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Category: Obama
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Muck Tracker First Lady Michelle Obama Unhappy About Sasha Malia Dolls
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Barack Obama assumes U.S. presidency
Starting today, Barack Obama pledged after being sworn in as president, “We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
Speaking before a crowd of 2 million, he pledged friendship to the millions more who watched worldwide.
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Obama’s speech focused on inclusiveness, change and a call to citizenship.
“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers,” he said. “We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”
He called for a new era of responsibility, but a return to old values such as “hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.”
The price of citizenship, he said, is giving one’s all.
“This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”
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Rudin loses in Oscar tug-of-war over Kate WinsletJanuary 23, 2009 at 11:27am
Scott Rudin may be regretting his decision to abandon The Reader after yesterday’s Academy Award nominations, which put up the film for five awards, including best picture, best director and leading actress.
Gene B. Sperling may return to familiar turf
Gene B. Sperling, a man familiar with the real and the fictional West Wing, may be signing on with the Obama administration.
The New York Times reported Monday that if Timothy F. Geithner is confirmed as the next Treasury secretary, Sperling will become his adviser on fiscal policy.
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Sperling, 50, was an economic power in the Bill Clinton administration, serving as the president’s national economic adviser and then as the chairman of the National Economic Council.
He then put his eight years at the White House to good use, signing on with “The West Wing,” the NBC series that chronicled the ups and downs of a fictional Democratic administration.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Sperling served as a consultant or writer on 18 episodes between 2001 and 2003. Sperling’s wife, Allison Abner, was also a writer on the show.
After leaving government in 2001, Sperling kept his ties with Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, later serving as an economic adviser on her presidential campaign.
Even though he was on the other team during the presidential primary, Sperling seemed a likely candidate for a post in the Obama administration, given his many links to Obama insiders.
He and John Podesta, the head of Obama’s transition team, worked side by side at the Clinton White House, Podesta as an assistant to the president who went on to become chief of staff.
The Sperling-Podesta connection continued after Clinton’s second term, as Sperling is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the Washington think tank that Podesta heads.
Rahm Emanuel, who will be Obama’s chief of staff, was also an adviser to Clinton, working at the White House with Sperling.
And Lawrence Summers, who will head Obama’s National Economic Council, was part of the Bill Clinton administration, as well, serving as Treasury secretary.
Finally, there’s the Robert E. Rubin connection, a vital asset for any Obama appointee. Rubin was Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1995, roughly the same time that Sperling headed the National Economic Council. And Sperling is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank that includes Rubin on its board of directors.
The author of The Pro-Growth Progressive, published in 2005, Sperling also writes for Bloomberg News.
He has taken a special interest in the issues of global education, hunger and debt relief, a concern that has linked him with the singer Bono.
During the Clinton administration, Sperling was Bono’s go-to-guy at the White House, lobbying Clinton on Bono’s behalf.
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Former rivals consider Hillary Rodham Clinton for State
You could call it a field of dashed dreams.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which convened this morning to consider Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, is an object lesson on the soaring ambitions of America’s top politicians – and the often deflated realities of their achievements.
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Acknowledging that one former committee member is president-elect, while its former chairman Joe Biden is vice-president-elect, Kerry cautioned younger committee members not to get “too far ahead of themselves” as “myself, Chris Dodd, Dick Lugar and perhaps Senator Clinton can … attest.”
Sitting directly across from him, of course, was Clinton, who came closest of any of those present to realizing her presidential ambitions before she became her former rival’s choice for secretary of state.
But if Kerry harbors any jealousy of the woman who displaced him as the nation’s top diplomat, he betrayed no hint of it. He invited Chelsea Clinton to sit behind him on the dais (offering her a temporary committee internship like that held years ago by her father), so that her mother could look at her while she testified.
And then he launched into a lovefest about Clinton, praising her as a diplomatic veteran on “first-name basis” with world leaders, declaring, “America is back.”
Not to be outmaneuvered in the graceful acknowledgements department, Clinton herself paid tribute to Ann Dunham, president-elect Barack Obama’s late mother, as she pledged to advance the cause of women and girls around the world, calling Dunham “a pioneer in microfinance in Indonesia.”
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This post is tagged with: Barack Obama, Chelsea Clinton, Christopher Dodd, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry, Joseph Biden, Obama, Politics, Richard Lugar, Senate Foreign Relations Committee0 Comments
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Gay bishop joins evangelical pastor in inaugural line-up
President-elect Barack Obama has invited V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and a symbol of the gay rights movement, to deliver the prayer at the opening inaugural event at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday.
The invitation is viewed as an effort to placate gay rights activists who were furious at his decision to have the Rev. Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor who opposes same-sex marriage, deliver the high-profile invocation at the inauguration itself.
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But just as Warren’s choice infuriated the left, Robinson’s is likely to antagonize the right. As the first openly gay man to be consecrated a bishop in the Anglican Communion, his ordination in 2003 touched off a worldwide rift about homosexuality within the Anglican Communion, spurring a schism within that denomination.
In an interview with the New York Times, Robinson said he believed his inclusion in the inaugural events had been under consideration before the Warren controversy erupted, but that Obama was also seeking to heal any rifts that Warren’s selection had caused among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates.
“They called up and said this has actually been in the works for a long time,” he said, “and at the same time, we understand that people in the L.G.B.T. community have been somewhat wounded by this choice, and it’s our hope that your selection will go a long way to heal those divides.
“In many ways,” he added, “it just proves that Barack Obama is exactly who he says he was and would be as president, which is someone who is casting a wide net that will include all Americans.”
Robinson said that his partner of more than 20 years, Mark Andrews, would accompany him to the inauguration. The two had a civil union ceremony last summer in a New Hampshire church.
The event Robinson will participate in is a concert featuring Beyoncé, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Top spymaster nominee Dennis Blair brings broad connections, experiences
By naming Dennis C. Blair as his nominee for the nation’s top spy post – director of national intelligence – President-elect Barack Obama gets a brainy, retired four-star admiral with an independent streak.
Blair is a 34-year Navy veteran and Asia expert who was reportedly passed over for the post of chairman of the Joint Chiefs by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who considered him too independent. His last job in the military was as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, the highest-ranking officer over forces in the Asia-Pacific region.
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He has also worked the intelligence business from virtually every angle – military commander, White House staffer and CIA official – but has no significant ties to controversial Bush administration policies like offshore renditions and harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, since he resigned from the military in 2002.
Born in Kittery, Maine in 1947, Blair is a 6th-generation naval officer and great-great-great grandson of Confederate chief engineer William Price Williamson of North Carolina. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968 with Virginia Sen. James H. Webb and former Reagan adviser Oliver North, and then majored in Russian Studies as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University with Bill Clinton.
He was a White House Fellow in 1975 and 1976, along with retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Marshall Carter, who later became chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Famous for his workaholism, Blair is not without a zany streak. Most famously, he tried to water ski behind a Navy destroyer while commanding the ship in Japan.
Blair was not a close adviser to the Obama campaign, but has reportedly impressed the president-elect with his intellect and his nuanced view of intelligence, as well as of U.S. power.
“The use of large-scale military force in volatile regions of underdeveloped countries is difficult to do right, has major unintended consequences and rarely turns out to be quick, effective, controlled and short lived,” Blair testified before Congress in November, 2007.
Blair has handled intelligence in a number of capacities: He worked as the Central Intelligence Agency’s first associate director of military support, and served a tour on the National Security Council. He was also director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and commanded the Kitty Hawk Battle Group and the destroyer Cochrane.
After his retirement in 2002, Blair has served as president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit research group largely financed by the federal government to analyze national security issues. He stepped down from that post in 2006 amid conflict-of-interest concerns.
The Pentagon’s inspector general concluded he had violated the institute’s conflict-of-interest standards by serving on the board of a military contractor working on the Air Force F-22 jet while the institute was evaluating the program for the Pentagon. However, the inspector general also found that Blair did not influence the organization’s analysis of the F-22 program.
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This post is tagged with: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Dennis C. Blair, Institute for Defense Analyses, James Webb, Marshall Carter, News, Oliver North, Recent Stories, Wesley Clark1 Comments
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Your piece does not refer to widespread reports of Blair’s complicity in E Timor massacres. Failure to mention does not inspire confidence in your objectivity. Your readers need to know: are these reports are accurate? and if so, why this history is not disqualifying?
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Cohmad Securities, Robert Jaffe face tough questions about Madoff tiesJanuary 15, 2009 at 9:16am
Investigators probing Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50-billion scheme are looking at the role played by an investment firm that he co-founded with an old friend from Long Island that recruited hundreds of investors from New York, Boston and Florida.
Muck Tracker Blagojevich Appoints Obama Successor Despite Warnings
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Obamas Successor Roland Burris Sees Divine Hand in Political Career
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