSH / The Dallas Morning News
rbush@dallasnews.com

Barack Obama spent his last days as an anonymous man driving around Illinois courting voters.

It was early 2004, and through the South Side of Chicago and towns like Springfield and Peoria, he saw nothing like the crowds that now greet him wherever he goes, including Reunion Arena on Wednesday.

Though he could not have known it then, Mr. Obama was embarking on one of the most astounding ascents in American politics.

Today, he is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Then, he was just another long-shot candidate for the Senate in a year that was shaping up nicely for Illinois Democrats.

But to survive the primary, he would have to beat the son of an entrenched political dynasty and a millionaire businessman. His chances against the Chicago political machine and a stocked war chest looked bleak.

David Mendell, a Chicago Tribune reporter who covered the race and went on to write about it in Obama: From Promise to Power, recalled Mr. Obama's early struggles to get people to hear him.

"There were times where he would give speeches, and people wouldn't be listening. And it bothered him when he wouldn't get a reaction," Mr. Mendell said.

But suddenly, everything changed.

First, Mr. Obama's chief Democratic rival folded amid a personal scandal. A few months later, his Republican opponent would implode the same way.

Mr. Obama was headed in the other direction, and after his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, he was transformed overnight from a promising new face in his party to an American political force.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., recalled how powerful the change was.

"I remember going to Freeport, Ill., a Republican stronghold in our state, and we were supposed to speak at a community building. There was an overflow crowd, and the police showed up. I thought, 'I have never seen anything like this in my life in Illinois politics.' It never stopped from then to today," he said.

On that trip around the state, Mr. Obama tried to answer every question in the crowd, to hang around until every supporter had had a chance to shake his hand.

But it became impossible. The crowds grew alongside his celebrity. By the time he got to Washington, he was as recognizable as anybody in politics.

On his first day in the capital as a senator, he fielded dozens of questions about whether he planned to run for president.

At his first news conference, a reporter asked him to describe his place in history.

Mr. Obama tried to take it in stride, telling reporters that he didn't want to play savior to his party, that he just wanted to focus on being a good senator.

At some point that changed. At Reunion Arena, Mr. Obama called out to the crowd that his candidacy came "at a defining moment in our history," that he is "confident in my ability to lead this nation."

Obama Honestly Embraced By White Folk

2008-02-21T04:43:00.001-05:00

Here is part of a story that I thought was interesting, it spoke, in part, about how times have actually changed with respect to race relations.

The story was titled "Road to redemption for Clintons: Embrace Obama" by DAVID BERG
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

"... I wish the two of them could have overheard, as I did, the young African-American prosecutor behind me at the Obama rally in Houston Tuesday night, who told his friend how shocked he was by those comments, and how — I was surprised by this — it had made him cry when President Clinton said that voting for Obama was like "rolling the dice."

I wish the two of them could have seen the ocean of black faces, brown faces and white faces, and felt the good will that permeated that arena. I wish that they could have heard the excited 10-year-old next to me, jumping up and down on her seat, waiving her Obama sign and chanting, "Si, se puede" with the crowd. (In the interest of full disclosure, that child is my daughter, Caitlin, and in truth, as excited as she was over Obama, when he suggested that we have to do a better job as parents and turn off the TV, her mood darkened, and she asked anxiously, "What about new episodes"?)

I guarantee you, as the oldest living man in America who has actually attended a Hannah Montana concert, my daughter is completely colorblind. From what I have seen of her generation, and that of my grown sons', that is the norm, not the exception. Racial politics simply won't work; not this time — and if all that good will seeps into the wider world — perhaps never again.

I wish, frankly, that the Clintons, who in many ways helped make Obama's candidacy possible, could hear firsthand how they let down so many people who cared about them and supported them through many tough years — how by their divisive tactics they have become the people and politics they deplore.

In short, I wish they could have been there Tuesday night to understand clearly how times and mores have changed and, perhaps, to understand how important it is that a new generation be given a chance.

Despite all this, there is a road to redemption for the Clintons. Hillary should simply admit the obvious: It's all over. If she has any lingering doubts, just look to Wisconsin, where she lost overwhelmingly in the state that practically invented white people. If she needs more proof, take it on faith from one who has loved her forever: She's going to lose the Texas primary, too. Against all odds, Barack Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. Hillary should concede the race now and, along with her husband, throw her wholehearted support to Obama.

By doing that, by taking the high road that seems to elude them presently, Sen. Clinton will reclaim her place as a central figure in the Democratic Party, and President Clinton, his iconic role on the world stage.

Even in defeat, Bill and Hillary probably can do more than any other Americans to unite the Democratic Party behind Obama and help him become the next president..."

I think the article was well written, funny at times, eye opening all of the time, but most importantly true.

Obama Inspires Massive Voter Participation

2008-02-21T03:43:00.001-05:00

Hawaiians Flood Polls for Obama
By Anna Mulrine
Posted February 20, 2008

HONOLULU — Across the city last night, most Hawaiians said they had never seen anything like it. Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama crowded into school auditoriums with lines that snaked around the buildings. Precincts couldn't keep registration forms in stock. "We ran out of democratic registration forms four times," said Manny Quinones, 30, one precinct leader. State caucus leaders were expecting 10,000 to 12,000 voters—and got as many as 20,000. Late into the night, voters were still standing in line.

"The last time I experienced anything close to this was the first state election, when voter turnout was 85 percent," Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Hillary Clinton supporter, told U.S. News. That was the year Hawaii gained its statehood, in 1959. Last night, Inouye stood in line for one hour and 45 minutes. It was the first time in 40 years that he returned from Washington for the caucuses.

At the state's Democratic Party headquarters, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie borrowed a lei from his wife, Nancie Caraway, a political theorist, before taking the podium to celebrate Obama's large win. He said turnout was so great that at a certain point "we went to the honor system. There was just no other way."

Caraway said that there were upwards of 5,000 people in her polling station. "And it was hot," she added. "I was worried." But she described the turnout as inspirational. "I'm a postmodernist cynic," she said. "This is a new page in American political culture."

Quinones said that he was an independent and then a Hillary Clinton supporter. He likes Ron Paul as well. "He has awesome ideas, but he could never get them through. They would be wasted years." He has settled on Obama who, many here say, best represents the aloha spirit, what Hawaiians describe as a diversity that defines rather than divides the state. He said Obama has inspired others as well. "At the caucus, over 40 people over the age of 40 came up to me to say that they had never voted and asking how to register."

Abercrombie, who attended college in Hawaii with Obama's father, invoked an analogy familiar to the residents of this island state. "We know about waves here in Hawaii," he told U.S. News. "Those great waves come, and they're there to be ridden."