Obama Will Reach Out To The "Other 46 Percent" - Reacting To Brian Solis

I just read Brian Solis otherwise well-considered blog post entitled "Barack Obama, The Social Web, and the Future of User-Generated Governance", and I have to totally disagree with his central idea that because of Senator Obama's huge win -- a landslide in the electoral college -- that the "losing side" of the coin of the election will not be reached. 

I take issue with this for two reasons: the failing economy and the need for government aide will cauuse a good portion of "the other 46 percent" to pay attention to President Obama.

I remind Brian and others that the reason Barack Obama won the 2008 election is 1) the failing economy, and 2) the fact that the Republicans' expressed reliance on "the free market" (the adherence to the belief in the existence of such which I take for intellectual laziness because it's a reason to do nothing), as well as 3) market failure is in part what helped Obama "over the top". (Solis is right about the other aspect components of Obama's victory.)

But my assertion is that the economy's continued deterioration will cause even Obama's detractors to look to hear and see what he's going to do about it. Our economy is tanking. Citicorp is set to lay of 9,000 people. Google's feeling the crunch. American Express wants a cut of the Bailout money.

We're in trouble. The "free market" is too sick to get us out of it, and it's actually under the influence of a confluence of international government actions. Everyone in America is waiting for us to act, and those who didn't support President-Elect Obama will watch on television and discover YouTube to see what he does.

Enter Barack Obama.

First Glimpse of the Star Trek Trailer (video)

You can see the glorious (and surprising) Star Trek trailer if you check out the new James Bond flick this weekend. Some people have already had this privilege, and they managed to upload the contents of their memories via a mobile device. So now we have the trailer right here! Cautious optimism. It looks fresh and cool.

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Activists throw flour on fur-clad Lindsay Lohan

U.S. actress Lindsay Lohan has been pelted with a flour bomb on arrival at a Paris nightclub wearing a fur stole.Animal rights activists showered the 22-year-old actress with flour when she went to the VIP Room Theater in the early hours of Saturday with her friend, disc jockey Samantha Ronson.

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20 Great Online Image Editors

The online image editing space has grown rapidly in the past year, providing great free and subscription-based options for users of all levels. These well-rounded services let you import images from your social networks, touch up photos, promote your work, and more.

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Are Our Brains Becoming “Googlized?”

Are our brains being rewired by using the Internet? The evidence tends to be pointing that way. With internet usage, a significantly bigger piece of neural real estate lit up on the fMRI indicating that more parts of the brain were engaged.

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Michigan Football-Worst Season in 129 Years!!!

Michigan sank to an all-time low on a day as miserable as its season. C.J. Bacher threw touchdown passes on his first two drives of the second half to lift Northwestern to a 21-14 win Saturday over the Wolverines, handing them eight losses overall and five at home for the first time in the storied program's 129-year history.

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The Center-Right Political Myth

We have been hearing pundits saying this is a center-right country on television for the last couple of weeks, despite all available evidence. CNN even did a poll a week after the election to ask people if they wanted the country to head in a Democratic direction. We already had that poll - it was called Election Day!

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T. Boone Pickens Expects Obama to Implement Pickens' Plan

Billionaire American entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens is optimistic that the Obama administration will bring the United States’ energy infrastructure into the new millennium by implementing his plan for energy independence.

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Berkeley's Robert Reich Blog Seems To Point To Bailout Of The American Taxpayer

Berkeley Professor of Public Policy Robert Reich became famous for a book called "The Next American Frontier" where he favored a kind of American Industrial Policy while at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. That book, and "American Industry in International Competition" and "The New Industrial State" by John Kenneth Galbraith, plus a healthy practice of system dynamics modeling, helped to form my current economic view.


Currently, Reich serves as what he describes as an "informal advisor" to President-Elect Barack Obama.  In his blog, which I'd wish he'd break up into subject portions for linking, Reich points to the big "C" - Consumers -- as being at the heart of the economic problem. He writes:

The real problem is on the demand side of the economy.


Consumers won't or can't borrow because they're at the end of their ropes. Their incomes are dropping (one of the most sobering statistics in Friday's jobs report was the continued erosion of real median earnings), they're deeply in debt, and they're afraid of losing their jobs.


Introductory economic courses explain that aggregate demand is made up of four things, expressed as C+I+G+exports. C is consumers. Consumers are cutting back on everything other than necessities. Because their spending accounts for 70 percent of the nation's economic activity and is the flywheel for the rest of the economy, the precipitous drop in consumer spending is causing the rest of the economy to shut down.


I is investment. Absent consumer spending, businesses are not going to invest.


Exports won't help much because the of the rest of the world is sliding into deep recession, too. (And as foreigners -- as well as Americans -- put their savings in dollars for safe keeping, the value of the dollar will likely continue to rise relative to other currencies. That, in turn, makes everything we might sell to the rest of the world more expensive.)


That leaves G, which, of course, is government. Government is the spender of last resort. Government spending lifted America out of the Great Depression. It may be the only instrument we have for lifting America out of the Mini Depression. Even Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is now calling for a sizable government stimulus. He knows that monetary policy won't work if there's inadequate demand.


So the crucial questions become (1) how much will the government have to spend to get the economy back on track? and (2) what sort of spending will have the biggest impact on jobs and incomes?


The answer to the first question is "a lot." Given the magnitude of the mess and the amount of underutilized capacity in the economy-- people who are or will soon be unemployed, those who are underemployed, factories shuttered, offices empty, trucks and containers idled -- government may have to spend $600 or $700 billion next year to reverse the downward cycle we're in.

The solution, in my view, is to give the American Taxpayer a $4,200 per-person check, each. Then form a plan to subsidize labor costs in selected export industries and rather than pick the firms, let them fill out an online application for assistance and make it so everyone knows who's applying for it and who got it. Finally, the massive infrastruture reinvestment program is part of this, too. But the idea is that the check will help American workers during this time of economic adjustment and even reach those -- like Joe The Plumber -- who can't file for unemployment insurance.

President-Elect Barack Obama's Video Adress For Saturday, February 15, 2008

Here, President-Elect Obama calls for Congress to act swiftly on economic relief for the Auto Industry.

Barack Obama's Radio Address, November 15, 2008

Get your own at Scribd or explore others:  Politics    Campaigns and Electi    radio address    Barack Obama  

Barack Obama Collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian Comics - Fun Facts About Barack

Ok.  So you're wondering what President-Elect Obama's weird and little known likes and interests are? Here's a list just presented by Denise Hawkins on the Obama listserv:

He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at  basketball

• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili

• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir,  Dreams

   From My Father

• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be  left-handed

• He has read every Harry Potter book

• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali

• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and  now

   can't stand ice cream

• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars

• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while  living in

   Indonesia

• He can speak Spanish

• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had  sports

   channels on instead

• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea

• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for  president –

   he didn't

• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia

• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs

• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be  addressed

   by his full name

• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his

   half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived

• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy

• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year,  with

   much coming from sales of his books

• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the  Cuckoo's Nest  

• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet  belonging

   to a soldier in Iraq for good luck

• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at  Harvard, but was

   rejected by the all-female committee.

• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and  The Fugees

• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing  on their

   first date

• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker

• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician

• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine

• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress

   (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)

• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the  backside

• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing  his book deal

• His house in Chicago has four fire places

• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita

• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry

• He uses an Apple Mac laptop

• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling  Chrysler

   300 SUV

• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits

• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes

• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff,  who charges

   $21 (£13)

• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The  Wire

• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service  handlers

• He was nicknamed "Bear" by his late grandmother

• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House  grounds

• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso

• His speciality as a cook is chilli

• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street  urchins"

• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg,  a Kenyan

   symbol of the fragility of life

• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan  government

"Lost" Inauguration Hotel Reservations Prompt New Facebook Page

Are you one of those who had the presence of mind to make your inauguration reservations earlier this year, only to have recently gotten a call from a hotel representative stating that your well-earned hotel room was "lost" are undoubtedly irate -- but not alone. 

Such reports have spawned this new Facebook Page called "Hotels "Losing" Reservations for The Inauguration".   This is what it's creator reports:

Have any of you who may have booked hotel rooms in the DC area for the inauguration months and months ago, suddenly received a phonecall from the hotel informing you that due to some sort of "computer malfunction" you no longer have a room reserved?

This just happended to me yesterday, and I'm trying to find out if this is starting to happen to many supporters. As I'm sure you're all aware, they are estimating there will be well over a million people coming to DC for this inauguration, and hotels that weren't already booked solid jacked their rates to rape people. That's bad enough, but now...I'm trying to get a feel for whether they are also now starting to "lose" reservations for people who booked months ago at lower rates, so they can resell those rooms at the rape rates.

As you might imagine, I am RAGING over this. I booked 2 rooms (for 6 of us) at the Hilton Garden Inn, in Greenbelt, MD back on May 11th, before Obama even won the primary! I have email confirmations on my reservations. In addition, I called the hotel directly 2 days after the election to reconfirm verbally they still showed my reservation, which they did. And now....magically....they tell me that the reservation never made it from the Hilton central system into their property system. I've spoken with a friend of mine in the hospitality industry, and she assures me they are blowing smoke up my skirt.

So, while I continue to call the hotel every hour on the hour, demanding that the general manager do something to rectify this situtation, I am attempting to find anywhere to stay. I worked 2 years on this campaign, and I'm heartbroken at the prospect of not being able to attend this historic event. There truly are zero hotel vacancies within a 250 mile radius of DC. I've been searching house rental sites, but I'm not having any luck there either. I'm livid.

If any of you have reservations, I would HIGHLY recommend you contact your hotels and reconfirm that they really do show you with a room...and somehow get them to confirm that in blood.

If any of you are experiencing the same problem that I have, please let me know. I think if we discover this has turned into an epidemic, we need to somehow get this out as a major story in the MSM and on the web. I would think a story about grassroots supporters getting screwed by corporate hotel chains would be a story that journalists would love. At the very least, I need to find a way to make Hilton pay dearly for this.

Also....if anyone is aware of someone in the DC area who would be willing to rent their house to a group of 6 of us, please contact me.

If you have been screwed by your hotel, please contact me with your story. I do NOT want to let them get away with this.