WASHINGTON (CNN) – President Barack Obama is considering giving a major speech detailing specifics on what he would like to see included in a health-care reform bill, a senior White House aide said Wednesday.

Senior advisor David Axelrod told CNN, the president is looking at the possibility of a speech as “one of his options” in pushing forward his health care agenda after he returns from vacation at Camp David next week.

Axelrod is a communications strategist extrodinaire and when the Obama administration pulls the big guns out (Obama) that means they are losing ground and want to stabilize it with some words from the well liked President.

What many believe President Barack Obama has to do to sell health care reform is to make this a moral issue similar to how J.F.K made civil rights a moral issue. I guarantee that in this “huge” speech that Obama will make he will ask how is it that the leading country of the free world has 47 million people without healthcare. How people die in emergency rooms because they had illnesses that were untreated because they had no money to pay for medical attention.

A moral issue — it’s time to take the speaking points away from the Republicans who are really just looking to build some momentum in the face of last year’s horrible defeat and allow the country to come together understanding what we need to do. Remember this, moral issue and personal responsibility.

I;ve been slacking on my politics blogs lately but fear not because this good brother is here, check out Oliver Willis.

Watching the young Obama girls grow right before our eyes is a pleasure and a source of inspiration for many. These young girls come from a family of love, no baby mama drama/ baby daddy shenanigans here, just pure love and respect.

They have a father who loves them deeply and is showing them the love a man should have for them.  A mother who is teaching them how to be loving, nurturing, hard working women conscious of their past and prepared for their future. Often we frown when we see the dismal state the stereotypical broken black family. Now let us smile at our well balanced First Family, for they are ‘So Beautiful’.

Change from Damian Steinberg on Vimeo.

Letter to a young black female

What’s up young lady. You may not know who I am but I know who you
are. You see, I see your potential, I envision you accomplishing all
of your dreams and goals. Anything that you set your mind to can and
will be yours if you just Believe!

Believe in what you may ask? Yourself! Believe that you are the
intellect which has governed civilizations for century upon century.
Believe that you are the standard of beauty and not whatever images
the media shells out at you. Believe that there is no task too big
or too small that you can not reach for and achieve.

Realize young lady that women have always been at the helm of
everything great. James Brown said it best, “this is a man’s world but
it wouldn’t be nothing without a woman or a girl”. You have so many big
sisters to look up to, so many sources of inspiration that have
provided the framework of the strong work ethic known as womanhood.

Notice I call you young lady for these terms that I hear you referred
to are not your names. You are a Queen who must demand respect, your
mere presence should command respect. You must first respect yourself
however, and respect your fellow sisters as well. Together you young
ladies make up the future table of leadership.

God made you to be special, he made you to stand apart from the crowd.
So fear not if you feel isolated or alone, look back to your big
sisters who have changed the landscape of history, they once felt
alone too. I write you this letter to show my admiration for you, to
pay homage to the beautiful gift that the creator is bestowing upon
us. Follow your dreams and believe in your path young lady, for the
very thought of you reaching a tenth of your potential is an
inspiration to us all!

Truly yours,
Cedric D. Shine (your #1 fan)

Arizona State University, don’t worry President Obama is just fine with his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and Juris Doctorate from Harvard. 

TEMPE, ARIZONA – Universities typically confer an honorary degree on commencement speakers, particularly those who have reached the pinnacle of their career or achieved the top of their field. Arizona State University (ASU), though, says it will not confer an honorary degree on this year’s commencement speaker, President Barack Obama, because “his body of work is yet to come.”

ASU Media Relations Director Sharon Keeler says, unlike other universities, the processes for selecting commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients are independent. She says that honorary degrees are given “for an achievement of eminence” and that Obama was not considered for an honorary degree because his body of achievements, at this time, does not fit within that criteria.

Writing two best-sellers? Not outstanding. Developing one of the largest grassroots organizations in the world? Nothing special. Becoming the first African American President of the United States? Good, but nothing to write home about.

A local paper published an editorial within hours of the news, exhorting ASU to give the honorary degree to Obama:

Arizona State University has handed out honorary doctorate degrees to pioneering scientists and college presidents, titans of oil and computer microchips, newspaper publishers and generous donors, a foreign communist educator and a successful movie director.

Happy Friday, just a reminder that family matters above all!

There’s nothing funny about the hatred in the world, hatred that has claimed so many of our leaders, no matter what their ethnicity. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best when he spoke about the assassination of Malcolm X.

“The assassination of Malcolm X was an unfortunate tragedy and it reveals that there are still numerous people in our nation who have degenerated to the point of expressing dissent through murder and we haven’t learned to disagree without being violently disagreeable.”

A Syrian national who allegedly planned to stab US President Barack Obama was arrested in Istanbul on Friday, Turkish media reported on Tuesday. The man had attempted to gain press credentials for Obama’s visit claiming he worked for the Al Jazeera. The Ankara correspondent for Al Jazeera said that they had never heard of the man.

Reports said he had confessed to police after his arrest. Obama arrived in Ankara Sunday night. He flew to Istanbul on Monday and left Istanbul for Washington Tuesday afternoon.

America clearly has enemies, it’s time that we stop fighting amongst ourselves and become watchful of those who want to kill us. If Americans are blinded enough to think that all Arab people are our enemies, notice that it was an arabic television network, who helped to foil this attack by letting the proper authorities know that they had never heard of the man in question. Food for thought people.

Everyone else sees it and i pray that soon the American people will see it as well. my mother said if America elects McCain/Palin then they are stupid and will regret it. She said what is Plain going to do, control the hockey moms. lol

Gordon Brown has broken with British convention and made clear that he favours Barack Obama as the next US President.

In a departure from the usual self-denying ordinance of Prime Ministers past, Brown has written an article for The Monitor magazine in which he praises Obama’s plans to get the US out of the housing slump.

Referring to the anxieties facing voters across the globe during the economic slowdown, he says: “Around the world, it is progressive politicians who are grappling with these challenges….In the electrifying US Presidential campaign, it is the Democrats who are generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times. To help prevent people from losing their home, Barack Obama has proposed a Foreclosure Prevention Fund to increase emergency pre-foreclosure counselling, and help families facing repossession.”

link

Most people won’t read this whole article or will only hear a sound byte of what Rev. Wright says and then a whole bunch of negative attention will be brought onto the Obama campaign. I was not present for this sermon but I think spiritually this is a great message. To give honor to God and to know that he takes the ordinary and makes things extraordinary is a remarkable message. It speaks to me, I think it speaks to the obstacles that we must face in the road and it does a good job at showing how a man like Barack Obama can become who he is in this here country. Only God can create such magnificent wonders!

Now his comment about having a black woman sleeping at the White House “legally”, in my opinion his message could have done without it. While media pundits will not understand this comment I think it speaks to the idea, the history of white men in power lusting after women of color and having them be neither heard nor seen. This goes back to the times of slavery and I think he made this reference with that history in mind. However we all know the media can will misconstrue a statement like this because Rev. Wright allows them too.

HOUSTON, Texas — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, reappeared here Sunday.

Wrights spoke glowingly of Obama while preaching at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, as part of a message that God takes “the ordinary and turns it into the extraordinary.”

The former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, whose sermons created a political firestorm around Obama during the primary season, struck a conciliatory tone, as he talked about the Democratic nominee’s achievement in a riff that included references to the racial injustice that has been a part of America’s history.  

“Twenty years ago, a scrawny little kid with a pointed nose and big ears — mama from Kansas and daddy from Kenya,” he began. “An ordinary black boy raised in a single-parent home. The boy walked into my office 20 years ago to talk about his dream for a community that concentrated on things that we could achieve in common, things that united us rather than to focus on all the problems and the issues in the community about which we disagree or the things that divided us.”

Wright also spoke of the Rev. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks among other examples of God turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, before mentioning the Illinois senator and giving a short summary of his journey through Harvard Law School to the state Senate to the U.S. Senate to his position as the Democratic nominee.

“The Lord turned the ordinary into the extraordinary. Y’all just saw it this past week. It was on national television,” Wright said to applause. “This ordinary boy just might be, come November, the 4th, this ordinary boy from a single parent home with a daddy from Kenya and a mama from Kansas. This ordinary boy just might be the first president in the history of the United States to have a black woman sleeping at 1600 Pennsylvania, legally.”
 
Wright’s sometimes racially charged preaching was criticized as unpatriotic and divisive. Obama’s connection to the pastor became a political liability for him, as cable media, for weeks, repeatedly ran the most incendiary video clips of some of Wright’s sermons — seemingly on a loop.

Obama eventually denounced Wright, calling his message divisive and saying it ran counter to everything he had worked for in his career. He and his wife Michelle subsequently left Trinity in late May.

Wright has spoken at Wheeler, a black church in downtown Houston, many times over the years and has led revivals at the church.

Here is Senator Obama once again showing that he is above the fray of Dirty Washington Politics.

Obama on Palin
Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown reports: At a press avail in Monroe, Mich., Barack Obama on Palin: “Back off these kinds of stories.” 

“I have said before and I will repeat again: People’s families are off limits,” Obama said. “And people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics.”

On charges that his campaign has stoked the story via liberal blogs:

“I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us,” he said. “Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.