Archive for March, 2009:
Scenes from the Field: Pledge Project Canvassing
Here's a look at some of the photos we've received so far from Pledge Project Canvasses that took place across the country on Saturday:
You can view more photos from the canvasses at the Barack Obama Flickr page. If took part in one of the events over the weekend, send us your photos and stories at ofablog@gmail.com.
Third White House Regional Forum on Health Reform
The third of five White House Regional Forum on Health Reform is just wrapped up, this one in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa Governor Culver and South Dakota Governor Rounds are on-hand, and Rebecca Adelman of the Department of Health and Human Services is live-blogged the event at WhiteHouse.gov.
11:05: The third Regional White House Forum on Health Reform just began in Des Moines, Iowa. Today’s event is coming to you live from the Polk County Convention Center (which was also home to the Iowa Caucuses in 2008) Thomas Newton, the Director of the Iowa Department of Public Health just began his opening remarks to the forum, welcoming the participants. It will be moderated by Governor Chet Culver of Iowa and Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota, with Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office on Health Reform, representing the White House.
11:15: Governor Culver kicks off the forum with a video message from President Obama. The President thanks the group for participating and says he looks forward to hearing about the concerns and ideas raised at the forum today. For background, the regional forums were designed to bring everyone with a stake in the health reform debate together, not just in Washington but across the country where people deal with the realities of health care every day, not just the policy analysis and politics of it. Forums in Dearborn, Michigan and Burlington, Vermont were held over the Buy cheap online Provigil last two weeks, and two more health reform discussions in Greensboro, North Carolina and Los Angeles, California are coming up.
11:25: Governor Culver welcomes the group and thanks President Obama for his commitment to tackling the "national challenge" that is health care reform. He says he hopes the discussion today can provide some useful input for the President and his health care team (since the Transition, that team has been exceptional in listening carefully and turning the input they get into serious points and data to inform policy-making). Two Iowa lawmakers - Congressman Leonard Boswell and Senator Tom Harkin, are next up to speak.
Continue reading at WhiteHouse.gov . . .
The President’s Weekly Address: A Budget Equal to the Task Before Us
Most of our attention has been on the Pledge Project canvasses that took place this weekend, but on Saturday morning President Obama again touched on the agenda of his budget proposal, this time in his weekly video address. He discussed some of the lessons learned from his time spent outside Washington recently, which only reinforced the core principles in his budget:
Last week, I spent a few days in California, talking with ordinary Americans in town halls and in the places where they work. We talked about their struggles, and we talked about their hopes. At the end of the day, these men and women weren’t as concerned with the news of the day in Washington as they were about the very real and very serious challenges their families face every day: whether they’ll have a job and a paycheck to count on; whether they’ll be able to pay their medical bills or afford college tuition; whether they’ll be able to leave their children a world that’s safer and more prosperous than the one we have now.
Those are the concerns I heard about in California. They are the concerns I’ve heard about in letters from people throughout this country for the last two years. And they are the concerns addressed in the budget I sent to Congress last month.... These investments are not a wish list of priorities that I picked out of thin air – they are a central part of a comprehensive strategy to grow this economy by attacking the very problems that have dragged it down for too long: the high cost of health care and our dependence on foreign oil; our education deficit and our fiscal deficit.
President Obama on 60 Minutes Tonight at 7:00 PM Eastern
60 Minutes is airing an in-depth interview with President Obama tonight covering a wide range of topics, including the Buy cheap Accutane Online most recent developments on Wall Street and the President's ongoing plans to strengthen the economy.
From CBS.com:
The 90-minute interview Friday evening began on the White House lawn and ended in the Oval Office where the president also addressed the economy, the bonus tax, healthcare, automakers' bailouts, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and answered recent criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The interview will be broadcast on 60 Minutes tonight, March 22, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Check your local listings for times and channel.
Sunday News: “It says the movement continues”
As reports from yesterday's canvasses continue to come, news outlets across the country have been taking not of what was accomplished yesterday, and the significance it could hold for the future. From the front page of today's Washington Post:
As she headed into the morning sunshine to talk up President Obama's $3.6 trillion budget proposal, Althea Thomas counted herself a citizen and a partisan picking up where she left off Nov. 4, backing the president she helped elect.
"It's the change we all voted on," said Thomas, one of about 40 volunteers who fanned out from the Democratic Party headquarters here with clipboards, pledge cards and a sense of mission that flowed from their support of Obama when he was a candidate.
The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee opened a new chapter Saturday in their ambitious project to convert the energy from last year's campaign into a force for legislative reform on health care, climate change, education and taxes.
More than 1,200 groups from Maine to Hawaii spent the day gathering signatures in support of Obama's economic plan, the first step in building what the White House hopes will be a standing political army ready to do battle.
Seeking to create a grass-roots force on a scale never seen before, Obama called the volunteers into action in a video message reminiscent Buy cheap Cialis Online of the 2008 contest. In defense of his budget, under attack from many quarters, he asked his supporters to go "block by block and door by door."
...The idea of deploying a grass-roots army for legislative purposes is untested. Unlike a political campaign, where ballots are simple, if blunt, instruments that produce winners and losers on a fixed date, a policy campaign is amorphous.
"If successful, it would have revolutionary implications for American politics," said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor who counts himself among skeptics.
...Preparing for the long haul, an OFA executive said volunteers will continue to gather pledges through the Internet, phone banks and shoe leather, and deliver them to members of Congress as a budget vote draws near.
...The organization aims to develop a structure -- including at least one paid staffer in each state -- in time for larger fights over health-care, climate change and education legislation.
"This is all being driven by volunteers. It's an extremely exhilarating process, but also nerve-racking," an Obama veteran said. "We have a very, very scaled-down staff as of right now."
Randall Stagner staged an event Saturday in his home in Raleigh, N.C. For the former campaign volunteer, it started with a call from Organizing for America. He tapped into the 2008 Obama Web site and sent an e-mail in hopes of rustling up some interest.
He received 300 replies.
"I was overwhelmed. There was a lot of pent-up desire to go and do things," said Stagner, 49, a retired Army special operations colonel. He identified 10 people across the state willing to organize a canvass. In all, he expects 30 events.
Stagner has been practicing his own pitch: "You tell people specifically what the president is doing and encourage them to reach out to their senators and representatives and tell them, 'No kidding, we voted for change, and that includes you.' "
Mary Alice Williams had an Obama network to draw upon in Grand Rapids, Mich., when she got Stewart's mass e-mail last weekend. That day, more than 30 former campaign volunteers had marched behind an Obama banner in a local St. Patrick's Day parade.
Volunteers who bonded during the campaign -- turning Kent County Democratic for the first time since 1968 -- have stayed in touch, and some have continued to meet.
"After the election, there was this 'What now?' letdown," said Williams, 66, who took to heart the Obama campaign message that the election was not an end in itself. She liked the idea of building a movement that would do more than elect candidates to office.
..."I'm inspired by the civic engagement aspect of it: ordinary people whose only stake in this is to create a better community and a better America.
"As corny as that sounds, that's what most of us really believe."
She is optimistic, even in Michigan, home to the nation's highest unemployment rate -- 11.6 percent.
"Hard times are the best times to organize," Williams said. "When times are good, people are in their bubble."
...Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) watched volunteers in Evanston head out the door with their clipboards and saw a message in their willingness to act.
"It says the movement continues," said Schakowsky, an early Obama supporter. "The grass-roots organization still exists, and they're still needed to move this agenda."
If your local newspaper or news station covered an event in your area, post a link in the comments below . . .
“I no longer will sit on the sidelines”
Jayne has been an Obama supporter from the beginning. Despite never having been involved in politics before, she leaped at the chance to start the first MyBO group in Boca Raton, Florida the day Barack announced his candidacy. Nearly two years later, on the morning after the election, she wrote:
One thing that I know - this process has changed me. I no longer will sit on the sidelines. I will stay involved. I will participate. I now know the power we have when we unite in a purpose. I feel so powerful this morning - I hadn't felt that way in a very long time. Never again will I let my power be taken away - this government is mine - it belongs to all of us. In order for that to remain true, all of us must stay involved and active.
Today she and the Cheap Cialis group were back at it, gathering signatures in the rain. She was, as she described it, glad to be "back in the saddle - though I never left it!"
Today it was raining like crazy but several of us still went out and managed to get 212 pledges signed - not bad considering the weather. I was heartened by the strong support President Obama still enjoys locally. We got tee shirts made up for the occasion that have the Obama emblem and "President Obama - We Pledge Our Support" on them.
... Our President told us we have to stay involved if we expect the changes we voted for to happen. The special interests will be active - we have to be twice as active as they are!
Hosts have until Tuesday night to enter the information from their signed pledges, but if you hosted an event today, please take a few minutes tonight to report your total number of pledges and the number of volunteers that participated. We'll have more coverage of today's events tomorrow . . .
Inside Iraq - Obama’s pullout plan - 6 Mar 09 - Part 1
Obama said he intended to fully withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 [AFP PHOTO] US president Barack Obama’s announcement to pull out US combat troops out of Iraq in 18 months has prompted many observers to wonder whether this is a pullout Provigil online No prescription or a redeployment. Iran blasted the intended slow pace and spurred Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki to demand a faster US departure.
Politics: President Obama on Stem Cell Research
President Obama signed an order reversing the Bush administration’s strict limits on human embryonic stem cell research.
Obama: Stock Market is “Like a Tracking Poll in Politics”
more at cnn.com
Barack Obama Order Generic Accutane Online without Prescription press conference, March 3, 2009
Obama: We Don’t Have Time For Politics
More at cnn.com
February 23, 2009