On January 20th President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in as President using the same bible that Abramham Lincoln used during his inauguration in 1861. Although Presidents are not required to be sworn in on the bible, it has been done by almost every chief executive since George Washington. In the past, Presidents have chosen to use a passage from the Bible to be opened to during the swearing-in ceremony. Traditionally the passage used holds either a personal or historical significace.

“The President-elect is committed to holding an Inauguration that celebrates America’s unity, and the use of this historic Bible will provide a powerful connection to our common past and common heritage.”

I am in no way surprised by this news.  Our country is not ready to dispense of the symbolism of swearing on the Bible, especially after all the rumors that were spread about Barack Obama being a secret-Muslim. I can’t imagine him wanting to be sworn-in any other way.

It is interesting to remember the final words of Lincoln’s inaugural address:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stre[t]ching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The question still stands, which verse will Obama use?

Obama also announced that retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones — a former top commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Europe — would be his national security adviser.

“I am confident that this is the team that we need to make a new beginning for American national security,” Obama told reporters during a morning news conference in Chicago.

Click here to view photos.

Obama’s team will advise him on foreign and national security issues in an era marked by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and terrorism around the globe. Obama takes office Jan. 20.

Obama said his team “must pursue a new strategy that skillfully uses, balances, and integrates all elements of American power: our military and diplomacy, our intelligence and law enforcement, our economy and the power of our moral example.

“The team that we have assembled here today is uniquely suited to do just that,” he added as his Cabinet picks stood behind him on a flag-draped stage. “They share my pragmatism about the use of power, and my sense of purpose about America’s role as a leader in the world.”

Obama named Washington lawyer Eric Holder as attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Naploitano as homeland security chief. He also named two senior foreign policy positions outside the Cabinet, including campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador.

Obama introduced Clinton first, saying of his former presidential rival, “She possesses an extraordinary intelligence and toughness, and a remarkable work ethic. … She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world’s leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world.”

Clinton will give up her seat as a senator from New York to join the Obama Cabinet. Her appointment was preceded by lengthy negotiations involving her husband, the former president, whose international business connections posed potential conflicts of interest.

The former president also agreed to disclose the donors to the foundation that built his library, as well as contributors to his international foundation.

She said to Obama, in brief turn at the lectern, “Mr. President-Elect, I am proud to join you on what will be a difficult and exciting adventure in this new century.” 

Sen. Clinton had scarcely finished speaking when her husband issued a written statement.

“She is the right person for the job of helping to restore America’s image abroad, end the war in Iraq, advance peace and increase our security, by building a future for our children with more partners and fewer adversaries, one of shared responsibilities and opportunities,” he said.

Gates said he was “mindful that we are engaged in two wars and face other serious challenges at home and around the world.”

“I must do my duty as they do theirs,” he said of the men and women in uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. “How could I do otherwise?”

He said he was “honored to serve President-elect Obama.”

Gates’ appointment fulfilled a campaign promise by Obama, the naming of a Republican to his Cabinet.

Obama said Napolitano understands the need to protect against terror attacks and to respond to natural disasters — and that she also understands as well as anyone the danger of unsecured borders.

Obama now has half of the 15-member Cabinet assembled less than a month after the election, including the most prominent positions at State, Justice, Treasury and Defense.

Obama said that in choosing independent-minded people like Clinton and Gates, he wanted people who have strong opinions and are not shy about expressing them.

“I’m a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions,” he said, adding that he didn’t check people’s political registration as he assembled his team.

But at the same, he said he’ll follow the Harry Truman model and that “the buck will stop with me.”

Vice President-elect Joe Biden said each member of the team shares the goals and the principles of the new administration that “strength and wisdom must go hand in hand,” and that America’s security “is not a partisan issue.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Barack Obama is a great guy, and I believe he is a good man, but I’m
not going to vote for him. I cannot tell you where he lost me, because
he never had me in the first place. It is not my intention to catalogue
my objections, such as they are, to Senator Obama’s political and
philosophical positions. It suffices to say that for now, he’s over there,
and I’m over here. I can’t see my way clear to him, and something
makes me doubt that he could be converted to my way of thinking -
and even if he was open to evangelization, I wouldn’t be the man for
the job.

Barack Obama is a great guy, and I believe that he is a good man. I
was never going to vote for him, but up until now, I was rooting for him.
Not even his unsavory associations could dampen my genuine good
wishes for him ? especially since, as his star rose, Hillary Clinton’s set.
I have identified myself, in this very space, as being in favor of anyone
who was not Hillary Clinton for our next president. I likened her to
Jacob Marley, and I said that the chain she dragged across the
national stage was, essentially, the worst tendencies of the Democratic
Party. I expressed my hope that, once Hillary had to leave the island,
Barack Obama would not take up the chain.

Perhaps my worst fears for Barack Obama have been realized.

Barack Obama is a great guy: is he a great man? He belongs to a
political party that counts on the support of those who believe ?
correctly or incorrectly ? that they have been cheated by the system,
and placed in harm’s way. Year after year, the party reminds these
people that they are underpaid and overtaxed, and often, this is surely
the case. Year after year, the party reminds them that their progress in
this world has been confounded by bigotry, and often enough, this is
the bitter truth.

Indignant as the party is about pervasive and intractable inequity,
there can always be found within their ranks a number of brave
idealists. They concoct elaborate plans of action ? plans to get
everybody health care; plans to get the idle rich to shoulder their share
of taxes; plans to save the ozone layer – but these plans turn out to be
doomed marriages between spotty logic and wishful thinking.

Invariably, the idealists degenerate into cynics, and they join the slew
of cynical politicos, many of whom were born cynical, riding the sullen
tide to re-election. The perennially discontented rarely have any place
to go, and they will keep the cynics in office as long as the cynics
continue to give lip service to discontentment, and as long as the
cynics give them someone else to blame when, year after year, decade
after decade, nothing changes.

Barack Obama is a great guy: is he a great man? He is the prophet of
change. He says he despises the ideological gridlock that long ago
ground discourse in our political life to a halt. He is an intelligent and
resourceful fellow, and it must have occurred to him that change
begins and gridlock ends with the reformation of his own party. In
2007, he might have decided that time and history were on his side.
Rather than seeking the presidency, he might have dug in, and
resolved to improve his party from the ground up. He might even have
given up the party entirely, and forged, with like-minded souls, a party
more willing, if not more able, to foster authentic and positive change.

Instead, and more power to him, he fought for the nomination against
the element of his party that is most offended by logic and most hostile
to challenge: he took on the surly embodiment of the Democratic Party’
s sanctimony. He outlasted everyone, but he vanquished no one. He
was also bloodied in the process. Now come the Republicans ? with
salt for his too-fresh wounds.

Obama now seems convinced that he can eke out a narrow victory
over Senator McCain only if he embraces the very stagnation he
promised to eradicate: teaming up with Senator Joseph Biden; making
nice with the Clintons; shakily emerging from a nasty primary season,
and, for the sake of victory, cultivating the support of the same people
who savaged him. Such is the nature of politics. Such is the
treacherous paradox that obtains when democracy boils down to
consensus among people unable or unwilling to move past half-truths
and repudiated policies. It is well argued that the paradox can only be
countenanced by subtlety. It is more to the point that the paradox can
only be transcended by greatness.

Barack Obama is a great guy: does he have any greatness in him? I
hope for his sake that he does.

Supporters of Barack Obama can claim, correctly, that much of what
he says has been subjected to mean-spirited scrupulousness, or
taken out of context. They claim that such dissection is the work of
character assassins. They remind us, correctly, that choosing a
President ought to be a matter of character definition. What can I use,
in order to determine what I must about the character of Barack
Obama, other than his words?

Can I use his stellar and comprehensive career as a public servant?
Can I accept the character witness of such unimpeachable bastions as
Ted Kennedy, or John Edwards, or ? it must be said ? Bill Ayers? Can
I trust that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg would not drape the mantle
of her parents’ aura over shoulders unworthy and untried?

Barack Obama is a great guy, and I believe he is a good man, but
Candidate Obama has gone as far as he can go on rhetoric alone.
This is why it is so sad to me that he has identified himself, and tied the
fate of his campaign, to the same old Democratic Party.

Barack Obama is a great guy, and I believe that he is a good man, but
is President Obama going to waste his chance to lead by entrusting an
ambitious social agenda to the incompetent bureaucracy that has
dashed the same hopes so very many times? Will President Obama
set out to right the real and imagined wrongs of the past, only to
demonstrate that he terribly misunderstands the times in which we live?
Will he advocate planetary citizenship, only to wind up duped by thugs
and opportunists ? and vilified by marginalized people at home and
abroad?

Barack Obama is a great guy, and I believe that Barack Obama is a
good man. If he becomes our next President, will he join the ranks of
great guys and good men among our former presidents who were
waylaid by history? If he becomes our next President, will he end up a
tragic figure, who failed, notwithstanding his idealism and his political
acumen, to navigate either the power or the limits of the office to which
he was elected? Will he squander the revolutionary implications of his
own ascent by perpetuating the empty promise of lumbering
government? Will he entrench the very impediments to the change he
now pledges to bring to the world, and plunge the generation of young
Americans he has inspired into apathy?

Barack Obama is a great guy, and I believe he is a good man, but
what I saw in Denver last week was appeasement of the same old
Democratic Party, and not anything resembling change I can believe
in. I was rooting for him, but I fear that he met has the enemy, and he
is them.

J.R. McCarthy

Article Source: Barack Obama Is a Great Guy by JR McCarthy

Let me offer you a non-american perspective on this year’s US election race between Barack Obama and John McCain. In this short article I want to explain to you – especially you, dear readers and friends from the US – why many Europeans such as me (and many other non-americans too) feel that Barack Obama would be a much better option for the US president than John McCain.

As I offer this perspective, I want you to have in mind that I have never lived in the US, I don’t feel the economic problems of US personally (however interdependent the world has become, this has not influenced my life in any significant way yet), I am enjoying a universal health care (currently, in England) and I am not writing this particular piece out of my sympathy for many Americans who suffer problems because of bad US economy or the high costs of health care.

What I want to talk about is the image of US in the world and how electing Barack Obama would help to correct that image. It is very clear that, during the last decade, this image eroded to its lowest point (possibly in the whole history of US!) all over the world. America has never before been perceived in such an unfavorable light. Several American friends of mine have a hard time to even grasp how unloved their beloved country has become. Majority of the world has a grim picture of the US, said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) when he was commenting the large international poll for BBC. “Negative feelings about Bush are high and are generalizing to the American people who re-elected him”, worries Kull.

Of course, this perception is much worse in the Muslim world than in Europe, and it produces a deep motivation to fight against US and its allies. But I am not the only European who feels that the behavior of US leadership in last decade has been really bad and has made the world more dangerous place. Unwise moves and oil-hunger-driven wars, a great lack of understanding of the mindset of the people whom US operations were supposed to help (like Iraqis or Afgans etc.) and turning a blind eye towards the regimes like Saudi Arabian or Pakistani, who happen to suit America’s interests – all this has undermined the fair amount of trust US have once enjoyed, also in Europe.

The situation has left the world hoping for a significant change in the White House. Those who speculate and make theories out of Barack Obama’s middle name never seem to get it: this Muslim-sounding name could actually reduce the number of the terrorist threats to USA, although all “Muslim theories” about this name are complete nonsense. And another seemingly superficial thing is significant as well: If Barack Obama will become president, the color of the president’s skin will speak to many around the world about the victory over racism in USA (whether it would be true or not).

Remember: public perception of the president (at home but very much so also around the world) is hugely important factor for the success of his country on many fronts, even if he makes mistakes. Kennedy was – at his beginning at least – very popular in Europe and around the World also because of his youth and charming personality. And there can be no serious discussion about public perceptions of Barack Obama vs. John McCain in the world: Barack is doing much better! Even in Israel , he “leads” the republican candidate by a big margin. This alone is hugely important even if Barack Obama’s political program would be up for grabs. But it isn’t.

Article Source:Barack Obama and the Perception of US in the World

NBC News, in particular, was fingered as complicit in the cover-up. While eager to expose a decades-old driving glitch on Sarah Palin’s record, the news department at NBC seemed oblivious to Obama’s evil dark side.

The facts are these.

* Obama was first introduced as the successor of State Senator Alice Palmer at the home of terrorist William Ayers [1995]. * Ayers and cohabitor Bernardine Dohrn (they’re married) “are extremist radicals from the 1960’s anti-war terrorist group the Weather Underground,” noted John Stephenson. * “They are unrepentant in the bombings they were a part of.” * “They disappeared in 1970 after a bomb designed to kill army officers in New Jersey accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse.” * “They turned themselves over to authorities in 1980. While the Weather Underground claimed 25 bombings, these characters were never prosecuted.” * “Charges were dropped due to improper FBI surveillance.” * Ayers told the New York Times in 2001: “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.” * “Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama have appeared together at a number of gatherings and academic events.” * “In November 1997, Ayers and Obama participated in a panel at the University of Chicago entitled Should a child ever be called a ’super predator?’” [Child, I suppose, is the liberal double-speak for "juvenile delinquent."] * “In April 2002, Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, participated together at a conference entitled ‘Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?’ * Ayers and Obama were two of the six members of the Intellectuals in Times of Crisis’ panel.” * “Ayers…is currently the Board Chairman of the Woods Fund of Chicago and Obama is a former Board member.”

William Ayers is currently a professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “Ayers is linked to bombings of the United States Capital, the Pentagon, and the Harry S. Truman Building, home of the United States Department of State, along with a series of courthouses, jails, banks, and prison administrative offices. He, along with other members of the Weather Underground, turned themselves in to police in 1981, after a series of official acts of misconduct on behalf of law enforcement officials ensured that they would never be brought to trial for their activities,” according to Mike Tippett at Wake Up America.

* In 2001, while Obama served as the paid Director for the Woods Fund, the organization issued a grant to the Arab American Action Network, a group that has ties to the PLO. * Obama’s ties to Jeremiah Wright are well known. “His church published a very pro-Hamas newsletter, and the churches ties with the Nation of Islam, and Jeremiah Wright’s award to Louis Farrakhan, as well as his visit to Libya to meet Muammer Kaddafi,” wrote Tippett.

Read Kenn Gividen’s musings at ENDiana.com or ENDiana.blogspot.com ]]> http://barackobamasblog.com/obamas-terrorist-ties/feed/ 2 http://barackobamasblog.com/barack-obama-in-chicago/ http://barackobamasblog.com/barack-obama-in-chicago/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:28:54 +0000 Obama http://barackobamasblog.com/?p=4 Barack Obama continued his Change that Works for You tour, talking about predatory lending, in Chicago IL on June 11, 2008.

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