Barack Obama’s Natal Chart Proving his Birth in Honolulu 

How could you question this?  It’s right here on the Internets.  I have been learning the Googles,  and Ted Stevens assured me it arrived through the proper truth tubes his contractor installed.  You can’t make stuff like this up, and images can’t be altered on a computer for heaven’s sake.* 

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Just a tinsy bit more on Senator Richard Shelby’s recent hypocrisy:

In late 2008 he opposed a Federal government bridge loan for US-owned auto companies, saying:

“We don’t need government - governmental subsidies for manufacturing in this country. It’s the French model, it’s the wrong road. We will pay for it. The average American taxpayer is going to pay dearly for this, if I’m not wrong.”

However, foreign-owned auto manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai received approximately $788 million in government subsidies in the cities of Vance, Lincoln, Huntsville, and Montgomery in Shelby’s home state of Alabama, according to analysis by Good Jobs First. Good Jobs First executive Director Greg LeRoy pointed out that “while proposed federal aid to the Big 3 would take the form of a loan, the vast majority of subsidies to foreign auto plants were taxpayer gifts such as property and sales tax exemptions, income tax credits, infrastructure aid, land discounts, and training grants.

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Beautiful Socks

Oh valiant little feline, you will be missed. After a long struggle with cancer, Socks left us yesterday, February 20 and made the world a little less fuzzy. Oh, and he was for Obama alright.  Betty loved him so.  You can’t take the Maryland out of a cat, and Maryland is all about Obama.

From MSNBC below, no more be said about whether or not Betty made the right decision.  When cats don’t want to eat, they don’t want to live.  That’s it.  Thanks Betty.  You’re the best.

“The cat wasn’t eating and wouldn’t get up Friday morning. When he finally did go to the litter box, he simply fell into the litter, prompting Currie to call Three Notch Veterinary Clinic.

Currie and the vet agreed it was time to put Socks down. Currie told SoMdNews.com that she plans to have Socks cremated.

Socks, who would have turned 20 in the spring, was a stray when he was adopted for Chelsea Clinton while Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas. The family brought Socks with them to the White House in 1993.”

People online continues:

It was near their home in Maryland that Socks was put to sleep Friday morning. “He could no longer stand and wasn’t eating,” according to family friend and presidential historian Barry Landau. 

“The truth be known, Betty asked if Socks could come live with her. The Clintons didn’t abandon Socks. They were totally conflicted. It broke their hearts, but they knew it would be the right thing for Socks’ welfare.” 

“Betty had lost a close family member and a dog and they wanted to do something nice for her,” continues Landau, noting that Hillary Clinton had just been elected to the U.S. Senate. 
“The truth be known, Betty asked if Socks could come live with her. The Clintons didn’t abandon Socks. They were totally conflicted. It broke their hearts, but they knew it would be the right thing for Socks’ welfare.” 

Socks acting like a normal cat

“Betty had lost a close family member and a dog and they wanted to do something nice for her,” continues Landau, noting that Hillary Clinton had just been elected to the U.S. Senate.

Hillary Clinton with Socks in 1999

During the family’s days in the White House, Socks had become attached to Betty, with whom he spent many hours every day. “Socks was always curled up on a blue striped silk chair, next to Betty,” in her office outside the Oval Office, Landau says.

Socks at work

Landau adds that even visiting heads of state asked to have pictures taken with the cat.

In the years since he left the White House, Landau says, “Socks had an incredible life. Betty cooked for Socks,” he said, noting the cat loved chicken.

On Thursday, Currie took Socks for one last walk; she plans to have the cat cremated. 

Bill & Socks

Bill loved that cat. Kept him close. Cats know EVERYTHING. They hear no evil, see no evil, but they smell it, they can tell it.

Frederick Douglass was perhaps born on February 14, 1818. The month and year are estimates for he was born at a time when slaves were prohibited from reading  and writing. No records were kept.  Douglass chose the 14th as the day of his birth and died 77 years and 6 days later on February 20, 1895. ”The Lion of Anacostia”, Douglass is one of the most prominent figures in  United States history.  In 1872, without his knowledge, Douglass became the first African-American nominated for Vice President in the U.S., running on the Equal Rights Party ticket with Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President of the United States.

As a slave at age twelve, his master’s wife taught Frederick the alphabet, breaking the law against teaching slaves to read. The master found out & strongly disapproved saying,  in front of Frederick, that if a slave learned to read, he would become dissatisfied with his condition and desire freedom. From white children in the neighborhood, observation and practice, Douglass taught himself to read. He credits the book, The Columbian Orator with clarifying his ideas about freedom, civil rights, servitude and the power of oratory.

Douglass literally went far in the world. Before the US Civil War, he traveled to Ireland and Great Britain, where he was already famous with many public journals on human rights and abolition named after him.  By the breakout of the Civil War, Douglass was known, even in the US,  for his powerful oratory on the rights of all people, including women whom he supported in particular, to be equal in all things.  He met with Abraham Lincoln regularly and, after the war ended he was appointed to US Government positions as marshal to the District of Columbia, consul-general to the Republic of Haiti and as chargé d’affaires for the Dominican Republic. He accomplished far more than I need list here. His biography is widely available.  

Douglass, without doubt, read  ”Dialogue Between a Master and Slave” from the Columbian Orator mentioned above.  As it would be any day, today is a good day to read such a logical discourse:

The  pages are posted here, the entirety linked to above in the sentence or a URL is linked below : 

Hard To Find Reading in 1831, When Douglass Was a 12 Year-Old Slave in Maryland.

http://www.thelosangelesmirror.com/the-dialogue-between-a-master-and-a-slave-from-the-columbian-orator

-Barbara McCarren

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Andy Card should apologize for his own stupidity. He said that President Obama is disrespecting the Constitution (insert irony) and Democracy (again, twisted irony) by not wearing a jacket in the Oval Office. He should apologize with his underpants around his ankles, because that is how I will always imagine him (and real tiny too). Quite simply,

If Jackets & Ties Made the Bush Administration Do

What It Did, Then I Vote For Full Nudity In the Oval

Office and on Air Force One Immediately!

  

What Murderous Scheme Were They Cooking Up Here?

How long do we have to put up with this graceless lack of patriotism from GOP has-beens, their cynical predictions of failure for we the people, President Obama & his administration, dis-respecting the will of the majority, a hopeful majority, hurling inane insults &  the same lame fear-mongering we rejected in November?  Two words of advice to Andy Card and Dick Cheney, SHUT UP!  The country is in crisis, you jokers caused it and now you distract the A.D.D. media who should not, for one moment, publicize this petty crap. Andy and Dick do not live in my country, the one I helped change on the ground. They are capital, we are labor.  As Lincoln said,   

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” 

Snap! Obama got that right. We stood up first, took off the ties, rolled up our sleeves, put on the boots and the fruit came pouring in. So Andy, the best you can do is look a fool and attribute national values to Obama’s clothing, to the items he is not wearing? And Dickster, you proclaim President Obama’s lack of national values  are clear because he has pledged to respect the US Constitution?  What a wimp you are, to have had to wipe your bald pate off with the founding documents, as if they’d gone missing, in order to have your way.  No, you could never play by the rules and get any job done.  You do not have a single drop of greatness in your blood, and that is as it will remain. I am still confused about WTF you people were trying to do, and how you f**ked it up so stupendously with all that bad-ass experience you had. It must be hard for you to live in a country whose citizens turned on a dime and saw, 180 degrees away from where ever you were standing, their country. Over there, where the young organizer, jacketless, was describing that what he saw in his country, was what he hoped he would see. This country had shaped his family and that family valued education, they cultivated a wisdom  beyond years, and a comprehensive world view untroubled by complexity but with a comfort and recognition that this facet of life allows for unimaginable possibilities.  The call for self-reliance and community effort, national pride and global citizenry, made sense.  It’s American!  We’re the home of the free, the land of the brave. The genius of Barack Obama is in offering as anodyne for years of threats and warnings, an appeal to our American Spirit to labor for, not against, the impossible,  a brave new future across a long rickety bridge.  When we are no longer in crisis, no one will look back in longing at the dark and dreary country you created, gents. We are an accomplished people, generous and optimistic.  You’re not. I admit that I did enjoy watching Keith Olberman on fire last night in his special comment about Dick’s lowing, mutated remarks to Politico in a February 4th interview regarding President Obama’s proclamation against torture and other Un-Constitutional acts, as the founding fathers intended. You can’t look at these documents like one of your freaky oil contracts, with hidden clauses and contingencies you play to your advantage so you win and, therefore, the other party loses. Kid stuff Dick, frat boy crap at best. The difficult thing is to succeed by the principles of fairness set forth;  liberty and justice for all. If  you are scared Dick, to live in our country with President Obama as Commander In Chief, you are free to leave. That silly rag we call the Constitution didn’t get in your way as you pissed  on the world like it was your fire-hydrant, just take your gun if you pass by the Hague in your travels. The ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ you used on the US Congress (on your buddy Dick Armey, for example) and on the good citizens of these United States to dupe* many into supporting your murderous invasion of a sovereign nation seems like some demented chess-game that you and Rummy never had a chance to finish back in the day. You anticipated, with little regret, the slaughter of not only the innocent people of Iraq, but also of our military men and women without a second thought. Everyone is worth sacrificing for your own small and vicious desires.  What are they again?  You said ‘to be respected’ is important, so  thuggishness and slaughter renders respect for you? Is that cauldron of hatred so fetid inside you that you can no longer even recognize good ?

And Andy Card is so small I can’t even go there (I said tiny already, right?). But you heard it straight from Andy’s A*s, Neckties & Jackets = Democracy.  May I suggest that Intelligence & Compassion = Humanity, and that Humility & Fairness= Equality , six things you can’t buy at Brooks Brothers, Andy. And  the will of free people, to exercise their right to select and form a better government, the arc that bends toward justice. . . never mind. Go f**k-up the Union Pacific Railroad, Andy. I am sure with your priorities, you can make that failing institution die quickly, and in a coat and tie.

BTW, Huffington Post has slide show that shows Jesus Reagan in the Oval Office, in a RED cowboy shirt. That’s RED. I don’t have to tell you what red means.

*On the duping: President Obama (State Senator of Illinois at the time) wasn’t duped by your fear mongering Cheney, millions of us weren’t duped, including me. I have a letter that Congressman Berman (D-CA) wrote to me in response to my letter asking he not vote to authorize President Cheney’s request to use force in Iraq.  I’m still waiting for an apology that is as considered as his defense of the invasion was. I received a non-sensical, platitude-ridden email from Senator Dianne Feinstein,  who voted in favor of using force, and it reads as if she had no choice, as if there had been no Levin Amendment, which would have changed the authorization process completely and could have halted the invasion. The text of Senator Levin’s brief amendment is easy to find online, as is the list of Senators who admitted to not reading the NIE Report entirely.  I mean, reading is tedious, and it’s not as if this vote meant the END OF THE WORLD.

With that, I am pleading for the maximum funding for new schools, new teaching tools, regular refresher courses for teachers, and a balanced and  more comprehensive education for all citizens. It’s all of a sudden “San Francisco” to want the highest standards of education achievable? Oh please let them filibuster in coats and ties while we go to San Francisco in our Birkenstocks to read books.

Tiny Andy

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First, please read President Obama’s Opinion piece in today’s Washington Post.

Some things haven’t changed and the GOP’s divisive tactics continue, in spite of  what we voted for on November 4, 2008. 

President Obama did not play politics with his economic stimulus plan because, he presumed there existed Congressional bipartisan desire to help our citizens in  dire  straits, and that a spirit of ‘good will’ would allow him to present an honest* plan,  that is generously complete with a dedicated 1/3rd  in corporate  and other tax cuts that the GOP support, even though the President (and we) know those cuts are rarely put directly into the economy.  It is ye olde  trickle-down theory that never works very well, and never fast enough.  We face a tremendous crisis!  That is a surprise to no one! It requires both short and long-term solutions.  The President incorporated the GOP’s favored tax-cuts without a hint of placation, & wrote the rest of the plan aimed squarely at energy independence and  job creation as well as debt relief for those who would immediately stimulate the economy with spending.

As the GOP clusters-up again, always reserving their energy to use against someone or something, as it seems to be their comfort zone, while change clearly disrupts their willfully stagnant  thinking, remember well and long the ginormous olive branch of trickle-down, ineffective tax cuts, that President Obama & Speaker Pelosi included, as the President had promised to be genuinely bipartisan, to a fault, without prompts. His honest intention to be generously, not niggardly, inclusive of the GOP’s anticipated requests for their beloved hand-outs to the wealthy, which suck up 1/3rd of the stimulus plan,  is not a starting point for negotiation. President Obama did not expect the worst from the GOP & yet the GOP appear to be intractable spikes, rusted in place. I’m talkin’ to you, Lindsey Graham.  How many times do you require an invite to exchange your ideas, any ideas, preferably ‘better’ ideas, not the same ones that got us here, only to declare that ‘the President is AWOL’ b/c you had no ideas to offer the President in lieu of his own plan, be it over cocktails,  at 2 meetings or during lunch at the White House.  So you blame civil banter or ‘lunch’ as the insubstantial factor, rather than that your well is empty of new, multi-purpose ideas that fit a 21st century collapse. You claim that the President is all talk, as if that charge will stick now like it did not in November.  But if there are no ideas in his plan, then why do you have so many objections to tiny bits of it, about 1% of the spending?  Do you object to his increase in defense spending too?  If his plan is the void you claim it is then pull out those twinkies, put them on display with your buddy John McCain and then pack the plan  with smart stuff that  gets us off foreign oil, creates jobs and increases national security - simultaneously.  You’ve had months to ponder a plan,  and what the hell have you been doing with your time, Lindsey?  Weren’t you tools readying your demands, mimicking Bill Clinton by taking the ideas listed above and ‘owning’ them?  All I’ve heard is  Senator Kyl laying it on Speaker Pelosi, as if the President is her puppet, and from the rest of you, a resounding, “No! We want more than a third of a trillion in tax cuts & you haven’t given in since you put it on the table.” This isn’t poker, gals and fellas, it is the lives and livelihoods of the millions of people who pay for your comfy salaries and benefits.  But what is left of the GOP  does not recognize honest compromise or inclusion; a third for the left, a third for the right, a third down the middle.  It is called fairness and they have never seen it, at least not as defined by either President Obama or the O.E.D.. As citizens lose their jobs by the thousands, these devoted partisans stall and hope that the President and, thereby,  even more citizens, will fail. Healthcare will be delayed as they stall and industries will leave the US forever. They want their country to fail but our President is too noble to say it and too good a person to perhaps even believe it. But I am  starting to hear the urgency in his voice. There is not a single reporter on the Hill who, when asked (Fox News doesn’t ask),  has seen a glimmer of a flash of  a spirit of attempted bipartisanism from any GOP members other than Snowe and Collins, as usual. There is, to put it very nicely, no tacit agreement in the  GOP to compromise or concede a point b/c in their cruel world, they could not imagine any President sincerely proclaiming a significant success as a result of a bipartisan effort.  Bill Clinton played them on their own game-board and that is what they expect, at best.  It is saddening when the country’s biggest skeptics, including me, see in a President what they wish they could be. Ye Olde GOPs have no intention of going large, or being productive b/c they cannot see the world Obama spoke of for 14 months.   As another economic horror report is due out tomorrow, think of this excerpted quote by Abraham Lincoln, addressed to the  Southern people, “ if they would listen - as I suppose they will not” in 1860.  ’But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. . . Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.”

This is how we carry on the fight: Call 202-224-3121 (or 866-544-7573) and leave a message for your senator. Even if your senator supports the plan, make sure they don’t agree to further conservative demands that have failed us for decades and have kept us without a real energy plan because they cannot abide real change. If you don’t know who your Senators are, go to this link to find out:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm