First Lady Michelle Obama is shown in this undated publicity photograph as she plants a garden on “Sesame Street” with characters Big Bird and Elmo.
It’s not a scientific poll on the popularity of President Barack Obama, but souvenir shops in Washington and elsewhere say sales of all things Obama are softening.
Back in January, it was nearly impossible to escape the Obama commercial boom. His image and words were on millions of T-shirts, posters and commemorative plates. Even Corporate America got in on the Obama blitz with PepsiCo and Swedish furniture store Ikea joining the chorus.
At the Political Americana store across the street from the White House, the red, white and blue Obama “Hope” image that appeared on many campaign posters is still the most popular T-shirt.
The slowdown follows a slide in the polls and intense debate on issues including the bailouts and health care reform.
There’s always HOPE
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday easily rejected the inclusion of a government-run “public” insurance option, backed by President Barack Obama, in its sweeping healthcare reform bill.
This is where Ratti’s Trash Track project comes in. His team have developed tags consisting of a battery-powered Sim card and motion sensor, encased in resin, which updates them about the location of a piece of rubbish every 15 minutes for up to eight weeks.
Lewis Girod, who designed the tags, says they can use the mobile phone network to pinpoint an object to within 100 metres or so in the city, and around half a mile in the country.
Ratti likens the use of these tags to injecting a radioactive substance into a patient in order to find blockages that might be causing health problems.
In this case, the blockages are problems with a city’s waste-disposal system: by tracking the final resting place of pieces of waste, from coffee cups to fluorescent bulbs, they can discover whether stuff that can be recycled ends up in a landfill. That applies not just to glass and plastics, but valuable (or toxic) substances such as gold, aluminium, nickel, copper, zinc, lead, cadmium and mercury, too.
As soon as he had spelt out the potential, I asked Carlo if I could get hold of some tags for a pilot project. A few months later, I was able to sit in London and watch a similar screen, tracking 60 pieces of rubbish in Seattle. Each one had a story to tell…
N.O’Really
Values
...The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline.
...Yet despite its amazing wealth, the United States has generally remained immune to this cycle. American living standards surpassed European living standards as early as 1740. But in the U.S., affluence did not lead to indulgence and decline.
That’s because despite the country’s notorious materialism, there has always been a countervailing stream of sound economic values. The early settlers believed in Calvinist restraint. The pioneers volunteered for brutal hardship during their treks out west. Waves of immigrant parents worked hard and practiced self-denial so their children could succeed. Government was limited and did not protect people from the consequences of their actions, thus enforcing discipline and restraint. ...
He’s got a point, there. But then....
A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances and embrace policies like energy taxes ...
*sigh*
09/29 at 07:46 AM •
(4) Extra Credit • Pass it on...
I know it wasn’t rape-rape...
CAfacepalm
Yet even among such dilettantes, the abruptness of Whitman’s conversion from businesswoman to politician stands out. Not only has the 2010 gubernatorial candidate never held office, but an analysis of her record by the Sacramento Bee showed that she hadn’t even registered to vote until she was 46 years old, and only became a Republican two years ago.
09/29 at 07:12 AM •
(8) Extra Credit • Pass it on...
I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits...
WHEN Barack Obama and the fragrant and Michelle Obama met Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his family, they duly met his 16 and 13-year-old daughters Laura and Alba.
Spanish privacy law forbids anyone in their native country publishing pictures of the girls. But then Obama stuck the pictures up on the White House Flikr stream, and now you can get a load of their Goth glory.
Many Spanish in-boxes today were flooded with a series of E-mails with the photograph—obviously altered—depicting the two teens as members of the Addams Family, the band KISS, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s troll-like Orcs…
I am always astounded to learn about the massive disparity in wealth between people. Astounding!
According to the information on these cards…
One of President Barack Obama’s health care “horror stories” is about a woman who, he says, lost her health insurance on the verge of breast cancer surgery because she didn’t disclose a case of acne to the insurer. That’s not what happened.
Robin Lynn Beaton, 59, of Waxahachie, Texas, indeed had her insurance suspended and then terminated when she needed it the most. Hers is a cautionary tale about how an insurance company can act in a seemingly arbitrary manner to revoke coverage for lifesaving treatment.
But not for the reasons Obama cites.
She “was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne,” he said in one telling.
Beaton did not lose her insurance because she failed to own up to a skin problem in her past. She lost it because, when enrolling in the plan, she had not reported a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately. [ she lied ]
Obama tells stories of real-life hardships repeatedly, in his speech to a joint session of Congress, in interviews and at his citizen meetings across the country in support of his campaign to rework medical insurance. Beaton’s case is just one cited by Obama that mixes fact with fiction.
In reflexively blaming insurance companies, Obama is playing into fears that have become a frightening reality for many Americans. Health insurance under the current system is not always the rock-solid guarantee you think you’re paying for.
Especially, it turns out, when you don’t fill everything out just right.
In Beaton’s case, the insurance company opened an investigation after her visit to a dermatologist and just before her scheduled breast cancer surgery, forcing postponement of her operation almost on the eve of it. The earlier problems on her enrollment form were discovered and her coverage was canceled.
To some lawmakers, that’s outrageous enough - never mind the acne story.
Rep. Joe Barton, Beaton’s Republican congressman in Texas, fought the insurer until it restored her coverage, enabling her to get the surgery 10 weeks after it was postponed. She told The Associated Press she owes Barton and his aides her life.
But somewhere along the way, Beaton’s case became a White House tale of an insurer canceling coverage because she forgot to report acne....
cont…
Already facing the loss of federal government funding, the community-organizing group ACORN also has run afoul of one of its big corporate partners, Bank of America Corp.
In response to questions from The Wall Street Journal, a spokesman for the banking company said it has “suspended current commitments” to ACORN Housing, an affiliated group, and “will not enter into any further agreements with ACORN or any of its affiliates,” pending assessments by the bank of the organization’s operations.
ACORN, officially the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been under fire since the recent release of secretly recorded videos that showed Acorn employees offering advice on evading taxes, setting up brothels and smuggling illegal immigrants.
Social Security and Medicare were called “bankrupt.”
This is a common error. Both programs collect more in revenue than they spend. That is hardly the definition of bankrupt.
---some Lympian
The Bush administration had championed a missile defense system with missiles in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic. But Mr. Obama has decided to change course, because new intelligence suggests Iran is not developing the kind of long-range offensive missiles the system was designed to protect against.
Iran tested its longest-range missiles Monday and warned they can reach any place that threatens the country, including Israel, parts of Europe and U.S. military bases in the Mideast. The launch capped two days of war games and was condemned as a provocation by Western powers, which are demanding Tehran come clean about a newly revealed nuclear facility it has been secretly building.
The tests Sunday and again Monday added urgency to a key meeting this week between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany — an international front seeking clear answers about the direction of its nuclear program.
President Barack Obama’s decision to fly to Denmark to support Chicago’s Olympics bid elevates the Games to an issue of national importance – and exposes him to political risks as well as rewards at a critical point in his presidency.
Three teenagers have been arrested and charged as adults with first-degree murder in the beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert as he walked home from Chicago’s Fenger High School last Thursday, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The three teens were scheduled to be arraigned today.
USA TODAY’s Judy Keen reports from Chicago that people gathered today at the high school to remember the slain honor student and to call for an end to violence.
Albert was beaten to death during a melee between two gangs that broke out on the street.
Several police vehicles were parked outside the school, which was reopened today for the first time since the incident. Ministers and anti-violence activists gathered outside in advance of today’s vigil.
A pot of white flowers stood in front of two posters featuring photos of the slain youth. One poster was covered with handwritten memorials. “Derrion, you will be missed,” one read.
Mary Washington, 69, who lives in the neighborhood, said it has long been plagued by gang violence. “They’re killing our children, our hope for the future,” she said.
I am giving away two of my nipple rings. There are for guys. I used them both for very short period of time and I got tired of taking care of them so I took them out. If you already have your nipple pierced and you wanna have more rings to play with let me know. The are worth $20 each if you get them in store.
