How is this not unconstitutional?!
President Obama looks through the menu to order a sandwich before holding a roundtable discussion with small business owners at the Grand Central Bakery in Seattle on August 17, 2010. (via)
Robert Reich: Obama's Address to the Nation: A Missed Opportunity to Tell It Like It Is
The man who electrified the nation with his speech at the Democratic National Convention of 2004 put it to sleep tonight. President Obama’s address to the nation from the Oval Office was, to be frank, vapid. If you watched with the sound off you might have thought he was giving a lecture on the history of the Interstate Highway System. He didn’t have to be angry but he had at least to show passion and conviction. It is, after all, the worst environmental crisis in the history of the nation.
With the sound on, his words hung in the air with all the force of a fundraiser for your local public access TV station. Everything seemed to be in the passive tense. He had authorized deepwater drilling because he “was assured” it was safe. But who assured him? How does he feel about being so brazenly misled? He said he wanted to “understand” why that was mistaken. Understand? He’s the President of the United States and it was a major decision. Isn’t he determined to find out how his advisors could have been so terribly wrong?
Tomorrow he’s “informing” the president of BP of BP’s financial obligations. “Informing” is what you do when you phone the newspaper to tell them it wasn’t delivered today. Why not “directing” or “ordering?”
The President distinguished what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico from a tornado or hurricane because they are over quickly while the leak is an ongoing crisis, lasting many weeks and perhaps months more. He likened it to an “epidemic.” But the real difference has nothing to do with time. Tornadoes and hurricanes are natural disasters. Epidemics occur because germs mutate and spread. The spill occurred because of the recklessness and ruthlessness of a giant oil company in pursuit of profit.
And what has the nation learned from all this? The same lesson we’ve known for decades, according to the President. We must end our dependence on oil. But if we’ve known this for decades, why haven’t we done anything about it? The President endorsed the cap-and-trade bill that emerged from the House (without calling it cap-and-trade) but didn’t call for the only thing that may actually work: a tax on carbon.
I’m a fan of Barack Obama. I campaigned for him and I believe in him. I think he has a first-class temperament. I have been deeply moved and startled by his ability to speak about the nation’s most intractable problems. But he failed tonight to rise to the occasion. Is it because he’s not getting good advice, or because he’s psychologically incapable of expressing the moral outrage the nation feels?Or is it something deeper? Whether it’s Wall Street or health insurers or oil companies, we are approaching a turning point. The top executives of powerful corporations are pursuing profits in ways that menace the nation. We have not seen the likes not since the late nineteenth century when the “robber barons” of finance, oil, and the giant trusts ran roughshod over America. Now, as then, they are using their wealth and influence to buy off legislators and intimidate the regions that depend on them for jobs. Now, as then, they are threatening the safety and security of our people.
This is not to impugn the integrity of all business leaders or to suggest that private enterprise is inherently evil or dangerous. It is merely to state a fact that more and more Americans are beginning to know in their bones.
Our President must tell is like it is — not with rancor but with the passion and conviction of a leader who recognizes what is happening and rallies the nation behind him.
Obama to give Nobel Peace Prize award to 10 charities
President Barack Obama will donate his $1.4 million 2009 Nobel Peace Prize award to 10 charities, the White House announced Thursday.
The organizations receiving the money “do extraordinary work in the United States and abroad helping students, veterans and countless others in need,” Obama said in a statement. “I’m proud to support their work.”
The list of charities includes:
– $250,000 to Fisher House, a group that helps provide housing for families of patients receiving medical care at military and Veterans Affairs medical centers;
– $200,000 for the Clinton-Bush Haiti fund, which supports relief efforts in the earthquake-ravaged nation;
– $125,000 for the College Summit, which helps prepare students for college;
– $125,000 for the United Negro College Fund, which helps more than 60,000 students attend college annually;
– $125,000 to the Posse Foundation, which awards four-year full-tuition scholarships to students who, according to the White House, “may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes”;
– $125,000 to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which has awarded scholarships to over 90,000 students over a 34-year history;
– $125,000 to the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation, which supports higher education opportunities for students from Appalachia;
– $125,000 to the American Indian College Fund, which provides over 6,000 scholarships annually to Native American students;
– $100,000 to AfriCare, which supports programs primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa dealing with health, food, and water resource development; and
– $100,000 to the Central Asia Institute, which backs education and literacy efforts for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Obama was awarded the Nobel prize for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Obama said he viewed the decision less as a recognition of his own accomplishments and more as “a call to action.”
The president accepted the prize in a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, in December.
The decision caught most observers by surprise. Obama had not been mentioned as one of the front-runners for the prestigious award.
The last sitting U.S. president to win the peace prize was Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The other was Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Jimmy Carter had been out of office for more than two decades when he won in 2002.
Reference: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/11/obama-to-give-1-4-million-nobel-peace-prize-award-to-10-charities/?fbid=3yjrj66jt3B
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Grad student in New York City. Blogging about: traveling, international affairs, Nepal, recipes, water & sanitation, India, travel photos, economic development.
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