US News
Tributes after Obama's victory, transition begins (Roundup)
Nov 5, 2008, 18:38 GMT
Pedestrians walk past a newspaper flier showing new US President elect Barack Obama with his wife Michele in London, Britain, 05 November 2008. EPA/ANDY RAIN
Washington/Chicago - A steady flow of well-wishes came in from around the world Wednesday after Democratic candidate Barack Obama's historic victory made him the first African American ever to be elected president of the United States.
Obama, 47, stormed to victory Tuesday night over Republican rival John McCain, 72, capturing a series of reliable Republican states that voted for President George W Bush in the last two elections, including Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Colorado and Nevada.
But there was little time for the president-elect to rest. Transition talks have already been well underway and Obama planned to meet with his top advisors later Wednesday to discuss their next moves, US media reported.
President George W Bush, who will turn the White House over to Obama on January 20, promised a smooth transition and hailed Obama's win as a great American story.
'No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday,' Bush said in a brief statement at the White House Rose Garden Wednesday. 'Many of our citizens thought they would never live to see that day.'
With the US involved in two wars and an economy on the verge of recession, Obama will face pressure to appoint cabinet posts quickly and get advisors involved in key policy making.
Obama basked in his victory shortly after midnight Wednesday before a crowd of nearly a quarter million people that had gathered in Chicago's Grant Park.
'If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,' he said.
McCain offered a gracious concession speech in Phoenix, Arizona. He recognized the 'historic' nature of an African American taking the highest office in the land and promised to help Obama unite a country that remains sharply divided.
'In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance,' McCain told a crowd of downcast supporters, who booed at his mention of Obama.
Sporadic celebrations broke out across the country upon news of Obama's victory and statements of congratulations poured in from leaders around the world. Many noted Obama's inspirational qualities and voiced hope that he would repair the US' tarnished image after eight years of an unpopular Bush administration.
Obama won the popular vote by 52 per cent, to 46 per cent for McCain. But state victories were the key in the country's state-by- state, winner-takes-all electoral system.
A total of 270 electoral votes is needed. The count stood Wednesday at 349 electoral votes for Obama and 163 for McCain. Obama took 27 states and the District of Columbia, compared to 21 for McCain. Two states - Missouri and North Carolina - remained too close to call on Wednesday.
In Chicago, a deafening roar went out from the tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Grant Park as networks projected the Illinois senator's win late Tuesday. Supporters hugged each other and shouted out 'Yes we can! Yes we can!'
'I never thought I would see this in my lifetime,' said Jessica Rose, a 26-year-old African American woman from Chicago. 'It's all like a fairy tale, it really is.'
Obama said he recognized the 'enormity' of challenges that would face him upon entering the White House. He reached out to McCain supporters with a promise to unite the country and offered a stark warning to US adversaries.
'To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn: I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. I will be your president too,' Obama said.
Democrats had worked on the hope that eight years of Bush's unpopular policies in Iraq and the slumping economy would convince voters to hand them control of the White House and strengthen their control of Congress.
The Democrats picked up at least four seats from Republicans in the Senate and were poised to make significant gains to widen their majorities in both congressional houses. At least 15 seats in the House of Representatives had swung to Democrats by Wednesday with a number of races still outstanding.
The faltering US economy was by far the top concern of voters heading to the polls in Tuesday's general election, according to initial exit polls reported by US broadcaster CNN that showed a full 62 per cent voters ranked it as the key issue.
Millions of voters waited patiently in serpentine queues early Tuesday to cast ballots. Many had started lining up before dawn, and some braved pouring rain to cast their ballots.
It was a bittersweet end to the 21-month campaign for Obama, whose grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, 86, passed away overnight Sunday after a battle with cancer.
'While she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am,' Obama said.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Due to the US Electoral College voting procedure NOT A SINGLE VOTE WAS CAST BY ANY OF THE 240 MILLION VOTERS FOR EITHER McCAIN OR OBAMA !
Nobody votes for the Presidential candidates except the ELECTORS.
These are the people YOU vote for at all the polling stations in the entire US.
There are 538 electors and the distribution of electoral seats is shared out per state - but not equally.
So, YOU vote for JOE the REP or FRED the BLUE. NOT Obama or McCain.
This is repeated 538 times on polling day.
If JOE wins, McCain gets an electoral seat by INHERITANCE. If FRED wins, Obama gets it. And so on.
When a Presidential candidate INHERITS 270 electoral seats - HEY PRESTO - HE`S WON !
And the only votes he has got in the entire US are 270+. Only 538 votes are actually cast for the Presidential candidates - BY THE ELECTORS who are committed to give their vote to their party Presidential nominee.
So what happened on the 4th Nov. was a huge country-wide swing from the Republicans to the Democrats - A PARTY VOTE ! Where the party who got 270 electoral seats simply inherited the Presidency.
It was not a Presidential election, that was simply a by-product, it was a party vote against BUSH and his Republicans.
BUSH gave Obama the presidency !!
So what is your point ?
Ramble, ramble, ramble. What is that your impression of Sarah Palin?
We CAN and we DID!!
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words 'hope and change,' 'change and hope' have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not 'hope and change' but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an 'undivided Jerusalem,' and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored 'direct negotiations with Hamas.' Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote 'Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state.'
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: 'There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President.'
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, 'of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.''
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on 'the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed' in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that 'broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama 'is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.,' he said, adding, 'Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.'
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled 'Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama' (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled 'Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque.' None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to 'tumultuous applause,' following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the 'middle class' but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the 'poor' in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke 'change' yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the 'corporate supremacists.' It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. 'Hope' some say springs eternal.' But not when 'reality' consumes it daily.
Like previous poseter I think never peace will be achieved if the colonization policy of the palestinian territories is continued.It should be reversed.Right now the israeli colonists are attacking palestinian villages .Nothing is done to prevent that.It is hard to imagine that the palestinians that have been living there for more than 700 years could simply be evicted by immigrants coming from other countries claiming to have a divine right to it.
It would never be tolerated from any other country.There is no excuse for colonization anymore since at least 100 years.
It is thanks to the powerful AIPAC lobby in the US that no news that would not reflect the official israeli point of view ever infiltrated in your media.AIPAC holds all your media accountable to present only their point of view,all accounts of the events are skewed and biased in your media.First thing would be to give palestinians access to your media too,enough for the american population to be able to make up their minds .Why does the points of view of the palestinians have to be obfuscated or given not by themselves but by others.They have their own voice and the american people is mature enough to hear that voice .
And the naysayers are at work already! Everyone needs to get behind this new President and quit all the negativism that has ruled the Republican campaign and work together for a better America.
So what is next?
After the Obama-groupies argue with the Bush-groupies on whether Obama is black or white then what comes next?
Obama is as white as he is black, and people will argue incessantly over which is greater, but then what? A first black president, great, but big deal.
Lets get onto important things like:
Can Obama balance a checkbook?
Or, is he just another financial idiot that is going to get followers into even more hock while those followers kiss his feet?
Why do you think Obama never visited a mosque and has never taken a hard-line approach to what he (probably) believes? Because the republicans ran such a negative campaign, how would it have looked if Obama had campaigned at mosques and added fuel to the fire surrounding his education background? His inexperience stopped him from having real opinions and ideas when visiting Israel. He is scared to be who he is because he is afraid who he is would not get elected. I'm tired of politicians saying whatever they feel the American people want to hear and thinking to themselves 'I'll tell them what they want to hear now, then I'll follow my own agenda when I'm in office. I know better, they'll see' and they throw honesty out the window.
'yeees...this is th prezidint..oh...President elect Obaama...nahce of yoou t call...congrats all around.....yeeees, thim transition teams are bonin up fer ya...we'll hep ya lahke th Clintons did fer me...heh, heh..jes kiddin....th whate hooouse lookied a lot lahke Cllintons private lahfe whin he lift....mussed up, ya knoow...a little befuddled aboout all the hubub...we've had an Irish prezidint befoah...no Irish?...reelah?....ya what?...ohh.....well haell..congrats any ways...ya must be one o thim black Irish....'
'what?....oh heck boyh...noo need ta worry...yooou cin clip thit Rezko thing whin ya git heah....ah knoow what ya meeenn..heck boyh, thim fairies at Enron wanted th same from meee too....musta thought ol Bill wuz still heah..heh, heh...no....you cin clip thit ACORN invistigation too...afta all, you th man now....jes fire th prosecutahs....they git th point, ya knooow...ol Bill may be a pussy magnet but he wasn't no fool...me?...ya want me t clip em...aw shucks Mr. Prizident...ah wount think o steppin inta yur...uh...dung...ya knoow?'
'no Barak...th only person gittin a pardon is ol Scoot....ah know, ah know...ya want me t clip thim invistigations s' ya won't look corrupt...heaven ferbid, heh, heh...heck congriss trahd thit with me on th war fer 8 years boyh....how'd that work out?... now, y git ta shut er down all byah yersef, big o me, eh boyh?...heh, heh, heh....what'll it be...bout three yeahs?...jes in tahme fer th nixt ee lection!'
'quit crahin boyh...ya got fer yeahs more an ya need t pace ya sef.... y' in th big chaih now boyh...git ya sef a nut cuttah...Karl Rove is available...heh, hehe...nooo, din't think so but ah wuz jes bein nahce...git one and cut sum nuts, cuz they's cumin fer yurs....everah day boyh...Pelosi an Reid....what? ...same partah?...heh, heh, heh...yeah, sure boyh, what evah ya think...well...gotta goo noow...havin coffah with Mutha Sheehan an ah need t load mah gun...see ya at the swearin in...I'll leave ya one o Bills salmon flavored cee gars...gotta find ooout whire he got thim things...reeel comfortin...'
how long it would take the SP fool to start on Obama again. He is now the President and needs the chance to show what he can accomplish. This country has had 8 years of failures, and it's not going to be fixed overnight.
And he wonders why we laugh AT him? (instead of with him)
Keep posting SP4 ... thanks to your posts like above, we don't have to type an explanation discrediting you ... you do it for us.
Thank you, thank you.
page: 1
pNov 5th, 2008 - 20:03:08
Barack Obama as next President of The United States of America
The die is cast and for reasons that only a privileged few know, you Sir, will be the next President of the United States of America. Your next 4 years will be a turning point in US history and planet earth. CHANGE, your advisors and high stake investors offer the nation will undoubtedly be the same rhetoric and empty promises that make up a political campaign, that campaigns for appointment for any public office in America.
The White House will be the Black House to some, the Aryan Brothers of America will not be so happy, but yet will blame you and your staff if you fail, which will reinforce their belief that the Aryan Nation is the true leader for America. The religious zealots will be busy bees making nests to survive the onslaught of lies, corruption and deceit. Business enterprises and other competing nations will capitalize off of your inexperience in the art of corruption and murder. The organized crime organizations from different nations including our own will benefit from the lack of control over national crime.
Military governments including our own will test your tolerance to pain and deception and trick you into needless and profitable domestic and international conflict. You will no doubt attempt to colorize your staff to soften the race conflict once in office.
As President you will be President. Nations will respect you only for your title of office. Americans will soon see after your appointment as President that your intentions were manipulated by those that make the rules. You will fill the spot in history as planned, and nothing more.
You will never while in office be able to pull the troops from conflict in any land we are engaged in. As a matter of fact we as a nation will be engaged in a new conflict of war, which will galvanize Americans to seek a different form of government and a different and honest Congress.
You will attempt to shore up Americas problems with false promise and lies, because you cannot directly affect the CHANGE you promised.
Your frustration will be your downfall while in office, and your co-dependence on those that you trust will also add to your demise.
Our Armed Forces in rank will respect you as good soldiers they are, but those under them will not, and for good reasons, that only a good soldier knows.
America will not be America until its government respects the People, and tells the truth. America is a Republic, not a Democracy or Fascist Government or is it?
Until you can walk thru the streets and neighborhoods of America unaided by Secret Service or any other law enforcement agency you will not be respected by the many, only by the fearful and selfish few. Americans can protect their leaders if they are honest and respectful of the people they were elected to serve. Our Government has forsaken us for many hundreds of years, and now we will wait until your 4 years are finished for us to come to fruition.
CHANGE FOR AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!
The American Republic
A Sovereign Republic
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