From the speech:

"We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.  There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified... For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

By January, he will have accomplished more than any first-year president since Franklin Roosevelt.

Nov 28, 2009

"There's mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—combined with the bank bailout package—prevented an economic depression. Should the stimulus have been larger? Should it have been more weighted to short-term spending, as opposed to long-term tax cuts? Would a second round be a good idea? Pundits and policymakers will argue these questions for years to come. But few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama's decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter. The New York Times recently quoted Mark Zandi, who was one of candidate John McCain's economic advisers, on this point: "The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do—it is contributing to ending the recession," he said. "In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent.""

READ MORE

http://www.slate.com/id/2236708/

Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists will be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street's influence in Washington.

November 29, 2009

The Washington Post reported that the move "may turn out to be the most far-reaching lobbying rule change so far from President Obama," resulting in "hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists" being ejected from federal advisory panels.

Not surprisingly, lobby groups, corporations, and other K Street influencers are up in arms.

"The reaction from the lobbying community has been swift and overwhelmingly negative."

And this week, congressional researchers concluded that the administration’s crackdown has “already changed the relationship between lobbyists and covered executive branch officials” and suggested that Congress might consider enacting similar restrictions on itself.

READ MORE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112602362.html

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/opinion/04fri4.html

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Have you seen Colin Gawel's video "Chemotherapy" It's a great song and it speaks directly to the need for healthcare reform. The version that's posted here also starts with a clip from President Obama's address to Congress. Colin's web site is at http://www.colingawel.com

Colin is an Upper Arlington Resident and the owner of Colin's Coffee at Fishinger and Riverside.

Consider doing a post on the video.

By Dan Balz
WashingtonPost.com
Posted at 6:34 PM ET on Apr 30, 2009

A new study by the Pew Research Center found that participation rates among African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans all rose between 2004 and 2008, leaving the share of the electorate accounted for by white voters at an all-time low of 76.3 percent.

African American women voted at higher participation rates than any other racial or ethnic group, according to the study, which was based on an analysis of Census data. The study found that 68.8 percent of eligible black women voted in the last election, an increase of 5.1 percentage points.

White women were the next highest in participation rates, followed by white men, black men, Latino women and Latino men. Asian American men and women voted ranked at the bottom in terms of participation rates.

Read the rest of the story here.

Conservative op-ed columnist David Brooks reviewed Obama's speech:

America once had a responsible economic culture, Obama argued. People used to save their pennies to buy their dream houses. Banks used to lend by “traditional standards.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used to stick to their “traditional mandate.” Companies like A.I.G. used to limit themselves to the “traditional insurance business.”

But these traditions broke down, Obama continued. They were swamped by irresponsibility. Businesspeople chased “short-term profits” over long-term investments. Smart people spent more time manipulating numbers and symbols than actually making things. Americans consumed too much and saved too little. America became corrupted by “excessive debt,” “reckless speculation” and “fleeting profits.”

Obama vowed to end this irresponsibility and the cycle of boom and bust. It’s time to get back to basics, he said. He embraced tradition, order and authority. He quoted the New Testament and argued that it is time that the U.S. built its economic house on rock and not sand.

If Republicans aren’t nervous, they should be. Obama is arguing for his activist agenda not on the basis of class-consciousness, which is alien to America, but as a defense of middle-class morality, which is central to it. Obama is positioning the Democrats as the party of order, responsibility and small-town values. If he pulls this mantle away from the Republicans, it would be the greatest train robbery in American politics.

Conservative David Frum gets it:

Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

"One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat [the Democrats] is with better policy ideas," - Rush Limbaugh.

"The dirty little secret ... is that every Republican in this country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so; I am willing to say it," -Rush Limbaugh.

"Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill" -Rush Limbaugh. 

Paris Hilton

In an interesting move, the McCain campaign decided to try to turn the excitement driving huge crowds to Obama events into a liability. In the end, Obama was able to brand the tactic as "politics as usual" where all the other attempts.

No good act of journalism should go unpunished.

Two tests of each candidate: VP pick and economic crisis. Clinton's words --- rare to see candidates get to make two critical choices on one election campaign.

Contrast the handling of the economic crisis

The Palin pick:

Scarbrough reaction

Cafferty clip

TPM's Palin's greatest hits

SNL videos

Phony outrage and lipstick on a pig

Colin Powell endorsement

Obama and McCain roasting each other

The caustic

The 

From the Columbus Dispatch: 'GOP's grip on county suburbs slipping':

"Reynoldsburg went for Barack Obama on Tuesday, the first time in recent memory that the reliably Republican suburb turned to a Democrat for president.

Obama took Franklin County by winning nearly 100,000 more votes than John McCain did, powered by the huge margins piled up in Columbus precincts. But Obama also was aided by once-staunchly Republican suburbs that are becoming more politically diverse and shifting to Democrats, an analysis of Franklin County elections data shows."

Republican divisive political tactics and out-of-touch policies that we saw so much of in this election cycle are taking their toll in UA as well:

"In Upper Arlington, Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by almost 5,000 votes in 2000. Four years later, Bush's victory margin dropped to 2,718. On Tuesday, the suburb went Republican by 886 votes.

Voters choose a candidate "more for what they see the issues are; party loyalty may be getting less firm," veteran Upper Arlington City Manager Virginia Barney said.

Barney said her city shares more similarities with Columbus neighborhoods such as Clintonville and Victorian Village, which leaned toward Obama, than with Hilliard, Grove City or Marysville, which stayed strongly Republican in Tuesday's election."